Mother Theresa's HIV Orphanage

Entry by Amy Watkins:
We left beautiful Uganda yesterday and flew back to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was an uneventful flight and for that I was very grateful. We are back at the Ethiopian Guest House and will be here until we leave on Sunday. It is so different being in a big city versus the beautiful countryside that we experienced in Jinja and at this point, I would have to say that I prefer the smaller villages to the huge, dirty, polluted cities.


This morning we headed to Mother Teresa’s HIV orphanage and had a really amazing experience there.

As we pulled up to the orphanage, which was behind a very large gate, there was a long line of ladies and their children sitting outside the gate. Once we got inside, there was another line of ladies and their children, sitting right outside the clinic – waiting patiently, of course (I’m convinced that Africans spend half of their life waiting in lines). More on this later……

The director was not there, so a sweet German lady that was volunteering, gave us a tour of the orphanage. She had worked there previously and had a wonderful rapport with the children. It was great to be able to talk to her about the kids. All of the children at the orphanage are either HIV positive or have AIDS. Christine (the volunteer lady) finished our tour by taking us to where the boys learn to weave – isn’t that interesting? In Ethiopia it is the boys who learn to weave scarves and other things and the girls learn to finish them (fringe, etc.). The boys worked on these huge looms. I don’t have a picture because we were not allowed to take pictures at this orphanage. We were then given the opportunity to buy some of the beautiful scarves that these boys had made and we were happy to do that – we were amazed at their handywork!

One of the most remarkable things that happened here was not “planned”. Remember back to the beginning of today’s entry and the women waiting outside in a line? Those ladies were from the community and the orphanage was giving them some food and gifts since it was the holiday. The sisters (nuns) brought the ladies in and began distributing the goods – there was only one problem with their plan (this was the first year that the sisters had organized this effort) – they had the ladies (and all of their children) situated at the bottom of a very big hill. By the time they gave them their bag of goods it weighed about 110 pounds. These ladies had to haul their bag up this massive hill (about 300 yards), most of them with a baby already on their back and several children following behind them.

So, as I am finishing up my scarf shopping in the little shop, a nun runs in and asks if we have any strong men on our team that can help them carry the bags up the hill for the women. Thankfully, we had many who could help. Several of us women also helped – the sisters would divide up what was in the big bag so that we could help carry it, but it was still very heavy. We would get our bags and attach ourselves to the woman who we were helping and haul it up the hill, all the way out the gate and into the street. We would help her get everything back in her bag and many of them proceeded to tie the 100 pound bag to their back and walk home (Aki told us that some of them had 30 minutes to walk). How can I ever complain about bringing groceries into my house that I was able to drive to the grocery store and buy with the money that was in my bank account? Anyway, I’m not sure how many trips I made up and down that hill, but it was more than I should have been able to make considering the shape I am in at this point in my life (follow Nancy Smith’s blog to hear another great story of God’s faithfulness today). I began to ask God to be my strength, it was no longer possible for me to help these ladies on my own and they needed help. God was faithful and allowed me the privilege to haul groceries up a hill for over an hour. Each time we would make it to the top and connect with our lady outside the gate, the women would kiss us all over – they were so grateful, even though most of them had much further to go before they were home safely.

As we were leaving, the sister in charge came to thank us for helping and apologized for all the work we had to do. She said it was “providential” that we were there that day because there was no way they would have been able to help all of those women alone. I agreed out loud with her and said, “God ordained this day for all of us.” It was a wonderful moment to remember the hand of God in all things, so that His glory can be clearly seen!