I have been struggling to find words to describe our visit with Sara. More accurately, I have many words, I am having trouble finding the right ones to adequately convey the experience. Please note that the names have been changed for privacy reasons.
We walked through a grassy field and by a shanty shop down a path of loose stones the size of bricks. Making a left and passing through a gate we entered Sara’s neighborhood. To the right stood her home. As we entered a baby was crying. His wails filled the seven by eight foot room. Sara tried but failed to quiet her son. It was not until she took him out into the afternoon sun that his tears ceased.
Sara returned and as we talked, Jonam, her son, played with his noisemaker, two small ceramic cups that he bangs together. We learned many things about Sara’s life, but these short bursts of conversation are punctuated by long periods of silence. It was difficult to ask Sara questions. It was not for lack of interest on our part nor an unwillingness to respond on her part, but prying into her obviously difficult life seemed inappropriate. Questions such as “How did you contract HIV/AIDS?” were ones that riddled my brain, but I could not muster courage to ask them.
While I cannot share many of the Sara works with the Entoto Project’s job creation program where she makes jewelry from coffee beans, one of Ethiopia’s staples and an integral part of Ethiopian culture. She told us that she would like to move down off the mountain but that she cannot. Her rent would triple from approximately six dollars per month to nearly twenty. While the Entoto Project pays Sara very well on an hourly basis, the number of hours that they can provide are limited.
Eventually Sara stepped outside and passed her son, her greatest joy, to a neighbor. She began to prepare tea for us, a surprise in a culture that nearly always serves coffee to guests. She would step outside and come back with something needed, cups, water to wash dishes, and so on, each thing borrowed from a neighbor. One time she came back with a loaf of bread which she served us along with the tea. The hospitality shown in the face of such dire circumstances and the willingness of neighbors to share with one another when each has so little of his own is amazing.
I still haven’t processed this experience, what it was like to sit and talk with a woman who owns so few worldly goods that I could have bought them all with the cash in my pocket. I don’t really understand this yet. Before we left we prayed for Sara and Jonam. We prayed for healing for her, for protection for Jonam, and that he would become a strong man of God.
