NAIROBI, Kenya | The teenager awoke under a pile of corpses to a pricking sensation on her face. Ants were biting her eyelids and the inside of her mouth.
The pain, however, brought relief to the 17-year-old. “I thought, I’m alive,’ ” Ridwan Hassan Sahid remembers. She felt blood oozing from rope burns around her neck and the weight of a body against her back. But fearing that the Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers who had left her for dead in a roadside ditch would return, she quickly brushed away the ants, shut her eyes and slipped back into unconsciousness.
Ridwan Hassan Sahid shows the marks on her neck after surviving hanging by Woyanne soldiers.
The assault and miraculous escape is one of the most chilling stories to emerge from an unfolding tragedy in eastern Ethiopia that largely has escaped the attention of a world transfixed by the humanitarian crisis in neighboring Sudan’s Darfur region.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed and tens of thousands were displaced in the past year alone, although exact figures are unknown because the area is remote and Ethiopian Woyanne officials restrict access to humanitarian groups and journalists.
Survivors such as Sahid offer the only glimpse into the unfolding tragedy. Now living in a secret location, the petite young woman shared her story recently.
Now 18, Sahid at times seems to be an average teenager, picking absent-mindedly at her henna-stained fingernails and blushing when strangers express interest in her. But behind her soft brown eyes is a weariness that belies her age, and a necklace of scar tissue rings her throat where the rope cut into her skin.
She recounts her ordeal without emotion. Only occasionally does her veneer crack long enough for a tear to roll down her check, which she self-consciously laughs off and wipes away.
“I wonder sometimes,” she says, “what kind of life I can have now.”
She grew up in the village of Qorile with eight siblings. The family, like most everyone else in the area, were semi-nomadic cattle and sheep herders.
Ever since she can remember, Ethiopian Woyanne authorities were seen as the enemy.
“We feel as if we are living under occupation,” she says. “We grew up afraid of them.”
Ethiopian Woyanne officials accuse the Ogaden rebels of using terrorist tactics. In April 2007, the rebels killed more than 70 people at a Chinese-run exploration facility in the region.
The attack prompted what aid groups and witnesses call a heavy-handed response by the Ethiopian Woyanne government. Troops are accused of burning down villages believed to be sheltering rebels, forcibly recruiting young men into government militias, raping women and imposing a commercial blockade that sent local food prices and malnutrition rates soaring.
“They used mass indiscriminate measures to collectively punish the entire population,” Human Rights Watch researcher Leslie Lefkow said.
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EDITOR’S NOTE To Condoleezza Rice, raping and hanging civilians like Ridwan is not considered terrorism. It is protecting United State’s interest. We hope the next U.S. Administration will change this inhumane policy on Africa.
Listen to how the Woyanne ambassador in Washington DC, Samuel Assefa, steps all over himself trying to defend the indefensible crimes of his bosses. Click here to listen >> Samuel was on National Public Radio’s Kojo Nnamdi program that was aired Thursday, March 20.
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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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.
