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By Dave Silvestri

[A continuation from Solomon’s story (Part 1); Names changed to conceal identity.]

FEBRUARY – ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – When Solomon’s mother finally left home for the last time to return to her after-hours vocation at Gondar’s bars in Northwestern Ethiopia, she left her son to the care of her step-mother—the boy’s step-grandmother, his grandfather’s second and much younger wife. Solomon was six years old at the time, and just beginning primary school. His step-grandmother’s youngest son, Zelalem, was just one year Solomon’s senior, and she planned to raise the two together. But if Solomon expected to receive the same treatment as Zelalem, he soon found a far different reality.

Although by no means acceptable, the reasons for Solomon’s inferior treatment by his step-grandmother at least discernable. Solomon’s mom had been the black sheep of the household, the only remaining daughter of her father’s ex-wife, the stubbornly resentful house maid in her own home, the rebellious daughter who continued to risk bringing shame on the entire household through her after-hours occupation. From the first month of his life, Solomon had been an obligation to his step-grandmother. If she was not rescuing him from attempted infanticide, then she was busy searching for his emotionally-unstable and negligent mother. Yet she had seven children of her own. She had not wanted another, and his very existence was draining the resources that she wished instead to commit to her own kin. And so while she resigned to care for six-year-old Solomon now that his mother had definitely left home, she was not about to treat him like her own child.

Every day, Solomon and Zelalem would prepare for school, only to end up in far different classrooms. In the family car, his step-grandmother would take Zelalem to Gondar’s top private school, where he would attend classes all day. Solomon, however, was left to walk twenty minutes to a government school, where classes lasted just the first half the day in order to accommodate a different batch of students in the afternoons. Whereas Zelalem received a specially-cooked meal for lunch every day, Solomon would instead be given the family’s leftovers—typically no more than a half roll of injera. His step-grandmother never encouraged him in his classes, never invited his friends over, never washed his hair like she did Zelalem, never even bought him a school uniform. Solomon had to sell ‘tala’—a home-brewed mildly alcoholic Ethiopian traditional drink—even just to buy a school uniform required for matriculation.

Confused at his situation—at a mother who continued to abandon him, a step-grandmother who treated him so inferiorly, a school where he didn’t learn and had no friends—Solomon found solace in his tears. But crying just brought more pain. Zelalem would kick him, and Solomon—helpless to retaliate against the darling child—would simply cry more. Although Zelalem’s older brother would occasionally lash out at Zelalem by kicking him, such protectionism simply angered Solomon’s step-grandmother, who hated such retribution for her dearest son. Eventually, she had had enough, and sent Solomon out of the home.

He was eleven years old at the time, and was still in the third grade. He had repeated the first grade twice, the second grade once, and would soon learn that he would need to stay back yet again before advancing to the fourth grade. Rejected from the home where he had never felt at home, Solomon went instead to live with his aging grandmother—Solomon’s great grandmother, and one of the only women who still truly cared for him. After she passed away just two years later, Solomon’s grandfather invited him back home again—back to reside in inferiority—but it was only three months before this man, too, fell sick and died.

Throughout these childhood years, Solomon had continued to visit his mother periodically. Although he knew that she had often used his wide community appeal for her own private gain, he nevertheless loved her deeply. “Because she’s my mom.” And so it rocked him when he was called out of class at school one morning to learn that she had fallen very sick; he must come quickly. It was TB. Her bar job had finally caught up with her, and she had contracted HIV, a virus that at the time (1997) was still widely regarded as a divine scourge for sinful life and meant an inescapable death sentence to most of sub-Saharan Africa’s rapidly growing infected population.

For the next two years as she slowly lost her prolonged battle with death, Solomon was her primary and often sole caretaker. Only Solomon would carry her mattress across town to his step-grandmother’s home, risking personal humiliation through association with the skeletal sex worker. Only Solomon would eat off her plate; only he would drink from her cup. Only Solomon would touch her. Only the thirteen-year old boy would bring her to the city’s charity hospital. And through it all, he would cry, confused.

His father, too, had died, Solomon had learned. For years the man had repeatedly rejected Solomon, had claimed he had no son, feeding lies to his wife and daughter. Only the man’s father—Solomon’s paternal grandfather—held onto the truth, ashamed at his son. Yet this grandfather’s efforts to reunite the two proved futile. In thirteen years, Solomon had seen his father only once, and at that time he had been rejected face-to-face. Solomon was left alone. His closest friends continued to be his own tears.

*****

Somehow, throughout all this, Solomon has continued to hold his faith, and continues to feel moments of Providence amidst a life disproportionally burdened by challenges. It was in one such moment—at a bank in Gondar one morning just a couple months after his mother’s death—that Solomon met Sandy. Theirs was an unlikely friendship to be forged. Thirteen-year-old Solomon was still in the third grade, and could speak only minimal English. Sandy was an elderly ophthalmologist from the UK who was working at Gondar University. Solomon seemingly had no future; Sandy would soon found the internationally reputed Gondar Ethiopia Eye Surgery charity. Solomon had come to the bank to deposit a paltry sum; Sandy had come to withdraw enough to buy a car for the hospital.

Their interaction that day was limited, but it planted a seed that would ultimately transform Solomon’s life. Looking at the young Ethiopian orphan’s bag of homemade bracelets and necklaces, the esteemed British physician bought one. They exchanged simple phrases. Sandy trusted his belongings to the young boy as he went to the counter. Solomon watched them as if they were his own. The two left together, exchanged a photo, and then nearly as soon as it began, the interaction was over.

Solomon wouldn’t see Sandy for another three months, and when he did, it was because Sandy had sought him out. He wanted to help the young bracelet maker. With the help of a hospital translator Sandy learned of Solomon’s struggles with Zelalem and his unloving step-grandmother, and decided to pay for the boy’s rent, furnishing, and food so that he could live alone as he had so long desired.

Although Sandy would return frequently to the UK and only return to Gondar for short intervals, he would always make sure Solomon had sufficient means even in his absence. He would encourage the boy to work hard in school. He would push the boy’s English. Over the next six years, he would become for Solomon the father that he never had.

*****

Now advanced in years, Sandy has since ceased returning to Ethiopia, but not without first permanently impacting the life of one orphan in Gondar. It has been another six years since Solomon moved from Gondar to Addis Ababa, joining the ranks of scores of thousands who migrate each year to the nation’s capital in search of better prospects at employment or education. When he landed his first job as a cook, Solomon called Sandy to tell him of the good news. The boy cried; the man congratulated him. It was the last time the two spoke.

Solomon remains deeply appreciative for Sandy’s unsolicited generosity. In his humble one-room apartment, a photograph of the elderly physician hangs alongside orthodox crosses and traditional Ethiopian paintings. “I have two fathers,” Solomon tells me. “First is God, then comes Sandy.” For five nights, I stayed with Solomon in that simple apartment—with its outdoor bucket sink and pit latrine—sharing stories with him as I continued my daily research work at Addis Ababa’s nearby Black Lion Hospital. In Addis Ababa’s cobblestone back alleys, it became my own home, the neighbors became my own, the store vendors no longer surprised to see me. Solomon had taken me under his wing, becoming my close friend, and showing me a piece of the generosity he had first been shown over a decade ago.

Although he no longer works at the Taitu Hotel—the paltry 1000 birr ($60) monthly salary too low to save any sizable sum of money—he remains endeared by all his coworkers there. His attitude, now refined by years of tribulations, remains impossibly optimistic. And yet, life continues to throw him challenges. To advance in his profession as a chef—his only hope at saving for the future in Ethiopia’s increasingly inflationary economy—Solomon must first train at a government chef school, but even before that he must have a full ten years of schooling, three more than he was ever able to complete in Gondar. Although he has no lack of determination and perseverance to finish such schooling, he lacks the savings to weather three years of rent and food with only partial employment during this time. And so for Solomon, the future remains uncertain.

It was a sad when I left Solomon, as I headed onward from Addis Ababa toward Nairobi, leaving him to his daily job search. Sad for me to leave so many friends I had made in my stay there, and sad to leave so many stories unchanged. I admired Sandy for the impact he had made on Solomon, and hoped dearly this was not the end of Solomon’s story. Together, we are waiting, hoping, praying for Part 3.

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