Ciao for now
I've finally admitted to myself that I must let this blog lapse...I simply don't have time to write to it, plus I think endless posts about econ cases on price versioning wouldn't really interest anyone.I have many stories left to tell about my time in Ethiopia, but these will have to find their own way out of my head; some of them I will keep for myself, though.
Ethiopia, which at first seemed like a long-ago dream when I first arrived back home, is coming back to me now in vivid snatches. Last night I couldn't fall asleep because I had Yasteriseriyal (a very popular song that ended up getting banned, I believe) in my head.
As the memories flow back, the first ones to announce themselves are the ones I won't ever forget, for good and bad reasons.
Most importantly, and most germane to why I am where I am right now, there are certain people I won't forget, even if I didn't get to say good-bye to them and I will probably never see them again:
The AIDS patient in Nairobi with Karposi's sarcoma ravaging his left leg, his wife lost to AIDS 4 months ago and three daughters: "Remember me," he said. "Have a safe journey home."
The healthy, plump young woman with a blinding smile who stood proudly in her fields of sunflowers and grain and fat cattle and said, "Now, you must help my sisters as you helped me."
The strong, tall, gorgeous 19-year-old who divorced her husband because he infected her with HIV and who now lives in a rural town off the generosity of friends, with no drugs in sight, and spends her time defying stigma and teaching people how to protect themselves from HIV; "Help her," her friend asked me, "she has no education and cannot get work";
The shephard boys who would cautiously follow us at when hiking, laughing when I fell in the river, playing their flutes, breaking out in snatches of song;
The 16-year-old girl who lived, shunned by friends and family, with fistula for 2 years after being married first at the age of 6 and again at the age of 9 and suffering a miscarriage at the age of 12. "Take me home with you," she begged us;
The boy lying, dead or unconscious, in the middle of the rotary and no one stopped to pick him up or take him to the hospital. "We can't," they said. "We are considered responsible for what happens to him if no one knows what happened. It could have been a stone, a car, a fight. This is how things are here." (I got so upset my friends actually endangered themselves by calling the Red Cross ambulance driver, who immediately asked what happened and the boy's name, and when he found out we didn't know, he refused to pick him up because of the liability. When we got back to the rotary, the boy was gone.)
The amazing doctors, nurses, volunteer health workers who dedicated their time--their lives-- and sacrificed other opportunities to heal their people in an environment that was anything but rewarding;
The young girl struggling along the road with at least 50 pounds of firewood dwarfing her strapped to her back, while her father/brother/husband walked nonchalantly aside her, carrying nothing, swinging his dula (walking stick);
The hopeful, energetic young men and women in the countryside towns, youth with fierce ambition and big dreams who laughed and danced so easily;
Undulating slips of young women wearing brightly colored strips of fabric in the nightclub, wrapping their arms around the necks of middle-aged white men with wedding rings, under a hazy red light;
The shy mothers, wrapped in yards of different fabrics, swaddling their newborns and patiently enduring the swarming flies as they wait for health services at a clinic with no running water;
The courteous old men who would invite me to sweet chai (tea) and discuss Ethiopian politics and history at length;
The sharp-faced little girls who walked, talked, and sold their trinkets to me everywhere I went, practicing their English and entrepreunerial skills;
The warm, hospitable older women who wore their embroidered natallas on holy days and would greet me with three kisses, the last with an exaggerated pause,and ask me how my parents were and whether I missed them;
And many, many more. I won't forget you; I will try to help you; I will remember your kindness, your courage, and your hope; I will carry you with me where I go, and I will be the better for it.
posted by Margot @ 12:58 AM
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