Seattle woman's tenacity builds clinic for poor in Ethiopia

A lot of people would have given up by now.

Many would have surrendered to the hassles of coordinating a project 11 time zones from home, or been choked by the red tape of dealing with a foreign government.

Still others would have succumbed to the difficulty of raising money for something most donors will never see.

But Selamawit Kifle, a South Seattle woman who grew up in Ethiopia, does not give up.

And because she does not, a clinic is rising from the red clay soil of her native land. Later this year, some of the poorest residents in one of the world's poorest countries may be receiving treatment for malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, complications of HIV/AIDS and other ailments.

"When I started, I had no idea what it would take," said Kifle. "I just knew I had to help."

Already, 63 Ethiopian orphans are receiving the basic necessities of life, along with school supplies and a chance at a better future, thanks to donors — nearly all in the Seattle area — who give $30 a month to sponsor a child through the Blue Nile Children's Organization, which Kifle created in 2001.

"She is a very quiet, unassuming woman, but she is just a lion in terms of what she can accomplish. It's amazing," said Deacon Mary Shehane of St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, which made Blue Nile one of its "Church in the World Ministries." Next month, St. Mark's will host a dinner and auction for the group; a similar event last year raised $20,000 toward the clinic construction.

The desperately poor Ethiopia which Kifle, 48, sees on her twice-yearly trips these days is not the country she remembers from childhood, when her upper-middle-class family had homes and property under Emperor Haile Selassie.

But a Marxist military regime that toppled Selassie in 1974 confiscated privately held property, including her family's. In subsequent years, thousands of people were killed or simply disappeared, including a teenage brother and sister of Kifle's. "The government took them away and we never saw them again."

Kifle left Ethiopia in 1982 at age 22, following an older sister first to Germany and then to the United States.

Thirteen years later, Kifle, who then operated an import-export company, made her first trip back to Ethiopia, and was heartbroken by the plight of the country's children.

"When you walk down the street, they follow you, begging for bread. If you go out early in the morning to church, you see them sleeping outside, piling up with each other to be warm," she said. "I know I can't help all of them, but if I can help even 100 kids, I'll know I've done something."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than 1 million children in Ethiopia alone have been orphaned by the AIDS epidemic sweeping through sub-Saharan Africa, and that total is expected to rise.

Setback alters goal

Kifle, with a growing core of supporters, proposed to create an orphan village in Bahir Dar in northwest Ethiopia. The local government granted the group five acres of land in 2001, and assigned it responsibility for 28 orphans.

Wherever they could find an audience, Kifle and her backers spoke of their dream to house up to 150 children in family-style cottages, with a school, a clinic and a farm that eventually could earn most its revenue through selling crops and goods produced there.

The entire project would cost about $1 million, but a first phase, they figured, could be done for about $250,000.

And that's where reality stepped in. Although Blue Nile gradually increased its number of sponsors, allowing it to assist more orphans, it was unable to raise the additional funds needed to keep the village project alive.

"We tried so hard and so long, but we just couldn't get the money," said Kifle. In 2004, with Blue Nile unable to make sufficient progress, the government took the land back, though Blue Nile continues to sponsor the children.

Despite the setback, Kifle persisted, trusting that God has a reason for everything, and buoyed by the words of a friend who reminded her, "You only fail if you stop trying."

She draws encouragement from the fact that eight of the group's sponsored children have made it into college or technical school, and one has graduated from nursing school. Ultimately, Kifle said, Ethiopia's best hope for the future lies in its next generation, not in dependence on outsiders.

In 2005, a Blue Nile board member and one of its first proponents, Richard Oslund of Seattle, died, leaving the organization $47,000 in his will.

With the orphan village still out of reach, Blue Nile backers chose a more realistic project, construction of a clinic in Ethiopia's capitol, Addis Ababa, which will be named in Oslund's honor.

Plans call for the 3,550-square-foot clinic, which will cost about $75,000 to build, to be staffed by an Ethiopian physician and two assistants, whose work would be supplemented by doctors and other health-care workers visiting from the U.S.

Maegan Ashworth, a Blue Nile project coordinator, is currently recruiting up to 15 medical professionals and trainees for a 10-day mission in November.

Kifle, who now operates a service in Seattle sending health-care and chore-service workers to people's homes, anticipates that about a third of the Ethiopia clinic's patients will be able to pay for medical services, helping subsidize the care of the less fortunate.

Admittedly, the clinic, which will serve patients of all ages, is a smaller project than Kifle originally conceived, but it's desperately needed, she said, in a country with one physician for 100,000 residents.

A captivating smile

Most important, it is actually happening. "It's coming out of the ground like a mushroom. It's wonderful to see," said David Hornett, the Blue Nile board member directing the project.

Hornett, a contractor from the Vancouver, B.C. area, was in Ethiopia last month as trenches for the clinic's foundation were filled with rocks and mortar. He keeps in touch via e-mail with an African foreman on the job.

It was a chance encounter outside an African airport in 2004 led to Hornett's volunteer work with Blue Nile. At the time, he was backpacking through Africa on his own, making his first visit to Ethiopia.

At the Bahir Dar airport, Hornett was boarding a hotel van when he noticed a woman who was catching the same van loading package after package into the vehicle.

"I had never seen anyone with so much stuff in my life," said Hornett. The woman was Kifle, taking school supplies and gifts to Blue Nile's sponsored children. On the ride to town, she told him about Blue Nile and invited him to stop by its office the following day and help hand out the gifts.

He went, largely out of curiosity. But as the session broke up, a young girl with polio, who needed the help of two friends just to walk, flashed him a smile he'll never forget.

"To see that she could smile, while so many of us in the Western world find more things to grimace about every day, that did it for me," said Hornett. "I knew I had to get involved."

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com