Sunday 10/17 - posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email
So, I debated how to write this blog entry but decided that if I was going to write it at all I was going to be honest about what I was seeing and feeling so … here goes.
Addis has been pretty overwhelming. I expected some “culture shock” . There always is some getting used to a different country, but Ethiopia has been different. I’ve always been able to see more positives than negatives than negatives in the places I’ve visited. That’s been hard to say here.
We went out today for a couple of hours and saw the cathedral that was used by the Emperor Haile Selasi (need to check the spelling) and it is quite beautiful and in stark contrast to the poverty and misery outside its doors. We literally walked past one young man lying on the street about 200 yards from the church, there were people standing around who our guide tried to assure us were just trying to help because he “was having a seizure”. Well, I have seen enough of both seizures and death to know for certain this young man was dead and the officials standing around weren’t trying to help. Not much further along there was another homeless person also lying by the side of the road, cars rushing by within inches of him and no one was paying attention to him.
The desperately poor are everywhere here to a degree I’ve never seen before—anywhere I’ve ever been. And worse, there isn’t any sense of hope that I can feel. No sense of joy anywhere. Don’t get me wrong. The people are wonderful. Warm, generous, hospitable…everything you could ask for in hosts when you visit their country. You wonder how they can maintain that attitude. And they are a proud people. They have such a rich cultural history.
But that’s the problem. It’s history. Or at least it feels like that in Addis. There isn’t any sense of hope or optimism in this city.
Sylvia and I are really tired. Neither of us could sleep and spent much of the night talking about the poverty in Addis and how bleak it feels here. She says it is worse than anything she has seen in Africa. On some level I find that reassuring—that it’s not just an overreaction on my part. Thinking about the years of civil war, the famines… they have left their mark on this country.
There is no way to describe what you are seeing/feeling except with honesty - glad you didn't try to gloss it over because then people wouldn't have a sense of what it is like on the ground in these cities.
ReplyDeleteMy experience in India was very similar - the poverty is so beyond anything you could ever imagine and the spirit of the people is so incredibly amazing that it is also hard to imagine how a person can be open and hospitable when they are faced with the worst life has to offer every day.