Journey to Ethiopia
by Dr. Bradley Davidson, Brittany’s Hope Foundation Board Member

Dr. Davidson's article appeared in abridged form in our Summer 2008 issue of The Perennial Path.
It is published here in its entirety.

I really had no idea how difficult it would be for me to write a concise few narrative paragraphs about our recent trip to Ethiopia. So much was packed into those five days, that I may as well have been asked to describe in brief the American Civil War or the history of Rome!

The name, “Ethiopia” conjures a number of images in our mind’s eye: amazing agility, speed and endurance of East Africa’s marathon runners, the beauty and grand nostalgia of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, rock-hewn Coptic Churches, war and border disputes with Eritrea and Somalia, the aroma of fresh roasted coffee, the desperate famine of the mid 1980’s, and the implications of extreme poverty. Ethiopia is considered to be the oldest independent country in sub-Saharan Africa, the birthplace of coffee and the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.

Despite its rich history, Ethiopia is now ranked 169th out of 177 countries on the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which measures areas of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living. Over 80% of its population lives on less than $2 per day. Disease has also taken a tremendous toll on the country—often due to preventable diseases such as typhoid and malaria because of the lack of effective public health measures and treatment. By the year 2000, fully 25% of the 12 million children orphaned by HIV in sub-Saharan Africa lived in Ethiopia and Nigeria. Now, though the prevalence of HIV in the adult population has diminished—largely due to the untimely death of the infected population—Ethiopia is home to 4.8 million orphans. In fact, 13% of all of the children in Ethiopia are orphaned, either by disease, the sad mandate of horrendous poverty, or the tragedy of armed conflict.

Statistics like this are difficult for us to comprehend, however, and may represent for most, only the television and news magazine images of some far-off place, shielded from our consciousness and perhaps, our conscience, by the miles, national borders and multiple time zones. It’s virtually impossible for us in America to relate to life on only $2 per day, the absence of any reliable medical care or clean drinking water. When Brittany’s Hope was invited by Father George Grima to join him in his work in Africa, we jumped at the opportunity to visit his projects in Addis Ababa and northwestern Ethiopia to experience the culture and meet the people first hand, and in that way, gain a deeper appreciation for the overwhelming need and great importance of the efforts taking place there.

Our purpose in making the long journey was multiple.  Father Grima, a confident and friend of Mother Teresa, who has a long history of humanitarian work in his own right in South America, Kenya and Ethiopia, had met David and Candace Abel after speaking in a church in New Jersey last summer. The conversations led to an open invitation to visit and to become more involved with his work, and ultimately to a wonderful opportunity to impact directly the lives of many orphans and an entire community within Ethiopia.

We arrived in Addis Ababa late on March 2, and after meeting Father George in the airport, we slept for several hours in an orphanage close to the airport. We returned to the airport early the following morning to board a plane bound for Bahir Dar, a city on the southern banks of Lake Tana near the origin of Blue Nile river. There we met with Fr. Abebe Teklemariam, the associate pastor of the local parish and principal of the Blessed Deborah Michael School, who then drove us on to Injibara, two hours south of the city and facilitated a meeting with Injibara officials.

Injibara is a small village and surrounding region located in a temperate plateau area of the country with a population of approximately 30,000 people, most of whom are farmers and laborers, and whose average income totals approximately $600 annually. Horses are commonly seen throughout the town, and are used more frequently for transportation than are mules as in the rest of the country, owing to the area's much more agreeable climate. Injibara has no church or community center, no indoor plumbing and no medical care, except what is provided by traditional witch doctors. Approximately 60-90 children annually are found abandoned, usually discarded on the banks of the small river which flows through town and serves as the only reliable water source for approximately 70% of the people and their animals. These children are usually transported for institutional care to Addis Ababa, approximately 7 hours south on the highway which runs between Bahir Dar and the capital and through the center of Injibara.

Ethiopia, like most of its sub-Saharan neighbors, has an admirable tradition of gudifecha, the practice that family and neighbors take in children in the absence of parents. The relationship between the adopted child and the foster parents is indistinguishable from that of biological children, to the point that if the adopted child is older than the biological one, the former has preferential status. Unfortunately, in Injibara as in most Ethiopian communities, this practice has been crippled due to widespread deaths and extreme poverty, but the underlying culture still exists. Institutional care of orphaned children is therefore a last resort, a desperate measure to be undertaken in emergency situations, while alternative, community-based programs are built.

Father George and Father Abebe had met with community leaders and government officials in Injibara to discuss the idea of establishing a center for orphan care within their village. So receptive they were to the idea, that several plots of land were offered free of charge to start the project. Our hosts arranged for a face to face meeting with the village leadership on March 3 where the needs of the community were discussed.

Injibara officials met with David Abel, Bradley Davidson, Father George Grima, and Nathaniel Abel.

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