I just finished reading "There Is No Me Without You" by Melissa Fay Greene. It is a book about one woman's attempt to rescue Ethiopian orphans. It was a hard book to read because it was so filled with hunger, disease, poverty, grief, and strife. There was not a lot of hope. The story of one pair of orphans particularily moved me. I would like to share it with you.
In 2003 Mekdes Asnake was 5 years old and lived with her grandfather Addisu, her young aunt Fasika and her little brother Yabsira, in a hut on a shared dirt compound outside the capitol. The walls of her house were a hard mix of mud and straw; the windows were open squares cut into the walls. Sometimes the family had firewood; when they did not, the circle of ashes on the floor was black and the hut was cold. They subsisted, year-round on eggs.
The children's father had been a day laborer in coffee processing. One day when Mekdes was 3 or 4 years old and waiting impatiently for him to come home and play with her, she saw a strange thing happen; he approached the house but suddenly knelt and lay full legnth on the dirt courtyard for a while, before getting up and coming inside.
Later, when her father got sick, Mekdes felt he must have caught the bad sickness that day from the dirt. He got thinner and thinner over the next few months, with a look of surprise in his brown eyes. Then thick black blisters erupted on his skin and he cried out from the pain during the day and groaned with it during the night. Mekdes thought he would get better. She was shocked when she woke up one night to the haunting sound of her mother, Mulu, howling over Asnake's wasted body.
Mekdes had not yet recovered from the horror of Asnake's death when her mother began to get the same disappointed, surprised look on her face.....
(I skip ahead to the children being left at a foster home because their grandfather and aunt are too poor to care for them.)
Mekdes felt the air at her back, suddenly aware that her aunts were no longer behind her - they were walking toward the exit! Mekdes shrieked and ran after them. How would she find her way home to her grandfather? Aunt Fasika and Aunt Zewdenesh turned around; they stroked Mekdes' face, kissed her many times, and told her good-bye.
Mekdes turned inside out with grief and terror. She understood; she was being abandoned! She arched her back in protest. She pulled out of the foster mother's grasp, fell backward to the ground, and writhed there beginning to shriek.
(Mekdes proceded to throw herself against the door to the compound so hard it knocked her to the ground again and again. The author could not stand watching the scene, Mekdes throwing herself at the gate berserk with grief and terror, the Aunt's on the other side listening and weeping. She asked her driver if she gave the family all her cash $200 would they be able to raise the children? No he told her they are too poor to raise them.)
The foster mother approached and took the thrashing child. Mekdes twisted and flailed and cried, and the foster mother, with squinting eyes, averted face, and strong arms, absorbed the blows. She was used to this.
(Fast forward to 2005 - Mekdes and brother Yabsira have been adopted by an American couple in Atlanta.)
Mekdes keeps alive the memory of her first parents and drills her brother on the family history.
"Who is our mother?" she demands.
"Mulu!" she yells if he hesitates.
"What was our father's name?"
"Asnake," says Yabsira.
"Good," says Mekdes.
While still in the apartment in Addis Ababa(right after they were united with their American parents), Mekdes drew 6 stick figures and labeled them: Mekdes, Yabsira, Mommy, Daddy, Mulu, Asnake. She asked her parents to tape them to the bedroom wall.
"Mommy, did Granny get you out of her stomach or out of Ethiopia?" she asked one day.
On another day, she began a story and stopped: "When I was with my mo- I mean Mulu."
"Baby, you can say Momma," Mikki (her American mother) said.
"Do you like Mulu Mommy?"
"I love Mulu!" said Mikki, and Mekdes embraced her.
Mekdes soon told her mother about the day her aunts took her to the foster home. "Yabsira cry a little. I am scream."
"Why did you cry, baby?" asked Mikki.
"I don't know this Ethiopia. I want my Ethiopia with Goshay (grandfather) and Fasika. I don't want new Ethiopia."
"You were sad," said Mikki.
"No hope, Mommy. I have no hope."
"oh, honey..."
"Because no one told me, Mommy."
"Told you what?"
"That you are here in America. I will not feel so sad if I know you are here."
"Yeah, I was here getting ready, getting your rooms ready. I was here, me and your daddy, waiting and getting ready."
"I am cry because I don't know you will come."
Of course, for many of Africa's ten million, fifteen million, twenty million orphans, no one is getting a room ready. No one will come.
***What a crazy combination of horrible and wonderful. I bet you can understand why Mekdes' story caught my heart. We will soon be preparing a room! Please pray that our Joshua can somehow feel hope in a seeming hopeless moment.***
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