meet Robirra: one of the kiddos living on HOPEthiopia’s compound. he quickly captured the hearts of many of my squadmates with his bright smile, unconditional love, & cool, calm & collected personality.
he is one of the 4.5 million orphans in ethiopia & unfortunately his story is similar to many others. he was abandoned at the gate of HOPEthiopia where Ralph, one of the founders, discovered him. he was found in a comatose state, unresponsive & presumed dead. after he was rushed to the local hospital a few towns away, they told Ralph that his state was due to abandonment, malnutrition & trauma. they were not sure if anything else was wrong.
he spent the next three years of his life at a local orphanage that had some experience with handicapped children. however, they were forced to shut down this last december & so Robirra moved into HOPEthiopia. Ralph explained that his improvement has been monumental. every time a team or group arrives on the compound, his abilities skyrocket to the next level. he is still unable to talk & move around on his own, but is growing stronger & stronger each day. when we arrived, lauren began holding his arms and allowing him to walk around the compound. erika saw this and wanted to find a way for him to be able to practice walking on his own, rather than having to wait for his house mother or a volunteer to find the time to walk with him. thus began our adventure of building a walker out of basically nothing.
nicholas, erika & i set out to build him a self sustaining walker that he could be placed in & allow him to grow stronger to help him eventually walk on his own. when we first thought of the idea, PVC pipe sounded like our best option. however, we quickly realized that wasn’t going to be feasible. so with a rusty saw, a bent hammer & nails that bent like a noodle we began cutting down trees and building the walker from scratch. what should have taken a few hours took two and a half days, but we did it!
we took it to his house & showed his house mother how to use it. the smiles on both of their faces for the next 20 minutes is something i will never forget. we were able to pray over him before we left & i ask for you to join us! pray for strengthened muscles, healing & the ability to walk within the next year.
below are some pictures and a link to a video of him walking! thank you for your love & support because each of you have played a role in Robirra being able to walk. HOPEthiopia thanks you & so does his house mother!
check out the journey here: Robirra Walks
as always, thanks for reading!
madeleine
