Transformation

From the rural villages of the vast expanse of land that is Ethiopia, girls travel for miles, for days, from family and familiar to the door steps of urban settings to find work and a better life.

They are often forced into this situation due to poverty, large families and lack of educational opportunities. 

They are desperate. 

They are destitute. 

They are deceived.

Deceived into thinking that this life will be better than the life they lived before.

Often they find work as child slaves, forced into domestic services without pay, forced out of education with time spent on preparing food, looking after children and keeping house while their "employers" work.  Often times it's their own families who send them away to help with the work of another family living in the rural setting.  

As these young girls grow, they try to find work. No longer able to sustain a living in the home and often ousted because they are too demanding on the household income.

So they go out onto the street looking for jobs. Work for an uneducated, inexperienced GIRL is not easy to find. She can get manual labour but even then she may be rejected.

One of our girls was. "You're too young" she was told. Maybe by international child labour laws, to work for a internationally seen institution, she was too young. "Go look for work in a bar" this young, naive teenage girl was advised.

Huh. You are too young to chip at cobblestones but you are not too young to work at a bar.

In this particular case, a case not too uncommon, the girl was raped. Introduced to drinking and sex by a "friend" who she had found on the street. This preceded her finding work in a bar where selling alcohol earned far less than selling her body. 

This is actually the typical case study - one that was portrayed last year at one of the Addis Ababa sites of EWAR.  One drama that was giggled at by women who knew the story, oh, too. well.

It was a story of a girl who came from the rural village to find work, discovered she was incompetent at city life then was befriended by someone who took pity on her. She was raped, she was deceived and she went on to find hope at EWAR. It was a story of survival.

When survival outweighs knowledge, one has to succumb to survival.

Though they know better. Though they are worth more, if hope is lost, survival strategies take first priority.

I remember attending my first training with Ellilta Women at Risk. Unbeknownst to me, it was an ICAP Africa training and it was based around trauma. There were some amazing speakers there from the Seattle School and they were preparing the participants on how to deal with trauma in their ministries. I heard stories that would make most horror films I had seen, sound lame.

But they were TRUE stories! How could such evil exist? I thought. And my question was answered over the couple of days I was there.

Evil was sent to destroy what Good had intended for all. It came to destroy beauty. It came to destroy sexual pleasure that displays the glory of the One who created it to be enjoyed.

But I had never anticipated that I would engage with such stories. That the women who stood outside the houses that lined the streets of Zion Church would be carriers and victims of such gross evil. In my total naivety, I never would have imagined that such horrific events would have led such innocent girls down the path of sexual commercialization. Not JUST the selling of their bodies, but the giving away of their souls. For free. At a price that they themselves have paid. Some for years and some since they were just babies.

So, in His intricate design, this Bringer of Hope, placed together the right people and the right community to rescue these girls from their despair.

In Debre Zeit, it happened like this. That this broken mother of five from New Zealand would be flying across the Indian Ocean to join a team she had met thru a post on Facebook, to join an entourage of ten from America to be introduced to an organization called Ellilta Women at Risk. Two years later her and her family were planted in a city where a church who was desperately trying to reach out to the women working in their location were needing some extra support. As she had been introduced to EWAR, she then in turn introduced them. So an alliance was formed against the enemy and the battle begun in Debre Zeit.

The model was applied into the context of this community where women enter into their brothels with nothing and they leave with nothing. So a 24/7 rehabilitation centre was planned and eventually implemented. The team comprised of workers from Addis Ababa EWAR and staff from Zion Church (aka Tsion Mekane Yesus Church).

The "team" also expanded across the globe as people gave to support the cause. Ladies took up responsibility for their Ethiopian sisters and set up fundraising campaigns, from head shaving ideals, to yard sales, formal galas and glass blown necklaces with the word "HOPE" stamped on the front. Their community of support multiplied.

One of our first drop ins with the ladies who are now graduating from our house

On the ground, the EWAR leadership assigned Abrehet (who was originally a part of the staff in Nazaret who I had met in 2009) to oversea our site. She put together plans and proposals and instigated our licence application (and saw it thru up until our latest report.)

We had counselors with years of experience come on a weekly basis to have one on one time in trauma counselling sessions. Other staff came to deliver the 12 step rehabilitation program, health, skills and work training components as well as parenting and basic maths skills.

From the get go we pushed relationship and showed a love that demanded nothing in return. Nigist (Pastors wife from Zion Church and social worker in our Hope House) not only executed this policy but also taught our illiterate girls how to read and write in a short amount of time.

We also added a fitness component at the girls request. My darling husband would leave home at six in the morning to reach the house by 7am to train the girls in resistance exercises and boxing. They. Loved. It.

We ate together, laughed together, cried together and examined ourselves TOGETHER. We were vulnerable together.

If there's one thing I love about what Cherry (aka Serawit Friedmeyer) has taught me and that we have tried to implement in our work, its that we are all equal. We serve each other equally. We admonish each other equally. There is no one who is above anyone in our project site.

 If God has created us all equal, then surely we should act like it.

Here is a clip of the work we have seen Him do over the last seven months. Thank you to all those who have contributed so far! God is so good!