Spent the last of my gift card on my tall 1/2 caff today staring at a poster photo of Ethiopia standing there in the tall green leaves with her white shall draped around her and her 25 cents a pound in her pocket. Overwhelmed. "Why did they put that photo here as a tribute?"
It stood to me a tribute to the horror of the disparity of wealth.
Its hard to come up from poverty. Flying to Addis, the hip Ethiopian told me that his European medical education didn't do much good in a land where no one can afford his services or the equipment to perform the heart scans.
And we laughed--the four of us--how we spray-painted our boys bikes red. How the fuscia seat didn't take the color very well. Boys don't wear pink winter coats here or pink polk-a-dot bibs. We color code our children. And their plastic sippy cups.
But she laughed when I shamefully explained that I forgot her newborn's sex. "Oh, we don't care about that here!"
Now who's coming up?
"Coffee is a Ceremony in Ethiopia," I shared with the Starbucks cashier, "Its made like espresso and they eat it with popcorn!" She jumped for an old receipt, scribbling it down. To remember.
Remembering you. Rise up Ethiopia!
No comments:
Post a Comment