There was a strange atmosphere in the project. Everyone today realised that we had just one week left and there was a raw emotion from many of the children who were almost panicking about us leaving. I found this a little difficult to deal with. Daniel had listed off 20 volunteers in the café the night before to me, giving a story about each, which had been on my mind a lot as I tossed and turned in bed. What I have done here will really leave a lasting impression. That’s a nice feeling in many ways, but creates lots of other emotions that didn’t help my current confused and mixed feelings.
We had brought John along to the project this morning; introduced him and told the children about how he was going to carry on their English lessons. The children had thought we organised John’s arrival for them, to lessen the blow of us leaving. I think at this point, if I could have somehow slipped out the back door, I really would have been more than happy.
Tommy has been wearing white a "Make Poverty History" plastic wristband. He had a supply brought from SCIAF and had been discretely distributing them to the children if and when they asked about the message on it. There was a certain irony about these very poor children wearing them with such pride, but I knew they agreed with the message, and when one of the boys came up to me and proudly said, “We need to help those people who are living in poverty”, I wanted to ask him if he knew that he was one of the people that needed help to get out of poverty. He obviously didn’t consider himself to be suffering the effects of poverty, even as he was stood there with holes in his shoes and no place to call home.
I have no idea how the situation arose, but all of sudden everyone wanted one of these bands and we lost total control. Tommy knew that he didn’t have one for every child and I felt really sorry for him as he ducked and dived trying to avoid eye contact. All of a sudden smiles turned into dagger-eyes and sheer dejection as shouts of “me, ME!” could be heard echoing around. There was near blows from some of the boys. I actually found it all a little scary.
We are both guilty of forgetting what life is like as a street child. Everything takes on different meaning and significance. All of a sudden, these worthless items became a powerful personal gift. Perhaps they were seen as a token of love, or of acceptance? It was upsetting for Tommy as he had only the very best of intention and the experience ended up being one of great distress.
It was another reality check, if we had had the chance to become complacent, about the reality of this unique world. I also still remember that these are the very same boys who would share every Birr they had, their one meal of the day or their tatty Man Utd shirt with me if they thought I needed it.
Yesterday, just before leaving for lunch, Thgebrehan (the sports coach) had used his barber skills to re-shave my head and turn my full-on beard into a goatee (“like the habashsa”). I had been a little hesitant to jump in the chair, knowing the same clippers had just been used on a succession of the street children, but ‘carpe diem’ and all that. Luckily Thgebrehan used both alcohol and lit alcohol to clean the clippers. I had about 40 boys crowded round me loving every minute of my haircut. Not one bit of my hair got near the floor as it was snatched up by the boys to keep – they had never had a piece of faranji hair in their possession! “It’s SOO soft!”, the cries went. Thgebrehan was very nervous about cutting my hair, but I think he ended up enjoying it. He did an excellent job and I was even more one of the boys now; I’d had my hair cut ready for Ashenda!Ashenda was to be celebrated the following day. This is both a religious (Assumption according the Ethiopian calendar) and a cultural day, and as a consequence the project was to be shut. The news was told to the class, and rarely have I seen such dejection and sorrow in young faces. I was in full flow of teaching about adverbs and the lesson never really recovered.
After the afternoon session, the day’s task was to see if we could get John’s guitar repaired. British Airways had let him down and the neck was nicely broken into two parts. We began walking with a few of the older boys, as well as the usual crowd. By the time we reached the square, about half a mile down the road, we must have been 40 strong. No-one wanted to leave us.
Again, we hadn’t thought things through. No project means no food. Tuesday lunchtime to Thursday breakfast is a long time for anyone, let alone a growing and active teenager who is sleeping rough somewhere. These situations are incredibly difficult to deal with; there are all kinds of thoughts going on. Do you feed those that you can? Do you feed none of them to be ‘fair’? Do you feed those who will hang around not far from St Vincent’s in the vague hope you’ll walk by and offer to take them for injera? Do you organise a time to meet? Do you leave it to chance? Do you give them a bit of money and tell them to sort themselves out? Do you let them chose where to eat? All these questions and a thousand more were racing through my head.
Feeling a little cowardly, I really didn’t want to address the situation, and I was feeling a little relieved that I had a lot of work to do on my laptop the following day. I could also sense John’s feelings of difficulty as a new comer to this situation. He wanted guidance and I had no idea what to say.
We left the boys outside Guna Sports Bar, their favourite haunt. I took John to meet Jose and Robbi in Enet, there wasn’t much conversation as we were both feeling terrible. Just for effect, I think, it started to rain. The boys would be wet now too…
I am glad that we had already made the decision to go to Yordano’s for dinner. I feel terrible for saying this now, but pizza brought great comfort, as did the two glasses of Axumite (Ethiopian sweet red wine). Me, Tommy and John spoke at length about what had happened over the last few days and tried to sort out some of our emotions and feelings. We had only known John for 24 hours but he had a quick introduction to life with the street children and the joys and pains that come in quick succession. They don’t give you a minute to think and maybe that is the best way most of the time.
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