Tuesday started our trip home, with an overnight stop in the capital city of Addis Ababa where we spent Wednesday visiting Ethiopia’s National Museum and its Ethnological Museum, pictured above. The latter is housed in the former palace of Haile Sallaise, the country’s last emperor in the country’s 3,000-year-old monarchy who ruled from 1930-1974 before the communist Derg take over.
Interestingly, his name prior to coronation was Ras Tarfari and he is the same man who gathered a following in Jamaica as a messianic figure. Yet another international influence that derives from Ethiopia.
The palace is now part of the Addis Ababa University campus. It was kind of cool to stand in the man’s bathroom during the palace tour, knowing that he's known for helping modernize the country, delivering a speech to the League of Nations in 1936 to condemn to use of chemical weapons by Italy against his people during the Second Italo–Ethiopian War, and also sparking the Rasfarian movement.
Fresh and Green Academy
We spent Wednesday morning at Fresh and Green Academy, meeting a social entrepreneur named Muday Mitiku Meles. Like Aynalem Ayalew in Bahir Dar who opened a resource center for the hearing impaired after seeing a need in her community, Muday saw a need in Addis Ababa and found a way to help alleviate it. She operates Fresh and Green Academy for poor children – of which there are many in this city of 3 million.
When she was 18 years old, Muday and a business partner opened the academy for children of paying parents. After seeing so many mothers on the streets peddling goods with their children, she asked why they weren’t in school. The mothers said it was because they could not afford the cost of uniforms as well as food. So, Muday began inviting the children to her school where she’d feed them and pay for their uniforms.
Before long, the paying parents decided to withdraw their children because they didn’t want their children learning alongside poor children, Muday said. She decided she’d keep teaching those who needed it most and turned her school into a non-profit organization that has operated successfully for the past 15 years.
Today, Fresh and Green has 300 students who are taught by staff teachers as well as teachers in training at the Kotebe University College across the street. There are also 431 single women, the majority of whom suffer from HIV, who make baskets, clothing, pottery and other goods at the school compound while their children are in school and then sell the items in the compound's gift shop. Muday has even set up a micro-loan system to help the women become independent entrepreneurs. Many of the women became pregnant after rape or lost their husbands to HIV/AIDS.
We knew to visit Fresh and Green because another student in the Reich College of Education spent two years volunteering there before coming to Appalachian.
With this being our last day in Ethiopia, we spent our left-over birr at the gift shop buying last-minute gifts knowing our contribution was going to a worthwhile cause.
Interestingly, his name prior to coronation was Ras Tarfari and he is the same man who gathered a following in Jamaica as a messianic figure. Yet another international influence that derives from Ethiopia.
The palace is now part of the Addis Ababa University campus. It was kind of cool to stand in the man’s bathroom during the palace tour, knowing that he's known for helping modernize the country, delivering a speech to the League of Nations in 1936 to condemn to use of chemical weapons by Italy against his people during the Second Italo–Ethiopian War, and also sparking the Rasfarian movement.
Fresh and Green Academy
We spent Wednesday morning at Fresh and Green Academy, meeting a social entrepreneur named Muday Mitiku Meles. Like Aynalem Ayalew in Bahir Dar who opened a resource center for the hearing impaired after seeing a need in her community, Muday saw a need in Addis Ababa and found a way to help alleviate it. She operates Fresh and Green Academy for poor children – of which there are many in this city of 3 million.
When she was 18 years old, Muday and a business partner opened the academy for children of paying parents. After seeing so many mothers on the streets peddling goods with their children, she asked why they weren’t in school. The mothers said it was because they could not afford the cost of uniforms as well as food. So, Muday began inviting the children to her school where she’d feed them and pay for their uniforms.
Before long, the paying parents decided to withdraw their children because they didn’t want their children learning alongside poor children, Muday said. She decided she’d keep teaching those who needed it most and turned her school into a non-profit organization that has operated successfully for the past 15 years.
Today, Fresh and Green has 300 students who are taught by staff teachers as well as teachers in training at the Kotebe University College across the street. There are also 431 single women, the majority of whom suffer from HIV, who make baskets, clothing, pottery and other goods at the school compound while their children are in school and then sell the items in the compound's gift shop. Muday has even set up a micro-loan system to help the women become independent entrepreneurs. Many of the women became pregnant after rape or lost their husbands to HIV/AIDS.
We knew to visit Fresh and Green because another student in the Reich College of Education spent two years volunteering there before coming to Appalachian.
With this being our last day in Ethiopia, we spent our left-over birr at the gift shop buying last-minute gifts knowing our contribution was going to a worthwhile cause.
Members of our group at the Fresh and Green Academy. This playground was filled with children moments earlier, but I was not allowed to photograph them.
Our group with Muday Mitiku Meles, far left, at Fresh and Green Academy.