When hopelessness turned to a glorious end.
Zinabua 10, is a grade one student living in southern Ethiopia, in a small town named Shanto, in Wolayta zone . In a family having four children, Zinabua is the second child to her parents. She joined SHAPEthiopia’s Shanto Area Child and Youth Development Program three years ago .As most children in rural Ethiopia she was raised in an impoverished family whose father has congenital dumbness and her mother is a house wife with no income.Her father strives to feed his children by an income from labor work (offering transport service by a hand driven cart) and her mother raise four children with no means of income of her own. So that, with SHAPEthiopia’s principle of “one child from a family”, Zinabua joined the program due to the overwhelming poverty of her parents. Sadly, on the mid of March, one Sunday morning when she and her parents went church something bad happened to this poor family, their house caught with fire and suddenly and it turned to ash.
It was a very heartbreaking moment to Zinabua’s family that extinguished the flame of hope they had in life, to see their house and everything in it burned to the ground. When the family returned home from a Sunday morning church service their house with 25 corrugated Iron sheets which was built by the donation of the church was not in its former place and condition, there was only a smoke that com from a demolished house. As a result Zinabua and her parent became desperate and felt deep hopelessness. They all shocked, the disable father fall down without words, mother went crying saying “where can we rest, where would we go …this is the end of our life.”
According to Ato Zewde Zaza, the Shanto area program coordinator, the plot of land on which the house was built was given by an old good lady who had adopted Zinabua’s father when he was a small boy. It was in the middle of this hopelessness that SHAPEthiopia was informed about the accident and its intensity .
Thanks to the immediate response of our supporters, receiving the report of the accident, SHAPEthiopia didn’t kept silent and respond immediately with positive action by restoring the burned house .Not only that, SHAPEthiopia made the psychological treatment in order heal the broken hearts of these family members. Consequently, SHAPEthiopia constructed a new house with a roof of 42 corrugated Iron sheets by raising more than 2000 USD (56,371.80 ETB) from our supporters from Partners With Ethiopia, with in less than a two week time.
The gloomy and disgraced face of Zinabua and her parents turned bright, hopeful, cheerful and smiling when they see a new house built by their supporters , on the same plot of land.
Last March a team of visitors from Partners with Ethiopia led by the president Ingrid Olson marched to this part of the region to visit Zinabua and her family and the newly built house with their support. The love, respect and warm welcome these family showed to our supporters during the visit was extraordinarily amazing. Receiving her gifts from her sponsor Noel Weaver, Zinabua said “Thank you!!’’ in the local language with a big smile on her face.
Showing his hands as means to nonverbal communication (gesture),Zinabua’s father expressed his feeling by showing joyful smiling face with involuntary tears on eyes at his maxim of happiness. Zinabua’s mother said” SHAPEthiopia not only restored our burned house, but also our hope of living, next to God, and we have no words except saying God bless you.” Added hermother, “Losing hope is losing life, SHAPEthiopia and its supporters restored our hope and dignity, I havebecome full of happiness and courage and so the new house rejuvenates our hope and dream”
