Ethiopia and Rwanda-Part 3

Mekele, Ethiopia 1/8/10 8:27pm

After arriving in Mekele we visited the Mekele School for the Blind. The compound was pretty big and had classrooms, dorms and a garden. The school needs help rebuilding a water tower, cleaning up the soccer field and teaching the children. The water tower is ten years old and falling apart. We have to build a couple more walls of support.

We also met many of the children at the blind school. They were all extremely polite and spoke English very well. They played with our cameras and held our hands. They told us what they want to be when they’re older: one boy wants to be a judge, another wants to be a doctor, and another a journalist. The boys knew more English than the girls for some reason, so we didn’t have much contact with the girls.

Mekele, Ethiopia 1/9/10 9:17pm

Today we started our work at the school. We determined what we needed to do in order to properly fix the tower. We cut down eucalyptus trees to build ladders and started to dig trenches.

We also learnt some Braille from the English teacher. He typed out the alphabet as well as our names on a typewriter that makes raised dots on a piece of paper. He was so excited that we wanted to learn and he said that we were the first group of people that came to the school who were interested in learning Braille. The teacher (we called him simply teacher) showed us a magazine in Braille and how fast he could read it. He could even read it backwards. Everyone was very interested and attentive.

Towards the end of the day we began to interact a little more with the children. They were all extremely intelligent and I was impressed they were able to walk around the compound without help. They spoke English well and were eager to learn the language as well as other subjects. I wondered how well they would do if given the opportunity to study at a school in the western world.

I met one child who wants to be a doctor. His name is literally, Assistant and he says he’s 11 years old but he looks about 8. He probably spoke the best English out of all the children I met and he was very funny.

At one point however he asked me for a bag to put his clothes in and told me how his aunt lives in the US, but she is unkind to him. My heart sank partly because of the situation with his aunt, but also because I felt, as with the children in Addis, like I was being used again. I was deeply hurt because I thought I had made a connection. But Assistant did not bring it up again and we continued to talk about other things, so maybe he really just wanted a bag. When we had to leave he walked to the gate and said goodbye.

Mekele, Ethiopia 1/20/10 8:07pm

The past few days have been exhausting both physically and emotionally. The tower is coming along nicely, although the work is sometimes frustrating. It is a lot of physical work, which is fine, but sometimes the guys on the trip seem to take over and the rest of us are left with nothing to so. We’ve tried to spend time with the kids, but haven’t really been able to teach them anything yet.

All of the children that I’ve talked to seem to have some very large ambitions, like being lawyers or doctors. I wonder, considering how smart they are, whether they would be successful if they had the opportunity to study at a school in the States of the UK. Or if they are only this motivated because they were not born with the opportunity. I think if they were granted this opportunity now, they would be much more successful than people who were born with the opportunity.

This also leads me to think about why I was born in a place like the US and not somewhere like Ethiopia. Why am I not the one blinded by smallpox? Assistant was very, very sick when we left. The smallpox he had as a child left his immune system a wreck and he easily gets colds. But of course, they do not have resources we have in the States, so even a simple cold is devastating. The nurse told us he sometimes has to go to the hospital to get some kind of medication they do not receive at the school. I never figured out what the medicine was, but I would not be surprised if it was something I had in my bag like Tylenol or cough syrup.

I am not religious at all, but I do believe that sometimes there are reasons for things. For example, Haiti was just struck by an earthquake; the last thing they needed, being one of the poorest countries in the world. There is no way that this is fair and if there is a God, he should not allow things like this to happen. Since I am unable to comprehend this, I have come to the conclusion that things like this can only be a challenge for us as human beings. As humans, I believe we are responsible for each other. We have the power to help and also to harm. The challenge is whether we will use our power for good or for evil.

The student photographer on our trip put together a very nice slideshow made up of pictures he took at the school. You can view it here: http://vimeo.com/9169907 The child singing in the backround is one of the students at the school.