SASKATOON, CANADA – Ethiopian children who are H-I-V positive are getting some help from a group of Saskatoon women.
Faya Orphanage is now up and running in a small African town, and houses 11 kids, under the age of 8. It was started in August by Saskatoon’s Megan Emann and Nathalie Lusignan.
They’ve already recieved roughly 25 thousand dollars in donations. If you’d like to be a part, you are encouraged to check out www.fayaorphanage.com.
By Pickled Eel
(Starting to slip into a U.S. drawl) “Howya doing? Hope Street please.” (this was in Washington DC).
Silence
“Do you know where that is?”
Nods.
“Are you able to take me there?” (it is considered a tough part of town)
“Mmmmmm.”
Silence
“Is it OK to take me there?”
“Yes”
Long pause in a wallowing 1970s vintage Cadillac with deep red vinyl and the smell of 48,000 packets of cigarettes.
“Perhaps we could get going. I need to be there in ten minutes or so.”
“Mmmmmmmmmmmm.”
Cadillac drags its saggy butt into the traffic and we slop along down the road towards the freeway.
“Where are you from?”
Long pause and three indeterminate lane changes before he says “DC”. Not what I was hoping to hear. But I decide I need to place a priority on extracting the seat belt from under the seat where it was last jammed in October 1984. Mission failed. Take attention off the driving and direct it back to the driver. I used the term loosely.
Dropping any attempt at conversational subtlety I resort to something more akin interrogation.
“Were you born here?”
“No.”
(Fool, ask open questions.)
“Interesting, where were you born then and how did you end up in DC?”
“I was born in Ethiopia and came to DC twenty years ago. I am an American citizen. Now, I don’t want to talk.”
(That is OK, you have done stuff all talking so far. Probably best you concentrate on keeping this wallowing beast in a lane and get me safely to Hope Street).
We arrive in Hope Street. It is a tough part of DC, on the “wrong side of the tracks”. He pulls up out side a community clinic where about twenty African Americans are involved in some sort of noisy (screaming) brawl. My Ethiopian friend was suddenly very animated.
“Come on, out you get. You need a receipt? Surely not. OK, OK. Quick quick, this is dangerous, I need to get out of here.” Frantic scribble, receipt handed over. I alight from the mother ship and hear him put the pedal to the metal. It wheezes its way like the fat man it is, barely gets any speed up, sloshes around a corner in a vaguely tight right hand turn and vanishes. I turn to the boiling crowd in front of me thinking this, white boy, will be interesting. Shake of the hand and a big grin – “Welcome”. It is my destination, after all.
My toughest taxi conversation yet. In the global fraternity of cab drivers he so far has been the exception and about as far from the singing madman of Jordan as you can get.
– – – – – – –
The writer lives in Sydney, Australia.
By Rebecca Wanjiku , IDG News Service
South Africa is the most networked economy in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Mauritius and Botswana, according to the latest edition of “The Global Information Technology Report” by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
In North Africa, Tunisia has overtaken Egypt as the most network-ready, while Morocco is ranked third.
The report focuses on the role of networked readiness in spurring innovation and economic growth. The report is in its seventh year and covers 127 economies worldwide. Africa was represented by 27 countries.
The report, which saw Nordic countries taking the lead and Africa holding the last positions, is considered the authoritative international assessment of the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations.
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“The successful experience of the Nordic countries, Singapore, the United States or Korea shows that a coherent government vision on the importance of ICT, coupled with an early focus on education and innovation, are key not only for spurring networked readiness, but also to lay the foundations for sustainable growth,” said Irene Mia, senior economist of the Global Competitiveness Network at the WEF and co-editor of the report.
To compile the index, the WEF used a combination of data from publicly available sources, as well as the results of the “Executive Opinion Survey,” a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the WEF with its network of partner research institutes and business organizations in the countries included in the report.
Tunisia was the highest placed country in Africa at 35. South Africa was 51, Mauritius 54, Egypt 63, Morocco 74, Botswana 78, Senegal 85, Algeria 88, Kenya 92, Namibia 93, Nigeria 94, Mauritania 97, Tanzania 100, The Gambia 101, Burkina Faso 103, Madagascar 104, Libya 105, Uganda 109, Zambia 112, Benin 113, Cameroon 118, Mozambique 121, Lesotho 122, Ethiopia 123, Zimbabwe 125, Burundi 126 and Chad 127.
In a separate study, “The Global Competitiveness Index,” South Africa, Botswana and Mauritius fall in the top half of the rankings. Featuring 134 global economies, the competitiveness index is the most comprehensive study from the WEF. This year, the report was expanded to include Brunei Darussalam, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Malawi.
“The ‘Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009’ offers policy-makers and business leaders an important tool in the formulation of improved economic policies and institutional reforms,” said Klaus Schwab, WEF founder and executive chairman.
The index is based on 12 pillars of competitiveness: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market sophistication, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation.
By Lanetra Bennett, WCTV
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA – Quincy Police say an arrest could be coming soon in this week’s robbery and shooting of a convenience store owner Wondwessen Gizaw.
As business continues at the BP at the corner of Highway 90 and Ward Street in Quincy, the police chief says he’s close to getting a warrant in hand.
Three men are wanted for robbing and shooting the store owner Wondwossen Gizaw early Tuesday morning.
Gizaw, a native of Ethiopia, is still recovering from three gunshot wounds.
Tanesha Hall is one of Gizaw’s regular customers. She said, “It’s a disappointment how someone would try to rob him. Basically we know it’s young people and they know how he is. Why would you want to take from somebody like that?”
The chief says the men were black, wearing black clothes, red gloves and masks. He also says they may have a person of interest.
Anyone with information, call (850) 671-7681.
By Joe Rodriguez, Mercury News
SILICON VALLY, CALIFORNIA – Two years ago, Joseph Zeleke rushed to a crowded hospital in Addis Ababa with a heavy heart, and several tons of donated American medical equipment for Ethiopian clinics waiting on the docks.
“The shipment was ready and now it could fall apart,” the Ethiopian immigrant remembered last week. “But I had to get to the hospital for personal reasons.”
Yemegnushal Haile, a nurse who was going to receive the equipment from Zeleke, had just died in the hospital from injuries suffered in an auto accident. This couldn’t be happening, Zeleke thought, saddened by her death and worried that the equipment might never get to the clinic.
The death of his sister Zenbech from breast cancer and AIDS in 2000 at age 45 had shaken him terribly. He put off college to start World Family, a charity based in Milpitas, California, that has delivered over $6 million in medical equipment to Ethiopia. A former importer in that desperately poor country, Zeleke knew he couldn’t let the latest shipment sit idly in storage waiting for thieves or corrupt officials.
As Zeleke gave his condolences to Haile’s husband, a chance meeting would solve the problem and much more. At Haile’s deathbed was her daughter, Emebet Billingham, a model and fashion designer from San Anselmo, an affluent Bay Area town. Before the accident, Billingham was helping her mother raise money in America for orphanages in Ethiopia.
After the funeral, Zeleke and Billingham rode together in a Toyota Landcruiser to the clinic where Billingham’s mother worked, the one set to receive those medical donations now on the dock. The more they talked, the more they uncovered similarities. They were the same age, now 40. Each has two kids, the eldest born in the same month and year. Each was an immigrant, now driven by the loss of a loved one, to help Ethiopia.
“Call it a karmic meeting or whatever,” Billingham said at the warehouse in Milpitas. “I think it was our destiny for Joseph and I to meet and, at least for me, to carry on my mother’s work.”
Slender and fit, Zeleke has sad eyes and brilliant, white teeth that somehow combine to power his quiet, articulate voice.
With a high school education — most Ethiopians never make it that far — he was making a decent living as a fresh-fruit broker in Ethiopia, but he wanted more. He won a lottery visa in 1999 to study in the United States. A year later, his sister died.
“I had no idea she had AIDS or when or where she got it,” he said, speculating that she kept it a secret because it’s a taboo disease in Ethiopian culture. Haunted by her death, Zeleke took a long hard look at his homeland and didn’t like what he saw.
When the World Health Organization surveyed Ethiopia’s medical landscape two years ago, it found only 112 hospitals serving a population of 75 million. There were only 2.6 doctors for every 100,000 people. AIDS was rampant. The country didn’t have a single dental school. Poor Ethiopians were more likely to visit untrained folk healers or tooth-pullers than see the inside of a modern clinic.
He started World Family in 2003 to fill the new health facilities with hardware. One of the first supporters he met in Silicon Valley was Vanessa Cooper, a local housing advocate who also advises charities trying to help Africa.
“I get a lot of people who want to start non-profits but most of them never get off the ground,” said Cooper, who was born in Kenya. “Joseph is rare. He had this passion from his personal story about his sister … and he had a business model.”
From his experience as a fruit-broker, Zeleke learned how to get things passed customs, deal with Ethiopian Woyanne bureaucrats and transport his goods from the docks to his customers. What he’s doing now is brokering between Silicon Valley hospitals that need to get rid of old equipment and Ethiopian clinics that need it. Those old medical machines, Cooper said, otherwise could end up in American landfills.
She said Zeleke’s pitch to American hospitals boils down to: “I’m going to save you the cost of unloading this equipment, but I’m going to make you feel good about it!”
Billingham, meanwhile, was a teenager in the mid-1980s when she moved to the Bay Area with her father. A brain-drain from Ethiopia was in full swing. After studying at the Fashion Institute of Design, she became a model and designer, married and started a family. Occasionally, she’d help her dynamic mother carry out ambitious medical and social plans for rural Ethiopia.
However, after her mother’s death, Billingham gave up her career to join World Family.
She concentrated on the social side, first raising money for a community center for orphans, which is named after her mother. She has plans for building many more.
With Zeleke as CEO, Billingham as president and an office manager on board, World Family recently moved into its first office in a Milpitas shopping center. From there the team marshals a small army of volunteers, from Ethiopian-American teenagers to technicians who test the medical equipment at a second, bigger warehouse in Oakland.
In only five years, World Family has shipped dozens of containers stuffed with over $6 million in donated medical equipment, enough to equip two hospitals and several clinics. At one hospital, Zeleke said, a grateful woman who had just give birth in the facility named her new son, “Hospital.” Partnering with the American Dental Association, they equipped Ethiopia’s first two dental schools.
World Family has scored a few hefty contributions. The Clinton Foundation, as in Bill and Hillary, gave them $260,000 in cash. Stanford Medical Center and the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital are their largest equipment donors. The warehouse space in Milpitas and Oakland is donated.
Even so, Zeleke said World Family needs to raise $26,000 each month to cover costs, mostly for shipping and salaries. He’s also looking for a medium size forklift. And that’s just for now. They want to equip 200 more clinics and raise money for more community centers and orphanages by 2010, only two years from now.
That’s when Zeleke wants to retire from charity and move on to something else, like a cozy job in high-tech. Billingham said she’ll probably stick around longer.
“The problem is,” Billingham said, ”that the more successful you become the harder it is to leave. There is so much need.”
In Ethiopia, that’s always a given.
For more information: www.theworldfamily.org
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – The number of Ethiopians needing emergency food assistance has jumped to 6.4 million from 4.6 million in June, the aid agency Oxfam said on Friday.
Drought and high food prices have both contributed to the worsening crisis in Ethiopia and other parts of the Horn of Africa like Somalia and north Kenya, aid workers say.
Oxfam, citing U.N. figures, said there was a $260 million shortfall for agencies trying to address Ethiopia’s crisis.
“Compared with the funds going to shore up the global financial system, the aid needed to save lives in Ethiopia is a drop in the ocean,” Oxfam’s country director Waleed Rauf said.
While government figures showed 6.4 million people needed emergency assistance, more than 13.5 million were in need of some sort of aid, Oxfam said. “The number of those suffering severe hunger and destitution has spiralled,” Rauf said.
(Reporting by Barry Malone, editing by Tim Pearce)