Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Dawitt is a street boy in Addis. Jim and Marion have known him for a few years and we were introduced one afternoon. For the next couple of weeks we spent some time with him. We would often meet him for lunch or breakfast at a cafe near to where he stayed in the city. It was a way for him to break up his day and get some food.

We talked to him a bit about what it’s like to live on the streets. The first thing he mentioned was how boring it was. This really surprised me. Admittedly, I hadn’t really put a lot of thought into street life, but one word I wouldn’t have come up with was boring. Dawitt said he would spend the majority of his day just sitting around wondering where he could find some food or a place to sleep.

He was having some problems with his health. He needed to have an operation and through a lot of luck Jim and Marion were able to set it up for him. For a few days after the surgery we had him in a guesthouse, met with him everyday and were really getting to know and like him.

We learned that he hadn’t always lived on the street. He went to university for a couple of years in chemical engineering before he ran into some problems. He ended up getting kicked out of the university. After some more problems with his family he was forced to move out of his mother’s house and onto the streets. That’s where he’s been for the majority of the last four or five years; he doesn’t really remember.

Dawitt, as most street boys, whenever he could got his hands on it he would use marijuana and chat. He said it was a way for him to forget his problems and situation; a way for him to turn off. He was making some efforts to quit now that he was living the high life – a bed and some dinner – but was still having trouble kicking old habits.

When we finally were able to set up our trip from Addis to Yabello we asked Dawitt if he would like to join us. He immediately jumped at the opportunity. He said he was excited to have something different to do everyday and people he trusted to share the experience with. We warned him he would have to quit marijuana and chat in order to come with us but he was thrilled to be a part of it.

He spent the night before we left with his mother to let her know about the changes he had been making and where he would be going. We picked him up en route and he joined our van for the trip south. The trip would take a total of about thirteen hours and after about five we started to notice a change in Dawitt.

We stopped in Hawassa for lunch and then again in Deella for a mid afternoon break when Dawitt started to become a little antsy. We chalked a lot of it up to the stress of the surgery, the change and the drive, that and a cigarette withdrawal. It wasn’t until later that we remembered him saying that he thought someone had been following us from the restaurant in Hawassa to the coffee shop 300km away.

When we finally arrived in Yabello and went to check into our hotel Dawitt became a new person. The stress of the change got to him and he decided he couldn’t handle it anymore. He no longer wanted to stay with us and was in quite a rush to get back to Addis. He figured it was easier to choose the life he knew than the one he didn’t, even if that life was on the streets as opposed to a warm bed.

He spent the night in Yabello wandering the streets until the bus left in the morning. It broke my heart to watch him walk away. He no longer seemed like he lived on the street, in fact, he never seemed like he fit in to that life. We haven’t seen him again since that night, we confirmed that he did get on the bus back to the city, but after that there’s no way of tracing him. This is a guy we had spent almost every day with for the past week and now we have no idea if he’s still alive.

I really learned a lesson helping Dawitt. We had found him a place to live, given him some of our old clothes, fed him and had been his friend for a couple of weeks. When we met him he only owned four things, the pants, shirt and shoes he was wearing and a bible he carried around with him. For us, the life that we offered him to come join us in Yabello seemed like a no brainer of a choice. Who would ever choose to live on the streets given the option, but it’s not as simple as that. I learned that in the end even though I think it’s better doesn’t mean it works for him and ultimately it’s his choice.