ETHOPIA TALE: FAMINE GOES, ORPHANS STAY
ETHOPIA TALE: FAMINE GOES, ORPHANS STAY
By JAMES BROOKE, Special to the New York Times
Published: Thursday, March 5, 1987
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Embeti, about 3 years old, stopped chattering with her rag doll and looked up curiously at two visitors hovering overhead.
''We don't know her history - we had to give her a name and an age,'' Getachew Zewudie, director of the orphanage, said of Embeti, who played on a sunlit veranda here with six other young children.
The children are a living legacy of Ethiopia's famine of 1984-86, which is estimated to have killed one million people. The children are part of a group of 10,000 children whose parents died of disease or hunger.
''When the feeding camps started closing down last year, all that was left were the kids,'' said Rev. Collin F. Battell, an Anglican priest who helps administer the orphanage here, which is financed by the American Episcopal Church. Separated From Parents
At its peak last year, the number of Ethiopia's famine orphans reached 200,000. But most of these children proved to be merely separated from living parents or relatives.
In 1985, in a hurried program to move 1.5 million famine victims from Ethiopia's drought-stricken north to its fertile south, some children and parents were placed on different buses.
After an international outcry, the program was suspended and Ethiopia's Government started a ''reunification'' program for separated families.
The 63 children at the Jerusalem Children's Home come largely from Ethiopia's northern provinces of Wollo and Tigre and their parents have never been found.
''I'm surprised how unaffected they are,'' Charles P. Sherlock, another Anglican priest, said as he watched a noisy gang of small boys chasing a soccer ball through avocado and cedar trees. Villa in the Cool Hills
Situated in the cool hills outside Addis Ababa, the orphanage occupies a villa that was once the residence of an official of the old regime, the Minister of the Imperial Pen.
When Ethiopia's Marxist revolution swept aside Haile Selassie's empire in 1974, the state seized this Alpine-style villa of cedar and stone. In 1985, faced with a growing number of famine orphans, the state ceded use of the village to the church group.
''Here is the main boys' dormitory,'' Mr. Getachew said. Switching on an overhead chandelier, he revealed a formal dining room decorated with a pink marble fireplace and furnished with 24 bunkbeds of unfinished wood. Scent of Eucalyptus
''Most of the clothes and toys come from England,'' Mr. Sherlock said, pointing to an array of stuffed bears, dolls and dogs that bore the wear and tear of cuddling by several owners.
Outside on the veranda, eucalyptus smoke scented the early evening air as the orphanage cook bustled over two woodburning stoves, preparing a huge pot of curry and a stack of injera, spongy Ethiopian pancakes.
From the valley below, the recorded strains of the ''International,'' the rallying song of the international Communist movement, could be heard coming from an outdoor loudspeaker. Sung in Amharic, Ethiopia's official language, the anthem signaled the end of a neighborhood political indoctrination session.
On the hill, Fachal, the orphanage's pet goat, chewed on a pants leg of a small girl who had a blue cross tattooed on her forehead. Tattoos for the Orthodox
''She must have been from Tigre,'' Mr. Sherlock mused. ''The orthodox peasants there still tattoo baby girls with crosses.''
At the orphanage, the children learn to garden and to wash their clothes, shoes and blankets. They learn the Amharic alphabet and are taught the prayers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. On Sundays, they climb the hillside to attend services at an old Orthodox church behind an eucalyptus grove.
The program, financed by the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief of New York, has opened four Ethiopian orphanages in the last two years. The orphanages, which care for 450 children, have a capacity for 900.
''It costs $35 a month per child to keep things going,'' Mr. Sherlock said.
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