There is No Me without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children

by Melissa Fay Greene (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $11.40

  When her daughter died while giving birth, Haregewoin sank into a deep, reclusive depression, reatreating from the world and involving herself only in the church. But when the priests brought her two children, AIDS orphans, she took them in, and found a new reason to live as she watched them grow strong, happy and healthy. This was only the beginning. As the AIDS crisis grew, more orphans arrived at the doors of Haregewoin's compound: dying parents brought emaciated children to her, begging for her help. Against common sense, against the limits of her bank account and bedrooms, she did not refuse. In the face of the brutal statistics of the deepening AIDS crisis, Haregewoin expanded her compound, started a scholld and daycare system and a shelter for sick mothers.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $4.31

  In a dusty tin-walled compound on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a middle-class woman named Haregewoin Teferra suffered back-to-back losses: first her husband died of a heart attack; then her beloved 23-year-old daughter was consumed by an unnamed sickness. In grief, Haregewoin turned to the church and asked to be taken into seclusion. Instead of allowing the bereft woman to leave the world, the church presented her with two teenage orphans and asked her to house them. Over the startled protests of her friends and family, Haregewoin said yes. Once she opened her gate to the first two children, she never really managed to close it again. Her compound became known as a haven: here was a woman who did not run away from HIV-positive individuals and AIDS-orphaned children. From across the country, children were brought to Haregewoin on foot, by bus, or by donkey cart. There are a million AIDS orphans in Ethiopia; There is No Me Without You shares the remarkable stories of a few of them, through the eyes of an author whose own life was altered while researching Haregowin's story.