Huron Expositor, 2001-11-07, Page 3News
Ethiopian meal teaches lesson
Youth group
learning value
of what they
have in special
project
By Susan Hundertmark
Expositor Staff
By sharing an Ethiopian
meal and a video of her visit
to the poor, underdeveloped
African country, Joan Stewart
is hoping the youth group of
Northside United Church
learns gratitude and
generosity.
"I want to help them
understand world poverty so
they'll be willing to share.
And, so they'll know that life
isn't as easy for other kids as
it is for them," she said last
week at the start of the group's
month-long mission project.
During the month, the youth
group will donate their
pennies each day for an aspect
of their lives that is not
enjoyed by children in
Ethiopia.
For example, the students
are expected to donate a dime
for having a shower, a nickle
for each water tap in their
homes and a penny for each
sweatshirt they own. As well,
students who did not have to
gather firewood for fuel to
cook their dinners are
expected to donate a dime.
"By the end of the month,
they'll decide where they
want to donate what they've
saved - either to a third world
country or to the local
Christmas Bureau," said
Stewart.
After sharing a meal of
vegetable alicha (vegetable
stew), doro wat (chicken and
onion stew) and injera (soft
tacos made from a special
grain called tef), the group
watched a video of Stewart's
1997 visit to Ethiopia.
Stewart said the Ethiopian
meal the students shared
would usually be cooked over
an open fire since the people
do not have access to hydro.
Many are also too poor to
afford meat in their meals
very often but the grain tef has
a high level of protein and is
eaten at every meal.
Stewart said that even the
hotel she stayed at had no
hydro or running water and
showed film of injera being
cooked over an open fire in
the hotel's kitchen.
"While we were there, there
were roosters running through
the kitchen. We brought a lot
of bottled water with us since
Gerth
meets
with Seaforth
parents
Following a Seaforth
District High School council
meeting last night where
parents and staff were
beginning to prepare a
response to being named once
again for possible closure,
superintendent Bill Gerth was
expected to make a
presentation about the school
accomodation review process.
"It's not required but I
think it's fair and appropriate.
When such a significant
change is proposed, I think
people are deserving of that
courtesy," Gerth said Tuesday
of his plans to visit every
school in the Avon Maitland
district named for possible
closure.
He said he would spend the
first half of the meeting
discussing the big picture and
the second half discussing
how each individual school is
affected.
"The idea is to present the
information in a complicated
report in a less complicated
way," he said.
When asked about the
meeting with Gerth, school
council president Maureen
Agar said she wasn't sure
how the meeting fit into
school board 's new closure
policy.
"To me, it's just
showcasing that they asked
everyone their opinion," she
said.
Susan Hundertmark photo
Lachlin Macgregor, 11, of Seaforth, digs into an Ethiopian meal during a youth group meeting
of Northside United Church where students were learning about hunger in the third world.
we would have gotten sick if
we drank the water," she said.
She said the country is
involved in reforestation
projects since a lot of wood is
used as fuel. As well, dams
are being built to provide a
water source in times of
drought.
She showed film of
Ethiopian people doing the
physical labour to plant trees
and move earth manually to
build dams that were 17
metres high and 100 feet
across by filling sacks with
dirt, walking down a hill to
empty them and returning up
the hill to refill them.
"The local nursery had
grown one million trees that
year and they were
transplanted onto the hills by
people who were paid with
grain and oil to do it," she
said.
An average day's work pays
four kilograms of grain.
"That's not a lot of grain
when you start dishing it out,"
she said.
Stewart talked about how
villagers have to walk several
kilometres to collect water.
"How would you like to
start every day with a 10
gallon jug on your back that
would hold about 100 pounds
of water? A lot of the water
collecting is done by the
women," she said.
Cattle is brought about 30
kilometres to wells for water
and a group of people must
cooperate to haul water from a
well, passing the water bucket
by bucket to the trough where
the cattle drinks.
People and animals drink
from the same water sources
Josh Butt, Kelsi Trotter and Krista Butt line up to sample an
Ethiopian meal at Northside United Church's youth group
meeting last week.
which are often dirty.
"People quite often get sick
from the water. It's hard to
boil the water if you have to
collect wood to do it," she
said.
Stewart also visited refuge
camps in Rwanda where up to
120,000 people, fleeing from
wars, lived in one camp. Each
family was given 20 square
metres of land where they
were expected to build
themselves a shelter and plant
a garden to grow some food.
"These people fled from
their home country and may
never be able to go back. They
could be in a refugee camp for
years," she said.
Stewart pointed out that
similar refugee camps
currently in the news are in
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Every two weeks they
distribute food to the refugees.
They would be lucky if they
had one meal a day," she said.
Stewart pointed to a map of
the world showing areas of the
planet, like most of Africa and
Asia, where 35 per cent of the
population is undernourished.
"In Canada, only 2.5 per
cent of the people are
undernourished, which is
extremely low. But, we're in a
country with all sorts of food.
Why do you think anyone in
Canada doesn't have food?"
she asked.
"How can we help that? Do
you think we can sham?" she
said.
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