My First Trip to Medhen
Board member Leelie Selassie recently visited Medhen for the first time.
Sister Senkenesh greeted me warmly and invited me into her office to go over the structure of the organization as well as M.O.RE.’s contributions to Medhen. She was, as the videos of her show, upright, smiling, engaging. What the Facetime image of her having tea with my parents did not show me was that she was far more. Over the course of an hour she showed herself to be a smart, forward thinking woman who had created a wonderful organization. Medhen’s strength clearly was that it preserves some of the best things of Ethiopian culture, including maintaining an orphaned/vulnerable child within the community, while at the same time bringing in some of the more liberal practices of Western social services to support these children.
A few days later Sister gave me the chance to do home visits with some of the families supported by M.O.R.E.. In one home a grandmother warmly greeted us. She supported her two orphaned grandsons with the help of donations from M.O.R.E.. These kids came home in uniforms that our donations provided, Sister informed me. While the 10 and 8 year old boys were shy, they appeared to be thriving under challenging circumstances.
On my third and final visit Sister allowed me to see the memory work that M.OR.E. donations supported. Here they have a 17 week class that meets on Saturdays for 3 hours with roughly 25 children. The kids were completing a project as I arrived with my father. When we arrived they each in turn stood up tall, looked us in the eye and introduced themselves.
“Tell them what you’ve learned in this class” their teacher asked them. The kids each took turns relating how they had for the first time learned information, by freely asking their remaining family, about themselves and their deceased parents.
“I learned my birthday” said one.
“I learned how my parents met” said another.
“I learned how my parents met” said a third.
“I learned my baptismal name” beamed another.
In Ethiopian society once a family member passes the children are encouraged to not dwell on the death or the deceased. Children I saw were now filling in important missing pieces of their own life’s story. I’m not sure when but tears started to quietly flow down my cheeks. My whole life I've been blessed to be able to ask my parents anything I wanted to know about and get honest answers. Yes we are Ethiopian but they had both been educated abroad and we lived in the U.S. from the time I was four. As a result I never hungered for those pieces of information. Yet, as I sat in that room, I realized that I had been doing my own memory work. Earlier that week my father and I went and visited a home we lived in when I was a child. It brought back memories that I couldn't distinguish from dreams until I saw the place. It was deeply fulfilling and all I had to do was ask my Dad. Now as we sat in this class, here were these group of kids without parents, sharing with us how they had gained something intangibly powerful. By asking where they had come from, the road to where they were now able to go seemed much clearer. As we headed back into the open field of the grounds that the school sits on the sunshine warmed me and I put my arm around my Dad thanking him for giving me my memories whenever I asked. I thanked Sister as well for creating such a wonderful organization that I feel blessed to support.
