In May of this year, myself and a friend went out to Ethiopia for a week. This was my first visit to Africa and my first experience of what real poverty is like. Watching DVDs of previous trips or listening to the first hand experiences of others who had visited Ethiopia before did not really prepare me for the scale of the poverty that I witnessed. Ethiopia only appears on our radar screens (as it has done in the past couple of weeks) when there is a news report of another famine. On such occasions the main images are of malnourished children being pestered by flies. Little attention is focussed on the awful conditions in which these people live. [For other pics please click here].

Only by seeing and smelling the stench of poverty can one truly understand how difficult life is for these people. Things that we take for granted (like clean water, electricity and toilet rolls!!) are real luxuries for the vast majority of Ethiopians. 70% of all Ethiopians are under the age of 15 which means that most children have only 1, if any, parents. AIDS is rife. Life expectancy for most males is under 40!

My friend, Gary McCracken and his wife Audrey, have been heavily involved in charitable work in Ethiopia for 5 years.

A few weeks before our trip, Gary had led a team of men from our local church, First Comber Presbyterian, visiting a number of projects that he was involved in, in various parts of Ethiopia.

One of the projects they visited was a SpecialNeedsSchool in a town called Bishoftu. The main purpose of trip was to find out more about the school and how we could help. Special Needs schooling is something close to my heart. My young son, Jonathan, attended FlemingFultonSchool for a number of years. The facilities at Fleming Fulton and the professional care he received was second to none. The care and attention that the children in the Bishoftu school receive is also second to none, but the facilities in which they are taught are absolutely dreadful. Such facilities would be totally unacceptable here in NI.

Unfortunately in an impoverished country such as Ethiopia, the disabled are considered to be the lowest of the low. Their families and the local community in which they live very often prefer to hide them away or leave them to beg on the streets. As a consequence less than half of 1% of all disabled children in Ethiopia attend school and those that do are taught in dreadful facilities such as the school in Bishoftu. However despite all of their disadvantages, my abiding memory from our visit will be the continuous smile on the childrens’ faces. We left them sweets and pens and pencils. You would have thought that they had won the lottery.

We have been so touched by the plight of these poor children that myself and a few friends have taken it upon ourselves to build these kids a new school – a school which will provide them with more acceptable educational facilities, boarding options for those who have to travel (there is no public transport) and above all hope for the future. To this end we have planned a number of fund raising events over the next few months. One of these events involves a team (including myself) who are going to try and climb the highest peak in each of the 4 provinces in Ireland over a 3 day period between 18th – 20th September. If anyone in the bowling fraternity (individuals or clubs) would like to sponsor me on this arduous challenge or help in any way (for example we have fund raising jars which could be placed on the bars of bowling clubs) please contact me on 07703 188944 or . In reality we have a lot to be thankful for. Any support would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Robin