Village of Hope, Day 8
We went to church at one of the two branches in Addis Ababa today. My word, these people are soft spoken. I didn’t hear a word that was said, and I was sometimes only a couple of feet from the translator. They must think we are the loudest people in the world.
After church we visited the “Missionaries of Hope/Mother Theresa home for the sick and dying destitute.�? Oh, my. It was like a concentrated version of the worst cases we saw in the village. One man was as thin as I’ve ever seen anyone in my life. His arms were maybe 1.5 inches in diameter, and his legs at the thigh were no more than 2.5 inches. We saw a room full of mothers who were critically ill being treated in a room with no working lights at all, children with disabilities (including the worst case of hydroencephalitis I’ve ever seen), everything you could imagine in buildings that looked like they’d just been gutted out and then moved into.
They said people were brought to them by Police, hospitals (when their family abandoned them), friends and relatives, etc. Sick people stay only until they are well, then are back on the streets (most of the time) because they just don’t have room for people who aren’t sick. I don’t feel nearly so bad about my job over the course of the last week now. The conditions are poor at best, and they have a clinic that serves a population of about 600-700 people with 2 doctors. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to complain about case loads in American. After that, we visited a Franciscan Sisters of the Heart of Christ orphanage. The conditions here were much better. The children were in good health, clean, and seemed happy overall. The two sisters who run the orphanage were SO good with the children and SO happy in what they were doing. It was refreshing to see children in fairly good shape for once, and to be able to smile and talk with them instead of just checking for triage marks and beckoning them in or sending them away.
After that we went back to the Sheraton, checked out, ate, said good-byes to the group members who weren’t leaving yet, and headed for the airport. When we got there, Dr. Burton found he didn’t have his ticket, so the rest of us checked in and waited. After about an hour he was re-issued a ticket, and now we’re waiting to board the plane and start the 25 to 30 hour journey home. It will be a relief to get back home, see my wife again, and get back to a much less stressful job.
