Heavy Rain (October 2000)

Sunday Sunshine

It is the rainy season in Ethiopia. In the afternoon the clouds gather and the rains fall heavily over Addis Ababa. The roads are rutted and cheap paint-jobs wash away to reveal corrugated iron. Flooding puts telephone systems out of commission for entire neighborhoods. People are cut off for weeks. Country roads, even side streets in Addis, become impassable for vehicles. Dung houses melt in isolated fields. People walk with steam rising off of their warm bodies. The rainy season was supposed to end one month ago.

This morning, Sunday, the sky is clear and blue. People are smiling and those who are not dependent on agriculture convey the hope that the dry season has finally arrived.

Alem, a Save the Children co-worker, beckons me to the entrance of her church. She points out a thin boy who weaves in and out of a milling crowd of well-dressed churchgoers. Months of rain have not washed away the layers of dirt and grime that coat his skin and clothes. His movements are attentive, quick. He has an old scar over his right eye. I estimate he’s eight years old. Malnutrition stunts the growth of many Ethiopian children. He may be older.

Before Alem has a chance to tell me who this boy is, he sees her and rushes toward us. He receives a warm hug from Alem then turns to me. His inquisitive eyes wait for me to address him, drawing my gaze away from the gaping hole in his shirt.

In faltering Amharic I ask, "Manu sameh?" (What is your name?") His smile reveals white teeth and a dimple. "Hassidah." We briefly hold hands. His are rough. He smells of sweat and earth.

Hassidah waits for Alem to explain that I am "a friend from America." He nods and with another smile leaves. He takes the hand of another thin boy. I see them now. There are a number of children like Hassidah who are weaving through the crowd, flashes of chestnut brown against a backdrop of bright flowered dresses and dark ironed suits.

"Hassidah lives with two brothers," Alem explains. Their parents died a few years ago. "AIDS?" I ask. Alem inhales sharply, the Ethiopian way of saying yes without actually saying a word. "He comes here because he feels safe behind the church compound walls," she adds. We both watch him for a moment. He leans against a short wall and surveys the people trying to enter the sanctuary before the service begins. Then we too leave the sunshine for the sanctuary.

Manic Monday

Sunday passes and again the sky threatens rain. Children running to beat the school bell wear pink, yellow and blue plastic bags on their heads, like transparent chef hats. I pass them on my way to a Catholic mission in Addis Ababa that cares for the sick and abandoned, many of whom are infected by HIV and AIDS. I bump along rain scarred roads. Up. Down.

Long lines of the mortally ill and abandoned stretch along a dirty sidewalk outside of the mission’s gate. Some lie wrapped in blankets, left by families that could not or would not care for them anymore. Others have the strength to lean against the stone wall as they wait. They brought themselves here. Some will leave if they are healed. Most come to die.

At any time the mission holds between 700 and 800 people. The number varies by the hour.

One by one, I am shown large rooms that smell of burning incense that fails to hide stronger human smells. In the first room, a man’s feverish eyes stare out of skin stretched over bone. In the second room, the healthier men huddle around a radio to learn about the outside world. It can take years for an HIV positive person to reach the final stages of AIDS.

In the third room I meet two dead men hidden under clean white sheets. They are bumpy mounds under cloth. The Sister who is guiding us explains that the home is trying to provide a place where people can die with dignity, so I try not to stare. They are the first people I have seen who have died of AIDS. They are anonymous.

When I ask how long it will take to fill the dead men’s beds the Sister laughs, not unkindly, at my question. An open bed is not required for acceptance into the mission, she explains. There are people sleeping on the floors that can use the beds. The Sisters select the neediest people from the lines for admission into the mission two times each day. As she explains, an ambulance enters the compound with flashing lights. A small group of people gathers around the doors as an emaciated woman is brought out on a stretcher. I can hear her moans.

Rooms for men. Rooms for women. Rooms for children. Not enough beds. Pallets on the floor. I blur the individuals in my mind so that I cannot distinguish faces, like a child crossing her eyes to replace the clear world with a fuzzy one. I hear the sighs and moans from the ground floor room on the women’s side of the mission. (Women fear the room because it’s reserved for those closest to death.) Sick mothers nurse babies they will leave orphaned in a courtyard. Handicapped children shriek in delight when we enter a room and touch their outstretched hands. I touch a silent infant with a head the size of a tennis ball and perfect ears. (He dies two days later.)

The Catholic Sisters fight to sooth people’s suffering every day. I am no saint. I am eager to drive out the gate, eyes forward. The empty-eyed staring of a small group of abandoned children inside the gate burns into my back. The gate closes behind us with a metallic grating.

There is no way I could have been prepared.

The More We Come Together(December 2000)

Kalib attends Tesfa Lidet. He is the first child to arrive on the group’s first day. He was referred to Tesfa Lidet to overcome depression and anxiety. His mother has AIDS.

Kalib is almost five. He wears a dirty knit shawl over his curly hair on days when there is a nip in the air, like today. The shawl frames his wide coffee eyes. His eyebrows arch so that he carries a constant look of surprise. Yewoinshet tells me about Kalib as we sit together waiting for the other children to arrive.

Kalib is almost five and he knows how to make tea. His 14 year-old sister ran away when their mother got sick. For two months his mother was too ill to get out of bed and had to wear bandages over her eyes. That is when Kalib learned how to boil the water and add tea and sugar. There was nobody else.

There was not much more than tea for a long time while his mother was bed-ridden. Kalib begged and used the money he got to buy sugar, ten cents for each spoonful. One for his mother. One for himself. His mother has recovered for the time being but he still helps her when he can.

Kalib hugs his pink dinosaur close to himself as we wait to begin. Two other children arrive shortly after Kalib. Tenanesh, the only girl, arrives with her grandmother. Samineh also arrives with his grandmother. Although he looks smaller than Kalib we quickly learn he is a few months older.. Tenanesh and Samineh are AIDS orphans and are HIV infected. The children size each other up quietly as their caregivers go through the long litany of Amharic greetings.

Kalib breaks the ice by throwing the dinosaur into the air. It does a somersault and the children laugh. One of the dinosaur’s eyes is missing, but no one seems to notice. We give the other two children stuffed animals and soon three animals are flying through the air. Laughter and smiles fill the room.

Kalib is smart for his age. He knows all of the body parts in English. "Nose. Mouth." He points to a small nose and his childish lips. One time he gets confused. He does it backwards. When he realizes the mistake, he leans back on the couch and giggles behind the pink dinosaur. The other children join him until they are all giddy. I watch his mother smile, a softening and slight rise of the corners of her lips.

Kalib enjoys the first Tesfa Lidet session. He does not have HIV and is not an orphan (yet). These things do not matter. He is making new friends. Kalib’s mother sits with the other children’s grandmothers, who have taken responsibility for the orphans. Like the children, the caregivers seem to enjoy each other’s company.

The caregivers talk about the children. None of the children goes to school because of their HIV status. "They get sick from the other children," one grandmother explains. An affirming nod travels down the bench following her statement. Yewoinshet told me that Tenanesh was first in her class before the school pushed her out because of suspicions of HIV infection. Kalib’s case is simple. He does not have money to go to school.

One grandmother gauges me with tired eyes. Her words are slow and weighted. I strain to meet her eyes as her message is translated to me. "The way our community isolates us feels like a wound on top of a wound." Her eyes become distant and I wonder if she is thinking about the loss of her daughter, the mother of the child she now raises. Her eyes refocus on me. She sighs. The children burst into laughter and we return our attention to the young.

At the end of the morning, Kalib bows and shakes everybody’s hands. He carries a banana in one hand, an orange in the other. His mother carries the song we have been working on, "The more we come together, the happier we’ll be."

As Kalib and his mother leave Medical Missionaries Of Mary (MMM), a small tea-maker and the mother he cares for, I can hear his voice sounding out the English words, "The more we come together…"

Hana (May 2001)

"I don’t have anything," she says quietly in Amharic. "Not even someone to talk to."

Hana is taking care of her younger sister and brother. They were evicted from their home after their parents both died. Hana was determined not to end up on the streets and convinced the local government to let them stay in a spare room in a neighborhood government building. She also got them to give her a small amount of money to buy food and the supplies her siblings need to attend school.

Now her brother is acting up. He does not want to go to school. And her sister is spending more and more time on the streets. At age nine she has already attracted the attention of some older boys. Hana fears that if she cannot provide more for her brother and sister, all she has struggled for will be lost. Hana speaks with her head bowed and eyes lowered. Instead of being proud of the efforts she has made to help her family survive, she is ashamed of their situation. She is worried. She is twelve.

We are driving to Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM) where I have set up a counseling appointment for her. The three adults in the car try to make her smile. The radio is on. It is not comfortable, especially for the Ethiopian adults, to be in the presence of such a young child who has taken on such grown-up responsibilities. While Hana’s spirit is inspiring, she is also a representation of how Ethiopian society is failing its youth.

At MMM I work with the Tesfa Lidet children while Yewoinshet and another counselor counsel her. After an hour, Hana slips quietly into the room where the children are coloring. I invite her to join us but she shakes her head no. While I work with the children, I also keep an eye on Hana, sitting alone on a green couch. Emotions pass over her face like clouds. Fear. Sadness. A faint smile. She is somewhere deep in herself, unaware of all that is going on around her.

The Tesfa Lidet session ends and the Save the Children car is waiting. I get in the car with Hana. We will drop her off at the government building where she lives. She is eager to get back. Her brother and sister will be waiting for her.

I ask her how it went. "Fine. Thank you." Her smile is sad. Before leaving MMM, Yewoinshet told me that Hana needs an adult she can touch base with at least once a week. Hana is experiencing extreme anxiety and self-doubt about her ability to raise her brother and sister. She is welcome at MMM but it is on the other side of the city and Hana has neither the time nor money to make that trip. I promise Yewoinshet that I will find someone. (I find a woman from my work.)

Hana looks me full in the face and smiles when she gets out of the car. Maybe her hope has not completely died after all.

The Garden of Eden (June 2001)

Eden was the name of a garden. The garden was a place of innocence. The Bible tells us that in the middle of Eden were two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man and woman chose to eat from the latter. And they were cursed and banished from Eden and her tree of life.

Eden is the name of a girl. She was born as a result of rape. Her mother was a housekeeper. Her father was her mother’s employer. He had a wife who had died shortly before he expanded the "duties" of his housekeeper.

Eden was born. She lived with her mother. When she was almost two years old her father invited them to live with him and the children from his marriage. Eden finally had a "proper" family.

One year later, Eden’s father died. On his deathbed, at a bitter and honest moment, he swore that he had not only infected his housekeeper/wife with his virus, but their child as well. Six months later Eden’s mother died. Eden was almost four.

Eden had never been formally adopted. Her father’s other children did not recognize Eden as their sister. They wanted her to leave. She was not welcome anymore. She did not know that she could claim any inheritance. According to her half-siblings, Eden was entitled to nothing.

Banished, Eden went to live with her aunt, her mother’s sister. Her aunt was a kind but poor woman. To survive, she cooked and sold injera. Eden grew up thin and straight. She grew up alongside her cousin and her cousin’s child.

Now Eden is eight.

Eden has soft brown eyes and gentle ways. She still lives with her aunt, cousin and cousin’s baby. Her late father was right. Eden has HIV. I know because I have seen the test results. I cannot see any signs of the virus. Unlike other HIV infected children I know, her skin is smooth and unmarked by herpes scars or fungal infections.

When I first met Eden, I thought she was shy. She was quiet with the other orphans who laughed and shouted during the Tesfa Lidet session. When they jumped, her feet barely left the ground. Dancing, her gestures were like distant echoes of the other children’s shaking, jumping and wiggling. Eden did not seem nervous. There was quietness, instead, that made her seem cloud-like.

I wonder if others also notice that Eden does not walk. She floats.

Eden takes my hand on the second day we meet. She does not pull or tug, but I sense her direction and I follow. Her voice, though a whisper, does not shake. Her words become a song to me, rising and falling in a simple melody. She always keeps eye contact. Though I do not speak her language, she binds me to her.

She stops us in the courtyard and we sit on the concrete ground facing each other. She invites me into her child’s world. We clap hands like little girls on a playground. I remember "Miss Mary Mack" from my elementary school years. Eden recites something about injera. Her hand motions mimic the actions of making injera. At the end of the song she shouts in English, "STOP!" We freeze and dare each other to move with laughing eyes. Her eyes shine.

The other orphans in the group follow us into the courtyard. Tenanesh asks me to put on a "fashion show" and the other girls enthusiastically encourage me. It is the rainy season, when Ethiopian children wear colorful plastic bags on their heads to protect their hair. I go into a counselor’s office and empty a bag of fruit. The yellow plastic serves as our fashion centerpiece. I become an exaggerated model with sucked-in cheeks, batting eyelashes, and swinging hips. The children mimic and caregivers smile.

Eden transforms herself into a plastic-bag fashion model. She winks her eye as she drapes thin yellow plastic against her coffee-brown skin. She has no hips but she struts. Her new friends beg her for a turn with the bag. They want to be in the spotlight. She is generous with them and passes the bag.

Back in our classroom Eden bends to tie her shoe. A mentally ill girl, four-years-old, runs toward Eden with upraised arms. Her small hand slaps against Eden’s back. Eden is surprised but she shows no anger. With a laugh she rises from the floor and runs around the table with her aggressor in hot pursuit. The two children look like they have forgotten the forces of gravity, not bound by the laws of this world.

The Eden’s of this world are few. During my time in Ethiopia I have met many young children who bear the scars of suffering and want, especially those children affected by HIV/AIDS. Though nobody could argue that Eden has had a simple life, she has somehow surmounted bitterness and anger to enjoy the present. She is a beautiful enigma.

A Picture of Samineh (February 2001)

He raises his eyebrows as if to emphasize to me, to everyone, that he has returned to Tesfa Lidet despite his illness. His grandmother pauses in the center of the room. For enough time for me to pull out my camera and notice how small he looks. I take the picture quickly.

My camera shutter opens and shuts two more times. Once to capture Samineh smiling with raised eyebrows as he hugs two stuffed animals, their heads peeking above his grandmother’s shawl that she draped around his small shoulders. Once to capture the wound that is eating through his neck.

Sister Patricia, a social worker at Medical Missionaries of Mary, turns from Samineh’s wound in disgust. She goes into the courtyard to control the tears that make her brown eyes bright. She reenters the room to question his grandmother about why she has kept him from the hospital. Patricia fights to control her face muscles, which twitch now, as she listens to Samineh’s grandmother explain that she did not have the money. Besides, she falters, there would be nobody to watch her house and Samineh’s older brother if she had to stay at the hospital. The old woman avoids Patricia’s eyes.

Patricia’s oldest son is the same age as Samineh. Five.

Samineh has missed the last three weeks of Tesfa Lidet and he other children are happy to see him. They crowd around him shyly when he is placed on the couch. Samineh is one of the youngest members of Tesfa Lidet. He is the smallest. The children use quiet voices when they talk to him.

Samineh sits on the couch with two stuffed animals while the other children color bright pictures and play with a bag of new toys that an Australian couple donated to the group. But they grow silent, their eyes apprehensive, every time an adult enters the room to look at Samineh’s wound. He is one of them and it reminds them that they are different from other children their age. I grow anxious as I note the concerned expressions and worried words of each new person that visits with Samineh.

Even in my anxiety, I smile as I watch Samineh’s eyebrows jump up and down, like they are attached to invisible wires. Samineh has developed a second language with his eyebrows that can convey anything from joy to a question. It is the main way I communicate with him.

His eyebrows reveal pain when Sister Kate, an Irish nurse, lifts up his chin to get a better look. "The poor darling," she mutters more to herself than those of us who await her diagnosis. "He needs to go to the hospital."

As his friends play without him, Samineh tires of the adult world. Though his grandmother has forgotten his shoes, he insists on getting on the floor with the others. The earlier shyness is forgotten. We play the hyena game, a combination of ring-around-the-rosies and tag. He runs and laughs with the rest as I, the hyena, chase after the children for my afternoon meal. I corner Samineh but he ducks under the table and makes a quick escape.

Soon he needs to use the bathroom. His grandmother has gone to the hospital to register him. He cannot walk shoeless across the courtyard. I lift him in my arms. I wonder if he, like a bird, has hollow bones. No human child should be this light. I am very conscious of every weak breath he takes. I am afraid I will break the child I was chasing just minutes ago.

A group of orphan caregivers raised the 50 birr (about $6.50 US) to pay Samineh’s admission to the hospital. Tenanesh’s grandmother offered Samineh’s grandmother a glucose bag for his IV drip that was leftover from when Tenanesh was sick. On principal, whatever little they had, they offered. They helped Samineh survive with the expectation that when their moment of trial arrives others would help them.

Three weeks later I go to the hospital to visit Samineh. I bring a small box of mini-M&Ms for him, my camera, and a lump in my throat. His room is on the fourth floor. The hospital smells like bodily fluids and chemicals. I breathe through my mouth.

Samineh’s grandmother ushers me into a little room. He is sleeping in a large metal crib. His forehead is covered in beads of sweat. We take off a wool hat he is wearing and the sweat glistens under fluorescent lights. The hospital has shaved off his hair. An IV is stuck in his tiny wrist. I wonder how the nurses found his thread-like veins.

Samineh’s grandmother shakes him gently. He cries out in pain and frustration, waving his free arm as though shooing away an annoying fly. "Sara is here," she explains. His stops crying and slowly struggles to push himself into a sitting position. I wave. His pencil-thin eyebrows rise in response. I play with his foot that pokes out from under a sheet. He smiles. The white bandage under his chin covers a smaller wound than the one I photographed. I smile.

My camera flashes. Samineh sitting up. Samineh drinking milk as I stand in the foreground. The room is small and picture taking is not easy.

I get emotional when I think that Samineh’s grandmother will use these pictures to remember him when he dies. The pictures also tell a story of all of the HIV positive children in Tesfa Lidet. For me they capture the beauty of the children and the fragility of their presence with us. The pictures are a way I can put a face on the issues that I try to explain to my family and friends. Maybe Samineh’s pictures will help people identify with HIV-infected children. The caregivers and orphans that remain in Tesfa Lidet are in desperate need of economic support. I wish the pictures were just friendly snapshots of a sweet child.

A Difficult Month

Samineh died on March 1, 2000, two weeks after I finished "A Picture of Samineh." I did not find out about his death until the following Wednesday. The counselors at Medical Missionaries of Mary wanted me to "have a nice weekend" and thought that I would be upset by the news.

Although I was not there, Yewoinshet related Samineh’s last day to me.

He had been released from the hospital the week before. On Thursday he begged his grandmother to carry him to MMM so that he could talk to Yewoinshet. His grandmother finally gave in to his pleas, although the walk was long.

When Samineh arrived at MMM, he called out for Yewoinshet. He asked her to tell Sara and his friends that he would return to Tesfa Lidet as soon as he got better. He also wanted her to tell us that he missed us.

Yewoinshet asked him if she could get him anything. He asked for an orange soda. After he finished the soda he hugged Yewoinshet goodbye.

According to his grandmother, within an hour of returning back to his home, he died in his sleep.

On March 29, Tesfa Lidet lost its second child. Tizita, age 12.

Her illness had gotten progressively worse, especially after Samineh’s death. She continued to come to the group sessions, but she sat apart from the other children and refused to eat or play.

As an exercise to remember Samineh and deal with our grief, the children each recorded a message for their friend with Yewoinshet. In Tizita’s message, she told Samineh about her physical ailments and asked about how things were where he was.

Although her death came as no surprise, it deeply affected those of us who knew her.

Last Respects (April 2001)

It is Tuesday. Seble, a counselor from Medical Missionaries of Mary, brings me to Tizita’s house to pay my last respects.

A little girl stands in front of a door in a brown gingham dress. She is barefoot and her hair is disheveled. I catch the scent of smoke and oil on her as I bend over to shake her outstretched hand. She has the same eyes as Tizita, intelligent. It is not necessary to ask if we are at the correct house.

Inside the house the air is cool. I am invited to sit on a bench and as my eyes adjust I see Tizita’s grandmother, her caregiver, surrounded by blankets on a pallet on the floor. I rise to greet her, but Seble gently touches my arm and whispers that it is their culture to sit. Soon I see why.

There are four of us on the benches, all women, when she begins to cry. Freeing her arms from a bulky orange comforter she gestures her despair. Her fists shake at God. Her shaking hands cover and distort her face. Her eyes are two dark pools. Between sobs I hear her call, "Tizita, Tizita, Tizita."

Tizita was 12 years old with chocolate-colored skin and dark eyes. She was the oldest HIV positive child in Tesfa Lidet. Tizita was an artist. I have some of her drawings in my desk, colorful flowers and houses surrounded by chickens. From her drawings I can mark the day when the sickness started to consume her and her eyes stopped seeing the world around her. Her eyes and the absence of drawings were my first clues to her withdrawal from us.

The grief in the house is infectious. My eyes sting. Tongues click around me, verbalizing "What a shame" without forming the words. My tears begin to flow, and others cheeks also grow wet with sorrow. I try to focus my eyes on the cement floor. There is something that resembles dried vomit. I stare at the high earthen walls instead.

Tizita was brought to a hospital on a Wednesday. She died on Thursday. Her funeral was on Friday. A friend who was there told me that the family was desperate. They could not afford the taxi that would bring her to the burial ground so Tizita’s cold body was left lying in her house. I received a call about their situation and paid for the taxi. My stomach cramped up when I put down the phone. Not enough money to remove a body. The thought of this entirely disrupted the process by which I was coming to an internal peace with the poverty that inhabits Ethiopia.

I spent the weekend trying to forget. I justified wild dancing and raucous laughter with my need for strength in the coming week.

On Monday, I told the remaining Tesfa Lidet kids about Tizita. As we did with Samineh, the counselors and I asked the remaining children how they wanted to remember their friend. "I’ll draw her a flower." "I’ll write a letter…." We also consoled their caregivers, trying to diffuse comments like "What is the use?" that they moaned in the presence of the children.

That was yesterday. Now it is Tuesday and I am sitting with Tizita’s caregiver, her grandmother. An older upright woman enters the house and sits on the end of a bench. Seble whispers, "She is the owner of the house." So this is not Tizita’s house after all. I am relieved. I was imagining, with horror, how long her body must have laid on the floor before me. A growing depression has made my thoughts morbid.

Tizita’s grandmother quiets. Her breathing slows. Seble begins to ask questions, but mostly listens as the grieving woman remembers. We learn that Tizita’s mother is still alive, pregnant in fact. Tizita was abandoned to her grandmother when she was six months old. She was a sickly baby. She had to go to the hospital a lot. That is how they think she was infected with HIV, through a blood transfusion. The remembering has a calming effect on all of us, though the words themselves are not comforting.

With a sigh, Tizita’s grandmother rises from the pallet. Seble and I kiss her goodbye. I bow my head and avoid her eyes. The owner of the house follows us out and offers to show us Tizita’s house.

The "house" is one small room with a low ceiling and newspaper-covered walls. "This is where Tizita’s little sister still lives with their grandmother?" I ask. When Seble nods my head swims and I feel nauseous. Anger intertwines with grief. Is there no comfort available, even in this time of loss?

One wall is covered with photographs, to which I turn my attention. I am looking for a picture of Tizita’s mother, looking for some clue about how the woman could abandon such a lovely girl. Instead I see two photographs of Tizita that I made, one with her grandmother and the other with Tesfa Lidet. Tizita smiles at me and I cry for the second time on this day.

Children playing in the street yell out "fereng" (foreigner) as I wipe the final tears from the corner of my eyes. I almost bump into a little boy who has his back turned to me. Then I recognize him. It is Masresha, a six-year-old from Tesfa Lidet. I did not realize he and Tizita were neighbors.

Masresha is playing a game with the other neighborhood kids. He tilts his head up so that I can kiss him. Seble tells him that we are just coming from Tizita’s house, paying our respects. He just smiles up at me and I know that despite the pain and the losses I could not abandon the living.