Friday, May 02, 2003

Anna Anna Fabulous Anna

No, not Anna Nicole Smith, Anna my best friend.
Not only did she find time to throw my party, she's on her way back to Ethiopia to do more charitable work.
She's not even affiliated with a formal charity, she just flies over there and looks around and starts helping however she can.
In just a few years she's become buddy buddy with the Prime Minister, some major tribal chiefs, cabinet ministers and other Addis Ababa Bigwigs. When she sends out mass e-mails, I had to learn not to reply to the whole list because even I know it's tasteless to use the fuck word around the prime fucking minister of a country.
So far she's set up the Addis Ababa medical school with two computer labs that link the doctors there to global medical information that will save untold lives, she's established a training program for social workers, started up AIDS education program, and drug and alcohol treatment programs.
She also helped out an entire laid-off staff of 22 convention center employees by funding a restaurant they now own and operate quite successfully.
When 22 people in Ethiopia have jobs, their income helps support maybe 220 more people in their families who would otherwise starve to death. And I mean that literally.

She's in the baby steps of starting a Blog that I hope will be about her work in Ethie and the other cool stuff she gets into.
Melly has offered to help her install all the extra bells and whistles we all like to have, stuff like comments, counters, turn signals and shiny bright Bloggy doodads.
Melly, how's that going?
Once she gets set up, I will make a big to-do about it so you guys can get to know her.

After that cowboy/total stranger at my birthday party pressed a ten dollar bill into my hand, someone at the table said, "Now you have to pay it forward."
Anna kind of exemplifies that.
Sure, she drives a Benz, but it does have a crudely silk screened "I heart Ethiopia" bumper sticker on the back. She also has a babyseat in the back seat to transport Andrei, the little boy she and her husband Brad adopted from an orphanage in Romania.
She may be wearing Prada shoes, but that's Ethiopian mud and cow shit on the soles of them.
She and Brad make a lot of dough, but they use most of it for the good of people all over the world. Brad's just as righteous as she is.
She walks it but doesn't talk it much. That's the best part.
Too bad she cheats like a mangy dog in Scrabble, otherwise she'd be a fucking saint.

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