By Michael Hill
It is certainly not a place that makes you happy. These
people have been dealt a tough hand by life. Few have smiles on their faces. On
this cool afternoon, they are mostly sitting outside. Not listless, exactly,
but hardly active. Some are in wheelchairs. Others remain in their beds in the
wards.
The home is really two compounds, one for children, the
other for teens to the aged. The occupants go from newborn infants to those
near the end of long lives. Some are simply too poor to afford any sort of
lodging during medical treatment in Ethiopia's capital city. But many were
abandoned by their families, too poor to care for, say, a handicapped child
with mental issues; or for an elderly relative near death; or for an unwanted
newborn.
There is an entire facility in the children's compound for
young mothers and their babies. Some of the mothers were rape victims. All had
nowhere else to go in a society where an extended family essentially defines
who you are, your status in the world. The three-month stay in this ward could
make the difference between a young mother abandoning her baby or learning how
to care and nurture her child.
This is not a luxurious place. All eating and much of the
cooking is done outside on long benches. Not only are there no private rooms,
your private space hardly extends beyond the edge of your bed. Outside the
gates, people line up looking to get in, some for a visit to the health clinic
for outpatients, but many seeking accommodation.
So why wasn't it depressing? Hard to say. Certainly the
facility was well-cared for. The paint seemed fresh, the floors swept, the beds
made. And the patients, though often in terrible medical shape, also seemed
well cared for, their needs attended to as best as possible.
But there was something else, something elusive. It probably
has to do with the attitude of the founder of the Missionaries of Charity,
Mother Teresa, whose familiar face beams down from many of the home's walls.
She came to Ethiopia in 1974 and met with the then-Emperor Haile Selassie. With
his permission, she sent two nuns from her home base in India to begin work in
Ethiopia. There are now 120 Missionaries of Charity in the country, running 18
homes like this one all over the country.
About 40 of the sisters work at this house in Addis Ababa,
along with 60 staff. Much of the support for their work, including the food
they serve, comes through Catholic Relief Services. Though the sisters were not
that visible during my visit -- first they were in their daily mass then
involved in tasks in their part of the compound -- their spirit was evident.
And the foundation of that spirit is to treat all with
dignity, even the poor and the sick who have been cast off from society. That
was what pervaded the place, a feeling of the dignity of each of these
patients, from the tiniest baby crying his eyes out to the oldest woman nearing
her last breath. (One way of insuring dignity is to forbid photographs, by the
way).
The presence of dignity affirmed the beauty in each of these
people, giving the place a calmness that belied the turmoil of so many of these
lives. It was a privilege to be amongst them.
No comments:
Post a Comment