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Independence Day, 2006
By
Published: Jul 04, 2006
Category:
Beyond Classification
“Six million children — and even more adults — die unnecessarily every day of treatable diseases,” Bono said at the World Affairs Council in Oregon. “God is in the Mother who has infected her child with AIDS….So put on your boots. Do your part to end stupid poverty and help eradicate AIDS. This…this is our moon shot.”
You know how it is when Bono preaches — you leave on fire, determined to help. Because he makes the light bulb go off for you. He makes you believe that the fight against AIDS in Africa is the civil rights struggle of our generation.
So I gave money to AIDS organizations. I joined the One campaign. Then U2 played Portland. This time, I felt strangely frustrated by Bono’s call to do more. What more could I do?
My answer came in a question yelled from the office of my program director: “How would you like to go to Africa?”
What was this? Well, World Vision wanted us to see the relief and development work it was doing in Ethiopia. Across Africa, AIDS has killed two million adults and orphaned 1.8 million children. Ethiopia is one of the countries hardest hit; the government estimates that 20% of the adult population is infected. I could only imagine what I’d see there.
I willed myself to say yes. Which wasn’t easy. Since becoming a parent, I have zero tolerance for seeing children suffer. I get physically ill stepping over meth babies in filthy houses. I want sexual abusers locked away — for good. I have become so intolerant to neglect and abuse that my radio reports involving children border on editorialized anger rather than professional objectivity.
So I ignored my doubts. I answered the call. And to the question — “How can I make a real difference?” — I found an answer.
Or rather, two thousand people found it for me.
After twelve inoculations and two weeks of feeling like I had the flu, Arik Corman, a radio personality from Seattle, and I flew with two World Vision workers to Addis Ababba, Ethiopia.
The stereotypes I’d had of Ethiopia were immediately blasted. Instead of a desert, the capitol city is perched at six thousand feet, surrounded by gorgeous mountains and five rivers. But things change once you leave the city.
Our first stop was the village of Wonchi, a remote development area serving more than 10,000 people. More than half of the children living here are AIDS orphans. It happens this way: Men travel to get jobs as migrant farmers, then return home with the virus and infect their women. Both parents become too sick to farm. And as they die in remote huts, their children are left to fend for themselves.
I talked to one woman who’d left her children behind so she could care for her brother’s three orphans. She’d likely never see her own son and daughter again. Another boy we visited has been the head of his household since age seven. He farms for a living. If he gets sick, tribal elders dock his pay for a month.
It would be so easy for these stories to make you despair, but despair gets nothing done. World Vision does. The dollars that support the work come exclusively from the United States, and 85% of every dollar goes directly to programs benefiting the kids. In the villages of Garaghe and Bossett, World Vision’s child sponsorship program paid for every improvement we saw. And the commitment was broad: It distributed medicine and stocked health care clinics, it drilled wells so that families can stop drinking from contaminated rivers, it built schools and bought uniforms so children can be educated
Child labor is rampant here. Girls who look no older than five or six carry infants on their backs. Flies cover babies’ eyes and cheeks, and there are open, infected sores on their skin. A beautiful girl who reminded me of my daughter told me through an interpreter of her dream of owning a blue school uniform. It costs 50 cents, more than her grandfather would ever be able to spare.
These kids are resourceful. A young boy in the Garaghe area gave me hope that we might turn the tables on America’s sorely tarnished international reputation. He had just received medical care and two goats from World Vision — he planned to breed the goats and sell them so that he could go to school. I asked him what he knew of Americans besides the work of World Vision. His reply: “I know nothing else about Americans, just what they do here for us.”
What if people in developing countries knew only of our compassion and generosity? What if children who’d watched both parents die of AIDS learned how Americans were working to eradicate this deadly disease? What if someone got a uniform for that girl, so she can go to primary school?
I filled my radio reports with word pictures of children and the opportunity we have to help to change a child’s life with a World Vision sponsorship. The phones rang, and rang again. By the end of the day, 800 Portland listeners offered to sponsor orphans in Ethiopia. In Seattle, 1,100 of Arik Corman’s listeners signed on. Now every child I met will be clothed, fed, and cared for by a person whose letters and pictures will be tacked to the sides of mud huts across Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia, thanks to World Vision, I found a foreign policy I can agree with, one I can shape. My dollar a day can save a life of a child. Money well spent? It’s the best value for the buck I know. And the feeling that something you do makes a difference — that’s beyond priceless.
Put your boots on: Sign up to sponsor a child here.
Five-time Emmy winner Sheila Hamilton is News Director of KINK FM, in Portland, Oregon. Before he was the flavor of the season, she introduced Head Butler readers to James Blunt.
