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Learning to Juggle Classes

Andy is still feeling unwell, in his third day with stomach problems, but a little better than yesterday. In the morning I managed to juggle between two classes. Gebreyesus was a star as he took control and more or less ran the exercise by himself with me looking on to pull anyone in if it got out of hand. Andy and I have been allowing an element of leadership to be exercised as nobody seems to take offence and it encourages additional self-confidence for the ones wanting to stretch themselves that bit further.

In the evening we had a working dinner with Bev, Sophie and Helen from CAFOD. We exchanged many interesting experiences and discussed the future of the Daughters of Charity school children project. With the opening of the new Street-children project in December 2007 there will be an opportunity to improve both educational and employment prospects. __________________________________________________________

On Tuesday afternoon we had another home visit to the house of a 16-year old girl who attends the Project. She lives with her mother who has chronic asthma and a younger sister about 7 years-old. The house was very small, about 3x3 metres, with two beds made of piled up boulders and the bedding on top, boulder walls and a tin roof with lots of holes. With the daily torrential rain just now, the roof must have been leaking badly. There was no water or electricity, just a small oil lamp and cooking stove. How this young girl manages to come to the Project looking presentable is completely beyond my imagination, as we had to gingerly find our way through a muddy field to reach her house.

After dinner I had a long discussion with Sister Ababa in the lounge about different aspects of life both within the Community and the Mekelle area. She explained that there are many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people living on the streets or in houses that are totally inadequate for human habitation. People living under bridges, inside drainage pipes and home made boulder houses.
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After breakfast on Wednesday I went up to the internet café at 7am but it was closed so decided to have a walk around town. The town is quite busy at this time of the day as it is fairly common for people to be up and about after 5 am each morning. It’s amazing how many women and young girls are working on building sites, lifting stones and carrying them in a kind of stretcher style builder’s hod. Tidying the rubbish around town seems to be an exclusively female job, why I’m not sure. The weight of the stones were obviously very heavy and you could see them straining, and all for about 8 birr a day, about 50p.

Normally my mornings are quite bright, but this morning when I returned after my walk around town, bang, another reality check. A beggar had located himself right beside the gate of the Sisters Community. He looked about 70 years old. He was so thin I don’t now how his legs managed to take the weight of his body. His case is unfortunately not an isolated one. When I stepped inside the gate of the project the children just swarmed around with big smiles and bring you brought me back from my thoughts. It’s strange that the children from the most disadvantaged of families have the greatest positive influence on how you think.

Tommy Dobbin
15th August 2007