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Haregewoin Teferra - Fervent Global Love of Lives Award
Andrew has recently nominated Ms. Haregewoin Teferra for the 2007 Chou Ta-Kuan (CTK) Foundation 'Fervent Global Love of Lives' Award. In late May 2007, the foundation will fly Ms. Teferra and a companion from Ethiopia, where she runs an organization for the care of AIDS orphans, to Taiwan to receive the award.
Ms. Teferra is the subject of a recent book, There is No Me Without You, written by Melissa Fay Greene. Mrs. Greene, a journalist who adopted two Ethiopian children before writing the book, documents Teferra's odyssey in raising AIDS orphans after the sudden deaths of her husband and her daughter.
Below is Haregewoin Teferra's story, written by Melissa Fay Greene.
Haregewoin is the founder and executive director of (in Amharic) Atetegeb Worku Metasebiya Woleji Alba Hitsanet Merja Mahiber [AWMWAHM] (Atetegeb Worku Memorial Orphans Support Association), for orphaned children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia., which has assisted hundreds of children since 2000 and houses 60 children today.
Haregewoin was born in Sidamo, Yirgalem, Ethiopia, in 1946, the daughter of a federal judge and the oldest of his 20 children. She completed grade eleven of secondary school in Addis Ababa, the capital; she married Worku Kebede, a high school biology teacher who later became high school principal.
Haregewoin worked as a secretary for Addis Ababa University and later for Burroughs Computer Company. She and Work had a daughter Atetegeb, born in 1967, and, two years later, a daughter Suzie. They were a very happy, comfortable, middle-class family.
In 1990, at the age of 54, Worku was addressing a neighborhood commission when he collapsed from a heart attack and died.
Stunned by his sudden death, Haregewoin continued to work and to raise their daughters to young adulthood. Atetegeb graduated from Addis Ababa University, worked for the World Food Programme, married, and had a baby son.
But in 1997, she fell ill. Haregewoin at that moment lived in Cairo, Egypt, where she worked as a caterer within the Ethiopian Orthodox community. Atetegeb phoned her and whispered, "Mother, I’m sick." Haregewoin flew back to Addis Ababa and discovered her beautiful daughter on her deathbed – gaunt and suffering. For eight months she nursed her, consulting doctors and clinics, turning the city upsidedown to try to save her daughter; but the young woman perished.
Haregewoin fell into bottomless grief over the death of her precious Atetegeb. She dropped into utter despair with no plan, no escape strategy; she expected no exit before death took her, too. For a year and a half, dressed in black, she spent all day every day at the cemetery, seated beside her daughter’s grave. From one hour to the next, she barely survived. She had to force herself to eat, without tasting; she shut herself away from her friends; she couldn’t even meet their eyes. When they invited her for coffee, she falteringly replied: "But my daughter… I...I liked her very much."
She remembered, one day, a fragment of a song and she typed it out: "There is no me without you." She placed the slip of paper over a photograph of her late daughter. (From this line the book’s title was taken.)
Her life was over. She requested to go into seclusion within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church; she would live alone in a small hut in the cemetery near her daughter. Her request was approved and she began to make preparations to leave the world.
Then outsiders intervened. The director of a Catholic charity, who knew Haregewoin to be a devout woman, asked for her help.
"Me? What could I do for the church?"
"There is a child," he began. He told her of a 15-year-old girl—orphaned and homeless—who had been living on the street, living as a sex-worker, until she was dumped one day on the church doorstep. "We cannot house her here," said the priest. "Mrs. Haregewoin, could you take her?
She thought: "I am leaving the world anyway. My life is over. It doesn’t matter."
She said to the man: "All right, I will take her."
"Thank you!" he cried, and promptly moved the troubled lonely girl into Haregewoin’s house.
Two weeks later, he phoned her; "there is a boy, with much the same situation."
"Another teenager?" she asked worriedly, because the girl already was a handful, trying to scale Haregewoin’s garden wall at night, trying to shoplift when they went out.
"Yes," he said.
"My life is over," she said again. "It no longer matters what I do. If you wish to place him here, you may."
He did. And two weeks later he phoned her again.
"No!" she cried, when she heard his voice. "I couldn’t handle another teenager."
"We have two six-year-old girls, orphans…," he said.
"My life is over," Haregewoin humbly replied; but, from the moment she opened her door to the little girls, her life was less over. They grieved for their late mothers; she grieved for her precious daughter; together they began to live again.
The director of the Catholic charity did not forget her. "We have four children here, Mrs. Haregewoin," he said.
"No, really, this is enough, I’m much better," she protested, thinking this was all about her, about cheering her up.
"There is a boy of seven, a pair of four-year-old twin girls, and an eight-year-old girl."
"And you want me to choose?" she breathed.
"No, Mrs. Haregewoin," he laughed. "I want you to take them all."
"All? Why can’t you call someone else?"
"Mrs. Haregewoin, there is no one else." In this early era of HIV/AIDS, people were too afraid of the AIDS orphans to house them, fearful that the children themselves spread the disease.
Haregewoin took all four, quickly bringing her numbers to eight children. That was in 2000. That was about 350 children ago.
Haregewoin will never get over the loss of her daughter; yet she was forced to look outside of herself and to see children in distress. She was forced to discover that—even though she couldn’t keep her own daughter alive--it was still possible for her to help other children. In my book, regarding Haregewoin and an abandoned baby named Nardos, I write: "She hadn’t consciously been looking to fall in love again, but suddenly, in the mitosis of love, Haregewoin’s heart subdivided and a new chamber beat within it, this one labeled Nardos."
In addition to housing between 60 and 80 children at a time, Haregewoin provides medical treatment to the dozens of children who are HIV-positive; she helps children whenever possible to return to their original extended families or to be adopted to loving homes outside Ethioipa. Older and healthy children attend neighborhood schools. Children too young or in too-fragile health to leave the compound are provided with school uniforms, classrooms, and teachers. Support is given to HIV-positive young women and widows in the neighborhood to assist them in finding food, housing, and work.
In reaching out to others, she herself was healed; it’s a transaction as old as humankind. By forcing herself to give, to love, when she thought she was empty of life and feeling, she was restored.
This could have been a moving but conventional story; it could have stopped there.
But Haregewoin just happened to be living at ground zero of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic when the tragic events of her life unfolded. When she opened her door to the first few orphans, the crisis in all its enormity poured in. In the book, I say: "Haregewoin was not to be permitted to retreat back into the simple pleasures of child-rearing. The most terrible epidemic in human history was knocking at the scraped metal door of her compound, politely at first, but with persistence, and then it was banging with fists."
Ms. Teferra is the subject of a recent book, There is No Me Without You, written by Melissa Fay Greene. Mrs. Greene, a journalist who adopted two Ethiopian children before writing the book, documents Teferra's odyssey in raising AIDS orphans after the sudden deaths of her husband and her daughter.Below is Haregewoin Teferra's story, written by Melissa Fay Greene.
Haregewoin is the founder and executive director of (in Amharic) Atetegeb Worku Metasebiya Woleji Alba Hitsanet Merja Mahiber [AWMWAHM] (Atetegeb Worku Memorial Orphans Support Association), for orphaned children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia., which has assisted hundreds of children since 2000 and houses 60 children today.
Haregewoin was born in Sidamo, Yirgalem, Ethiopia, in 1946, the daughter of a federal judge and the oldest of his 20 children. She completed grade eleven of secondary school in Addis Ababa, the capital; she married Worku Kebede, a high school biology teacher who later became high school principal.
Haregewoin worked as a secretary for Addis Ababa University and later for Burroughs Computer Company. She and Work had a daughter Atetegeb, born in 1967, and, two years later, a daughter Suzie. They were a very happy, comfortable, middle-class family.
In 1990, at the age of 54, Worku was addressing a neighborhood commission when he collapsed from a heart attack and died.
Stunned by his sudden death, Haregewoin continued to work and to raise their daughters to young adulthood. Atetegeb graduated from Addis Ababa University, worked for the World Food Programme, married, and had a baby son.
But in 1997, she fell ill. Haregewoin at that moment lived in Cairo, Egypt, where she worked as a caterer within the Ethiopian Orthodox community. Atetegeb phoned her and whispered, "Mother, I’m sick." Haregewoin flew back to Addis Ababa and discovered her beautiful daughter on her deathbed – gaunt and suffering. For eight months she nursed her, consulting doctors and clinics, turning the city upsidedown to try to save her daughter; but the young woman perished.
Haregewoin fell into bottomless grief over the death of her precious Atetegeb. She dropped into utter despair with no plan, no escape strategy; she expected no exit before death took her, too. For a year and a half, dressed in black, she spent all day every day at the cemetery, seated beside her daughter’s grave. From one hour to the next, she barely survived. She had to force herself to eat, without tasting; she shut herself away from her friends; she couldn’t even meet their eyes. When they invited her for coffee, she falteringly replied: "But my daughter… I...I liked her very much."
She remembered, one day, a fragment of a song and she typed it out: "There is no me without you." She placed the slip of paper over a photograph of her late daughter. (From this line the book’s title was taken.)
Her life was over. She requested to go into seclusion within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church; she would live alone in a small hut in the cemetery near her daughter. Her request was approved and she began to make preparations to leave the world.
Then outsiders intervened. The director of a Catholic charity, who knew Haregewoin to be a devout woman, asked for her help.
"Me? What could I do for the church?"
"There is a child," he began. He told her of a 15-year-old girl—orphaned and homeless—who had been living on the street, living as a sex-worker, until she was dumped one day on the church doorstep. "We cannot house her here," said the priest. "Mrs. Haregewoin, could you take her?
She thought: "I am leaving the world anyway. My life is over. It doesn’t matter."
She said to the man: "All right, I will take her."
"Thank you!" he cried, and promptly moved the troubled lonely girl into Haregewoin’s house.
Two weeks later, he phoned her; "there is a boy, with much the same situation."
"Another teenager?" she asked worriedly, because the girl already was a handful, trying to scale Haregewoin’s garden wall at night, trying to shoplift when they went out.
"Yes," he said.
"My life is over," she said again. "It no longer matters what I do. If you wish to place him here, you may."
He did. And two weeks later he phoned her again.
"No!" she cried, when she heard his voice. "I couldn’t handle another teenager."
"We have two six-year-old girls, orphans…," he said.
"My life is over," Haregewoin humbly replied; but, from the moment she opened her door to the little girls, her life was less over. They grieved for their late mothers; she grieved for her precious daughter; together they began to live again.
The director of the Catholic charity did not forget her. "We have four children here, Mrs. Haregewoin," he said.
"No, really, this is enough, I’m much better," she protested, thinking this was all about her, about cheering her up.
"There is a boy of seven, a pair of four-year-old twin girls, and an eight-year-old girl."
"And you want me to choose?" she breathed.
"No, Mrs. Haregewoin," he laughed. "I want you to take them all."
"All? Why can’t you call someone else?"
"Mrs. Haregewoin, there is no one else." In this early era of HIV/AIDS, people were too afraid of the AIDS orphans to house them, fearful that the children themselves spread the disease.
Haregewoin took all four, quickly bringing her numbers to eight children. That was in 2000. That was about 350 children ago.
Haregewoin will never get over the loss of her daughter; yet she was forced to look outside of herself and to see children in distress. She was forced to discover that—even though she couldn’t keep her own daughter alive--it was still possible for her to help other children. In my book, regarding Haregewoin and an abandoned baby named Nardos, I write: "She hadn’t consciously been looking to fall in love again, but suddenly, in the mitosis of love, Haregewoin’s heart subdivided and a new chamber beat within it, this one labeled Nardos."
In addition to housing between 60 and 80 children at a time, Haregewoin provides medical treatment to the dozens of children who are HIV-positive; she helps children whenever possible to return to their original extended families or to be adopted to loving homes outside Ethioipa. Older and healthy children attend neighborhood schools. Children too young or in too-fragile health to leave the compound are provided with school uniforms, classrooms, and teachers. Support is given to HIV-positive young women and widows in the neighborhood to assist them in finding food, housing, and work.
In reaching out to others, she herself was healed; it’s a transaction as old as humankind. By forcing herself to give, to love, when she thought she was empty of life and feeling, she was restored.
This could have been a moving but conventional story; it could have stopped there.
But Haregewoin just happened to be living at ground zero of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic when the tragic events of her life unfolded. When she opened her door to the first few orphans, the crisis in all its enormity poured in. In the book, I say: "Haregewoin was not to be permitted to retreat back into the simple pleasures of child-rearing. The most terrible epidemic in human history was knocking at the scraped metal door of her compound, politely at first, but with persistence, and then it was banging with fists."