Child's Play

Aaahhhh.... our youth - filled with shinny games, puzzle making and fort building. That was the life. Every child has that freedom and experience right?

Ethiopia isn't a place to grow up, most children are expected to contribute to the family income in some way, whether it is a 4 year old tending sheep or a 10 year old cooking all day with meager resources. The only time a child is truly free is until they can walk, then it is game over.

Take Melkomu for example. I met him in Lalibela where he, like all the other grade 9 students, are desperately trying to make ends meet in order to attend school. He bothers faranji or foreigners for money. But this one is different, first of all, his face is kind. He is desperate like all of them but his English is impeccable and has a curiousity and awareness that belies his 12 years.


Unlike most street boys that I completely ignore them or tell them to leave me alone, I actually spoke to 'Malcolm' and we chatted most of the day about our lives. He taught me Amharic, I taught him English. He told me about prices in Ethiopia, I told him about costs in Canada. His father makes roughly $0.60 a day working for rich Ethiopian families as a handiman, then on weekends he acts as a porter for $0.05 a load. In Malcolm's family there are 7 people - 3 brothers and 2 sisters.

A kilo of tef or the grain that forms the staple of Ethiopian food, injera, costs $1.30 and will last a family 3 days. A chicken costs $1.20 and a goat costs $20.00. They can barely afford to eat most days and 2 days that I spent with Malcolm he never ate breakfast and had one dinner.

He didn't own shoes.

It's a struggle to grow up here. But children still manage to be children - I saw children in remote villages playing jump rope with a handmade rope. In another village two small girls were practicing handstands and then there are the boys that are constantly wrestling and racing eachother through the fields. Despite the hardships they face, kids manage to still play here - with balls made from torn plastic bags or torn clothing and tree climbing, hiking and inventing games to fulfill their imagination. Something that our children miss in order to play more Xbox.

It sometimes gets to me

I've seen my fair share of hard luck cases. People whose families have sent them away thinking they were possessed, victims of polio, war, starvation and inexplicable diseases and preventable conditions. It's an integral part of traveling to these countries where life is cheap and short.

In the Dogon region of Mali 2.5 years ago - a baby girl, about 1 year old likely with cholera and likely died soon after she was brought to the 'toubab' or white person for healing. There was nothing I could do but say that I'm sorry but there was nothing I could do.

In Mopti, Mali, 9 years ago. Sitting having my breakfast of bread and warmed milk at a roadside cafe while groups of young boys sent away by their families to earn their keep were begging, not for scraps, but for the oil that is left on a finished plate of eggs.

And now in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The struggles of some here is unimaginable. Many left their homelands during the famine of 1984 or subsequent droughts and moved to the city to make their way. Illiterate, unskilled and unable to cope with the pace of the city they live on the streets under burlap USAID sacs. Sometimes you can't tell their is a mass of bodies around a corner because it just looks like a pile of garbage. Old people with no possible source of income, the pensions of Ethiopia aren't the best, often blind and usually widowed and infirm.

Then comes the polio victims - bodies contorted in unspeakable ways by a childhood illness that is 100% preventable by vaccination. There is no welfare or healthcare or often even families to deal with them.

This is my reality right now. It's a downer of a post but it isn't all just happy tourism in third world countries. I give. I give a lot. Yesterday I gave a massive amount, as in a 1 birr bill which is approximately 6 cents, to as many of the invalids as I passed. I gave about 30 bills in 2 hours. Sure it is only $2 and I lose more than that a day at home. But I can't give more to each person or it will encourage begging to only whites (or faranjis) and will not make those in need look to their own countrymen for help.

There is nothing 'we' can do until the corruption ends on both sides - that of the local government and the overhead-bloated NGOs and aid organization. How much do you think WorldVision spends on their ads every Sunday morning? Enough to help 1000 people here perhaps.

Food food everywhere...

... but not a bite to eat.

One of the most complicated things about arriving in a new country (presuming your luggage arrives with you) is figuring out how and where to eat.

In Addis, there is lots of little restaurants serving all sorts of Ethiopian fare that looks delicious. The problem - I'm a white single girl. If I sit in a restaurant to dine like a queen for$2 I am mistake for a prostitute.

Or at the least, it is an open invitation for every stranger to join me in broken English conversations about how (insert nationality here) men are the best lovers. And how they worship women and believe that I am the most beautiful woman they have ever seen. Can you say awkward?

So I'm left with quick and cheap eats that I eat alone in my filthy hotel room that has no power or water or I eat on the go. It's annoying and you are left with eating lots of bread and cheese and cookies.

Okay, all this talk about food has made me starving. Awkward marriage proposal over a quick roast chicken here I come.

Abyss Ababa

It's go time. 5 hours left until I take off for yet another flight, this time to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Am I excited? Yes.

But everyone keeps sending me messages about being safe and warning me to register with the embassy and take a knife and bring pepper spray. Now I'm getting scared.

Scared is a good thing. Scared will keep me safe, if I am more aware of the risks then I'm more alert and less likely to be taken off guard. I'm not the person to walk with an open knife in my pocket and my passport duct-taped to my waist, but I am the person to be vigilant. You have to be. I'm a single white girl traveling alone, I'm not stupid and I know that I am a target.

Maybe that is part of the fun. It is very possible that the risk of traveling to far flung destinations that no one has heard of (like Djibouti) is part of the motivation to go. I like to think that my motivation to travel is to experience new cultures, view new ways of thinking and seeing incredible parts of the magnificent Earth. But the other part of it is to push my limits - emotional, physical and mental all rolled into a challenge of just surviving my experiences and coming out unscathed.

It's risky. I know it is. And I know my loved ones are just trying to keep me safe. But man, the nightmares I've been having about the horror stories of raping, pillaging and roving bands of marauders hasn't been conducive to resting before travel.

The planet awaits. So seize the day and book your next trip. Go to Gabon or Indonesia or Uruguay...... or Ethiopia.