When Canada Met Ethiopia

Sedrak and I with some of the little girlies

2am. Dead asleep, I hear the buzz from my cellphone go off. Rarely do I get a text at such an ungodly hour. When I finally awake from my unconscious state closer to 4am, my bleary eyes widen as I read this :  “(from Jeff Power) Here in Hurso, Sedrak is asking where u are :)”

A “hello” from one of the boys I met and befriended in East Africa.

It’s moments like this that jolt me from the more mundane parts of my job and CLEARLY remind me why I left teaching to go into humanitarian work.

Sedrak. Boys like Sedrak that you meet and fall in love with.

Separated by oceans, land and hours of flight, yet connected in one second by a simple text message.

I can get lost in the day-to-day work of sending e-mails, organizing events and doing training sessions. Lately, I’ve been speaking to middle school children, professionals and lay people about the amazing work that GHNI is doing other parts of the world. But what keeps it all real is that these are REAL people I’m talking about. It’s not merely an idea or a system that I’m communicating about. It’s a human being with dreams, passions, delights and a beating heart like you and I. Sedrak is a powerful reminder of that.

After you visit, work or live in another culture and return home, you often have two choices. Shelve it all, or choose to live in a reality that you have to actively stay engaged in.

Living in a Western country, it is so easy to hear of others’ misfortunes and not be affected  by it. We watch earthquakes and famines on T.V. while eating dinner. We hear about wars on the radio while driving to work. We see mothers dying of HIV on the front cover of newspapers and magazines. Yet, we can turn off the T.V., shut off the radio and throw away the newspaper without being the least bit disturbed by what we see.

Compassion is a choice.

It’s not the easiest choice, but it’s the right choice. When you meet boys like Sedrak who have few opportunities in life, you need to choose to feel, to care and to say, “I need to do something”.  We must put a face to each corner of our world, or else those parts of the world will simple disappear with a click of a button.

Please watch this amazing 6 minute video that my colleague, Shirin Faridi, shot and produced for GHNI after our volunteer compassion trip  to Ethiopia in July 2009. Yes, of course, it’s a plug to watch yours truly speak Amharic, but it’s ultimately me beckoning you to visit and engage in another world and asking you to decide to care. Watch, open your heart, and fall in love with the people of Hurso.

What To Do On a Lovely Saturday?…Training, of course!

Explaining TCD at SFU training

Ever wonder what commitment looks like?

It looks like individuals who give up a gorgeous Saturday to attend an all-day workshop on community development and disaster relief.

I was impressed because most people would have used that time to sleep in or be outside in the sunshine (which can be rare at times during the winter months here, so I totally understand). Yet, these 8 men and women decided that there was something more valuable to them than an extra couple of hours in bed. They took the time to drive up the mountain, and spent a day learning about IDR, HIST and TCD. (All these acronyms are just to mess you up and make us sound all posh and knowledgeable. )

The curriculum we used was a foundational introduction for those with any interest at all in humanitarian work. It was written by workers in the field with decades of experience. Having seen best and worse practices, they crafted a training that would enable people to learn more about how to be prepared in disasters and as well as examining community development with locals’ assets and skills in mind rather than imposing our own ideas and solutions.

This was our first try on campus to see if there was any interest for students to receive training in disaster relief and community development. I was encouraged by the interaction of the students, their questions and the honest feedback at the end. Interested. Eager. Hungry.

It’s vital for those who have a desire to assist others to get equipped, informed and trained. Otherwise, you could become part of the problem, rather than the solution. As one of our HISG trainers said on Saturday, ” You don’t want to be a disaster in the disaster.” A strong example that he used was about volunteers who went into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and ended up adding to the problem by not being prepared (not bringing enough food for themselves) and rather than helping, made it even more burdensome for frontline workers (standing in food lines that were reserved for victims).

Same with community development. How can you help if you don’t have, at minimum, a basic context or framework to understand someone’s else situation, especially when they’re from another culture, another country? We’re working with human beings, and so it’s essential that we tread with the utmost care and respect of others.

All that being said, it was deeply encouraging to have the students come with an open heart and mind. Many are considering volunteering, getting more training and sharing this knowledge with others.

Do you know of any individuals, clubs or groups who are going on a trip and would like some training? Drop me a line!

1, 2, 3, Ways To Involve You and Me

Sipping on my first cup of that real stuff - Ethiopian coffee. Can you give up just one cuppa a week? In my case..it would a chai latte...

Lately, as I’m reading and learning more about various social injustices, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness. How can I be a change agent when the needs are many, the issues are complex and I am but one person?

I’d like to share with you 3 thoughts on how we can all get involved.

GET INFORMED. GET CREATIVE. GET FRUGAL (SORTA).

1.  GET INFORMED

Ever read a book that made you angry in a ‘ I can’t stand by and do nothing’ way? Well, here’s one for you. A book can bring new perspective on a topic in order for us to know that our help to others is truly beneficial to them. Knowledge is essential. I recently read a book called “Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve In An Age of Plenty” by Roger Thurow & Scott Kilman. These journalists have covered issues concerning Africa and agriculture over several decades. They brought to light how we, in the West, often view famine as occurrences of chance (weather, drought) or by factors beyond our control (civil war, political despots). However, their researched argument shows how well-intended, but bad economic and political policies from Western nations (i.e. subsidies to our own farmers prevent African farmers from having a chance at selling their food on equal grounds) actually play a part in deterring development and perpetuating famine in certain African nations.

Health, Hemorrhoid Cream and Heart

A baby being weighed in Hurso : Infant weight is an indicator used to measure the health of a community

You probably wonder why I love alliterations so much. Well, you’ll find out.

Though I’m not presently not on the “field”, what energizes my work and my passion is to stay connected to what our field staff, nationals and interns are doing. This week, I’d like to share with you a recent update from our US GHNI interns, Ian and Peter, who are currently working in Hurso, Ethiopia.  I had the awesome privilege of going to Hurso this past summer to witness the beginnings of our TCD work there.

Here’s their entry this week:

In a few weeks, we are going to do a one day medical clinic in Hurso. This medical clinic will not only help the people of Hurso with their current physical ailments, but it will also provide us with an assessment of the illnesses and diseases common to the village so that we can steer our health education curriculum towards meeting those needs. This clinic will also establish a basic understanding of how healthy Hurso is, so that we can quantify the progress of TCD in the village over the next few years.

It’s Not a “Women” Issue. It’s a Human Issue.

Beautiful Women of Gambella, Kenya

Imagine if 1 out of every 22 of your female friends died while giving birth.

That, unfortunately, is the shocking reality for women who live in Sub-Sahara Africa.

I just finished reading a book that has shaken up and stirred my heart.

“Half the Sky” is an incredibly compelling and emotion-stirring book about how poverty is perpetuated and further entrenched when half of humankind, women, is kept in oppression. Written by Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn, this Pulitzer Prize winning journalistic couple documents the horrors of girls and women in developing countries who have been subjected to abuse and neglect unfathomable to most Westerners. Young girls kept in cages and sold into prostitution. Maternal mortality and injuries that are preventable. Gang rapes that mutilate and destroy female bodies.

The Hope of Health in Hurso

Yes….alliterations on a Friday. Bear with me!
I watched this video of Ian and Peter, the GHNI Interns that are living in Ethiopia for a year, who are continuing the work that has just begun in a village that I visited last summer. The video is wonderfully optimistic and funny! Helps us to see how it’s the little things, even such as digging pit latrines, that can save lives and offer hope.

Hurso is a village in East Ethiopia that is close to the Somali border. A poor community that has very little economic activity and where many women must engage in prostitution to feed their families. We are hoping to see that, a few years in Hurso, working with the village to develop other ways of earning an income and to educate them on clean hygiene and other basic wellness principles will help them move out of poverty. Our first project in July 2009 was to build a school in Hurso and now the work continues…I will be posting stuff from Ian and Peter from time to time, but if you’re interested in following them more frequently, find them on my blog roll!

Hope Comes in Fours

Gambellan Students receiving new school supplies

Four, you ask. Why four?

Remember when I wrote back in the summer about the terrible attack on Gambella, a village  in Northern Kenya? Well, this past week when I was in the States for North American Mobilization meetings for GHNI, I learned of some great news!

FOCUS. Helping ONE Village At A Time

GHNI US/CAN Mobilization Meetings

10 people. 3 days. 1 amazing GHNI Mobilization conference.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee. Sound of fingers tapping furiously away on laptop keyboards. Poster board sized post-it notes decorating our “board” room (a.k.a. my US Mobilization Director’s living room). The sense of a productive and intense few days of dreaming, planning, discussing and FOCUSSING.

It’s hard to describe how excited and pumped up I am about this coming year. I’ve just come out of some extremely strategic and dynamic meetings with passionate and innovative colleagues who love their work and ultimately, love people and want to see people’s lives transformed.

Kenyan Village Attacked

The car our CHE worker was driving when village was attacked

The moment that separates life and death is but a breath.

9am. Saturday.July18th, 2009. As our white rental taxi-vans pulled away on the dusty roads of Isiolo to return to Nairobi, gunmen surrounded the village in which we had been working for the last week.

The attack was pre-meditated and well-planned. The attackers encircled the village from all sides, closing in on the school where they had planned to start amputating the limbs of children. One of the local protectors managed to fend of the defenders with a machine gun, firing back at the attackers while the children scattered and fled. Unfortunately, one child was shot in the foot, another got some fingers cut off and was rushed off for medical attention while four school children have gone missing. The teachers escaped by running into the bushes.

Terrific and Terrible News

The mostly completed dormitories for teachers

Internet access is a lot more scant that I anticipated. I will try to write a more in-depth blog once I get more time.
We just got back into Nairobi today after an incredible week of working with the Borana people in Gambella, Northern Kenya. The terrific news is that our team completed the building for the teacher’s dorms, we installed a pipeline for the farm to enhance their irrigation project and we had a chance to hand out notebooks and school supplies and play with school children in the village.

It was an incredible week of seeing how this community is steadily coming out of poverty.

However, the terrible news is that the village was attacked this morning as we were leaving to come back to Nairobi. We’re still waiting to get more information, but it sounds like 7 people were killed, a child injured and the entire village was sent scattering and running for their lives. It was pretty devastating news as this village was previously attacked and completely burnt down just 8 years ago. Our hope is that all the work we’re doing in this village will not be in vain and will be destroyed.

Tomorrow we fly out to Addis Abba, Ethiopia and will travel to our next village, Hruso.