Addis Traffic Laws

Haha, so this was in an Ethiopian Horizon magazine. Some new Addis traffic laws. There are fines for:
Leading animals onto a roadway
Operating vehicles that emit large amounts of smoke
Conducting any kind of business on a roadway
Splashing a pedestrian with water (we assume this refers to driving through standing water in such a manner as to cause the described offense)Not exercising the appropriate level of care around railroad crossings
Pushing or pulling hand operated carts on main roadways
Not following lanes
Parking on a narrow roadway
Repairing an automobile on a roadway
Picking up or dropping off passengers from a moving automobile (this can only be targeted at minivan’s and their weyelas, we don’t know anyone else who practices such foolishness)
Not yielding to traffic at an intersection
Utilizing pedestrian walkways for other purposes
Driving without a seatbelt fastened or enforcing the use of the same for passengers (presumed to be the front passenger but not clarified)
Parking a vehicle on a pedestrian walkway

So funny… for us at least.

Recent Miracles

Okay back to the best part of the day. Remember how I had mentioned about Daniel wanting a digital camera for the school? Well, my mom emailed me and said that one of the fathers on my brother’s basketball team had come up to her today and given her a BRAND new camera! He had bought it for his
God provides in ways we never even imagined, and blesses us beyond our biggest expectations. I thought it would be a big enough miracle to find a used, older camera, but this one is twice as good as mine!
Oh, another miracle, I had let Estifanos be alone with my camera in the clinic because I knew he would not hurt it. I told him just to be careful with the shutter cover thingy (it is broken; every time I turn it on I have to manually open the shutter). Amanuel found me and had taken the camera away, and told me to be careful with it. I told him that it was okay that Estifanos had it. I do not know what he did to it, but when I got it back, it is a bit off-kilter when it is closed, but I do not have to open it manually anymore!
AND God has answered my prayers about having patients in the clinic. Instead of about two per week, we now have about two (or three) per day. :-).
The power went out one (well, more than one) night this week, but this night it was during dinner, so we served everyone in the dark (plus candles), and I prayed that the power would come back on so we did not have to wash dishes in the dark, and near the end, the power came back on, so we washed with electricity!

God is so powerful; what more can I say.

Saturday-Wednesday, during which the Pathfinder week begins!

On Saturday during Pathfinders we sang some, went over the birds we saw last week, and then did some marching. Bekelech and I were so bad it was funny. Falling all over one another laughing our heads off. I am a troublemaker. Oops.
Sunday morning we went to Safara right after breakfast to get some food. Later in the evening, we helped move desks into the new assembly hall. While we were waiting for the “move out” call, I played hide and seek with the kids. I had the bestest hiding places. Behind the main flower thing with the flag. We crawled around it on our bellies to get to the other side and thus closer to the base. The Pathfinder group arrived in the evening.
No patients on Monday. NONE. And it was Hanna’s last day at the clinic :-(. Nothing to do in the evening, since we took pictures throughout the day of the Pathfinder activities. They did knots and had some sort of inside meetings. It would be useless for us to attend, since they are in German translated into Amharic. It took me eight hours to do one load of laundry—NOT including drying time.
Tuesday was much more interesting. We had a few patients—Dureti’s dad (he came into the clinic on Friday, and I found on that it really was him) was back, and a little boy, Yohannes. He and his mother came in with another lady and her baby. His name was…. Obama. When they told Hulu, I started laughing really hard and ran out to tell Cameron. But he is a charming baby. We played peek-a-boo and he was sooo cute. Anyway we had to draw blood for possibly anemic Yohannes, and we did not have a small enough butterfly needle, so we snapped the tip off of a syringe. It took us (well, Hulu) three tries to get it. Poor baby. But he was one tough cookie. We helped serve lunch and wash dishes, and it felt SO good to not sit around doing nothing all afternoon. We hung out at home until Cameron realized they were playing soccer so we went to play. I stinkkkkkkk. Then we helped serve dinner. We dished it up in record time. Super fast. Rice and dabo (bread), which was really weird to eat. But the bread was really good (as was the rice). We washed dishes, practiced some Amharic, watched some House, and now bed!

Wow, greaseee. I mean, we had patients today! I made Estifanos come in—a thorn had stabbed it and it was huge. So after Estifanos got treated, he hung around, and China ended up coming too, so the three of us were in the nurses’ station. Estifanos left, and China was just hanging out, being well-behaved, and then he left, and I called him back because he cannot just go running around the clinic, but he did not come back, so I went after him. Amanuel told me that he had ran by (all the way around) so I go SPRINTING back…. and wipe out on the freshly mopped floor…. and crash into some chairs. I better bruise, after all that. Hulu wanted to bring me to the Korean Hospital at first (why, I do not know…). But I am totally fine.
A few other people came in too, including one of the German people. Would you believe with all this GOOD Ethiopian cooking, they make their own meals? Weirdness. Totally beyond me. It is actually quite a miracle that we get to eat with the people this week, because we would be SO out of groceries by now. This afternoon was some really good green vegetable stuff and fake doro wat (eggs, no doro (chicken)). But man, oh man. We know what makes their cooking soooo good. Oil oil oil oil oil oil oil. Those dishes are SO hard to wash!
HAHAHAHA so. Washing supper dishes tonight turned into a water fight. At first it was Alemayo, me, and Nehemiah, and then Girma came in and we blamed Samson. We had a “You!” “YOU!” “YOU!” “You!” fight in Amharic. Then we got Girma involved and Kibret SOAKED him. It was SO much fun. Everyone ended up wet. Except Cameron—killjoy.

I taught CPR today in the clinic. Yeah so cool. It was horrible, but I tried my best. And lunch was special because it was one of the German guy’s birthday. Dr. Jerry (the leader of ADRA Ethiopia), bought soda for everyone and cake… and two sheeps. ;lkdfja;odifja;s lkd :-(. Poor sheepies. And I do not mean Lauryl and Heather heehee But they had two vegetarian dishes and the cake was super good. The afternoon stuff. Then Greg (one of the Germans) brought out some rope and we double-dutched and jumped rope for a bit. I came back in and turned on the television, and GUESS WHAT MOVIE WAS ON?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COME AWAY HOME!!!!!!!! I went out to tell Cameron, and when we came back inside, it was on the last scene. I announced that MBC MAX was the best channel ever. The guy was playing his song and Chris and Annie were together and then he asked if he could, “like, um, email or text her or something.” Then they held hands and the last scene happened and the movie ended. We were super confused and sad that we missed the most epic line ever, but we just put in the DVD and watched the last scene AND MBC MAX HAD CUT THE LINE!!!!!!! So, in honor of Come Away Home, “I’m glad you came tonight.” I eat my words about it being the best channel ever.

Thursday-Friday, during which we finally go to the post office!

There were no patients on Friday. Noooone. After lunch, I read with Meskeram for awhile. In the evening, we went to play soccer (for some reason, we no longer play on our field). We play now outside near Samson’s house, on a terribly slippery small field that runs into a threshing floor. Dodging cows and donkeys to get our ball back, priceless. Anyway, we had to stop to ge the ball from one of the guards, and there was an evil creature (aka, goat) tied there, and Yobe grabbed it by its balls and picked up. I could not stop laughing (do not worry, I did feel some pity for the poor thing).
Friday, we had a few patients, and near patients. Why do all the patients come right around 12, as we are leaving to go eat. Cameron cannot leave because Amanuel is usually not there, and we might prescribe something for the patients. We went home and did non-electricity things for awhile. I went into Cameron's room and came back out pretending that Kitty had been in his room. AND HE BELIEVED ME. It was great and super funny. Finallllllllllly… guess what! Abebe came to TAKE US TO THE POSTA BET!!!! Post office!!! Hareg was with us, so we dropped her off at home and then stopped at the post office. I made copies of our passports while Cameron bought peanut butter from the grocery store downstairs. I left with two packages, and Cameron (who had a slip for an envelope) left with three packages and no envelope. Background: The post office lady is a very disagreeable lady, and would not give me the other two addressed to me (Mom they are from you, I assume…. I identified them by the duck tape all over them :-D). They were addressed to Hareg (and me DOH) but she filled out the papers for Hareg, and did not have the time (“no time no time”) to switch the slip and let me take it. Oh, but she can give it to us on Monday. Does she realize how hard it is to GET to the post office? We do not arrange our own transportation, I explained, and it is very inconvenient to come to the post office to get our mail. Monday. Well, we cannot come Monday. Maybe Wednesday. Does she not want us to clear out her behind-the-desk area of all our packages? Anyway. We will be nice to her even though she… is mean. We had a package-opening party when we got home. Cameron’s three were all from Southern, and one of mine was from CHRISSSSS and the other from my aunt! Both excellent packages :-D, THANK YOU GUYS!!! and we got cool things from the SM office as well. Mmm I smell like veggie meat (Friday is taco night).

Monday-Wednesday, during which we have no class :-(

On Monday we had two patients in the clinic [in the morning]. The first man had a super infected wound, which was cool for me but so not for him. It did not look too bad, until Adonya took off the scab. It was sunk in the middle to over a centimeter below his skin! You could tell it hurt a lot, but he did not even say ouch. Dr. Debela thinks I might have scabies. The only problem with that is that in order to get rid of them, you need to wash everything in boiling water. Our washing machine only does cold water, and the biggest pot we have is probably only big enough for my clothes, not my bedding or towels.
The second lady was a lady in labor, so it would have been exciting if her baby could have been the first born at our clinic, but she had had a baby die just after being born last time, so Dr. Debola sent her to a hospital or something. She waited around here for ever, though, because Daniel was taking her and he was in a meeting. Eshi negir at work again. Haha, and EVERYONE was late, except Cameron. I had been up half the night itching, and so set my alarm clock for later then did not get up, Meron and Bayise were late, Daniel was SUPER late with everyone who takes the “service” (gets a ride to work), and we did not see Abebe all day. Class went really well with my favoritest class.
Tuesday…. Tuesday… Oh we were SUPPOSED to go shopping. But Amanuel was sick and something else, so Cameron had to stay at the clinic, but I was (grudgingly) going to go alone, but then Abebe could not even take me grocery shopping (we needed to get money and go to the post office too). I was on the edge of angry… and this week’s Sabbath school lesson is on patience. Well played. Anisha, there are starving children in Africa…… and Jennifer and Cameron were VERY NEARLY two of them! You can tell Jill she can use that on Miranda and Garrett.
Anyway, so I hung out the entire morning with Cameron in the pharmacy. We watched Esther. THEN we find out that it is a half day :-/ so no class. Oh, and by the way, yeah, the kids were right, there is no class for the rest of the week because of exams or something. Thanks, Ato Kinfe. If they want the kids to treat/respect us like teachers, they ought to keep us informed of when we will not have class. Abebe showed up in the evening and took us on a quick (and surprisingly inexpensive) shopping run.
On Wednesday, Amanuel was finally better, but we had no patients all day. We even went back after lunch and there were no patients. So I had a very successful day. I read some, played cards with myself, listened to my ipod, and then was bored. Ha, Cameron said I had too much to do. After lunch, I finished my test for the first half of the Boxcar Children… I hope I actually get to use it…. darn not having class. At least now the second grades are caught up with one another now… I read with Meskeram for awhile, then tried to play soccer, but left shortly after we started because I was going to cook. I made tofu wot and shiro, both of which turned out pretty well, considering, but I forgot to put tomato paste in the tofu wot and ginger in the shiro. Oh well, we ate it. The injera we had bought was turning moldy. Things here go moldy like no other. I think Daniel is arranging a trip to the post office for us tomorrowwwww *crosses fingers*.
WOAH I can make the page a different color… AND make it say “DO NOT COPY” AND add a border! Funness.

Thursday-Sunday, during which we go swimming!

I have some sort of itchy bite againnnnnnnn. They started out on my left leg and my hands and wrists. Now they are on my lower left leg, and both upper legs, both hands and wrists still, and on my hips. ITCHY.
There were no patients on Thursday :-/. I finished inventory and printed the rooms that are finished. Class was good. We finished a whole chapter. They will probably be ready for the test on the first half in two weeks. I started writing the test, and it is really good. Mek’des, Hermela, Dureti, and Meskeram wanted to study, so they took turns reading the Boxcar Children outside our house. We decided to give them all Dumdums, but Dureti left her wrapper. GAH. Thursday night we cooked rice and beans for everyone at the clinic.
No patients on Friday either :-/, but lunch was a success. Cameron’s beans turned out amazing, and the rice was not mushy. We read again after class, and boy, are those kids bold. We really need to lay down the law. Dureti and Mek’des have been following Cameron into his room, asking for things and touching his stuff and asking inappropriate questions, and they followed him into the kitchen on Friday. Dureti took the spoon out of the honey bowl and stuck it in her mouth! And Mek’des had the manners to wipe the spoon with her finger before eating it. Dureti will come right into our house, and we have to physically chase out/remove China. We have to close the kitchen blinds so they do not stand there and harass us. We went to Vespers, but only stayed for the singing—they started really, really late and we were really, really hungry.
On Saturday morning, I told Cameron, “don’t chew with your mouth full!” Oops. Before church, Sinke brought us shiro and injera. WOOHOO. Church was fine. For Pathfinders, we went on a hike/swimming!! It was supposed to be to identify birds, but I hiking was just more fun. The swimming place was only about an hour away. I learned that it is perfectly acceptable to take some shumbra from someone else’s field when you walk by. Yum. The swimming place was beautiful. Girma was the first one in, and soon shed his shorts so he had on a tank top and his underpants. Cameron was the second one in. I wish I was that brave, but I do not want to get parasites. Someone convince me that I will not get sick if I go swimming, please. The little boys wore their birthday suits, and most of the other guys went in their underpants. Gezehang and Alemayhu did not go in either, and Nabon just waded, so I did not feel so bad to not be swimming. We sang some songs after, and walked home. It was very dark when we got back, but it was such an awesome day.
Today Cameron cleaned, we went to Safara, and I mopped. I will make bread when the floor dries. I borrowed Sinke’s mop bucket—SO much easier than using the sink. But I used WAY too much laundry detergent. I basically mopped with bubbles :-).
Today while we were playing soccer, I did not do half bad. Gezehang is a monster. He is so good. Baybe (Estifanos) kept calling my name, then his favorite four letter word beginning with S. He kept trying to get my attention, but I did not fall for it. Meskeram eventually asked me why I was ignoring him, but I was like, “Who?” Ha. And then China kept trying to kick me, but I would just pick up my leg and catch him in the stomach. I win today, Solomon boys. I win.

And I have no idea why everything else is blue and underlined.

Saturday-Wednesday, during which we ride a mini bus, Higer bus, see Epiphany, and have no water for two days.

A picture of the guy's leg tumor.

Saturday was good. We did special music with Amanuel (on recorder). It went really well. We had potluck in Dr. Gemechu’s apartment with Hareg, Amanuel (who was the speaker) and Bereket (who taught Sabbath school). I do not know if I have mentioned, but there will not be potluck anymore. But we have been invited to the apartment the past two weeks, so maybe it will continue that way. I think that we should have potluck, but have it be a potluck instead of Sinke making everything. Sinke can just make the injera, and everyone else can bring a wot. It makes more sense. Pathfinders went well. We sang and then the kids broke into groups and were given a topic to discuss. While they did that, Amanuel, Bereket, Kibret, Cameron and I rehearsed some special musics. In Amharic SWEET. We are singing in four parts. After the kids presented what they had found and answered some questions about it, we showed the rest of Jonah. Then we watched a marching movie.
I do not think we did anything on Sunday. OH! I made pierogies! Curtis and Meredith had brought me sourkraut, and we had bought Vidalia onions at Lomyad, so I made sourkraut, then made them into pierogies. Hey, kids, when there is nothing to do on Sundays, what do you do for fun? Oh, we hang out in front the the feranjiwoch window and giggle while we watch them do strangs things. And we kick their kickball onto the roof. Thanks, China. Yeah, they hung out ALL while I was making pierogies. I let them try a bite of one, and I do not think any of them liked it. Maybe they will not ask us for things anymore. We have a brilliant plan, to give them Warheads or Fisherman’s Friends next time they ask for candy. All we need now is… Warheads and Fisherman’s Friends. And stickers with itching powder. Heehee. Only good little not-greedy children will get nice treats. For dinner, I fried them up with onions like we do for Easter and Christmas, and Cameron really liked them. Yay! They did not turn out badly at all, if I do say so myself.
Monday was Monday. We knew we were not going to have class on Tuesday, because it was Epiphany, a big Orthodox holiday, but we did not know that the kids only had a half day on Monday! I specially arranged to have 2B on Wednesday [even though they are my least favorite class] and 3rd grade only on Thursday, but it turns out that I have to miss 2A too! Drat. I love 2A. They love me. Maybe I will have an extra 2A class on Wednesday of next week. Third grade is already way far ahead. Around 130/2, maybe, I heard Dureti calling and calling and calling my name. I ignored her (she is the worst when it comes to asking for things). I went outside finally around two thirty, and it turns out HELEN had been calling my name, not Dureti! I felt so bad. So no class on Monday. Around 4, Girma came to take us for a walk (?). We went out the back, and then through the fields and it started to rain. POUR, more like it. Girma did not understand why I was okay with getting my hair wet. Haha. We had sheets of mud/t’eff on the bottom of our shoes. We took refuge under the future employee housing for awhile, then went home. We were so wet. We found out that the Florida Hospital mission trip for April is canceled. Well, it has been moved to October, which does not matter to us, because we will be gone. So we are sad that we will not get to see the Yosts again. Boo.
On Tuesday, we had no water when we woke up, which is super weird because it had rained the day before, and we had electricity. Sorry Cameron, no shower. We took a taxi (mini bus) with Girma, Meskeram, and Mekelech to the bus station before Girge, and the girls went on to Hareg’s house. Bereket and Kibret met us there, and we went with them, via HIGER BUS (AHH!), to Megedanya (the main taxi station) and another Higer bus to somewhere near the main Epiphany festivities. There were SO MANY PEOPLE! And some horses—with actual English saddles! Pretty. I want to be an Ethiopian horse policeman. Either that or I can join the RCMP. Bereket guessed 100,000 people. We saw the big parade, and the priests and elders and their cool umbrellas. And the supposed Arc of the Covenant. AND we saw the Pearsons! They were there with some other people from the hospital. It was nice to see them. It was SO hard to move through the crowd. My philosophy was “stick as close as you can to Bereket (or whoever was in front), your eyes on the ground, and keep his shirt in your periphery vision.” When the crowd got really bad, it was easier to follow, since we all basically moved as a unit. It was Bereket’s first time at Epiphany too, which I guess is not that surprising because he is not Orthodox. We ended up seeing another smaller parade, and then we stopped for lunch (YAY). It was called Five Zone, and had feranji food, and some really good-looking pizza, but we got Ethiopian food. I got shiro, and Cameron, Bereket, and Kibret split two meat dishes—t’ibs and something else. It was really good shiro. We had a lot of trouble finding a taxi to get home. We tried at this one stop for awhile, then tried another one. We FINALLY found a Higer bus that was supposed to be going to Bole Road (we were going to go to Kaldi’s for coffee (it is like Starbucks…. so much so that it got sued), and, for me, ice creammmmmmmmmmmmmmm. It ended up going to Megedenya instead, so we caught a bus to Girge, had coffee there, then they put us on a bus to Safara. We got off at our produce stand and got bananas, potatoes, avocadoes (for Cameron) and eggs (for baking!). Then we walked to find Girma, who thought we would get off at the last stop. There were some guys on horseback, and a beautiful buckskin, all decked out in his saddle, went running down the street, sans rider. It was SO funny. The other guys went after it. We finally found Girma, and it started to rain (not as bad as the day before, though), and I joked that every time we were with him, it rained. We STILL had no water when we got home, but we had another surprise. The beans we had been soaking had begun to ferment or mold something, and bubbled over—ALL over one of our chairs and all over the table. It smelt HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE! And we had no water with which to clean. Thankfully, we still had pierogies left over, so we just microwaved them. I had three, and Cameron polished the last 12. I went to bed early, since I could not take a shower.
Still no water on Wednesday, so we told Daniel, who told Yobe, so went with me to look for Solomon. The guy whose wife bit him came in to have his dressing changed, and one of my 2A students came in with a fever and abdominal pain. We tried to do a stool sample, but as of now *ahem* no luck. We went him back to class and said to come again after he eats lunch. Today is going very slowly. I finished inventory as much as I can, and those are the only two patients who have come. Class today was fun. I had 2B, but apparently the communication of “2B on Wednesday, and 3 only on Thursday” failed miserably. There were only like, 20 kids in the class. I restarted the book, we learned bakery again, and I introduced “polite.” We only got a little bit further than the entire class did last week. I made them give me a sentence “May I please have/go….” And once one kid did it, they got a Smartie. And then another kid, and another, until they got the hang of it: Give a sentence, get a candy. Funny, though, no one gave me “May I please have a candy?” I ran out of candy with 6 KIDS LEFT! ONLY SIX! Gah. But I took down their names, and will give them another chance next week. That is what you get for going when no one else goes. Like when Dr. Barnhurst gave us the code word in recitation… which I forget, unless it was elephant… that gave us 10… 10!!! free points on a mechanism question. I wish I remembered the word... Thanks, Dr. Barnhurst, for not putting it on the test key.

I forgot to mention, we went to a new grocery store and out to lunch with Dr. Gemechu on the Tuesday before he left. THE GROCERY STORE HAD ICE CREAM, so we bought a pink one. It turned out to be strawberry ice cream, which I usually do not choose if there is vanilla or something, but it was SO good. It was like, 14 birr for a tiny little cup, but it was so worth it. Lunch was nice; we went to the first restaurant we went to with Abebe. Cameron got a hamburger, and I got pizza again. Dr. Gemechu got t’ibbs, and ate only mostly the meat… with a fork, of course. Funny.