Latest Trip to Babile
This latest trip was the first time I traveled to Babile without Yewoinshet and others. I wasn’t completely alone because I took my friend Tezeta along with me to translate. I didn’t know her very well before we went, but I knew that her English was good and that I would feel very comfortable being with her everyday for a week. She was fabulous and the two of us got along really well. She is so much fun and has a genuine interest in Hope for Children and especially the kids in Babile. I am very sad that she can’t come with me again, but she is in school for computer programming and will begin a new session in a few weeks.
Every other time I have gone to Babile I have taken a contract minibus or rented Landcruiser. This time we were on our own and took a big bus which was a big mistake. What normally takes around 10 hours took us 13 hellishly hours on a hot bus with crying babies. We spent one night in Harar to recover and arrived in Babile on Monday morning. I needed to come back to Addis for a special counseling training this week so this first trip could only be for one week. I am planning to go back in a few weeks to continue what I have started. Given our time constraints we began working right away.
I am trying out several photography projects with various members of the Babile and HFC community as well as coordinating some projects that HFC is doing. Elsa, the Babile Project Coordinator (and the woman I stay with when I’m there) helped me identify some kids whose profiles have been taken and have not received support from HFC yet. I gave them all cameras and asked them to take photos of things that represent their own experiences associated with HIV/AIDS and problems they see within the community. I was really impressed with some of the things each child photographed, but unfortunately the cameras I have for them are very poor so I would like to get some better ones before my next trip.

The other group I am working with consists of female members of the community who are willing to stand out again Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). In Ethiopia close to 80% of women are circumcised and in the Babile region it’s around 98% due to the large number of Muslims in the area. The practice has been illegal for 8 years, but people in both the Muslim and Christian community continue to believe in its value and do it behind closed doors. The group I started working with has members from both religions and we are going to make posters and banners addressing the practice from both perspectives. We only had time to do one photo session so we set up a scene in which a 6 year-old girl was to be circumcised (the age in which Christians target girls). It was pretty horrific from my perspective. I have never witnessed anything like that and it was hard for me to pretend. The women I worked with have all experienced such ceremonies so they seemed to cope with it fine. The next time I go we will photograph a Muslim scene. In that culture they circumcise girls at are 14 or 15 and then tie them up with rope for 2 weeks!
The women in the group also had the idea to take a portrait of religious leaders who have agreed to stand out against the practice. There are only a few that are bold enough to do that because they receive a lot of grief and put their reputations on the line. We had a meeting with one Sheik to discuss the possibility of him posing for a picture. I made the biggest faux pas when I met him. Apparently no one is allowed to shake the hand of a Muslim leader, especially not a woman. Well, without knowing this I walked right up to him and grabbed his hand to introduce myself!! He was very polite and could obviously tell I was too dumb to know their tradition so he just balled up his hand and politely smiled and nodded Hello. I guess I learned that lesson the hard way. I will hopefully take his photo during my next trip as well.
The two HFC projects I’m trying to get going involve small business entrepreneurship. The first is a collaborative project we are doing with the Babile school. They have agreed to plant mango and papaya trees on their grounds and when they are fruitful (in about 3 years) our kids will each have one to look after. They can use the fruit to feed their families or to sell. We would like to use it as a way to help them learn about money and how to manage it. The rest of the trees will belong to the school and the profits will be used to provide uniforms and supplies for orphans and vulnerable children. The other project is to help a group of women start a business of making small cement ovens to make injera (the traditional staple food here that people eat for every meal). The ovens are fueled by coal and are designed to be twice as efficient as normal injera ovens. We think we have identified a donor to help us jump-start the project so I worked with the 10 women to get an idea of what they need.
One disturbing thing that happened in the last few weeks was the departure of one of our group home kids. Marta is about 13 or 14 and she decided that she needed to go back to the woman that helped raised her before she entered the group home. She said that the woman needed her help, but we found out later that the woman wanted her home because she wanted to marry her off!! Everyone is so worried about her, especially Hyminot (the GH mother) and her GH brothers and sisters. Some women in the community are trying to talk with her to help her reconsider, but I think it’s pretty hard to get to her. There hasn’t been a resolution yet, but I really hope she reconsiders. Early marriage is another big problem in Babile.
Half way through the week Yewoinshet told me that she would like to bring all the Babile group home kids to Addis to attend the month-long English classes being taught by a group of Americans. I really wanted Monsour (the boy that I have begun to sponsor) to be able to attend and luckily Yewoinshet agreed! Instead of leaving on Tuesday Tezeta and I decided to accompany Elsa and the kids back to Addis.
We arranged to travel overnight on a contract minibus. Unfortunately the ride was pretty traumatic for all the kids for various reasons. We loaded the bus on Friday afternoon. When Monsour got on board my heart broke. His luggage consisted of a small plastic bag with about 3 articles of clothing, all of which I brought for him at the beginning of the week. The other kids all had luggage, toys etc and he had NOTHING. I will get him a bunch of stuff from the HFC stash while he’s in Addis. As we were all loading the bus things were a bit crazy. Two of the kids entered crying because a bully on the street

When we started out the kids were really excited (see photo on right), but about 15 minutes into the trip they started to get sick and drop like flies. We only had a few plastic bags with us, but luckily they lasted the 31 km to Harar where we caught our contract minibus to Addis. When we got to Harar Tezeta and I ran around the market and loaded up on plastic bags, lemons, biscuits, bread, and tissues to get us through the night. We arrived in Addis at 3am and dropped the kids off at the group home that they will be staying at for the month.
Tezeta, Elsa, and I all went home for a few hours to sleep before getting up again to take the kids to breakfast and then to Saturday program. Even though we were all tired we couldn’t miss it! We took the kids to a pastry shop down the street and they were SO excited. They couldn’t keep the smiles off their faces as they tried the new exotic Addis pastries. We then headed up the road to the office where we took them to Saturday program. They really enjoyed the singing and dancing. I have ever seen Monsour so happy. He had a big smile on his face while he was watching all the kids perform. I was SO excited when he then got up and sang a song in Oromefa! (the main language they speak in Babile). He was so adorable.
It turned out to be a nice ending to a pretty up and down week. I think the work has started off on the right foot, but it’s never easy to absorb the things I see and hear in Babile. I just hope all the work that HFC does will have a long-lasting positive affect on the community.