Seesai's Wings

I met a new friend today in the poorest part of Addis Ababa.  I don’t

know how you actually spell his name and if I used Amharic I’m not

sure I could even find the right letters in their 200+ symbol

alphabet.  Since we pronounced his name Seesai, that’s how I will

spell it and if he ever reads this I’m sorry for the name butchery.

At any rate, we met Seesai through our friend Yemamu (and yes that one

is right) when they showed us their new center.  Now when I say center

I don’t want you to think in American terms where a center might mean

big parking lots leading into a shopping plaza with a Starbucks on

each end.  Think more along the lines of a metal enclosed patch of

grass which has four small buildings: one will be a library, one will

be a dining hall/activity room, one already is a guard shack (metal

enclosure that a person lives in to guard the center) and the fourth

building already is a shower.

I say the buildings will be these things because as they stand right

now it is just corrugated metal on top of eucalyptus tree logs.  The

library has gone a step further and added a plastic tarp lining to the

walls and ceiling of the 22 by 10 foot building (by the way that’s not

as big as some of your bedrooms).  As of now the books can fit in a

box the size of a microwave oven and consist of a wide variety of

outdated material from Windows 97 to a fifteen year old dictionary.

But this is just what it is.  What it’s going to be is a whole other

story.

Yemamu and Seesai  grew up in a place called Kore (sounds like Koray

or maybe Korah).  If you have seen the movie Slum Dog Millionaire

where the kids are living on a trash dump then you may have gotten a

small taste of how these two and so many others grew up and are still

living.  The noticeable difference here is the addition of fire as the

trash is burned in the exact same place these kids and people are

living.  The smoke was so bad today that we couldn’t actually go into

the dump because our friends said you can’t breathe and couldn’t even

see the person next to you if you were holding their hand.  The kids

from the dump are outcasts, so much so that they aren’t even allowed

to use the public taxi system which is sketchy at best.  They get

their clothing from the trash and eat whatever the dogs and hyenas

don’t get to first.  The idea of three meals a day and medical care

for simple, treatable issues is as much of a joke for these kids as

the thought of being allowed into a school.

One thing they do for fun is to hide in the garbage at night until

the hyenas get very close and then jump up, screaming and yelling and

laughing as they chase one of Africa’s most dangerous animals away to

scavenge elsewhere.  When we tried to explain to our friends that

hyenas were super nasty and dangerous (according to Nat Geo TV of

course, but they don’t exactly show them in a trash dump I guess) they

just looked at each other, then at us like we were the crazy ones and

said, “Noooooo! Not in Ethiopia!”  The saying goes that if a hyena

sees a man, he goes away.  If it sees a woman, he waits.  And if he

sees a child, he laughs.  Sounds to me like the kids in Kore get the

last laugh on this subject.

For the last two years our friends have been working on getting other

activities for these outcast kids to be involved in and finally a week

ago they got permission to have this patch of grass and few metal

buildings to start their center.  Like I said what it is and what it

will be are two separate things.  Later this week we get to see them

open their doors to 150 kids who will get a chance to shower, to eat

three times a day, and whenever volunteers are there or donations are

available they will have the chance to learn and to receive medical

care.  The admission criteria are simple; worst come, worst served.

The kids who are the most needy, alone, sick, and desperate will be

served first and the hope is to quickly raise the total number of kids

from 150 to 300.

According to Yemamu, Kore, the dump, and the attached leprosy village

called Alert were made in the 1940’s when there was a lack of

understanding about leprosy and the king/emperor of the time didn’t

want the disease to spread.  Out of sight out of mind may have been

the idea, but now there needs to be a new light shed on the issue.  In

a country where the unemployment rate is well over 40% and diarrhea is

one of the main killers of children these kids aren’t even being

counted.  There are zero resources being put into this community aside

from city waste and the people like Yemamu, Seesai, and another friend

named Alex are left carrying the weight of their families, friends,

and many others.  What’s strange is that our friends who live at the

dump and in the leprosy village invited us over their houses and to

walk through their part of town and I haven’t felt so safe, loved, and

welcomed anywhere else in Ethiopia.

Seesai has two tattoos on the back of his neck.  When we get back to

the states I will post a picture for sure, but until then I can just

describe them as one wing on each side.  When I first saw them at the

beginning of the day I thought to myself, “probably to fly out of this

place”.  But as the day went on and he was going out of his way to

take Kelly and I to an easy place to catch a taxi home, Seesai was

sitting in front of me.  I kept looking at his wings and re-evaluated

what they were to be used for.  Now I’m sure I have it right.  He’s

going to use those wings to fly every kid in that dump to a better

place where they have an equal shot at life.