Out of Africa

By CANDACE CHASE

Kalispell woman brings life lessons home after three years with relief agency

The Daily Inter Lake

Lucy Smith of Kalispell watched a big Isuzu spin out and get mired on a hill in Ethiopia. Then it was her turn.

Serving as a volunteer for the relief agency Lalmba, she was driving an ambulance through the mud and fog of a rain forest en route to a hospital.

"I had a newborn baby orphan and two very sick people with me," she said. "I had to get all these people down the hill safely."

Navigating that hill meant adoption and a chance at life for the baby. The two sick people had numerous family members depending on their return.

It became an epiphany for Smith. On that hill, she realized the deep interconnections of all human beings and the obligation to give what we can to others.

Smith drew in a deep breath and started down the hill.

"You learn a lot about yourself," she said.

It was one of many slippery slopes she would face during 2 1/2 years moving among Eritrea, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Smith's odyssey began in October 2003, when she left for Africa.

In Kalispell, she had spent more than a decade serving Literacy Volunteers first as a tutor and then as executive director. But for at least 25 years, she had kept track of the little relief agency started in 1963 by Hugh and Marty Downey.

Lalmba, which means "a place of hope," began in Eritrea to care for orphans and the region's many sick people. It has expanded into neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya.

As of 2006, the agency's hospitals and clinics treat more than 100,000 patients a year and care for more than 2,000 children, mostly orphaned by AIDS.

In 2003, at age 50, Smith sent an e-mail asking the Downeys to keep her in mind if they needed an educator in about three years. Almost immediately, she was invited to apply for the educational director position.

With her three-year time frame blown away, Smith took a leap of faith. She left her elegant, immaculate townhouse on the Whitefish River for Eritrea, a barren landscape deforested by 30 years of a brutal war.

"I learned to take a bath in a teacup," she said with a laugh.

Lalmba had created schools for children living in villages far from Eritrea's public schools. Smith was to help train 189 teachers serving in those classrooms.

In accordance with Lalmba's policy, Smith was charged with training an Eritrean, Efrem Girmai, to continue the work as education director for the Eparchy of Keren in Eritrea.

"Efrem was great," she said with a smile.

Smith explained the appointment as director was considered a great honor but brought a great deal of responsibility for about $1.50 a month more pay.

Often, the two traveled a half day to reach a school over barely visible roads strewn with boulders and thorns. Smith drove the vehicle, and that shocked the people in the villages.

"American women were thought of as having elevated status," she said with a laugh. "I should have a driver and a housekeeper."

Most of the schools amounted to huts in which the students sat on their heels during lessons. Although a few were constructed of stone, most schools were sticks barely stuck together.

"When the wind would blow, the school would blow down," Smith said.

Teachers had just a metal table and some kind of material painted black which served as a chalkboard. Lacking governmental support, these schools had just a few books to serve classes varying in attendance from a handful of students to more than 100.

A majority of teachers were good students who were educated through ninth grade, though some had finished high school.

"Most of them were assigned to the job as part of their national service," she said.

Teachers educate the children first in their village language, then in the third grade move into the national language of Tigrinya. From the six to the eighth grade, teachers use only English in the classroom.

"English is the language of higher education," Smith said.

After the eighth grade, Eritrean students must take the national exam in English. If they do well, they go on to secondary school and a better future.

Smith's charge was to help teachers implement the national curriculum with almost no books or instruction materials.

"It's really difficult for teachers," she said. "So we did a lot of how to make learning tools."

In retrospect, Smith wished that she had brought more pens, papers and pictures with her. But she innovated, saving every paper towel and toilet-tissue roll to make puppets as learning tools and anything with a picture for vocabulary.

She devoted half of the weekends during her 15 months in Eritrea to putting on workshops for teachers. Smith felt that she was just getting the wind in her sails when her visa ran out.

"I left at the end of the first year without permission to come back for a second year," she said.

It was a blow when the government would grant only an additional three-month visa. Smith was the victim of a change in the government and its attitude toward the United States.

Before she left, Smith was able to help organize an Eritrean-directed program to provide support for children who lost one or both parents. These children received medical help, food, uniforms, papers and pencils so local people could care for them.

"It was a good way to support the [public] schools, and it was all done through Eritrean people," Smith said.

After Eritrea, she moved in and out of Kenya and Ethiopia. Those landscapes were a complete change from the barren desert of the past 15 months.

Smith described Chiri, Ethiopia, as stunning and Matoso, Kenya, on Lake Victoria as equally beautiful. In both locations, she substituted for Lalmba project directors.

In Ethiopia, she worked with a management team, helping oversee the construction of a children's home. It was quite a stretch, helping solve construction problems involved in building on a hillside.

"That was hilarious," Smith said with a laugh. "I was the project director and I was supposed to have the answers."

Instead, she used her skills as a facilitator to help the three people on the management team make the decisions themselves.

In addition to helping with construction issues, Smith prepared a payroll for a staff of 40 and drove the ambulance to Lalmba's clinics and hospitals.

In Kenya, her job included overseeing a children's home for 40 orphans and a program that kept 1,300 children in school and in their villages. As in Eritrea, they received food, medical attention, school uniforms and supplies.

Smith also performed administrative duties for the clinic at which doctors treated patients with AIDS.

"What I learned was the many levels of care required," she said. "My work was helping coordinate what pieces I could."

In Matoso, Kenya, about 30 percent of the population has AIDS. Smith said stigma, remoteness, lack of education about drugs and how they work were challenges in providing the complex treatments.

Yet the people manage to prolong lives.

"It's a huge credit to these doctors," she said.

Smith brought home back many touching memories of wonderful people.

One was of her neighbor, Amaresh, in Eritrea who had so very little yet would make her tea when she noticed Smith was working late.

Another friend was an Eritrean woman named B'higu, a former soldier who sold eggs to keep her two bright sons in school. Smith remembered when the sons had saved up and bought a goat for a feast.

"They came over with the best part of the goat in pot," she said, blinking back tears.

She told them that she was deeply honored but she could not take their food. Smith knew that these people rarely knew a day without hunger.

She worried that she might have offended them. But she was reassured when B'higu came to visit.

"She said "Thank you. My sons were very hungry,'" Smith recalled.

Adjustingto the land of plenty in the United States was difficult when she returned in April. Smith said she felt suspended between two worlds.

She couldn't say to herself "back to the real world" after seeing Africa up close and personal.

"That's a real world over there," Smith said. "There is so much need."

Although she had to take deworming medicine, had a parasite dug out of her arm and had malaria symptoms twice, Smith intends to return, if called, for shorter stints in 2007.

She recalled waking up each morning in Africa wondering if, in spite of making her best effort, she was doing enough.

"We are all very small in that moment," she said. "But for whomever you are helping, you are everything that they need. It really is enough."

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.