injera & roaches

I cringe involuntarily when cockroaches play tightrope walking over the bowl of injera batter and run gracefully around the edge of my glass. My skin crawls against my will. The women around me have long ago gotten used to these creatures and view them as minor pests, compared with the rats which come by night. Thankfully, the rats are now history. My husband climbed a chair balanced on a board teetering over the crooked stairwell. From there he suspended himself in the roofing materials to put in screening which blocked out all furry and flying beasties. He was also able to fix the faucet, cutting the water bill by 90%, and fix electrical features that had not been used in eight years. But Tsahai's ceiling hangs low from where water puddles and runs in when it rains. the window is one she picked out of the trash to fill the opening in the wall. It does not fit, so she stuffs rags in the gaps when the weather changes. Her 8 x 10 room is bigger than those of the other tenants, who view her as the house mama. Now that my husband fixed her door, she can lock it by night when the women on the bottom floor turn their rooms into brothels and drunken customers try to break in to rooms everywhere in the building.

Tsahai shows her thanks with the injera she is serving us. She made a sauce of lentils and peas, pureed smooth and made red hot with pepper. Fresh on the injera, she offers it to us and is pleased that we know how to eat it right, with our fingers. She really has little else. Caught between two worlds, she is without documents. She can not stay here, she can not go home to a country that no longer exists, and she can not leave for asylum anywhere else. Because she is just an old woman with no baby, she is not an emergency, so she has waited in this hovel for eight years.

Yesterday I wept with Tishmig. Her husband and children are in jail. Yes, in jail! For the crime of misunderstanding a document. Tishmig had to flee with their third child, a baby born prematurely, else she would be there too. Thankfully our network informed us and we placed her in one of our safe houses. Although she and the other women like Tsahai now have work in our projects, there is no moving the powers that be to provide them with justice. Last week Tishmig's husband had kidney problems and asked the guard for permission to not have to clean the bathrooms, due to pain. He was punished by being locked up and forbidden to see daylight for two weeks. His little girl, who has asthma, needs to get out and have fresh air each day, but she is too scard to leave the cell without her daddy.

Last week Delores was with us. She was passing through. Fresh in from Dubai, she has fled war which negated room in the new country for her tribe. Because she is a Christian she must choose to declare herself Muslim and do the obligatory military duty, which for women means to serve as a military prostitute. Or she must leave. As another refugee told us, leaving is the only option, but it means fleeing through Sudan and crossing a valley of quicksand by night where thousands have perished. It means paying all you have to get in a small boat and be dropped by cover of night off the coast of what you hope is Europe. But because you are ignorant, you soon find you have only been moved deeper into the Muslim world and remain a victim. Delores left this week to try a new boat. Like another woman said, in this world she has no address anymore. All her family is scattered and she can never hope to find any of them again.

I dip my injera in hot sauce meditatively. The roaches have retreated into the shadows. The warm cola in my glass will kill the bits they left behind. Meanwhile, Tshahai is humming a haunting worship song with that deep resonance that comes from the soul. Truly, blessed are those who turn the valley of suffering into a place of springs watered with their tears.