Greg DalyGreg Daly learns how young adults from the North are making a real difference in Ethiopia
Spending a fortnight building toilets in the heat of an Ethiopian summer might not be everybody’s idea of a good time, but a group of young women who did it this August enjoyed it so much they didn’t want to go home.
So says Dublin-based Laura McCann, a 27-year-old technology and design teacher originally from Fintona in Co. Tyrone, who this summer spent almost two weeks building toilet blocks in the slums of Addis Ababa.
Laura travelled to Ethiopia with six other young women and Fr Raymond McCullagh as part of an ongoing project between Living Youth – the Diocese of Down and Connor’s Youth Commission – and Habitat for Humanity Northern Ireland, an ecumenical Christian organisation that seeks to improve housing worldwide, making shelter a matter of conscience.
Experiences
Describing the trip as her first time ever in a developing country, Laura said that when she went she had wanted to see if conditions in Ethiopia were really as bad as she had heard – and that she couldn’t believe it when she realised just how things were. Since coming back, she says, she’d given a presentation to her own students about her experiences in Ethiopia, with them being “blown away by the images and stories and how poverty-struck people were”.
Her main job there, she said, had entailed mixing cement, but not like builders back home.
“The main thing we were doing was mixing cement, and we were doing it by hand,” she says, continuing, “There were seven girls and by the end of it we were experts, mixing cement all day and laying blocks. We were building a sanitation facility – going into the slums they didn’t have any proper toilet facilities, and Habitat just wanted to provide them with some sort of dignity, so we were building toilet blocks to provide dignity for the elderly and also the young people.”
“Because the houses are so bad,” she continues, “and lots of them are just one room, a lot of them use a local river as their toilet facility, which means there’s a rise in disease. One of the things Habitat is trying to do through building the toilet facility is they’re giving the community some responsibility, you’re giving them dignity, and you’re giving them a cleaner environment.”
Adamant that simple toilet blocks are vitally important, she says: “It’s only through going there that you realise that small piece of dignity means a lot.”
Laura’s team was the fourth ‘Living Youth’ team, Fr Raymond explains, although Habitat Northern Ireland has been sending volunteer teams to Ethiopia for over 10 years, with a team from the University of Ulster – he is chaplain at the University of Ulster in Coleraine –first going there in 2005.
“A student team went out in 2005, and then the following year we started a partnership between Habitat working here in Northern Ireland and Habitat working in Ethiopia. Part of that partnership was – obviously – to help vulnerable groups, and the vulnerable group in Ethiopia at that time were people with leprosy,” he says.
“Over the 11 years,” he continues, “the partnership has grown and developed, which is great, and part of that is helping people who have leprosy to have their own homes and be integrated into the community. That has now broadened out to people in the slums of Addis, which was where we were working this year, and also single-woman households and elderly people.”
Explaining how the project has expanded, he said, “It’s based on a three-year cycle, so we’re into our fourth cycle now. This was my first time working in Addis, working in the slums. It was a difficult experience because the people are very vulnerable, very marginalised, but it was really good: we were building toilet blocks and also working on renovating existing houses.”
Impressed
He was deeply impressed by the young volunteers on the project: “I must say, the team this year were fantastic. They were a small team – all female apart from me – but they worked really, really hard, and they got an awful lot out of it, which was great.”
One thing Fr Raymond says he loves on projects like this is their transformative effect, not merely benefitting those being helped but affecting the volunteers in profound ways. “It’s not just one-way, not just us doing the work for the people out there – it’s them teaching us about community, about gratitude, about making the most of what you have. It’s always had a major impact over the years, when we must have had the guts of 150 students and young people, going out to Ethiopia, and it’s all been really good, it’s all changed their perspective and helped them to see the world a wee bit differently.”
“Habitat from that perspective is not in any way different from other outreach or Christian agencies – it just gives you a deeper understanding of how the world works. Sometimes it doesn’t work very well, but we try to make it work a bit better.”
For Laura, the experience has clearly been profound, and not just because she has come to realise how important education and funding opportunities for education are in countries like Ethiopia – she cites the example of a young girl she met who was studying maths and chemistry in the hope of becoming a doctor, but who may never be able to afford to contribute to her country in such a way.
Important
“I think it’s very important that everybody goes over,” she says, “not just to Ethiopia but to any place that’s in poverty, just to see how we get so consumed in our own lives that we don’t realise what we could do for other people. I would definitely go back next year, and would love to bring other students with me.”
She’d been struck in Ethiopia by how simplicity can mean happiness, saying how while “in our own community we’re so consumed by social media, so consumed by competing against other people, that mental health issues are on the rise, but when you go over there you see they’re so at peace and that there’s a real community and a spirit – it’s actually through how simple things in life make you the happiest”.
“One day we were on the bus and a child came over to us looking for money,” she says as an example, continuing, “we didn’t have any, but I had two sweets and gave them to him, and he took them and ran over automatically to his friend to share them. That struck us because here a child could eat a whole packet of sweets and never share them! The generosity of the people struck us because even though they’ve so little, they’re very generous.”
Noting wasted
Ballymoney, Co. Antrim’s Aileen McAllister, a 22-year-old student working towards being a primary teacher, found something similar, speaking fondly of the children smiling there, and how “even though they have so little, but the way they share with each other is so lovely to see, and how hard they work, with everything used and nothing left to waste”.
Aileen, who had been co-leader of the group, originally heard of it because she had been at a fundraiser for Habitat run by her cousin and his girlfriend some years ago. “When they came home they highly recommended it,” she says, “and then a couple of years later I saw a notice in the parish notes and clicked on and applied.”
The impact the project is having on people’s lives is obvious, she said, and the people there make this very clear. “We were brought into a house that Habitat had given to this old lady,” she says, continuing, “She was sick, lying on her bed, but got up to welcome us in to thank us all personally. It really does make a difference to their lives.”
Describing a visit to Debre Berhan, a village of over 500 homes that Habitat had made, she says it is clear that Habitat are changing lives in a real way.
“Every volunteer going out is a small link in the chain,” she says, something Laura echoes when she says, “My favourite part was knowing my few weeks of effort were part of something bigger.”