It never gets easier.
When the van arrives and your bag is in the drive and everyone cries because its time to leave, it hurts just as bad every time. My squad has just finished living in Ethiopia for three months, and that still wasn’t enough time. I wrote a blog on leaving Cambodia, how hugging my brothers and sisters goodbye ripped out my heart. While I have not kept up on my blog these last three months, I can assure you that saying goodbye to Ethiopia was much the same.
I began that morning with some squad mates in worship. We watched the sun rise over the trees, it looked just like the one from “The Lion King”. While they sang I talked with God. He assured me that we did all we could do to serve our Ethiopian family, and now it was our time to go.
Most of the kids came up at seven in the morning. We wanted to take a group picture before we left, and most of the kids were gonna be at school when we left. I sat next to Sintu and later snagged my girl Zuritu. Sintu and I became friends because Cindy and Sintu sound too similar to not be the names of friends. Her favorite color is pink, followed by yellow and purple. Someday she wants to be a Bank manager, I don’t know why a twelve-year-old would want to be a bank manager but I think she’ll be the best. Zuritu was the first kid to welcome me to HOPEthiopia, the first one to give me a hug and hold my hand. I had never experienced such freely given love before, and I’ll never forget the way she loved me first.
After the picture I found my dear friend Meskarum. She was one of the orphans and now helps the house moms take care of the other kids. We first met during the house moms’ “Moms Night Out”. I was able to learn her story and become her friend. I once asked Meskarum what her hopes and dreams were, and she said “My hope is Jesus.” We only hung out a few times, and I wish I had reached out to her sooner. In our last parting I hugged her close and felt my heart break into pieces. She looked at me, took off a golden bracelet, and placed it upon my wrist. I was so shocked that I didn’t even know how to react, because in that moment I didn’t think I did enough to deserve such a gift from her. And there I learned a valuable lesson: love doesn’t keep score, it just gives away.
As Meskarum left for school, I saw some of the kids doing flips onto some mattresses outside. One of the boys was Badasa, my favorite movie buddy. I first met hime when our squad watched “Moana” with the kids. I began that night watching Moana and ended by watching Badasa. He drew on my hand and I kept poking his belly. To see him laugh was the greatest gift. My other favorite memory with him is when he tried to teach me how to keep a soccer ball in the air by kicking it. My high score was two, but his was four. Badasa would keep track of my and his overall score by counting our combined fingers and toes. I think I kicked the ball around twenty times, but he insisted I got at least double. All I know is that his score shattered mine, and that was okay. I didn’t learn soccer, just how to hang out with a child.
Another one of the kids doing flips onto the mattresses was Sesay. He became such a turd before we left, saying that he wouldn’t miss us and was excited for us to leave. No one believed him of course. I saw his tender heart when he hugged me, and how he loved the other kids as he played soccer. Sesay always tried to be a tough guy, but he never could fully hide that he was a good kid.
Yet another one of the kids was baby Derege (not to be confused with the eighteen-year-old Derege who loves bikes). This little three-year-old tike was trying to do flips and tricks like the other kids while sporting his feminism shirt and pink pajama pants. I first ran into him when I was wandering around the children’s village. As one of the five kids to arrive while I was there, Derege seemed to come out of nowhere. He was surrounded by people wanting his attention (as per usual), but when Derege saw me, he ran over and insisted that I pick him up. Every time I’d put him down he’d demand that I pick him up again, and by the end of that day I was in love. He never begged for my attention like that again, I think I see what he was doing.
And then there was little Meskarum. Another one of the five arrivals, Meskarum has a smile that could warm any heart. I was cutting grass for ministry one time and she came up and began to braid my hair. I had my journal nearby, so I let her and another girl (her name is Bikiltu) draw pictures inside. That was within the first week of arriving at HOPEthiopia, and ever since that little girl has been a beacon of light in my life. She was doing flips onto the mattress with all the other little boys, not to prove a point but simply because she knew she could do everything they could do.
My man Gaze came by around that time, and I made him take a picture with me. During the night before we had a dance party with all the kids full of singing and laughter. I tried to get Gaze to dance with me, but he was too cool to do that. Then later in the night he randomly came up and hugged me as though we were best friends. I really love that boy, he is mature beyond his years and will someday be the best pilot Ethiopia has ever seen.
As I was wandering around the guest house, I came across Luis (my squad leader) sitting some kids on a motorbike. The bike had only been at HOPEthiopia for a week, so the kids were really excited to sit on it and “ride around”. There were so many kids at one point that Luis actually looked concerned (which is a pretty big deal). One of those kids smiling and laughing was Bikiltu. Along with drawing in my journal, Bikiltu is known for frequently daydreaming and wanting to ride on people’s shoulders. I let her ride on mine during a bonfire, making her the only kid to have ridden on my shoulders. It hurt a bit, but I’ll never regret dancing to Shakira’s “Waka Waka” with that kid on my back.
I finally went in to have breakfast, it was the classic “something and bread”. Today’s something was eggs, so I grabbed myself a cup of coffee and got some food. As I did, I noticed three familiar faces in the kitchen- Zenit, Heldona, and Buze. These three women have served the squad three meals a day and seven days a week for the last three months. All three are sassy, all three are dangerous in a water fight, and all three have a heart of gold. They never refused hugs or pushed people out when there were too many people dancing in the kitchen. It was a common thing for a group of us to dance after dinner, and the kitchen ladies embraced it. They would laugh at us “ferangis” (thats white people) make fools of ourselves all the time, and it was out joy to make them laugh.
I spent the rest of the afternoon with Zuritu at baby Derege’s house. She took videos on my phone, I laughed, baby Derege kissed my face, and I tried not to think too much about saying goodbye. I found my favorite house mom Aberu and sat with her as we always did together. She and I connected during the “Mom’s Night Out”, and since spent a few afternoons just sitting together. Aberu came to HOPEthiopia to be a special house mom for a special needs boy named Rubeira. My squad watched this three year old boy transform from a helpless baby that couldn’t walk, talk, or eat solid food, to a joyful child that eats bread and smiles all the time. Everything Aberu does is to support her boy Rubeira, and I have loved watching their relationship grow into something truly beautiful.
I could keep going on about the kids I loved and the people I met. There were many hard goodbyes said that day, and though I am finishing this blog two weeks later (as you’ll soon see I have been busy as of late), I still find a lump in my throat when I remember all the people I left behind.
It never gets easier.
When the van arrives and your bag is in the drive and everyone cries because its time to leave, it hurts just as bad every time. I said goodbye to my friends knowing that I may never see them again, and no blog can accurately portray that feeling. When the van pulls away and you watch the ones you love slowly disappear until they’re out of sight, you begin to feel the heaviness of your heart beating down your chest. You sit with that weight in silence, sometimes looking out the window just to be sure that you can’t catch a glimpse of what you left, if but for a moment to release the ache inside. There might be a tear in your eye, or you might have already run dry, but in any case you sit in silence and watch every moment from the last three months play across your mind. You remember all the times you laughed and all the moments you cried. You remember the moments you want to forget, and for a moment its okay. Most of all, you cling to those small moments, the ones that happened so casually in the day to day that you know that in a blink they could be forgotten and never seen again. Those moments are my favorite, and they could be anything- from the way a kid wrote their name, to that special smile someone used on their birthday, and even those moments just sitting with someone in peaceful silence, not speaking the same language but somehow still understanding each other’s very soul.
Sometimes I’ll hear someone say a word or do an action that instantly transports me back somewhere I once knew. Whether it was before the race or Cambodia or Ethiopia, the most random things transport me back to those simple moments and let me, if just for a moment, relive a memory and warm my heart. It never gets easier, but I’ll take the pain if it lets me relive those moments just one more time.
~CLS
