Reflecting on his most recent trip to Ethiopia, Philip chronicles 5 days, and shares personal and moving insights about the journey and the women, men and children the group met along the way.

Day One, 4:30 a.m., Thursday, September 23, 2010,
Hilton Hotel, Addis Abba

I arrived overnight from Austin and met with the group of twenty Glimmer donors and supporters from Austin, London and Dublin. We flew to Gondar, the former capital of Ethiopia, a fortified city on the northern Lake Tana shore, where our bags were loaded onto pickup trucks and we jumped into a fleet of white land cruisers and 4x4s – a clue to the terrain that lay ahead.

The first part of our journey was by boat – an old metal boat with its old, outboard engine grinding across the lake - driven by a local lake boy across the flat, muddy, brown waters on this sun filled morning. The boat waded its way thru the tall reeds and grasses as we made it to shore, to be greeted by villagers, and their mules. A few of us ventured to climb up into the old saddles, held onto the mules by string and rope. Others walked – until we understood how far away the village was - plus the terrain became very uneven and potholed underfoot –and none of the riders had fallen off or hurt themselves. So within 15 minutes we were all up in the saddles, enjoying and appreciating the ride, as we wound our way through the fields of tall grasses and maize on these small sturdy mules.

We passed by a small group of children, sitting in the dirt, under
a tree, surrounded by sticks, which they use as a classroom. We saw mud and straw “tukals” which they call home. Farmers were in the fields, ploughing the field with an ox. The quiet was broken only by the crack of the farmer’s whip or the sounds of the animals and the birds. I expect that this is what it was like over 100 years ago in rural Ireland, or Texas. Subsistence farming. No electricity. No roads. No cars. No comforts.

After about an hour, we reached the center of Robit, a dirt-poor, remote, rural village that Glimmer hopes to help by raising funds at the November event. These are the forgotten people - no longer forgotten - and whose faith sustains their human spirit. These are the “bottom billion”. These are the people we reach out to at Glimmer - and all of us were moved and somewhat changed by meeting them. For most of the people in our group it was the first time that they had seen, experienced and interacted with people living in such abject poverty, first hand and close up.

That day, in Robit, we visited children in the local dilapidated school – deep, wide cracks in the wall, broken windows, mud floors and no blackboards. We sat in shocked silence in the classroom, wondering what if it was us -or ours - that came to these classrooms
everyday.

We went to their water point – a wide river full of dirty brown water, and a bridge that broke, disconnecting one side of the village to the other.

It was in their “health clinic” that many of us simply broke down – inside the dirty, dark, dank rooms we saw empty, disused bottles of medicines lying around on the doctor’s table – and outside, around the back, we found a lady lying on a table with the IV drip hanging from the roof of the clinic. She was better off outside - the air was fresh - and about 10 other women, surrounded her, from her community who sat and waited in silence – and in helpless hope. Here was this woman, lying outside the back of the dilapidated clinic, no doctor in sight, waiting, simply waiting. It broke our hearts. It was just too hard to see. Too hard to acknowledge and accept.

I’m reminded of Bono’s line: “Where you live should not decide, whether you live or whether you die”.

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