‘I Wanted to Cry’ : Students Find Hope, Despair in Ethiopia

“I wanted to cry. Just cry, cry. But what would that help?” Sabrina Moore said Friday morning after returning to Los Angeles from a visit to an Ethiopian refugee camp.

Moore, student body president at Gardena High School, and Oliver Benjamin, her counterpart at North Hollywood High School, painted a picture of hope in the midst of despair as they described camps they saw on the journey, made as part of a Los Angeles Unified School District fund-raising drive for Ethiopian famine victims.

“People were suffering, and they were obviously in pain,” Benjamin, 17, said. “You could see their diseases, and they were starving. But there was hope. . . . They have the basic human desire to live, and we were helping them achieve that.”

Moore, 18, agreed that she saw some “hope and happiness,” even in the midst of the greatest suffering she had ever witnessed.

‘They Had Each Other’

“Four- and 5-year-old little kids would be taking care of 1- and 2-year-old little kids,” she said. “They didn’t have much, but they had each other.”

Moore also recalled an orphan boy who enjoyed following them around the camp.

“He had no parents, no home, nothing,” Moore said. “But he was happy.”

The most heartbreaking thing, she said, was seeing “a tiny baby that was sick, dying of pneumonia.”

Moore and Benjamin--who spent three days in Ethiopia--were accompanied on their journey by Rita D. Walters, a member of the Los Angeles Board of Education, who said that corporate sponsors, not the fund-raising drive, covered the expenses of the trip.

The three returned to Los Angeles on Thursday evening.

The fund-raising drive was prompted by a flood of calls to district offices last month from viewers of a television report about New York students who raised $250,000 to send grain to Ethiopia. That program ended with a challenge to other school districts to match the effort.

Despite having already completed a drive in February that raised $120,000 for famine victims in 14 African countries, the Los Angeles district accepted the challenge and launched the second effort. The aim is to raise at least another $250,000 for medical aid, which will be funneled through Interaction, an umbrella organization for African relief.

Students and teachers at each of Los Angeles’ 644 public schools have determined their own activities, ranging from noon dances to bake sales. District staff organized their own fund raising, and the public has been invited to send contributions to: L.A. Students for Ethiopian Aid, PO Box 875679, Terminal Annex, Los Angeles, Calif. 90087.

At Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, students contributed $1 each for 850 helium-filled balloons, which they released with attached cards describing famine areas in Africa and requesting that finders mail a dollar to the school.

The balloons were launched last Tuesday--the same day that Moore, Benjamin and Walters were at the refugee camps half a world away. By Friday afternoon, $19 had been received from finders of the balloons, according to Louvenia Jenkins, principal of the school.

A districtwide tally of funds raised is not expected until early June.

Africa Study

In connection with the drive, the district distributed materials suggesting how classes ranging from social science to music, or even science and math, could address African subjects.

Nothing, however, matches direct experience, Moore and Benjamin agreed.

“Five years of schooling couldn’t have taught us what we learned in three days,” Moore said.

The student leaders said they will share their experiences in Ethiopia with all who care to listen.

‘We Can Educate’

“We can educate the students,” Benjamin said. “A lot of students care, but a lot are wrapped up in their own teen-age problems. . . . We did go over there, and we’re bringing back a report. And it helps tie the students to the situation.”

Moore said she believed that their peers “will probably learn more from other students, as opposed to news documentaries or things like that.”

“If any school wants us to come and tell about our trip, we’ll be happy to go,” she said.