Meet Almitu.
She's our son's birthmother. She didn't want to give her baby up to an orphanage (and if you've ever been in an orphanage you wouldn't want to give YOUR baby up to one either!) but she had no choice.
She had another son already who was around two years old. Then she got pregnant. Then her husband left her. So here's an uneducated, poor, young mother who has no hope of being able to take care of two children on her own. There are no food stamps, no WIC, no services for her.
So she made the heartbreaking choice to give her baby up.
A few months later she had to travel six hours to get to the capital of Ethiopia to go to court where she met us for the first time. After court, she had to be interviewed by us asking when her baby was born (she had no idea), what his father was like (not a good man), what her village was like (how did we expect her to explain that...she had nothing to compare it to!), etc, etc. The agency then took her to see Colton at the orphanage (surely not a good experience), she gave him one last hug and left to never see him again.
Now that's a hard life.
We thought of her often through the last few years. We thought of her older son. We always wanted to get back in touch and finally last year we did. It was amazing to see pictures of her. It was so great to be able to send pictures to her for her to see her son.
But as we learned about her life, we couldn't stop there. She had gotten back together with her husband (the aforementioned bad man) and had another son. Her oldest son, Yabez, was living with her mother and going to a state run bad school. This is the kind of school where there is an 85:1 kid to teacher ratio. Because of that, the teacher rarely shows up. If the teacher does happen to show up she teaches in the tribal language rather than Amharic, the national language. This is a problem because at the end of 5th grade every child in Ethiopia has to take a test to be able to move on in school. The test is in Amharic so none of these kids can pass it and therefore drop out. This was Yabez's future.
This is how we got into this whole situation. We searched for a better school for him. We found it in the Yiddiddiya school (don't ask me why there are so many d's in that word!!!). The teachers teach them Amharic and English. They learn about Jesus. These kids are loved.
So we started sending Yabez there. He seems to like it a lot and is learning. The problem is, he has to walk quite a distance to get to school. There was no lunch provided. The kids who lived closer went home for lunch but that wasn't an option for Yabez and other kids in his situation.
That's how Fuel Their Future got started. The woman who runs this school asked us to help her feed these kids. I know you can't learn if you're hungry. I know you won't stay in school if you're not learning. I know you won't get a job if you can't stay in school. I know you won't have money to feed your babies if you don't have a job. I know if you can't feed your babies you'll have to give them to an orphanage. I know an orphanage is no place for a child to be.
My hope with Fuel Their Future is that we can keep more families together. And as far as I can tell, full happy bellies might just be the first step in doing that.
As of this writing, Almitu and Yabez are living on their own. She's working and he's getting an education. They are both shy but VERY smiley.
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