By CASEY NEILL
HAFTU Strintzos used to go looking for gold to buy school supplies.
Now the Haileybury Keysborough student and his classmates are raising money to supply water to his former school in Tigray, Ethiopia.
“I really am proud. I didn’t imagine this would happen,” he said.
The 14-year-old arrived in Australia about two years ago after aid worker Maria Strintzos adopted him in 2010. He lost both his parents when he was just five years old.
“It was very different for me. I was really just looking around all the time, very fascinated by everything,” he said.
“We used to sleep on the floor, normally on animal skin.
“We didn’t have all the necessary equipment for school. I used to go looking for gold in order to buy my necessary equipment for school. My pen or book. We didn’t have desks.”
Haftu marvelled at television.
“I thought ‘how could the people fit in this small box?’,” he said.
“I thought they were actually real people.”
“Now they’ve started spreading around (Ethiopia). Electricity is going around the villages.”
He’s made return trips to his village but feels “really emotional to go back there and see the people like that”.
So Haftu and Maria have been sharing their stories in Haileybury classrooms.
“They’re all going to play a dynamic role in transforming the lives of nearly 400 children that go to Haftu’s school back in the village,” Maria said.
“Most schools there, they don’t have latrines and they don’t have water sources.
“So they go to school with nothing to drink and nothing to eat for most of the day, so the learning environment’s very difficult.”
So fund-raising will support a hand-dug well, which Maria hopes will lead to a vegie garden and nutrition and hygiene classes.
“Haftu is living testimony of social justice come good,” she said.
“It makes it more personal and it helps the children connect with the issues when they see a student from their own school that’s gone through this, and it’s not just make-believe.”
