Childhood Hunger

Bill Shore’s Letters

Letter From a Landover Caravan

May 2001

Dear Friend,

Our doctor warned that the mefloquine prescribed to prevent malaria might be mood altering. I don't know if that explains my tears last night or if it was the 12 year old Ethiopian girl whose perfect English and winning smile made her so hard to leave behind at a school we help fund.

We travel the length of Ethiopia this time, from the Eritrean border, down almost to Kenya. It is a different country than we visited during the drought last. Relief efforts were successful. After three years, the rains came. Cattle and those who depend on them are no longer dying. This time entire villages turn out to meet us. The elders thank us for coming and for caring. "America is second to God" said one, "and so we thank God for bringing you to us and hope that you will help."

There is so much promise and opportunity in Ethiopia that it makes your mouth water even in the dry and dusty African desert.

Everything about this trip was different from our last. Instead of Chuck Scofield and I traveling alone, we have a delegation of 14 from the U.S. in a caravan of five Landrovers, swerving across broken roads crowded with goats, camels, mule-drawn carts and children. The dust is so thick it coats our stowed luggage, making the bags almost indistinguishable. We drive off-road as well, across vast stretches of dirt and sand, past children standing alone and nearly naked by the side of the road with no sign of home or family anywhere between them and the horizon. One boy materializes out of nowhere and runs along side our vehicle, yelling "Pen! Pen! I am a student," and slapping a ragged notebook as proof, until I role down my window and hand him my blue felt-tip.

At the halfway point of our journey, we arrive at the Hotel Pinna in Awassa. The rooms are clean. There is a restaurant. There is electricity and a shower. There is a bathroom! All of which is more than we had the day before in the small town of Yabello during the one long night that Scott Feldman from American Express refers to as "the Yabello years." Our dollar a night rooms there are more like cells, with a bed, a chair and a dangling lightbulb. When Scott threw his pillow across the room at a cockroach the size of a rock, ten more scurried out of the pillowcase. Before the trip is over, the latrines will claim a $300 pair of prescription sunglasses, and, almost, a passport.

Life in Ethiopia and the quest for water in Ethiopia, are one and the same. It is not a seasonal quest but daily. Women walk ten hours a day to bring home their family's water needs. Not just on market days, or rainy days, but every day, day after day, week after week, for months, years, decades. At one stop I talk with the village elder, who has been elected Chief of Water. He receives no compensation, but his proud friends are quick to add that he is honored in other villages with free food and a place to sleep when he visits. I ask the secret to his electoral success. "I hold the lives of the people in my hands," he explains.

All we drive by is fascinating, but it's what we spend days driving to, that merits the 8000 mile journey: the long-term development projects Share Our Strength supports. A $3000 generator irrigates hundreds of acres making them fertile for growing food. Dams flood river valleys enabling crops to crow. Micro-lending programs and schools redefine the role of women.

Our previous trip had more ripples than we knew. A corporate executive who visited the Share Our Strength website sent $15,000 to our partner, Action for Development. Another company, Land O Lakes, learned about Project Mercy at the Ethiopian embassy fundraiser we organized. Now Land O Lakes is helping increase milk production of the cows, make cheese, and better manage their dairy products.

Our partners demonstrate more organizational discipline in measuring results than most American nonprofits. They meticulously count every hand dug well, goat, camel, school and health post. They know precisely how many more they need to reach every villager, and which community leaders they must work through.

Proof of impact is valuable to any grantmaker, but I had all I needed in the eyes of that 12 year old girl in at Project Mercy, in Yetabon. The mountain setting there is beautiful and it was clear from the modern facilities that the children there have a chance that most of Ethiopia's children don't have.

We visit an English class. The barefoot children leap to attention. The teacher asks one child after another to stand and recite, and then, at our prompting, asks what they want to be when they are older. I thank the class for allowing us to visit and as they sit down, one girl on the aisle, says something so quietly I can't hear her. She is the only one who has spoken without being called upon.

While Harris Wofford, who was Peace Corps director there 40 years ago, addresses the class, I walk over and kneel down to ask her what she said. She is wearing a pink blouse under a blue denim shirt and her dark hair is pulled back from her high forehead in tight cornrows. Her bright white teeth and her wide smile make a dazzling combination.

She repeats what she said so I can hear her this time: "God bless you."

Like any child she is shy, but unlike many she does not look away. Something about her presence sets her apart. I put my hand on her wrist and ask "What's your name?"

Although her English is flawless I ask her to write it down so I'll know the correct spelling. She searches her notebook for an empty space and writes:

"Alima Dari."

We talk for 5-10 more minutes as she tells me about her five brothers and sisters and where they all live. I ask how far she walks to school.

"Just two kilometers" she shrugs, because many of her classmates walk three hours each way.

Our hosts urge us to move on but Alima's eyes never leave mine. We have blocked out our surroundings and go on talking. Her classmates begin to stare in our direction. For some reason this encounter is important to both of us, something we've both been waiting for, as if we what we can learn from each other is something the others can't give us.

Our group heads outside. One hundred men are assembled at the foot of a new road they built. Harris Wofford, in campaign mode now, tells of bragging to his friends about the beauty of the Ethiopian mountains that range behind them. "I will now go back to America and tell them Ethiopia has men equal to their mountains." As the translation is completed, the men's cheers build like a wave.

When we came to Ethiopia last May we observed the drama of drought and death, and we left shaken. But now we witness the even more powerful drama of resilience and life. Just a few inches of rain after years of deprivation and the land springs back to life. Our return visit yields not just a snapshot of Ethiopia but a wider view of the panoramic cycle that has played out in the horn of Africa for millennia.

For another two hours we tour the hospital that is being constructed, and the cattle shed, and garden and kitchen. When it is finally time to leave Project Mercy, we see that all of the children, hundreds of them, line the road from the school all the way to the main gate. They are smiling and waving. "I love you" an older boy yells playfully, as if curious to experiment with our language's more powerful words. "These kids have a shot," I say to my colleagues. "You can see it, they've really got a shot."

Instead of getting in the car, I start across the field. I don't know why or what I'll do when I get there, but I want to touch them one more time, to somehow return the affection they give so freely. But that's not all. As I walk toward them I search the line for Alima. There are close to 300 children, three rows deep. It could be impossible to find her. But that smile is like a sunrise on the vast African horizon. It would have been impossible not to find her. When I do, I wave and yell "Alima!" Her friends break into a fit of giggles that I know her name. I reach across the first row of children, and Alima and I shake hands again. Then I walk back toward the cars, certain of our connection eve without understanding it, pondering it then, pondering it still.

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