PANAMA - Two communities that one might think would never collide might be Panama, N.Y., and Dahley, Ethiopia.
However, the Baer Family has brought pieces of Ethiopia home with it from Dahley to a small shop in Panama and hopes the people of the area will show their generosity to a people who could desperately use it.
''It is a way for us to bring the sights and the smells and the sounds of Ethiopia back to a rural part of the U.S. and maybe bring a little bit of awareness without being all holier-than-thou,'' said Sally Baer, who along with her husband and children have been in the nation doing volunteer work since May 2009 and just recently returned to the United States - but only for a few months. ''There is another world that is really impoverished out there.''
FINDING A CALLING
In 1994, Tom Baer was living an ''average, all-American life'' as co-owner of T&L Cycle on Fairmount Avenue in Jamestown along with his then-wife, Laurie. That life was turned upside down one September day when Laurie left home for a business trip to Chicago.
''(She) never came back - she was on a commercial aircraft that crashed outside of Pittsburgh,'' Mrs. Baer said. ''Of course, that is going to shake somebody and what their life is.''
Baer started pursuing a life of service to a greater purpose of God at that point, his current wife said. After he started becoming more active in church and later, after he and Sally had purchased a new home together in Blockville, he came to a realization.
''We came in the house one day after work, and he said, 'I think we're supposed to go into full-time service,''' Mrs. Baer said. ''It was one of those moments where everything changed.''
God told the Baers that they needed to get trained and be ready to serve, Mrs. Baer said. They traveled to Kentucky, selling most all of their possessions, and entered a seminary.
They started taking classes and training themselves by trying whatever they could to find out what their calling in life might be.
''We even lived in a camper in Florida and volunteered for a winter,'' Mrs. Baer said. ''We did crazy things - people thought we were crazy.''
Meanwhile, they cross-adopted their children from their previous marriages - Tom's daughter Emily and Sally's son Willson - and adopted two more daughters, Andy from Kazakhstan and Sophie from Ethiopia.
It was when Sally went to Ethiopia in August 2008 to pick Sophie up and have a bonding trip with her that she began to feel the pangs of her calling.
''As soon as I got to Ethiopia, I knew I was going to be back there,'' Mrs. Baer said. ''I thought, 'I know I'm going to be back here. This is home.' It was the weirdest thing.''
When she returned to the United States and told of her experience, Emily said she wanted to experience the country for herself. And when Tom took her over there for a two-month volunteering trip, he had the same feelings about the nation, Mrs. Baer said.
The family had found the location where it was meant to serve its calling - now, all that was left was to figure out how to do it.
'A HUGE STEP UP'
After working on some service projects in the nation through a pair of large foundations, the Baers were taking a rest period in the month of August when they began conversing with a man named Habti. They soon learned that the 43-year-old had been living away from his six children, working odd jobs for sometimes less than a dollar a day, in the effort to simply provide food and shelter for them. And while he had finally saved up enough money to buy a small piece of land, the stipulation was that if he didn't start building upon it soon, it was going to be taken away.
''So we wrote about it on Facebook - so much support has come from Facebook - and somebody made a $20 donation,'' Mrs. Baer said. ''We thought, 'You know what, that's all we need is somebody believing that this guy's house is a worthwhile dream.'''
Within a few days, enough people had believed to drum up $450 for the cause. Baer Essentials, the family's own private effort to raise funds to help the people of Ethiopia, was born.
As they started working on building the first of what they hope will be many ''Habti's Houses'' - a project similar to Habitat For Humanity, as Mrs. Baer described it - the family began getting to know many members of the surrounding community. And as they did, more ideas of how they could help started coming into their heads.
''We'd bring bananas and bread, and we'd cook meals every other week in a little house we had rented,'' Mrs. Baer said. ''It was just hanging out and building relationships with the kids, and we said, 'You know what, we could put an afterschool program in, and start feeding some kids and giving them an international education - what a difference that would make.'''
The Baers met with the local government to discuss the idea and, in a development that was somewhat unexpected, they were not just given permission - they were provided with a parcel of land on which to develop the program.
''It was really stunning,'' Mrs. Baer said. ''There are really big organizations in Ethiopia that are never offered anything like that.''
The program will cost $200 per child per year, providing hot meals, vitamins, food and an international education - ''a huge step up from 99 percent of what Ethiopians are offered,'' Mrs. Baer said.
In addition, the land also provides space for a traditional round mud hut building to be erected for community gatherings, as well as to provide space for a cottage industry for women to bring in some money and create economic development. A third building on the land, Mrs. Baer said, would be half-library, half-health education center. Organizations are bringing books in to build up the library shelves, she said.
''There is no library in Ethiopia except for in the city, so that is an awesome thing,'' she said.
All told, it is an incredible opportunity that is more than the Baers could have dreamed possible when they began their service a year ago - and one that will change many, many lives for the better.
''We just kept saying 'yes' to what was offered to us, and now we have this really fantastic life that we love,'' Mrs. Baer said.
BRINGING ETHIOPIA HOME
While her husband will be returned to Dahley at the end of the month to teach in the afterschool program, Mrs. Baer and the children will be in the area through June. But while she is here, she will not be abandoning her service to the people in Ethiopia.
Six Baers Gift Shoppe will be open at 37 E. Main St. in Panama from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Saturday through May - or until her supply of authentic African scarves, jewelry, bowls and other items is gone. Every dollar that is brought in from the sale of the items will go back into the Baer Essentials community project in Dahley.
''You walk around Ethiopia and there are all these different things,'' Mrs. Baer said. ''Then we just had fun going into these little kiosks and buying this stuff.''
While the selection of colorful, stylish and useful merchandise is intriguing, one of the most intriguing things about the shop is the fact that when it reopens next spring, Mrs. Baer said, many of the same items may not be available.
''The thing that is fun about it is that I can go out into the city of Addis Ababa and say, 'I want to find X, Y and Z' and not be able to find it,'' she said. ''It's never the same - it's like a revolving inventory.''
On top of raising funds through the shop, the Baers are reaching out for financial help for Ethiopia in other ways. Churches have asked them to come and speak, Mrs. Baer said, and sponsorships have been achieved in that manner. The family also will be traveling to the Rochester area on Monday to become official missionaries through an agency - creating more financial accountability for their work, and more opportunities for people to donate.
They are also accepting donations in the form of school supplies, first-aid supplies, children's clothing and shoes, and other physical essentials. Such items can be dropped off at the shop throughout the spring.
''Everybody has that stuff in their house that they want to get rid of,'' Mrs. Baer said. ''That's a way to donate that's very hands-on and easy.''
For more information about the Baers' work in Ethiopia, visit sixbaers.blogspot.com. For more information about Six Baers Gift Shoppe, call 782-3871 or e-mail sixbaers@gmail.com.
