I am 21 years old, and, thanks be to God, I am now doing my third-year medical course at the Hayat Medical College in Addis Ababa.

This is only possible due to the financial help Fr Mark Montebello is sending me regularly from Malta.

My dream to be a physician has grown with me since my childhood. My mother’s family was Muslim. When she was just over 15 years old she married my father, who was Christian. Then my mother adopted Christianity. This was a great disappointment for my mother’s parents, who forced her to leave their village with her husband forever. My father was a teacher. However, due to some unknown reason, my parents were not in a position to live together for long. They divorced when I was just three. My mother had no other choice but to return to her family’s house. But my grandparents refused her. My mother and I spent the next three years in very harsh conditions, with no food or shelter. We just moved from one place to another.

In the meantime my mother contracted malaria and died in hospital. Though I was only six years old, I was the only one to care for her. For want of a better place, after her death I spent the next nine years living at the hospital. Then I went to live close to a Catholic mission, and my sustainment was paid for by Fr George Grima of Gozo. That’s when, after a few years, I met Fr Mark, who, for the last three years, has paid for my education from donations he receives.

Understandably, my dream to become a doctor began while living at the hospital. Here the majority of the patients were unable to get medicines or doctors. Most of them died from simple curable diseases.

I have seen mothers and fathers die of HIV. I have seen innumerable infants become orphaned. On their faces I saw the same terrible bewilderment I had gone through. Only God knows what the babies could have become in the world. The youths could have become adults who might have challenged Africa’s poverty or the lack of wealth and food distribution in the world.

I am one of the lucky few. I want to become a doctor to reduce the senseless dying and the hopelessness of so many helpless people.

Fr George and Fr Mark have saved me. But now prices in Ethiopia are rising impossibly fast: the house rent, the food, transport... in a few months everything has more than doubled. My worst fear is that I will be forced to stop my studies.

Anyone who wants may contact Fr Mark at the Dominican Priory, St Monica Street, Pietà PTA 3111. By continuing my studies I will be helping so many other people with my future humble services.

Finally, I have no words to thank all those who came into my life to fulfil my dreams.