I LEFT MY HEART IN ETHIOPIA

by DEVIN PARRISH

The map on the screen in the seatback in front of me showed an animated plane flying over the Nile River.

I had a window seat. My mouth dropped open as I looked down. I’d only ever read about the Nile and saw pictures of parts of it. Now it was real to me. It was the perfect welcome to Africa. A few hours later, I was getting off a plane in Addis Ababa for a mission trip that changed my life.

It was night when we landed. My first memory as we walked toward baggage claim was seeing rows of men and women waiting for loved ones. They looked like a life-size mural. After a long time in customs and exchanging American dollars for Ethiopian birr, I and the 15 people I came with met Pat, the head of the organization we partnered with. The others had worked with Pat before but I was new and the only one from Atlanta.

We stayed in the capital and went to the first of three hotels we would lodge.

“The next morning, I experienced a rude awakening of my Americanness.”

The lining of a backpack I’d had for several years was starting to peel and when I opened it, it looked like a small snowstorm of plastic had coated everything inside. I’d brought another bag, so I cleaned off what was in the backpack and transferred all the items. I stepped outside my room to look for a place to throw away the backpack when I saw a hotel worker in the hallway. I walked up to him and asked if he knew where I could throw the backpack away. His eyes widened as he looked at me and said, “That’s a perfectly good backpack! Why would you want to get rid of it?” I showed him the peeling inside. He shrugged and said, “That’s no reason to get rid of it. You can just brush it out.” I’d handed the bag to him at this point and he was inspecting it further. He softly shook his head and started brushing out the bad lining with his hand. I said sheepishly, “You can keep it if you want. I have another bag I can use.” He said, “Yes! Thank you.” I walked to breakfast, reexamining my requirements for deeming something worthless.

Another moment of humility came later when a house mother at a safe house where we served told me she couldn’t understand my accent. In that moment I realized I assumed just because my first language is English and I speak in an American accent, I should be understandable to anyone.

We drove out to Angacha after breakfast to help with a food and health clinic. When our bus pulled up, the scene mimicked what I saw the previous night at the airport except this time the lines of people–mostly women–were waiting for food. When I got off the bus, I walked toward them and shook as many hands as possible before being called to pack flour into bags. It’s the least-desirable task because the flour is heavy and leaves you looking like you’ve been rolling around in chalk. After dusting myself off, I helped with the clinic. I mostly entertained children while their ailing siblings were being weighed and given checkups. Parents nervously held on to hope as they waited for the doctor’s diagnoses. I’d never been around that many people whose station in life was so dire yet their smiles took over their entire faces. It was unconditional joy personified.

The drives were beautifully scenic. The landscape was mostly rural and very mountainous. Some parts of Ethiopia reminded me of northern California. As we drove through different towns, people would walk along the sides of the roads with livestock. Playful children would stop what they were doing and wave vigorously or try to chase the bus as we rode by.

All the young women I encountered felt like my daughters. Especially SinkNesh.

Everywhere we went felt like home to me. I looked into the faces of people who could’ve been blood relatives and ancestors I never met. Almost everywhere I went people greeted me as “sister.” All the young women I encountered felt like my daughters. Especially Sinknesh.

I met 15-year-old Sinknesh at a girls’ orphanage where all the children’s parents had AIDS-related deaths. We spent a few days with them doing everything from planting a tree to going to a fancy restaurant for lunch to shopping for school clothes. As we pulled up to the orphanage the first day, all the girls stood on the front porch and sang a welcome song in Amharic.

On the day we went shopping, the woman who ran the organization’s safe house for survivors of human trafficking came with us. She’s a doctor who also helps out at the orphanage. Sinknesh and I were standing with our arms around each other just outside a shoe store when the doctor looked at me and smiled. She asked, “How are you enjoying Ethiopia so far?” I said, “I love it. I feel like I’m home.”

**She looked directly into my eyes and said, “You are home.”**

Our last day with the girls was emotionally exhausting. Saying goodbye took forever between all the sobbing and taking breaths to form words. Sinknesh spoke very little English and I spoke two words of Amharic even though she tried to teach me to count to 10. I was one of the last to leave the orphanage, holding on to Sinknesh for as long as I could. Our tears said enough. Any attempt at language in that moment would’ve been just been noise.

Two of the scariest nights involved an earthquake and a frightening rescue mission in Addis Ababa’s red-light district.

The earthquake took place during a stop in Hosaena (Hosanna). We stayed at a hotel overnight as we made our way back to Addis Ababa. During dinner, someone asked, “Do y’all have earthquakes here?” A local said there hadn’t been an earthquake in that part of Ethiopia in a long time.

That night, a 5.6-magnitude quake shook us out of our hotel rooms, sending us running to the courtyard for safety. The hotel was a little banged up, so we hung out in a building in the courtyard to wait out any aftershocks. A couple hours passed before we were allowed back into the hotel to sleep for the rest of the night. We were supposed to stay there another day but there were concerns that the hotel may not be structurally safe.

We returned to Addis Ababa and over the course of two nights, ventured into the red-light district to find girls who wanted to escape human trafficking and come with us to the safe house. We split into two groups. I was in the first one.

A group of genteel Ethiopian men carrying machetes and guns served as our security, forming a human wall of protection around us to keep us safe from angry pimps.

First we walked to a row of sex huts only big enough to fit a twin bed. Girls and women stood in the doorways. As the group and I walked down one street, I slowed my pace. A girl who looked to be around the same age as Sinknesh, was staring at me. I stopped and smiled. Then I held out my hand. The girl walked toward me and held me hand. Then I put my arm around her and held her close as we walked toward the end of the street. I wasn’t sure if she could understand English so I just asked, “Come with us?” As we got closer to the end of the street, she had both arms around my waist and her head was resting on my shoulder.

The van we arrived in was waiting with the doors open. All of a sudden, our bodyguards were moving swiftly toward us. The local pimps were getting upset about us interfering with their business and threatened to come for us. I made one last attempt to get the girl into the van but a friend of hers showed up. Even though I didn’t understand what she said, I understood the ominous tone. The girl pulled away from me and stood frozen as her friend tugged at her. She took one last look at me and walked away.

Shortly after I got back to Atlanta, I was on my way to do some shoe shopping when I came to a red light. I had just returned from 10 days of experiencing bottomless love and escaping imminent danger. Now I was about to look for some new shoes? That passing thought made me weep. I was homesick for Ethiopia. I was thinking about Sinknesh and the girl in the red-light district and the girls and young women at the safe house and the little children at the clinic. It felt like I was thousands of miles away from family. And I was. But I was also crying because I was joyfully aware that my life would never be the same after an experience like that. And it hasn’t been.