This past Sunday, followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo faith celebrated Easter in high spirit as they always do. The holiday follows a 55 day long Lent period, during which faithful followers follow a strict vegan diet. People do their absolute best to spend the holiday with family and friends absorbing their tradition.
Dressed in colorful traditional attire, children play with their peers and adults sip three rounds of strong homegrown coffee. People chit chat and share memorable pastimes while engaging in intimate conversations. The aromatic smell of burning incense fills the air, and just like that, tradition is passed, weaving memories between people and time, connecting the past and the present.
The Easter festivity is quite extravagant here. Unfortunately, the joyous celebration also shows growing inequality. Those who can afford it surge to the malls and grocery stores to do last minute holiday shopping. The less fortunate among the holiday shoppers in the streets and small market places, have their own means of acquiring Easter goods.
The holidays belong to the destitute too. Those are high times for beggars whose lives depend on the generosity of others.
Begging has a life and an art of its own. Beggars try different tactics and skills to implore and tap into people’s emotions and moral values; hopeful for cash or in-kind donations. During the Lenten period leading to Easter, not only do people adhere to strict fasting, they are also continuously reminded by religious figures to be considerate and care for others.
It is heart wrenching to takie a closer look at some of the beggars and their circumstances. Some young ladies, for example, though they seem barely out of their teenage years, are seen holding or nurturing infants.
Others, who are ill, display medical prescriptions, unable to purchase their medication. They lie on cement concrete hardly breathing. Their weak and defeated bodies exposed to yet more disease, defenseless against harsh environmental conditions.
It is not uncommon to see young and perfectly healthy looking people begging and exploiting the kindness of others. That rightfully frustrates a lot of people who argue that giving handouts to beggars does not solve the chronic problem.
It, in fact, they argue, sustains and encourages dependency. Certainly, the effectiveness of handouts at an individual level or aid, at a state level, continues to generate unabated passionate debates. Politicians differ on their ideological beliefs with respect to instituting policies that will focus on helping the poor.
Social scientists, including economists, psychologists and scholars from other fields, have studied people’s motivations and built-in incentives, only to come up with inconclusive arguments, at times even contradicting one another.
Despite Ethiopia’s concrete economic achievements, millions live in impoverished conditions, many helplessly homeless. They have no support system except the benevolence of passersby who are willing to spare some leftover food or some coins here and there. The state does not have social safety net programs that cand support its vulnerable citizens such as the elderly or mentally ill population. If there is, it certainly is not something that most people know about.
This is not to blame or suggests the state is at fault here. Sure, it is easy to say there should be a system designed to better protect and look after the weak.
But the truth is, as most people know, it is going to take more time for Ethiopia to pull itself out of chronic poverty. The state’s limited budget is stretched thin. I, for one, do not expect the state to be able to cover even a portion of people’s basic needs.
Luckily for Ethiopia and Ethiopians, we are witnessing individuals taking matters into their own hands and carrying their country on their backs, taking the initiative to contribute their own share of responsibility to help overcome these challenges. Cognisant of the heavy burden and mountainous challenges that still await, visionary individuals are determined to see Ethiopia regain its glorious past and preserve its rich cultural heritage.
Take the humanitarian Biniyam Belete for instance; seeing one too many homeless citizens, he decided to care for the most vulnerable at his own home. Just recently, I had the pleasure of visiting Mekedonia, a home for the elderly and mentally disabled Biniyam helped found in the Kotebe area of Addis Ababa. Biniyam started caring for few homeless individuals who could not look after themselves and had no support system.
Now, in less than four years, almost 700 people are being cared for at one of the four Mekedonia compounds. The center has close to 70 fulltime unpaid volunteer staff who look after those receiving care.
Walking through the compounds, visiting one room after another, looking at rows of beds, it instills humanity and pride in your countrymen. A short introduction video recorded before and after the individuals were brought into the centre shows transformational change on many of them.
During our brief tour of the centre, we met and conversed with some of them, including two men who were 100 plus years old. Their canes by their bedsides, old worn religious books lay on their beds exhibiting their unquestioned faith, their intact dignity and their resolute spirit. You walk out proud and humbled by what one passionate individual can accomplish.
I want to encourage people to take some time from their busy life and pay Mekedonia and the wonderful people there a visit. I am confident that, it will be a source of motivation for you. People like Biniyam motivate us to be productive citizens. In the words of the iconic, Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
My heartfelt gratitude to Biniyam and all the selfless individuals at Mekedonia for being the change they wished to see.
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