Reflections on a trip to Ethiopia
It’s Sunday morning 6th June and I’m writing this on a plane traveling over Eastern Europe. A few hours ago we took off from Amman and flew up the Syrian side of the Jordan valley (I guess to avoid flying over Israeli air space). I looked down on Damascus and could see the road coming in from Jerusalem where Saul met the resurrected Jesus and the Jordan river and imagined all of the history tied up there. It was a clear morning so I could look across to the hills of Galilee and visualise Jesus walking about amongst the villages over 2000 years ago.
Andrew and I are on our way home from a trip to Ethiopia. We were visiting the village where Andrew grew up - and where part of his heart still lives. Over recent years he and his brother Sam have returned on several occasions implementing various projects to help the village develop and, in Andrew’s case to encourage the believers in Degan. Sam was unable to go on this occasion so I went along to ‘carry Andrew’s bags’. It was an amazing trip.
Andrew’s parents Ron and Maria were missionaries in Degan for eleven years leaving in 1978 by which time the Communist government made it extremely difficult for any explicitly christian witness to continue. I was amazed by the impact which they had had during those years and the affection and esteem in which they are still held 31 years later. People would continually come up to warmly greet Andrew in the street saying “Ah, Maria’s boy” and then go on to relate some way in which they had been blessed by Ron or Maria while they were there. I guess until we get to Heaven we will never know the impact we have had but Ron and Maria can rest assured that they have “fruit which remains” in Degan.
It’s bringing tears to my eyes just thinking about some of the experiences which we had while we were in Ethiopia. Andrew took me to visit a little lady, Fati Indris, who was the first person to become a believer under Ron and Maria’s ministry in Degan. She is a leper and lives in a leper colony on the outskirts of Combolcha, a large and growing town near Degan. She lives in a tiny hut with a very leaky roof but is full of the joy of the Lord. She has no hands, deformed feet and a disfigured face but I have rarely seen someone who is so full of life. She had great news which she was eager to share with us - she is getting a new house. She insisted that we come to see it and on the way we discovered that it was being built by Habitat for Humanity (I believe a team from NI, possibly including someone from Ballynahinch Baptist, have helped or will help with the construction of HFH houses in Ethiopia this summer - possibly these very houses). Fati was overjoyed as she showed us around her new, spacious, leak proof house with it’s own separate toilet - absolute luxury to her!
One of the major objectives of our trip was to further the process of providing an ambulance for Degan. The money has been raised to buy the vehicle but there are many hurdles to cross to be able to order it on a tax free (more than 100% import duty applies) basis and to arrange for it’s management and upkeep in the village. Once again we saw God’s hand at work in what we were able to achieve while we were there - and once again Ron and Maria had a part to play. When they were in Degan they helped establish a school for the village and also befriended other local children who attended other schools. Two of those children are now in high positions in regional government but, like Andrew and Sam, have retained an interest in helping their home village develop. It’s too long a story to go into all of the detail but, during our visit, they travelled from the regional capital Bahar Dar to Addis, a drive of 7 hrs, to meet with us and go with us to the Red Cross to assure them that this project had their support and, equally as important, the support of the government departments over which they have control. With their weight behind the project it now seems that, as soon as the necessary paperwork is completed (which could still take some time), the ambulance will be provided for Degan under Red Cross management.
These two gentlemen spent much of the day with us and, in addition to helping with the ambulance project, encouraged us to register DESTA as an Ethiopian NGO. They offered to investigate the registration process and assist us with drafting any documentation which was necessary. They encouraged Andrew to have a big vision for all that DESTA might be able to achieve in the future.
Andrew and I were also confronted again by the great medical need which exists in Ethiopia and particularly in rural areas. We were taken to see a girl called Awagash Hassan. She had been vomiting blood for some days so her parents had taken her to the nearest hospital (70 kms away). The doctor examined her, gave her a blood transfusion and some tablets and sent her home (her two brothers each donated some blood). When we saw her she had been home a couple of days, was very listless and still vomiting blood. We asked why she had not been admitted to hospital and were told that that would have cost 75 Birr (£4) per day and they could not afford that. They had already had to sell one of their precious cows to pay for the treatment and transport to hospital. Her mother said to us “In this country, if you haven’t got the money, you either get better or die” and that indeed is the reality. We felt very inadequate having no medical knowledge with which to help her but on the basis of Peter’s response to the lame man we prayed in Jesus name that she would be healed. We were also able to leave some money to allow her parents to take her back to hospital if that was felt necessary.
We visited another man in the village, Ibrihm, and videoed him ploughing his small plot of ground with his two oxen. Next day we learned that his little 3 year old granddaughter had died at about the time we had been with him - again probably from some very treatable condition.
Dawd, another friend of Andrew’s, had lost his wife and two children over the last 2.5 years due to simple illnesses and is now living on his own.
Mohammad Hassan, the leading christian in the village, and friend of Andrew’s since he was a boy, has a married daughter who is about to have a baby. In the Degan area, where the popupation is about 65000, there are 3 or 4 deaths each month from child birth so this is an anxious time for them. There is a clinic in the village but electrical power is very intermittent (it was only on for 2 of the 5 days we were there) and they cannot afford a backup generator. This results in some night time deliveries and other emergency procedures having to be done by torch light.
I could write much more but I will make that do for now - maybe another time.
I think I can speak for Andrew as well as myself when I say that it was a ‘vision expanding’ trip. There is huge need in the places we visited and our minds were opened up to many other possibilities for meeting that need. In the days ahead we need to evaluate those possibilities and explore means of further developing DESTA’s ministry - before the images fade and we get submerged again in the day to day humdrum of life.
