In Ethiopia with Margaret Aguirre

9 Nov 2006 in Ethiopia

Leaving Ethiopia

Margaret Aguirre is a member of IMC's communications staff based in Santa Monica.

I’m on the plane from Addis Ababa to Kampala, feeling like I’m coming out of some sort of ionization period - one week almost entirely removed from internet or cell phone access while visiting IMC Ethiopia programs, about 300 miles east of Addis.

Up to now, I’ve had only a “headquarters” knowledge of IMC’s humanitarian work in the field. I know IMC saves lives; but that’s nothing compared to seeing those lives first-hand.

Case in point is at one of IMC’s stabilization centers outside Asebe Tefere, in the West Hararghe zone, where we’re treating children with severe malnutrition and other medical complications through funding from USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Frankly, the word, “stabilization,” is an understatement; this is resuscitation. These kids are or have been very close to death. Your heart breaks to see their tiny bodies, covered with sores, their little eyes swollen ‘til they’re almost closed. They are often either listless from hunger or crying inconsolably. Some have malaria, others pneumonia or tuberculosis, since their malnutrition has made them susceptible to infection.

I walked into the small, dark room with my video camera, embarrassed to be intruding on the mothers sitting on the beds with their babies. The medical coordinator, a warm, whip-smart young woman named Amarech Geremew, went around the room, explaining to me the babies’ conditions, how they were being treated and put on a proper feeding regimen. She showed me the edema on their limbs – where the press of a thumb leaves a deep, round mark. The babies would wail when she’d touch them.

This is painful to witness.

Yet in the midst of all of it, something lovely happened – and it happened over and over, at each clinic I visited. I would switch to my digital still camera, talking quietly and consolingly to the babies as I snapped their pictures. After each photo, I would show it to the mother. Immediately, she would burst into a smile, touching the screen and pointing it out enthusiastically to her baby. She’d then motion for me to take another shot, this time smiling, prodding the baby into a smile. I have dozens and dozens of these big, toothy grins.

What’s important though is these weren’t just nice memories. The fact is the recovery rate for the kids in IMC centers in Ethiopia is about 92 percent – way above international standards. As dire as the situation looked, most of these children were going to be ok and go home to their families.

One woman whose 10-year-old son was nearing a full recovery from severe malnutrition and TB one month earlier said to me through a translator something I would hear repeatedly: “IMC saved my child’s life.”

The next day, we headed to one of IMC’s Supplemental Feeding Programs in East Hararghe, near the town of Dire Dawa, where babies are weighed and measured to determine malnutrition, and mothers (mostly mothers, although you see the occasional father) are educated on proper feeding, as well as sanitation and disease prevention.

Here, the women in their vibrant robes and head scarves sit outside in the sun with their children, waiting to have them examined. Most of these kids are on their way to recovery and have more of a healthy glow. The atmosphere is slightly more convivial, with women swarming around me, wanting their pictures taken. But there’s no mistaking, these children too are malnourished, and their mothers are worried.

I remember a mother at one of these SFPs gathered the others around to deliver a message to me. She clearly understood the power of a camera, vehemently talking while an IMC staffer translated: “We want you to know that IMC has saved our children’s lives. But we need more medicines, antibiotics.” I nodded and promised to pass it along.

Hunger, obviously, is a common denominator in these remote areas of Ethiopia. IMC has recognized it’s not enough to treat malnutrition and educate parents on how to prevent it; we’re now literally going to the “root,” helping families plant their own gardens or supplement them by cultivating more diverse crops. To a family of 10 who may have been subsisting on sorghum and corn from their garden and buying the rest, we’ve now provided seeds, tools and the skills for also planting cabbage, tomatoes and beets. They can then feed their family, sell what’s left over, and become a template for their neighbors.

We visited one of IMC’s livelihoods programs in West Hararghe, high in the lush mountains near Gola, where many residents owned large gardens, full of crops that IMC helped them plant.

A woman with six children insisted on giving me vegetables from her garden – including the largest carrots I have ever seen – as gratitude for IMC’s help. “We have more than we could eat,” she explained.

I am in awe of every person I met here. Whether they work for IMC, or had been helped by IMC, they all showed incredible generosity and warmth toward me.

I was just a person holding a camera; I’m not a doctor or an agronomist.

At one point, I ask one of IMC’s medical coordinators, Marefia Mamo, how he deals with the grueling work, the constant exposure to human suffering.

His answer is simple: “I love this work. It’s hard. But it’s about the results.”

Later in the day, after introducing me to the 10-year-old boy he had successfully treated for TB and malnutrition, Marefia turned to me and said, “See, these are the results I was talking about.”

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