By Johnnie Dorsey | Austin American-Statesman
I recently had a humbling experience on a trip to Ethiopia with Catholic Relief Services. It was a trip that helped me realize that the words of the Our Father can bring us together and help us see that we really do need each other and God to be nourished.
As the director of the Office for Black Catholics for the Diocese of Austin, I was privileged to be part of a 14-person delegation invited to visit development programs in Ethiopia. The aim was to raise our awareness and foster advocacy upon our return home about issues affecting Africa’s poor people.
Awareness raising started right away. On our drive from the Addis Ababa airport to our hotel, I could see homeless people in one darkened, impoverished neighborhood after another. Relatives huddled together, wrapping themselves in paper and plastic for their night’s sleep. It was a prelude of what we would see in days to come.
Ethiopia, with a population of 82 million, is the oldest independent country in Africa — and at 2,000 years, one of the oldest countries in the world. The population in the capital has doubled in the past 20 years and is expected to double again in the next 20. Housing is obviously a major problem; city streets are lined with homes with corrugated metal for makeshift roofs and walls.
Shortly after our arrival, we flew 300 miles east to Dire Dawa, a city of 400,000. From there, we bounced in a caravan of Land Cruisers over rocky roads to visit several rural villages.
When we arrived at the remote mountain village of Kufansik, a village elder greeted us waving two water bottles. The liquid in one was brown, a sample from the scum-covered pond they previously used. The other bottle was filled with sparkling, clear water drawn from a new distribution system developed by Catholic Relief Services and local Catholic partners.
As the elder raised the bottles to the heavens, the other villagers broke out into joyous singing and dancing, sharing their appreciation for their new water source. Mothers who previously walked miles a day to collect drinkable water now have time to tend their fields, and village children are now free to attend school. Families have also learned how to improve their health through sanitation training. In these rural areas, Catholic Relief Services has also taught local residents to protect their watershed by controlling grazing and building terraces for flood control and soil and water conservation. This clean water in Ethiopia, so often taken for granted in the United States, is radically changing people’s lives.
As our visit came to an end, the villagers brought traditional injera bread, small marula fruits and boiled milk for us to share with them. Though some of the delegation worried we might become sick, particularly from the milk, we understood it was a risk worth taking. A colleague noted later that in this act we shared the body of Christ with poor people, and that when we ask God to give us our daily bread, we are all poor.
Later in the day, the rains came — a blessing during this time of drought. Our vehicles got stuck in the mud, but we were determined to visit another site, so we jumped out to walk the rest of the way.
Now we passed face to face the Ethiopians we’d been waving at for hours from our car windows. We slipped and slid across muddy ruts, and they laughed and greeted us. In minutes, though, the growing sheets of rains sent us running back to the vehicles.
For a brief moment, however, we experienced what the Ethiopians experience. By the time I climbed back into our car, I was caked with mud. I realized again how blessed I am and what a humbling experience this was for me.
In that Ethiopian community high in the mountains and on a muddy rural road, I learned that the entire world needs to be a village in which we all help one another.
(Johnnie Dorsey is director of the Office for Black Catholics for the Diocese of Austin and can be reached at [email protected].)