Ministry to survivors

To assist Ethiopian widows and orphans who are victims of genocide, HIV/AIDS and poverty, First Presbyterian Church in Spokane has formed the Anuak Meer Ministry.

Mary Frankhauser, a church member who helped organize the ministry, says they have moved slowly, working with organizations such as Partners in Africa, which will offer sponsorships so children can receive family-based care, educational support, Christian nurture, counseling and medical care.

The indigenous Anuak people have been the subject of military oppression by the Ethopian government. The killings of more than 400 Anuak men by uniformed soldiers on Dec. 13, 2003, led to a placement on the emergency list of the worldwide Genocide Watch organization.

Ariet Oman and Alock Nyigow, two women among several Anuak who have come to Spokane, say part of healing from the massacre will come from keeping children with their mothers or placing them in families where they can ask questions and talk about what happened to their parents.

The Anuak Meer Ministry (meer means “love” in Anuak) hopes to provide scholarships and small business microfinance loans for women to make traditional baskets out of local grasses.

Its work complements that of Anuak Baare Hope, a Spokane-based nonprofit relief organization that is building an orphanage.

Oman and Nyigow formed the ministry with Frankhauser, Carolyn Holmes and about 20 others at First Presbyterian.

Nyigow; Karlene Arguinchona, a physician; Debbie Stimpson, a physician’s assistant trained in HIV and AIDS care; and Holmes and her physician-husband, Ed, will visit the Gambella region of Ethiopia next month. In preparation, Ed Holmes attended a conference on microfinance.

“We can’t change what happened, but we can try to prevent it from happening again,” says Carolyn Holmes, who tried to go to Gambella in 2005 but couldn’t because of violence and a disputed election there.

First Presbyterian sponsored the Anuak when they arrived in Spokane as refugees in the 1990s.

“Over the years, our church has come to know (them) and to care about what was happening to the people, particularly since the genocide,” Frankhauser says.

Nyigow came to Florida in 1996, then to Spokane in 1997. She left Ethiopia in 1993 after her husband, who worked with the governor of Gambella, was killed in 1991.

She works at the Sacred Heart Medical Center laundry and as a caregiver at Harbor Glen.

Knowing what it is to be widowed, Nyigow says, “I know God sent me here to help. Now I need to go back there to help my people.”

In 2004, she and Holmes went to Addis Ababa to visit her parents. There, they formed a partnership with church leaders to bring baskets woven by Gambella women to the United States to sell, so the women can earn a living.

“At home, women do not have a voice. As a U.S. citizen, I have a responsibility to speak,” Nyigow says.

“It’s good God sent me away so people here can hear what is happening and how they can help the widows and children.”

Oman came to Spokane in 1989, having left Ethiopia in 1986. She, too, has gained confidence to speak out.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in business at Eastern Washington University and works at Bank of America and the Waterford retirement residence.

Because Oman’s mother died in childbirth and no one wanted to take care of the baby, she was almost buried alive with her mother.

“I was told later that as they put gravel and dirt in the grave, a woman grabbed me and ran to Pokwo, the Village of Life, and gave me to Marie Lusted, a Presbyterian missionary and nurse,” Oman says.

“Marie gave me to a woman whose five babies died at birth,” she says.

“I went to school in a culture that does not encourage women to go to school. Most drop out in grade school and marry.”

After high school, she went into business making local wine, hoping to save gold to go to college. Eventually she fled Ethiopia for Sudan, where she was in the bush for four months, until she came to the United States.

“When I first arrived, I was shy and didn’t speak much. I knew little English,” Oman says. “I came to Spokane thinking I was going to Minnesota, where most Anuak were resettled.”

She completed studies at the Adult Education Center. The first of her daughters, Gilo Taka, 16, was born on her last day of class. Her second, Abang Taka, is 13.

Oman hopes to be a bridge between women in Gambella and Spokane.

“I hope to help Anuak women know what the outside world has to offer and urge them to forgive so they are not bitter toward those who killed their fathers, husbands and brothers,” she says. “Our ministry is about peace and love.”

The logo for the Anuak Meer Ministry is hands together in prayer, with fingers and thumbs touching to form a heart.

“We are ‘nyiwara,’ daughters of the same Father – children of God regardless of our shape, color, height or different educational or social status,” says Oman.

In that spirit, the ministry’s brochure quotes Psalm 146:9, saying God “protects the foreigners among us, cares for the orphans and widows, and frustrates the plans of the wicked.”