Brian Campbell, Holt Creative Productions Manager
Addis Ababa—We come to a side of Addis that I have been told about, where stories of crisis and children at risk are spoken of in terms that are hushed and shrouded in shame.
The Marcado district is part market and mostly slum. Dr. Fikru Heramo, MD, Holt’s Ethiopian country representative, drives down the overcrowded, ever narrowing streets to the front gates of an Orthodox church. It’s a prayer day and people are flowing in and out of the clean church courtyard. We park in a dirt, oversized front driveway. This is shared by cars and vendors selling pumpkins and herbs. Friendly faces and gestures bring us closer to the wares of a young girl no more than 12 years of age. Dr. Fikru tells Holt president Gary Gamer and me about the medicinal purposes of the herbs while in the same breath translating to the young girl the gist of our conversation.
We turn from the church and move deeper into this rundown neighborhood. Moving along the street a bit, we turn down a rough path alongside a polluted slough. Scraps of meals and daily life litter the front of corrugated dwellings. Here, a nun operates a home for orphans and unwed mothers. Today she isn’t in, but we are welcomed by staff and a young woman. Sitting on the dirt path, a small child about 10 months old is crying. 
The young woman hurries over and lovingly scoops up the child, and the child seems to be comforted almost instantly. Gary asks the girl through Dr. Fikru if the child is hers. “No,” she says. Dr. Fikru turns to Gary and says quietly, as if the girl might understand, “The child resembles the girl.” In a posture of privacy and discretion, Dr. Fikru asks again, mentioning the resemblance. Now the young woman bows her head slightly and no longer makes eye contact. “She confesses that the child is hers,” says Dr. Fikru. Gary turns to the girl and places his hand on the young mother’s shoulder. The young woman relaxes a bit, and Gary asks, “What does that mean?” Dr. Fikru tells us of the crisis that led to her pregnancy and banishment from her home. This shame was followed by unemployment and removal from her only source of income. She could never admit to having this child outside these gates. She risked shame and disgrace by ‘confessing’ to having a child. Gary meets this story with a reassuring look and hugs the mother. She is visibly touched by this simple gesture of compassion.
This facility is far from ideal for this mother and the young children who live inside the walls of the compound, yet this is the haven that is available to them. Gary speaks as I videotape: “These are the struggling agents of change that we must identify and lift up. These are the mothers, the children and the struggles that Holt must rise up to meet.”
