There's No Place Like Home

In order to better understand and appreciate my experience this past year, I needed time to sort out my feelings and think about next steps. My time working abroad in Ukraine and Ethiopia provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn about global Jewish life and responsibility. I walked away from the fellowship a more committed, patient and compassionate professional and human being.

I read a quote yesterday by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in front of Central Synagogue in New York. It said, “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” My mission often felt that way, touching me when I least expected it.

When I close my eyes, I remember the people I met along the way. Each face reminds me of a story, some funny, heartwarming and full of hope and others filled with deep despair and hardship. Thoughts of the lonely, elderly Jews in Dnepropetrovsk and desperate mothers or sick children in Gondar disturb me when I am awake and when I sleep. Here at home, I hope I can serve as a voice for those who don’t have one.

There is truly no place like home and returning to the luxuries of my life – family, friends, electricity and water – made me feel like the luckiest person in the world. So, it didn’t take long for me to find a way to continuing giving back and stay connected to JDC’s work abroad.

Clean water became very important to me in both Ukraine and Ethiopia where water is contaminated. In Ukraine, the water is tainted by toxic chemicals spilled into rivers by factories. In Ethiopia, a country of 80 million, only 22% of the population has access to a safe water source and 90% of all preventable disease is caused by water-borne illness. Adults and children still die needlessly from diarrhea and malaria.

Until I lived in Ethiopia, it was hard to imagine such conditions still exist. I met women who walk 10 miles back and forth everyday to the nearest tap to bring clean water home for their families for drinking, cooking and personal hygiene. At schools, children drink from muddy puddles that they share with livestock.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee/JDC has provided clean water for 25-years in Ethiopia through hand-dug wells and protected natural springs. JDC professionals, local government and community members have already partnered to develop nearly 100 projects. One hand-dug well costs $6,000 and provides a lifetime of safe and reliable water for hundreds of families living in remote villages. The results, which I have seen with my own eyes, are truly life-changing.

Over the year, so many of you asked what you can do to help. I hope you will be inspired to join me and my husband Jonathan in our commitment to bring clean water to remote villages in Ethiopia. This is a great way to make a difference that will last a lifetime.

Through the Sisisky-Salky & Friends of Ethiopia Water Project, Jonathan and I aim to raise $6,000 to complete one communal well but we need your help! Please consider making a donation in any amount to help us reach our goal. In addition, Jonathan and I will match 50 cents for every dollar of the first $4,000 dollars raised.

Donating is simple, easy and tax-deductible. Click here to donate safely and securely online at the JDC website or send a check payable to JDC at:

JDC
Attention: Zhanna Veyts – Ethiopia Well Project
711 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017-4014

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “Pray as if everything depends on God but act as if everything depends on you.” I carried this quote with me during this year; it is a spot-on summation of the passion and commitment of JDC work around the world.

Thank you for allowing me to share this experience with you. And, before I sign off for the last time, I’ll look forward to sharing updates on the Ethiopia Water Project!

Adieu, Addis

I’m wondering where the time went. On Sunday, I will fly to Budapest for a week to visit JDC programs and then head home to complete the last few weeks of my fellowship in New York . I am often asked, “what will you do back in the real world?” Frankly, I don’t know. But, I’m sure it will be a lot easier to figure out with electricity and a hot shower.

Before focusing on the “next,” I am trying to savor my last week here in Addis. I plan to enjoy my last caramel macchiato at Kaldi’s Coffee, a knock-off of Starbucks down to the green aprons and tall frappacino. Last week, my brother Zach and sister-in-law Clare visited. We travelled to Bahir Dar on Lake Tana to the Blue Nile, the source of the Nile River . We ate too much injera, listened to Ethiopian jazz from the 1950’s and tried chewing chat. Chat is a natural, very mild and legal (yes, mom) stimulant. Grown locally and widely exported throughout African and the Arabian peninsula , it is purchased in bags that look like pre-washed mixed lettuce. During a typical chat ceremony, one chews the leaves into a pulp swallowing only the bitter juice over the course of several hours. Truthfully, it wasn’t worth the effort and the local St George brew is a better choice which Lonely Planet seconds.

We also visited the Yeka Terara Elementary School in Addis. JDC provided funds for the school to construct a new eight-room building, chairs/desks, blackboards, materials, clean water drinking taps and latrines. Before expansion, students were turned away, forced to attend schools outside their village area or were crowded into classes with up to 90 other students in either morning or afternoon shifts for grades 1-6. Now, students enjoy a full-day of school with just 50 students per class and attend through grade 8. We met with Yeka’s teachers and principle to gain insight into Ethiopia ’s educational system and understand the challenges they face, some of which are similar to our own.

We made a brief stop at the Mother Teresa Clinic too. I am pleased to report that Mohammed, the little boy I wrote about in an early entry, was successfully treated for Hodgkin’s Disease and finished his chemotherapy. He presented at the clinic with a disfiguring growth on his face the size of a bowling ball (he is 10 years old); today there is not trace of the tumor and he was busy playing soccer in the courtyard with his friends when we arrived. Sadly, though, another young patient was diagnosed with bone cancer and required a leg amputation. The surgery was performed under local anesthetic (general was not available) using a hand saw at the hospital where electricity went in-and-out during the procedure; a nurse sat nearby taking the boy’s blood pressure by hand every few minutes since there was no machine. The state of affairs from a medical perspective is one of the worst in the world. Ethiopia has 2,000 doctors in a country of nearly 80 million; that’s just one doctor for every 40,000 people.

Ethiopia changed my picture of the real world. So did Ukraine . Elderly Jews who are forced to choose between food and medicine and street children who bathe in the gutter are now memories of my real world. I hope I am able to find a way to make these experiences drive my everyday life at home and work. As Lionel Shriver wrote in her novel, the post birthday world, “some years thanksgiving arrives in the lowercase, in July.” When I return to New York later this summer, I will celebrate thanksgiving for this incredible opportunity that expanded the boundaries of my real world.

More Photos

Spice stall at the merkado.



Castle in Gondar.



Well project.

From the Piazza to Church and Back

At first I thought I had writer’s block only to realize it was quite the opposite. So much happened in the last few weeks, I’ve barely a moment to process much less write about it. It all began last month with a trip to Italy to a) meet my mom b) eat my body weight in pizza and c) research materials for my project. As it happens, JDC has a small office in Rome which served as an important base for the organization since the resettlement of Jews after World War II. This hub also witnessed the mass exodus of 250,000 Russian Jews over the course of twenty years. Smaller populations from Albania , Libya and Iran also made their way through Italy , one of the busiest Jewish transit sites in Europe along with Austria and Germany .

Today, there are some 13,000 Jews living in Rome who belong to one of the twelve orthodox synagogues. Jews settled in Italy before the destruction of the first Temple and continue to don their traditional roles of shopkeepers and peddlers in a largely lower-middle class workforce. The Roman philanthropic culture does not compare to what we know in the United States and fundraising efforts in the community are limited. Instead, the Jewish community has a self-imposed tax on members to help support communal institutions. In addition, JDC provides funding for the cultural center at the old orphanage and a community center with familiar programs like youth and the elderly.

After my fair share of work, pasta and sightseeing, I headed back to Ethiopia to greet my husband Jonathan who spent the last ten days here. Shocked by my living conditions, he compared it to his college fraternity house, only worse. We took the opportunity to get out of town and made three small trips. The first was to Gondar where I was able to show him the meat and potatoes of JDC’s work in Ethiopia which I have described to you in past entries.

One new project on the horizon worth noting is a small-scale irrigation program in Dembya woreda (region) that will provide rural farmers with limited capacity, diesel hand pumps, improved seeds and agricultural tools in order to increase farming production aggravated by lack of water and drought. This woreda currently has the least amount of water coverage in the region with only 8% potable water compared to the best coverage at 40% in Worega and Dabat woreadas. Farmers rely on rainfall, limited river water or make-shift surface irrigation pumps and rudimentary wells for farming, all of which fall short of the water demand. It is estimated that a farmer’s production would be increased by 50% during the farming season and by 100% in non-farming, dry seasons. Irrigation pumps allow farmers to cultivate the land year-round and produce additional sources of income such as cabbage, onions and tomatoes in the off-season when the land is not worked.

Our second excursion was to Lalibela in the Lasta Mountains and commonly referred as the Ethiopian “ Petra .” This isolated, ancient city is built into the mountainside and boasts eleven medieval rock-hewn churches built in the 12th century which are all carved below ground level (some more than 10 meters high). The city itself is a World Heritage site and is considered one of the greatest religious and historical in the Christian world; thousands of pilgrims make their way here each year to celebrate Christmas and other festivals, more than doubling the population for weeks at a time. Besides visiting the churches, there is nothing else to do in Lalibela except talk to the locals and drink their famous Tej, home-brewed honey wine, at the one bar. The only foreigners, we joined the group around a horseshoe table enjoying the traditional local entertainment, a singing comedian who goes around the room making fun of customers through impromptu lyrics. As the only farengees, you can imagine how he idled on us!

After making it back to Addis Ababa in one piece, we took a much needed vacation and checked into the Sheraton for a long-weekend. Air-conditioning, electricity, running water and room service… what more could a girl ask for? Oh, a copy of the Sex and the City movie I bought on the street for $2. It was perfect.

School and Clean Water Development Projects

Grade 8 Final Exams


Current School Water Source for Washing and Drinking


JDC Clean Water Development Project Behind School


Testing the Water

Who Said Don't Talk to Strangers (aka Sorry, Mom)

A new life is beginning to shape for me as I settle into the city and make friends. The African Union headquarters are in Addis Ababa as well as hundreds of international embassies, government offices and nonprofit organizations such as UNICEF, USAID, Save the Children, the Red Cross and Clinton Foundation. I heard that there are an estimated 50,000 foreign workers in Addis making it a much more sociable place to meet an eclectic group of friends compared to Dnepropetrovsk. I imagine Kiev would have been similar but my small town in eastern Ukraine was rather homogeneous and closed to outsiders, perhaps a remnant of the Soviet-era.

In Ethiopia, white foreigners are despairingly, yet harmlessly, referred to as “farenges,” pronounced fah-ren-geez. Walking down the street or even passing by in a car someone inevitably yells, “look farenges!” and everyone turns around to stare. Less often, though not uncommon, is the “f-ck you, farenges.” I haven’t quite figured this one out. It’s usually followed by the foul-mouth assailant approaching you to ask where you’re from or offer a marriage proposal or discounted shoeshine. It’s a head-scratcher. I tell them, in the United States this is the wrong foot to get off on when trying to make new friends; its just not good customer service!

My closest Ethiopian friend is in Ghana for several weeks accompanying a group of Mother Teresa clinic spine patients awaiting surgery. Luckily, I met a great group of foreign friends and we are exploring the nightlife (live jazz bars to theatre) in Addis together. One is law professor at Addis Ababa University, another an English teacher, a missionary, one working for a major United States foundation and nine medical students from San Antonio of whom I’ve become especially fond. We spent a day together earlier this week sightseeing, shopping and hiking through the mountains at Entoto National Park. I am now a certified hypochondriac; fortunately they’re stocked with plenty of hand sanitizers and drugs.

The one thing many of my new friends have in common is that they are devout Christians. They attend church every Sunday and share a loosely defined set of conservative principles that are relatively unknown to me at home. For instance, one friend generally avoids R-rated movies largely due to what she describes as gratuitous violence. This was the topic of conversation last night at dinner. At first, I sat through the discussion without a peep not believing she was serious. Having lived in Los Angeles and with a brother-in-law who is a filmmaker, it didn’t occur to me that people might feel this way, at least not anymore. I was quickly amazed at her passion for the issue and her solid arguments (although of course, I disagreed).

Having lived in New York City for nearly seven years now, I guess my southern roots have all but been abandoned for more liberal Jewish thinking, sometimes making me feel like the odd-man out; I didn’t expect that here. Many of my friends have worked in Ethiopia for years. Their commitment, intellect and compassion are powerful and I believe there is a lot we can learn from each other. Besides being farenges, and whether we are Christians or Jews, in our hearts we are here for the same reasons and that makes us more the same than different. Strangers really do make the best friends.

Empowering Women and Educating Families

As you know, I like to write in the dark. It helps pass the long nights without electricity which are now every other day. Ethiopia relies on hydroelectric power and without rain during the short rainy season, we find ourselves in this dim predicament. Today, though, I am writing from the well-lit and air-conditioned Sheraton lobby sipping a glass of white wine and considering how many bar snacks I can reasonably fold into a napkin for later. I already have a muffin and two imported Red Delicious apples in my purse.

I found my middle-ground since I last wrote: laps at the hotel pool followed by the city’s only veggie burger. This is it. The one place that lets me pretend I haven’t just seen what I did. The place that lets me forget that rat running across my foot on a home visit to a client in her mud hut. It is the place where I try to erase memories of sick children with curable disease who will die because they are poor; where I put overwhelming poverty in a box. Even with this retreat, I still often go home and cry. My emotions are not my own in Ethiopia .

Last week was spent with a small delegation of Board members from Italy ’s Rita Levi Montalcini foundation. Montalcini, the 99-year old Nobel Peace Prize recipient used her prize money to establish a foundation dedicated to empowering African women through education. The foundation grants JDC funds to maintain full-ride scholarships each year for 15 girls from no or low income rural families to attend the four-year college at Unity University College (UUC) in Addis. Because they have a harder adjustment than most students, “Project for the Future” also includes a one-year preparatory program that helps the girls catch up with their classmates in English (all university classes are taught in English in the country), math and science.

I had lunch with three recent graduates. One is a nurse, another in marketing and the third in government. From large families with up to ten siblings, some also orphaned, these young women were the first in their family to attend college. Now employed, they are the primary bread-winners in their family. They invited their younger and older siblings to live with them in Addis; they are paying for their tuition in order to provide them with the same educational opportunities they were afforded in hopes of creating a better future for their families.

Ethiopian girls make up less than 25% of students in higher education because they marry early and almost always have more difficult economic situations than their male counterparts. Also, they receive less than 10% of government scholarships, making this program even more important. UUC does its part by ensuring an even male to female student body (out of 8,000 undergraduate/graduate students) and assigning a special “Project for the Future” office to work with our girls.

It is often said that when you educate a woman, you educate an entire family. This couldn’t be closer to the truth. It is one of the most beautiful projects here - full of optimism and another escape that fills me with hope.