The Orphan - A Portrait of Courage
by Paul Rice
Category: Drama

Two small Ethiopian sisters were orphaned when their father took the family supposedly away from their home and through a dense forest to his parents home where they would be more able to eat there because it was in an area where the massive drought had not entered. Halfway through the forest, the family stopped to rest and the mother needed to breast feed the younger daughter Yodit while the elder child Meme foraged for berries in the area. Their father, looking at his family and their thinning condition, became overcome with depression and slipping a thin bladed knife from out of his sleeve, he approached his wife from behind and then plunged the knife into her chest just below where the child was nursing. Surprised, she looked up at him with a questioning pain, then fell back onto the hardened earth and the small child fell to her side. He ran off into the forest just as the older child viewed her mother on the ground and ran to her to see just what had happened to her. They spent the night lying on her stiffening body and crying. The next morning they were awakened by the loud grunting coming from a large Boar that had smelled their mother's blood and was now approaching them in a very threatening way.That same morning, two hunters from out of Addis Ababa, were on a hunting trip to try and find enough food from their hunt to last their families through the long winter months. When they heard the Boar's loud grunting, they just knew that he was what they were looking for. When they approached the clearing where the lifeless body and two small children were, they couldn't believe their eyes. The large Boar was chasing the children round and round the lifeless body trying to catch and kill them. Instantly, the two hunters drew their sharp spears and threw them with determined accuracy towards the charging Boar. Both spears hit their determined mark and the Boar dropped to the ground dead ! The two mall children, seeing the hunters approaching them in the clearing, ran to them and the two men picked up each one and began comforting them in their big strong arms. Taking them down to a nearby creek, they gave them drinks of the refreshing water, wasked their mother's blod from off of each one and then opened their lunch packets and fed them until they could hold no mote. Then they removed their own warm jackets and wrapped each child into them and took them back into the area where their mothers corpse was. Placing them on a large pile of soft leaves, the men them wrapped their mother's body in a blanket from out of one of their packets, then dug a grave for her in the clearing, placed her gently within the depth of the opening and then began covering her with the soft earth from their labors. They made a crude cross from two branches and then drove it into the ground above her head. Then, placing the large Boars body on a sling they had also fashioned out of two larger twigs, they slit its throat and permitted its blood to drain out to make its carcass somewhat lighter, then secured it to the sling with two cowhide straps. They each took turns carrying the two children and pulling their prized food and trekking off back towards Addis Ababa. Arriving there, they were greeted with loud barking from their dogs and loud screams whenever their wives saw the two small children they were carrying. They made over and over the two beautiful girls as their husbands related all of their experiences with their mothers dead body and their killing of the Boar just in time to save the children. They cared for the girls for several weeks while preparations were being made to take them over to His Majesties Orphanage that was being managed by a Missionary from the United States. Each child grew up there in a wonderful Christian environment until they graduated from the school there. Yodit earned her way performing household chores for different families while Meme worked in a bar, dated and then married a Cuban soldier.