The Norfolk-Mekele Connection

By Chris Hanley

I couldn’t imagine a better “Dream Team” to bring to the Mekele Blind School this past summer.

I met the blind school in June of 2006 when I was in Ethiopia with another teacher doing a fun “cultural bridge building through art” project. While there, I accidentally found the Mekele Blind School . . . or maybe it found me.

Marie Isabelle with new friends at the Mekele Blind School in Ethiopia.

It’s a stretch to call it a school. Ninety abandoned blind children, ages 6-16, live in squalid dorms, near open sewage, with open, weeping wounds from falling on the rubble that peppers the compound area. They are fed one njera pancake each day, with a spoonful of sour milk on top if they are lucky. Consequently, the kids are grossly malnourished and depressed, which means they sleep a lot. Two teachers show up one or two days per week to do what they can with 90 blind kids. There are no Braille books, and the government gives the school 1,000 pages of Braille paper per year, about 10 pages per kid for the whole year. It is a sorry scene, to say the least, but, the children are helpful, bright, beautiful, funny and desperate for any educational opportunity.

Over the year since coming home, I made over 20 presentations about the school to libraries, schools, churches, Lions Clubs, and Rotaries. Donations started coming in, and the wonderful Church of Christ on the green offered to act as our nonprofit “umbrella.” With the help of my dear friend in Mekele, teacher Mitiku Gabrehiwot, we cleared the rubble from the grounds, had metal lockers made for the kids, built a security wall, and best of all, built a beautiful library and clinic. Now, we are working hard to fill the library with Braille books and learning aids for the blind.

So, now about the Dream Team. Marie Isabelle and West Lowe of Norfolk joined me with five others in June 2007. Each paid their own expenses: flight, accommodation, food, etc. Each member had a unique gift to share: teachers, optician, business-women and cabinet-maker.

West Lowe works with a local crew to build a bookcase for the library.

The joy that unfolded during those two-plus weeks was extraordinary. Marie Isabelle is a volcano of energy and ideas, and spearheaded the replacement of 90 filthy mattresses and pillows, the digging and planting of a fruit tree garden in front of our library/clinic, the laying of stones in front of the dorms so the kids might get a better footing in the torrential rains that fall during summer, amongst many other things. West Lowe worked tirelessly with an adorable and eager team of both blind and sighted boys and men, building 10 bookshelves and a desk for the library. He worked exclusively with hand tools, and being the consummate perfectionist that he is, managed to turn out the bookshelves perfectly square, paint them a beautiful turquoise, and install them impeccably level.

We filled our clinic with basic first aid supplies that we brought with us, hired a nurse, librarian, and an older, blind student library assistant. Marie sent over 100 vinyl covers for all the new mattresses and pillows. I have been sending over Braille books weekly, bought with donation money.

It’s grassroots. It’s a joy.  It’s a small world. It’s a neighbor thing.  Our friendships there have made us all much richer. We are loved, and prayed for, and thought about, our voices, what our touch feels like, what our laugh sounds like. And they wait for us to return with more gestures of the faith and confidence we have in them as valuable, intelligent human beings.

Ethiopia has the highest rate of blindness in Africa. Trachoma, river blindness, and other causes are to blame. Contact Chris Hanley to learn how to contribute to or volunteer for the Mekele Blind School. 

Photos by Chris Hanley.