To finish our blog from yesterday—I’ll try and describe what Jennifer saw and did as she traveled the Ethiopian countryside to see beauty we can only imagine when staying in the dusty inner city.
Muketore is a transitional facility where orphans are placed before they enter the care of the Layla House. Jennifer and some other members of our group decided to go there to paint (sidenote—these were not normal walls; it was the inside of a grass hut. The walls were so perfectly made that rollers placed paint nicely throughout the huts.)
The hardest part of the day was a tour of another orphanage run by an Ethiopian monastery that takes care of the elderly, mentally ill, and some children. In Africa, there are no homeless shelters; no senior centers; an entire generation has died from AIDS and has left hundreds of thousands of elderly men and women to fend for themselves. What used to be a strong family unit has dissolved into a nightmare of poverty and self preservation. One younger mentally ill man was chained-his hands behind his back and his feet shackled, since he considered a danger to others and himself. His day was spent staring vacantly as the world passed him by.
These heartbreaking images are all too common here; somehow each new face strained with pain is yet another reminder of the great magnitude this country and its people suffer daily. A walk through the countryside lightened the group’s load as a group of local Ethiopians decided to cliff dive (about 30 feet above a small pond). The greenery and trees were a welcoming site compared to the brown landscape of the city. Another highlight: a true horse and buggy ride through the country lane where locals gathered to wave at the volunteers.
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