Generosity

When I go on outreach to the different villages we work in I am reminded of how rough the toughrain is  here.  I am just blown away when I think about people  the fact that often times patients are carried here on handmade stretchers by anywhere from 40-75 community members.  I think I have mentioned this before, but when someone is really sick and can't walk, they are carried here overland-- in many cases taking up to several hours to a day-- by friends and family as there are no cars or busses and ambulances are unheard of.  Yesterday on the way to the village of Goize we came to walk with a women and her son.  We all began chatting and it turned out she was also going to Goize to visit with her mother.  I asked how far it was from her own village to Goize and she replied three hours. Yup, this woman and her ten year old son were walking six hours in one day just to see her mom for the afternoon.  Can you imagine?  If we had to walk hours up and down mountain sides, would families still exist in America?  Our family times holiday meals around when parking on Lake Shore Drive opens up...walking three hours each way--- I have a feeling there would be a few empty chairs at Thanksgiving if this was the case back home.  Obviously, its a different world here and people's lives don't operate in the same way but it stops to make me think about how much more I can do to be a better sister, daughter, wife and friend. 

On the way we got to a super muddy area and as usual I lost my balance on a rock and my leg sunk deep into the mud.  There was a little stream up ahead where my co-worker Alias convinced me to take off my shoe and wash off my foot.  The woman were were walking with immediately jumped into the creek and began scrubbing my foot and cleaning my pants, shoe and sock.  Even her son helped out.  Now really, can you picture this happening back home?  People don't even stop to help when they see someone fumbling with a map, can you imagine cleaning a stranger's feet?  Also worth mentioning is that her son offered to carry my bag and when I said no he took the backpack filled with a cooler and immunizations from another staff member and carried it for at least two hours. 

Fast forward a few hours....we are in Goize and in the middle of doing vaccines when I notice a woman whose child looks really small.  Since I am not trained to give vaccines I use the time on outreach to check children for malnutrition.  This woman had three kids with her, ten months, two and six years-old and after looking a little closer it was apparent that both younger ones were severely malnourished.  The women herself wasn't in great shape either, she had one of the biggest tumors I've seen so far growing off her neck (possibly a goiter).  We convinced her to come back with us to the health center where we have a malnutrition program and could treat her kids.  While I won't go into it now, hers were just two of the MANY children I saw with severe malnutrition in Goize, something pretty alarming to me.  Honestly, we could have brought back eight more families if we had the room in the car. (You might be asking yourself how I can tell if someone has malnutrition since I am not a doctor or nurse....luckily there is a very easy to use measurement strip for upper arm circumference that I have begun taking to all outreach sites.)

As we began the trek back to the car a random woman invited us all into her home for some coffee, which again made me stop and think.  Have I ever invited a complete stranger into my home?  Sure I am always happy to have friends and family over for shabbat dinner or to hang out, but a complete stranger off the street?....can't say I have.  As we continued  back people stopped to ask the mother why she was with us.  After she explained they were all tremendously concerned and threw their arms in the air to show their sympathy and giving words of encouragement.  At one point it began to rain and we ducked into a hut that is used for selling tela (a fomented barley drink).  Again, the women asked what was going on and immediately hugged the woman, grabbed their chest and poured her a big drink.  In a place where people have so little, giving things away for free can't be easy. You could just tell that these women so cared and felt for the mother, even though I don't know that they had ever met before.  As a co-worker explained to me a while back, people here really feel for one another......this was more then evident on this hot, rainy afternoon. 

As we continued with the walk the woman began to struggle with her two kids, one tied to her front and the other to her back.  My co-worker Sebsibe took matters into his own hands and carried the baby back himself.  Just to set the stage for you, this was no simple walk in the woods.   We were walking basically straight up and down a mountain in the middle of a hot and humid day after going all day without anything to eat and little to drink (the Ethiopians aren't big on drinking water unless it's with a meal).  We made it to the car and eventually back to Lalmba.  As I pulled up I mentioned to the guard that we had a patient in the back of the truck.  He followed me in and halped carry one of the kids to the clinic. 

I am not sure if these stories will do justice for what I experienced today or be able to convey how telling each instance was to me.  I feel like I have so much to learn from the people I meet here.  I hope that one day I can do for others what I have seen others do so selflessly.  I hope that I can feel for others the way people here do.  After thinking about this I realize just how much I have a lot to learn about life and generosity....and luckily for me I have a seemingly endless supply of teachers all around

PS- for those of you who are follow the weekly Torah portion you will share in my amazement at the similarities with my experiences on Friday and what you read this Shabbat about Avraham's generosity towards strangers......beshert, coincidence.....???

Over the past 24 hour I have experienced several moments of immense generosity, directed both at myself and to complete strangers.  In a place where people have so little I am always amazed at the things people do for each other. 

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