MIDDLEBURY, VERMONT — A Middlebury family’s trip to the other side of the world to bring a daughter home is the subject of one of the films featured at the Green Mountain Film Festival’s Vermont Filmmakers Showcase on March 29.
Dave Raizman and Jim Ritvo, the local filmmakers behind “One Family: An Ethiopian Adoption,” will be at the 10 a.m. event. A discussion will follow the show.
Recording of the 35-minute film was done in 10 days in the summer of 2004. It involved shooting up to 40 hours of video footage and traversing Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, home to two million people.
“It was very fast and we just sort of hit the ground running,” said Raizman, who lives in Adamant. “When we went, we weren’t really sure what the scope of the story was going to be. When we left, we came away with this powerful story of this family.”
The film highlights a couple from Middlebury who have two sons, and their effort to adopt a 10-year-old girl from Ethiopia. Both of her parents are dead and her relatives who remain cannot afford to raise her, so she lives in an orphanage. According to Ritvo, adoptions in Ethiopia are on the rise, with approximately 1,200 a year.
“Really that’s a drop in the bucket,” said Raizman. “There’s a million (orphans), you’re talking about 1 percent.”
The children are well cared for, he adds. Ethiopia has an affectionate culture and the orphans do not lack for human touch.
“In Ethiopia everybody picks up kids,” said Raizman. “These orphans seem to be in better emotional shape than we’ve seen in other countries.”
Although the Vermont mother had traveled to Ethiopia before, the family had no say in who they would adopt. Any cultural, color or continental differences that may have been an issue were non-existent, both filmmakers said.
“We saw a kid and a family bond, like, instantly,” said Raizman. “This girl is ready to love and they’re ready for her. … She was their daughter. There were just no ifs, ands or buts about it.”
The idea for the movie came to Raizman and Ritvo via a suggestion from a third party. Each man owns his own production company and the two have collaborated on a number of projects over the last seven years.
“I think we’re storytellers and it sounded like a good story,” said Ritvo of Montpelier. “We hadn’t thought boo about it. … It’s had a nice response in reviews and film festivals.”
The New England filmmakers learned a few lessons while in the African country. Ritvo’s luggage did not arrive until the day before they left for home. As he put it, “I was the largest man in Ethiopia,” and was unable to find a pair of pants that fit. His wearing the same clothes for several days was not something the people of Addis Ababa noticed.
“We have so much that we just take for granted in this culture,” said Ritvo, who was impressed with the generosity of those who had nothing, yet offered so much. “We were crying a lot.”
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Contact Sarah Hinckley at [email protected].
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA — A 15-year-old from Ethiopia finally received a life-altering surgery Tuesday.
Hundreds of Hampton Roads children participated in last weekend’s Final Mile at the Shamrock Sportsfest. Many of them raised money for Operation Smile, and one teenager running with them personified the reason for the mile.
Tuesday, Edelawit sat quietly, filling pages of a coloring book while she waited for her cleft lip operation at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters. Though the surgery was delayed by two hours, she did not seem to mind.
It didn’t surprise her surgeon, who asserted what an “incredible, adorable person” she was.
Edelawit’s surgery is not a typical, complicated craniofacial surgery case that Operation Smile usually brings to CHKD.
We asked whether Edelawit would have orthodontics work, and thought she may, Dr. Bill Magee, Operation Smile co-founder explained that repairing the lip will actually help naturally push the teeth back into place.
The hope is for Edelawit to return home and be considered a normal child. That is all she wants, and for kids in Hampton Roads raising money for Operation Smile in Final Mile, it was an opportunity to learn firsthand the impact of their volunteerisms.
“Not only do they run for their physical health, but they’re running for service, to serve another person,” said Magee, DDS, MD. “They see they can do it, that they have power.”
Edelawit’s surgery lasted about an hour and a half, and she will go home to her host family Tuesday evening.
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Contact: [email protected]
Ketero.com announced the release of a web event management tool
Palo Alto, CA – Ketero.com just released a web tool to add and access worldwide event calendar of Ethiopian themed events. The website was launched in February 2008 to help various, artistic, business, community, school, sport, political and religious groups publicize their events for the general public for free.
In addition to the public event announcement, Ketero.com also provides customized calendars for various users to communicate and collaborate on projects via a secure and private web atmosphere.
Ketero.com does not organize or run the events listed on its public calendar. Our mission is to provide a free, online space for publicizing all sorts of events.
Ketero.com is administered and moderated to keep spam at bay and check events for authenticity. Registered users get e-mail notifications when new events are added, visitors can also search event activity using ketero.com’s web embedded search engine.
Why the name Ketero? ?ketero is about announcing events, setting time and place to meet, organizing, collaborating, and keeping time commitments.
Please contact us at [email protected] for questions regarding advertisement, private calendars and any other questions.
Addis Ababa — A UN report says that contrary to popular perceptions inside Ethiopia, greedy traders and speculators are not to blame for recent price rises.
The food assessment report comes just a few days after a special parliamentary session devoted to the economy, and in particular to rocketing food prices.
Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi announced the creation of a special task force to monitor and prosecute “greedy” traders.
Traders were now complaining about the farmers’ market power, the report said.
Mr Meles had accused businessmen of profiteering and exploiting the situation.
But the new report by the United Nations agencies concerned with food and agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, says the traders are not to blame for the high prices.
Dilemma
As markets get less centralised, and farmers become more sophisticated and better informed, it says the traders are starting to complain about the market power of the farmers.
The one popular perception the report does support is that farmers are now better off, and able to wait and spread their grain sales through the year, rather than having to rush everything to market immediately after harvest when prices are at their lowest.
But the main message of the report is that grain prices in Ethiopia, however much they may have risen, however unaffordable they may be to the urban poor, are still below world prices and below prices in most neighbouring countries.
This, the report says, poses a dilemma in terms of government policy.
Buying grain locally to give to those needing emergency aid might push up domestic prices.
But while importing food from outside and giving it away or selling it cheaply could stop the price from rising, that would then encourage more and more grain to flow out across the borders to other places in the region where the price is higher.
Subsidised wheat targeted at the poorest Ethiopians costs 90 birr ($9.5) for a 50kg bag – less than half the shop price of 4 birr/kg.
(Reuters) – Ethiopia’s federal court denied bail on Friday for 27 suspects in a $17 million fake gold scandal at the country’s central bank.
The National Bank of Ethiopia was ordered to check all its gold deposits last week after a consignment of bars shipped to South Africa was found to include gold-plated steel.
“The charge is too complex and involves a number of people in a criminal case that requires more time to investigate,” the court in Addis Ababa said in its ruling.
“We have decided the suspects should remain in custody for a further 15 days. The case is adjourned until April 7.”
The accused, who include 11 bank employees, were brought to the courtroom by armed police.
The other suspects are workers from the Geological Survey of Ethiopia, which was meant to test and certify the gold deposits, and businessmen thought to have profited from the scam. They are all charged with causing a $17 million loss to the bank.
Thousands of artisanal miners in south and southeast Ethiopia extract alluvial gold, which is supposed to be checked by the Geological Survey before it is sold to the National Bank. (Writing by Daniel Wallis)
