Fighting Against the Stigma of HIV & AIDS

UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and Aids, has a mission. Mediterranea participates in that mission. That mission is stop the discrimination and devaluation of people who live and are associated with HIV and AIDS.

“Discrimination”, for us, refers to the unjust and hostile treatment of people who have or are perceived to have an immune problem related to HIV.  It’s important to observe that even when a person feels a certain stigma towards another, they can still choose to not behave or act in a way that is unjust or discriminatory.

In Ethiopia, AIDS tests are free, as are the antiretroviral medicines necessary to treat the disease.  Babies and pregnant women who have tested HIV+ are given preventative medicines.  That’s not to say that all those affected are being treated, just those who have access to the medical services.  However the country is certainly making progress against the disease.

Parallel to these advances though is the stigma of HIV, which is very much apparent in Ethiopian society.  In Abugida, we have given preference to HIV+ children and they live together with HIV- children without any problems.  This has been achieved simply because the parents of unaffected children want their children to go to Abugida and they know of our selection criteria.  Most schools don’t accept HIV+ children but in Abugida the school is for everyone and everyone must live together.  The good food, care and attention that the children receive is a big attraction for the parents and, in the end, all the children live together happily.

Regrettably the same cannot be said for adults.  Here we have been pioneers by employing HIV+ adults at Abugida.  Each day, however, we are confronted with the prejudices of some of the local leaders.  They think that HIV+ women are not suitable to care for children.  They believe that such women should not work in the kitchen.  Unfortunately it seems to do little good arguing that for an HIV+ woman to be of risk to the children she would first have to cut herself, then find a knife and cut a child and then mix their blood together.

We continue fighting the discrimination that exists towards HIV+ people and do this in the area where we have influence, in the Abugida school.  We continue to emphasize that being HIV+ is a condition only of interest to those infected not to the whole community.  We are fighting so that people are not obliged to have an HIV test when applying for a job, where they would be discriminated against if the test showed positive.

There are 1,500,000 people in Ethiopia who are HIV+ and this is only the tip of the iceberg as the number represents only those who have taken the test.  1 in 7 residents of Addis Ababa are HIV+.  Do they expect all these people to live off charity, not to be allowed to work and to be condemned to the margins of society and into prostitution?

We continue fighting the fight but it is not easy.  The option we have taken at Mediterranea is to stand firm and not to permit any sort of discrimination in the area that we influence.  We are winning battles but the war is far from won.

Remembering Part 1

In the next few days it will be 4 years since we took our first steps in Ethiopia. At that time we had already been working 7 years as an NGO with experience in other countries, but in Ethiopia we were new.

In November 2006 we contacted a local NGO whose president we had met on an earlier, private trip. This man took us to see an empty orphanage in the city of Nazret with the intention that we would help. It was an orphanage with more dust than the Sahara desert and equally as uninhabited…although he insisted that the children were away for the weekend.

We had almost given up on him when he took us to a very small and humble school operating out of a container in the neighbourhood of Mekanissa, Addis Ababa. He told us that it was a school for Eritrean refugee children and Ethiopian children from a very poor area and that his NGO was supporting it. The school and the children touched us deeply and our first thought was to construct a decent school for these children. We visited the school various times bringing things for the children, each time noticing that the teachers seemed more distant. Until, on the last day, they wouldn’t even let us in, they were very angry with the president of the NGO. Since we were new to the country and the country had touched us deeply, we didn’t catch on at the time that this man was using this school as bait for his own interests.

So we were sent packing still holding the 500 sweets and 300 packs of biscuits that we had brought for the children. To have distributed these in the street could have provoked fighting so we decided to take them to some nuns that we knew. The nuns, who are very practical, were in need of much more basic things than sweets and biscuits. They didn’t say anything but it was easy to deduce. And so, feeling rather ridiculous, we left.

The president of the NGO told us, when we were back in Spain, that the teachers we angry because they hadn’t been paid for months. And we, as the novices we were, naively sent him from Spain money for all the salaries that he told us were outstanding, so that he could pay them. Some days after we sent the money we asked him, “Have you paid the teachers?” to which he replied “No, and I’m not going to, but if you want I can send you a false invoice.”

This was our baptism as an NGO in Ethiopia.

To be continued…

Food for those in need in Palmanova

Students from the Baleares International College (Mallorca) donated around 200kg of food for us to distribute amongst people in need in the Palmanova area.
The food was taken to the distribution point today and will be handed out this week.


I was informed the students intend to do this on a regular basis. They clearly set an example for other students.

In my stories the princesses…

In my stories the princesses…

There are not twenty mattresses,

Neither a pea nor a castle;

They sleep on the earth floor;

In rooms made of paper walls.

In my stories the princesses

Are born with red blood,

Are dressed in rags,

Have skin that shines like satin.

The princesses of my stories

Don’t eat every day,

But show a happiness

That overwhelms you.

The princesses of my stories

Wear veils and crowns;

They are in truth my princesses,

You know it and I know it.

The stories of my princesses

That I’ll tell you if you’ll allow:

Say that they live far away,

In a country that you can not see;

But it is close, believe me,

If you choose to SEE.

If you want to be their fairy,

You only have to believe.

I promise you a thousand and one stories

Of princesses with skin of satin,

For you to dream of every night,

Imagining what their lives CAN BE.

By: Ana Calso - http://atravesdelainfancia.blogspot.com/

Sami and a Dream

A Center for the Disabled in Ethiopia

The person on the right of the photo is Sami.

Sami is the representative of Education for the Akaki Kaliti kebele (neighbourhood) in Ethiopia. Sami is very intelligent, with an enviably quick mind. Sami is totally blind.

In his youth he was the only blind boy in the area to attend a state school. One that offered him the possibility to use Braille, a system for reading and writing by touch, designed specifically for blind people. Although Braille is available in Amharic (the language of this region), very few blind Ethiopians get to use it  as there is no money to make it available for them.

As you may know, we have become involved in providing support to the disabled of Akaki, starting by supporting disabled children and adolescents who attend the Akaki Mengist school in Addis. These children and adolescents of both sexes, who are physically disabled, blind or deaf, have the use of two classrooms.

So far we have sent 12 pairs of crutches (some for infants) a wheelchair, as well as educational material and a foosball table set.

Additionally, we have bought 20 sign language manuals in Amharic, for the deaf. We want to help more of the disabled of Akaki and for this reason have offered to buy Amharic Braille for the blind children of the area, so that they can attend the state school.

Today we are going to talk of a dream. Normally in Mediterranea we speak of realities, that is to say, when we speak of a project it’s because we have raised the funds necessary to action it. But this is a Big Dream…to provide a center where the disabled of Akaki can come to work. Having a room for physiotherapy and various professional workshops for the disabled.

It is estimated that some 6% of Ethiopians are disabled. Their only means of survival…begging. Their lives are ones of intolerable poverty and marginalization. They are people abandoned to their luck and practically without any possibility of personal development or integration into their society.

But here we have Sami, to remind us that there can be light in the darkness. And that with your help we can put into reality our Big Dream to help more.

Welcome on board!

A big thank you to the 6 new people to sign on as members of Mediterranea in the past week. Particularly heart warming is the fact that 5 of these people do not know us physically, they read about Mediterranea's work on the web and have decided to join and support our efforts.
You boost our energy levels.
Michael