Recently my youngest brother graduated from high school and I was lucky enough to be there to celebrate with him, and not just at the graduation itself but all the graduation events. It seemed like the goodbyes and final moments leading up the actual graduation stretched on for weeks –there was a senior dinner at our synagogue, a final banquet for his robotics club, a graduation party, a pre-graduation event at the school, and so on. I’m so used to having these final dinners and established goodbyes that I, like many people, take them for granted and put off saying and doing certain things until the set time –no need to take pictures with Zelalem today, when I’m running around trying to get to school, I’ll do it right as I’m leaving Gondar. And why, on an average day, should I tell the women who I work with on the toy project how much they mean to me? Isn’t expressing that sort of sentiment a bit odd and best left for when I am about to leave Ethiopia? But as I learned too late, sometimes we don’t get that official goodbye moment, the opportunity to say and do all those things we’ve been saving for that final wrap-up that previously has seemed to come, neatly arranged, with every major stage in life. And with that said, I think it’s time I tell you the rest of the Typhoid Maggie story.
I told you that I went to Addis to get the advice of Dr. Rick Hodes, and I told you that I was on the road to recovery. Both are true, but I left a lot out of the story. In the few days that I spent in Addis, Rick tried several things to help me, coming by my hotel room after he finished a full day of seeing patients at the clinic to try one thing or another or tell me what recommendations he had received from one of his doctor friends in the U.S. After a few days, the moment I had been trying to avoid for weeks finally happened –Rick stopped by to visit me and told me that he felt I needed to leave Ethiopia for further medical treatment, that I had reached the limitation of what was available in country. So my bosses and I discussed it and I agreed to go home, but I made clear that I would only be going for a few weeks to recover and then would be back for the final few months to wrap everything up. Now in my hoped for version of events, I would get at least 24 hours before going home in order to say goodbye to the people who had played an important role in my life for the past few months, pack up my things, and buy some souvenirs both for myself and for my loved ones at home. The plan would be that I would come back, but I would do all these things just in case. But about an hour after Rick told me he thought I needed to leave Ethiopia, I got a call that there was room for me on the flight leaving for the U.S. in four hours. Seriously, my bosses work fast. I tried to protest, saying that my medicine and valuables were still in Gondar and that I felt weird leaving it all behind, but it was eventually decided that the best thing for my health would be to leave that night. So I boarded the plane for D.C. with only a weekend’s worth of belongings.
Upon arriving in the U.S., I ignored the advice of the United representative who told me that although there was room on the 8:30am direct flight to Kansas City (it was 8:15am and I wasn’t supposed to go out until 1pm) there was no way I would make it to the gate in time. After securing the very last seat on the flight, I turned on my phone to call my parents to let them know I would be in much earlier, and immediately saw a message from a friend who was writing to see if my family was okay and expressed her sadness for what happened in my community. Having just spent 17 hours on a plane, I had no idea what she was talking about, and so in the minute before the flight attendant told everyone to turn off their phones, I read the news that there had been a shooting the day before at the Jewish community center and at a retirement home in Kansas City. Sitting through that flight only knowing the names of two out of the three people who were killed when so many of my family members spend time at the sites of the shootings made for a gut wrenching few hours. The shock of the news reminded me that despite all my recent frustration with Ethiopia, my home country has serious issues as well.
Luckily for me, my loved ones were not harmed, but the tragedy rocked the community. And if that wasn’t a good enough welcome home, we went straight from the airport to the emergency room, where the head of the E.R. came to check on me because he thought the resident who was treating me had lied about my story. “Oh did he tell you that I just flew in from Ethiopia and that I was diagnosed with both typhus and typhoid? No, he’s not making that up,” I said. Needless to say, it wasn’t the departure or arrival I had in mind.
All of that happened months ago already, and while I am recovering, I’m still very much dealing with the after-effects of whatever strange illness I managed to catch. So why have I waited so long to bring you up to speed? Well, as I mentioned before, I was expecting to go back, and when I started feeling better within the first few weeks, I began making plans to do so. But that I wasn’t completely back to normal coupled with the fact that projects in Gondar were wrapping up so the other fellow was coming home led to the decision for me to stay in the U.S. Taking the time to face the reality that I wasn’t going back to Ethiopia and that I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to wrap things up and do and say all the things I had pushed off is the second reason I have waited so long to write this post.
The past few months it has been hard not to think back on my experience and not be filled with regret for what I didn’t get to say or do. Although I was never going to finish the projects I helped start (girls empowerment club, the sanitation education project, and the pediatric malnutrition toy project) because the whole point was to create sustainable programs, I still wish I had been able to do more and make a larger impact. For a long time, I felt helpless to complete my biggest goal of leaving a long-lasting positive impact on Gondar. Since time travel isn’t an option (despite writing a whole post on the topic), I’ve settled on another solution. But I need your help.
Although the programs I helped to start while I was in Gondar may or may not continue into the future (so far, though, they have continued in my absence), I realized that there is a way for me, for you, for my friends, family, and community, to improve the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Ethiopia for years to come. For those of you who have been reading my blog for the past few months, it might be obvious where this is going because there is one issue on which I have become very passionate: bringing clean water to the millions of people whose only water source is neither clean nor safe. I don’t want to re-hash my two previous blog posts on the issue, so I’ll just say this: around the world, there are 800 million people without access to clean water.
A young girl drinks water from a stream. JDC is building a well nearby so luckily she will soon have access to clean, safe water.
Women and children have to walk for hours every day just to find water for their families, which they then have to carry the long distance back on their backs. Fetching water replaces school, something that is vital to economic growth and empowerment of girls, and it eats away at time that could be spent nurturing a family or working to make additional money. And what about the water that many people do have access to, whether nearby or an hour’s walk away? It is often filled with parasites that will cause diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and soon after, death. My dogs drink cleaner water than most people in Ethiopia, and that is just sad.
I’m not hoping to solve the world’s water crisis now (I’m too busy working on world peace…just kidding), but I am hoping that together with all those who I am connected with, on whatever level, I can raise money for at least one well to be built in Ethiopia. One well, which costs about $3,500 to build, can impact anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand people, depending on the density of the surrounding area and how far people have to walk for water. And while there are many organizations that build wells in Ethiopia, I cannot speak highly enough of the work that JDC puts in to ensure that their wells are not only built properly so as to last more than a few months, but that the surrounding community understands how to use the well as effectively as possible.
A little girl pumps water from a JDC well, providing her and her family with clean, safe water.
While it would be great if each and every person I reach out to gives enough money for a single well, I know that for many people that is just not possible. So think about how much money you spend on bottled or filtered water in a day, a week or a month, or how much your water bill is every month, and consider giving that amount if you can. To support this project and learn more, please click HERE. Even before you click, I just want to thank you for helping to make a lasting impact in Ethiopia, and for helping me to accomplish one of the many goals I had for my fellowship. Also don’t forget to come back later to read the second part of this story and my final post!
A Ferenji in Gonder 