Orphaned: One Woman's Mission to Save Africa's AIDS Children

When Haregewoin Teferra's husband and twenty-three-year-old daughter died within a few years of each other, her middle-class life in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was shattered. Bereft and with little to live for, Haregewoin became a recluse. Her self-imposed exile was interrupted when a priest delivered first one, then another, orphaned child into her care. To everyone's surprise, the children thrived, and so did Haregewoin. As word spread, children of all ages began to appear at the door of her modest, tin-walled home—an infant handed over by his dying mother, an orphaned brother and sister whose grandfather was too poor to feed them, a baby left on the doorstep. Haregewoin's home became known as a rare place where AIDS-stricken parents and grieving families could safely leave their children. Soon Haregewoin was caring for sixty children, running an unofficial orphanage and day school, and learning firsthand about her country's and her continent's greatest crisis—the AIDS pandemic that is leaving millions of children without parents to care for them. 'There Is No Me Without You' is the story of Haregewoin and her struggle, but also of the triumph of saved lives and the renewed happiness of children welcomed by adoptive parents in Ethiopia, America, and around the world. It is the story of what one human being can do in a time of crisis. And at heart, it is a book about children and parents, wherever they may be, however they may find each other.