To Be A Fool…

Across the ocean, in a village in Ethiopia I have a brother.  No, he isn’t a brother by blood.  He is a brother in Christ, and in the fact we share a daughter.  My 9 year old daughter.  She came to live with us 2 years ago, when she was 7 years old.  My husband and I met her first on a photo-listing of children who were available for adoption from one of the poorest countries in the world.  Ethiopia.  Her mother had passed away when she was 4 or 5, and her father was disabled and raising her alone.  In the picture we received, she had just been handed a new dress by some Americans visiting a local orphanage.

Struggling to find enough food and clothing for his daughter, this father made a great personal sacrifice.  He placed his daughter up for adoption.  His hope was that an American family would adopt her, and she would never be hungry again.  I don’t understand that kind of desperation…. but it is all too commonplace in many parts of the world for people to be starving and watching their children waste away for lack of food, water, and medical care.

For us, the poverty angle is personal.  Our daughter worries about her father left behind.  She worries that he won’t have anyone to take care of him.  That he won’t get enough food, or clothing.  That she will never see him again on this earth because he may die of any number of ailments without readily available medical care.

Our little girl came to us able to cook over an open fire, use a bathroom that was only a hole in the ground, and cut up vegetables in small pieces with a sharp knife.  She also knew how to make injera (Ethiopian type of bread), and remembers making it with her mother.  She remembers her mother dying.  She remembers giving her pennies to beggars so that they could buy food instead of buying candy when she had a few extra coins.  She has memories that buckle my knees in sorrow for what this little one has seen already in life.

Amazingly enough, our daughter has a spirit that just won’t give up. She is full of life, and full of love.

We are forever connected to her father left behind.   Poverty has a personal face for us, never letting us forget.  But before coming face to face with the extreme poverty I saw in Ethiopia… we had no concept of how much human beings suffer every moment of every day.

If I could, I would have everyone visit a country where poverty and need is more than just being hungry.  It is raw sewage running down the streets.  It is naked children playing beside busy roadways and begging from cars.  It is mothers and fathers dying of AIDS while their children rummage through dumpsters in search of food or things to sell.  It is a mother watching her child starve to death because there is no work… there is no food.  It is children dying of AIDS with nobody left to care for them, or love them.  It is children working hours of back breaking labor just to bring some bread home to their cardboard box for their little sister or brother.

There are many charities passing out food, clothing, and medicine, but there isn’t enough.  Please help today.

Posting for Blog Action Day ‘08