August 1999

Dear Friends,

As I write this letter, it is abut 10:00 a.m. and I am sitting in a garage in the town adjacent to Mizan. Once again, one of the clinic cars is in need of repair. Outside the garage, the local police are taking target practice. Gunshots ring out every half hour or so. A handful of government workers are sitting in the grass waiting for our car to be repaired so they can catch the three-kilometer ride back to Mizan with us. (Work stops when there is a car going somewhere.) This morning someone died. Work stops for that too, so that everyone might go to the "likso," or visitation, that takes place. Here I am, bringing the computer along to the garage so I can work while waiting
for the car to be repaired. Will I ever really adjust to the culture? Sometimes I wonder!

It is the middle of the dry season here, and it is definitely dry, not to mention very hot. We had rain about five weeks ago, but since then none has come our way. The dust is everywhere and everyone is suffering from coughs and eye infections because of it. I won't complain, though. To me, the dust is preferable to the ever-present mud that accompanies the rainy season. This hot dry season is good for the coffee growers here. Having no rain for an extended time is a good thing in their eyes. Last year, maybe because of El Niño, there was no dry season. The continuous rain meant no coffee crop for many of the people who depend on selling coffee for survival. In Gatcheb clinic, there are more people who can't afford to pay for treatment, more people suffering from the loss of the little money they make selling coffee. Typically during this dry season, people sell their cows to make money when there is little or no coffee. But because so many are trying to sell their cows now, the price for cows has dropped and people are afraid to sell their "security" for so little. So, there is no money. At the clinic we struggle to know how to best help. Sometimes we're able to give people work in lieu of payment. Other times we allow a loan or a discount. If the local farmers' association writes a paper verifying that the person is truly "poor," then
we give the treatment for free, as they would at the government clinics.

Picture with me a few of these visitors we see. Maybe it is the 15-year-old with new baby in hand, abandoned by her family because she has no husband. Or maybe it is the mother of eleven children with an abusive husband, who sells me eggs to earn the few cents to treat or feed a few of her children. It might be the seriously ill child that should have been treated days before and now requires hospitalization that probably won't help. Her parents just didn't know any better. Still, it could be the young woman who dies at the clinic with no relative at her side to bury her or buy the linen to wrap her in. Every day, at least one of these people enters our doors. How do we help them? Is money the only answer? To answer this let me describe for you this garage that I seem to spend so much time in. It is a typical small, dark building with mud walls and floor and no windows. Tools are in random piles, some in boxes, and some on a crooked shelf in a corner. An old barber or dentist's chair stands, stripped of all padding, rusting in its lack of use. Piled high in the middle of the room are old metal scraps from cars, most not recognizable in terms of what they might once have been used for. And then, a worker
walks in, goes right to the place in the scrap heap where he finds the old thrown-away part. He picks it up, grabs the right tool, and skillfully welds it into a broken car or truck, creating something new out of the old, restoring the vehicle to"health." I saw nothing of value in those thrown away parts. Yet in the eyes of the master, the pile is a treasure chest of jewels, each unique, each special in and of itself, each just right for some specific purpose far greater than what could be imagined. Working at the clinic I meet so many people who believe they too are just pieces of thrown away metal in the scrap pile. And where is their hope, if they have no job, no coffee to sell, no money to "buy health," no family to love them, no place to be buried, no home to call their own? Thank goodness for the Master of our lives who lovingly takes each of us from our heaps, broken and without hope, and puts us into just the right place where He reveals His purpose for us. He is the source of hope. In Acts 5:41, the disciples, having been beaten for their faith, go on their way "rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name." They too were taken from the pile. But filled with His hope and
purpose, they could rejoice, knowing they were being welded in the Master's hand.

Please pray that in the midst of much suffering and hopelessness, the people that visit our clinics might know that they are as precious jewels in His hands by the care they receive from us. Please pray specifically that the coffee and other crops might flourish. And pray too that the ongoing war with Eritrea might quickly come to an end. We will be turning Genja clinic over to the government in June, so also please pray that the turnover might be accomplished with a minimum of difficulty, and that the workers there might find work quickly.

As always, thank you for your faithfulness and concern for me. I couldn't be here if it weren't for you. Yeare no bana pet makay. May God be with you.

Caryl Weinberg