June 2016

Ababu

Ababu is one of the cooks in the Sister’s house. Last year we purchased a horse for her husband so he could continue his work as a Gari (cart) driver.  Pleased to say that both the horse and the business are doing well.  Ababu invited us to her house to show us the extension they had built, this showed us that with a little help the family was able to improve their standard of living.

Nanna

Nanna is Sisters other cook we were surprised to see her with a new son Benian 4 months old.  No maternity leave for Nanna after a week off she was back at work bringing her son with her.  Her niece Zemyne a 7 year old girl was brought from the countryside to look after Benian. This seems very strange to us but as Nanna’s husband has no work she is the only source of income.  By bringing Benian to work she can feed him and getting Zemyne to look after him was the only option.  Once Benian is clean he can start at the Day Care Centre and we can then look at getting Zemyne back in to school.

Aweke

We have known Aweke and his family from our very first visits, now in his 20s he has a job as a sales rep for a local paint company and has been there for over a year.  This year he has built a small shop onto the family home and is selling everything from soap powder to sweets. As he travels about the region with his work he is able to purchase goods cheaply and sell these in his shop.  He has also employed a local girl to run the shop whilst he is away.  The sponsorship we gave him and supporting him to get a marketing degree is really paying off. 

Alum

We have known this family for many years, Alum her daughter and son Adani. We have supported Alum with food and the sponsorship programme has seen Adani through Day Care and into the Catholic school, a bright boy we have affectionately named him the little professor. On several occasions we have said to Alum that she needs to look for work to support her family but she has always said that she was in poor health and to be fair she has always been very thin and appeared to be not in the best of health.  Our suspicions were that she is HIV positive.  Last year Adani was coming to school looking very dirty and when we visited the family home this too was very run down.  It is not our place to judge but when we see others including the Porridge Club moving on it was difficult to see a better future for this family. Because of our concern we had further conversations and looked to see what further support we could give but wanted Alum to realize that she could not rely on hand outs. Sister Terfatu said that she may be able to offer Alum’s daughter some work at the Centre when she leaves school in the summer. Well were we in for a big surprise it was clearly visible that Adani was clean and he looked better in himself.  We were invited to the family home, we knew that Alum’s daughter was working for Sister but when Alum met us at the door she looked much better and the house looked great it had been re- mudded and had new floor covering. Alum explained that she had a cleaning job at the local hospital (the hospital policy is to employ a percentage of employees who are HIV positive and supply them with medication).  Had our nagging finally paid off?