When I was in Ethiopia, there were lots of moment where I wished I had my camera but it wasn't convenient or seemed somehow disrespectful. I came home with many memories in my head that didn't get onto film, and frankly, had some regret that I wasn't braver with my camera.

This week while researching the Sheraton hotel, I stumbled across this mini-essay: Outside the Sheraton. There are several other essays on the site featuring Ethiopia, so you may enjoy checking more of the site out.

This link explains how the author came up with this writing idea. I found it very powerful, and was immediately flooded with memories of the moments in Ethiopia that I wished I had caught on film.

I've decided to make "Unphotographable" a regular Friday morning feature here and have invited other adoptionblogs.com writers to do so as well. So, this morning, here is my first Unphotographable.

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Beggar

This is a picture I did not take of a beggar squatting in rags on a dusty corner of a busy street where I was walking in Addis, who looked 80 but may have been only 49, with hands upstretched pleadingly, gnarled and arthritic and shockingly missing the middle three fingers of each hand, which sad fact he seemed to capitalize on by waving the misshapen stubs high like flags while begging alms and listening alertly to sounds, so he could turn his grizzled grey head and fix his milky cataract-ridden gaze on any passerby, those unseeing eyes adding to the pity I already felt, pity mixed with an unreasonable clutching fear, fear that if I came close enough to drop a few birr into his ragged lap, he might reach out and snatch at me with those pitiful sad hands and pull me down with him, and so I simply walked on.