Friday-Sunday, during which we have a camporee and do not go to Gimbie

On Friday, they started setting up for the “camporee” after class got out (half day). We were supposed to meet at four to practice Jesus Loves Me in ASL for the camporee… almost no one was there, though. But Amanuel said that his kids were coming, so I decided to help build the tent while I waited for them. It was pretty fun. Those eucalyptus trees are pretty sturdy. We practiced (and had an awesome showing, including Mek’des and Estifanos (who usually do not come to Pathfinders). The evening meeting was pretty cool (though, all in Amharic). I wore short sleeves just to prove to myself that it was NOT really cold, for a Connecticut girl.
Saturday was busy, but we got very tired of the meetings, since we did not understand anything and the preacher went on and on and on. Even Azeb, Dr. Gemechu’s wife, wanted him to stop. Hareg thought it unsafe for us to eat the food with everyone (the vegetables had not been prepared safe enough), so we went back to make our own lunch. We were getting ready to cook the potatoes, when they call us to come go to lunch with them! It was very nice of them, especially since Dr. Gemechu is as sick as a dog. During the afternoon program, we sat on the side and I read and we talked a little (quietly). The evening program was a movie that had been filmed in Brazil, was in Spanish, and dubbed over in Amharic. I understood what little Spanish came through the very good dubbing. I was sooo tired at the end, and we still had to pack for Gimbie. I went to bed earlyish.
The Great Ethiopian Race was today (Sunday). We had to get to the SDA union office right as the race was ending, so we had to find our way around (rather, Yared did). We got there, and found out that there was not enough room in the land rover for all of us to go back. Cassie was there! We ended up deciding that we would take the bus out to Gimbie tomorrow anyway, and that Cassie would stay with us. Yared could not come get us until two, so we went to lunch, then to a shop to get potatoes for supper. It was nice. I was glad that Cassie knew her way around Addis. We generally rely on Abebe or Yared. We got back to the Learning Village and started to make dinner. We had a good time. Now we are making pumpkin bread to bring with us. Sooo that is why I am still here in Addis. We have to be ready to leave with Abebe at 330. 330!!!!! AM!!! ACK! I will be sleeping, thankyouverymuch, on the bus.

Gimbie for Thanksgiving

Gone to Gimbie. Be back next Sundayish.
Leave me messages/emails!

Love
Jennifer

Tragedy

Please, everyone keep the friends and family of fellow SM Kirsten Wolcott in your prayers. She was murdered on the island of Yap, and everyone over there is pretty shaken up (as I am sure her friends and family at home are).
Pray for them all.

My hat it has three corners

Okay everyone. So my blog is confusing, right? I am sorry. I mostly just write it down in my scatter-brained way, and while I do realize I am kind of writing for an audience, I do not take that into consideration while writing. Things that make perfect sense to me just confuse everyone reading my blog. So please comment/email if you have any questions. We all know I love, love, love mail of any sort. I have had a request to describe the Learning Village. The city is Addis Ababa. There is a section of town called Kalaala. We live in Kalaala, in a kind of rural area. The city is encroaching on us from the back, but we live on a plateau ishthing with an awesome view of the city. It is quiet (except when the planes fly into/out of the airport, then they fly RIGHT overhead). The clinic’s proper name is Summit International Higher Clinic. The school is named Shibu-Ejersa Primary School (grades preschool-8), and it is located on the grounds of the Learning Village. The best word I can find for it is “compound.” We have a fence around the immediate living-area (as opposed to the fields where we grow teff and wheat), and guards (with flashlights and guns at night!). There are approximately 16 people (we tried to count) who live here, plus the three of us student missionaries. In addition to the school and clinic, they have a bee hive, a dairy, fields of teff and wheat, a garden, a greenhouse (well, it is under a tent), and are trying to grow fruit trees. They plow the fields with oxen. We have a few wells here (but are in need of another!), and we provide water to the surrounding community. They have no other way (well, I suppose they could walk all the way into town…) to get water except here. Sometimes we have electricity outages, but thusfar they have not been bad. We have had a tougher time with the water situation. Since we share with the community and the people who live here (who use it, like us, to do laundry and cook), sometimes there is no water to wash dishes (oh darn), and sometimes we do not have enough water to shower. Yay for being dirty. The fields of teff and wheat are so beautiful—they remind me more of “amber waves of grain” than the US ever has (then again, I have never been to the Midwest). All of the people are awesomely nice to us. We like to go stargazing at night. We get to see so many stars, and the lights of the city below us, and the airplanes landing from the west and taking off to the east (over our heads). Everyone here is so good at football. Soccer, rather. We play most weeknights, and Sunday mornings. Cameron is a really good goalkeeper. I can do…defense?
We go grocery shopping about once/week. We like getting our produce from a produce stand (better quality than the supermarket). The roads are pretty good, for the most part. There are parts where you really need to be careful and navigate the gaping holes. Drivers have to navigate the holes, people, donkeys, goats, sheep, dogs, not to mention other cars. The people walk right in the middle of the road and it is not unusual to see a donkey walking seeming without anyone following with two yellow water-jugs strapped on its back. The traffic can be horrific. There are no pollution laws, I do not think, so sometimes it is quite smoggy in the city itself. While parts of the city seem obviously impoverished (tin walls, etc), right down the road there are often very ritzy homes. Man, and this totally does not sound appealing, but it really is a great city (for a city haha), and Kalaala (especially the Learning Village) is awesomely beautiful and I love it.

Monday-Thursday, during which we get to work in the clinic!

I would like to dedicate this entry to Dr. Hamstra because he commented on my blog and that’s awesome.
Also, who is Milton?
Anyway. Monday morning, we had no water to shower, which was sad, but Dr. Gemechu sent Tesfeye to come get us to go DO STUFF! We went to the clinic, where the nurses were doing some health education. We listened to them educate in Amharic and Oromo, then I helped Ado take blood pressures. There was this one guy and his paper said he was 66. I did not believe that, so I pointed it out. Turns out we had the wrong paper haha. We get to go back to the clinic every morning now. Sweet. I worked on the powerpoint for class after lunch, and then went to class. Oh, I love 2A. They really seemed to understand. After class, we were waiting for Estifanos (previously referred to as “Stefanos,” but he spells his name Estifanos) to call us to go PLAY SOCCER. We were really excited. And since we have so many leftovers, we are not cooking all week. They ended up playing FULL COURT (ick) but I somehow ended up as goalie (Samson left to go play defense, then they came back toward our goal so I filled in). Meskerem and Mek’des and Harmela (I have her in one of my classes) and Estifanos and China and some other little girl were there too, and they helped me guard the goal. I stink, even with 6 other people to help me. We wrote stuff in the dirt (they helped me spell things in Amharic) and we played with a stick China had. It was really really fun. I was still having fun and stuff when everyone else decided it was too dark and quit for the night. Haha and Estifanos told me at the end to “shut up.” I told him not to say that, but he said it again so I grabbed his face (just to have him look at me, not hard or anything) and made him apologize. He said it again to Anisha, and she did the same thing and told him not to say it and made him apologize again. That boy needs some discipline. Guess what we had for dinner?? Injeraaaaaaaaaa! Same as lunch!
On Tuesday, we worked in the clinic again. I folded the outpatient forms (CRH nurses, if you read this, they had SOAP on them and they felt familiar since I copied them down so much :-)), then we sorted all of the medications for the pharmacy. After lunch, I made a slideshow for 2B (that would be simpler for them than the one I made for 2A). Class went alright. It is quite frustrating when they do not understand “Ronald is Hannah’s father. Hannah is Ronald’s ________?” I have to figure out a way to help them understand the correlation. At least the teacher stayed and could help explain. There was another teacher who came to observe, and he was also helpful. At the end he suggested that I use Amharic names instead. While part of the point was for them to become familiar with American names, guess what 3rd grade is doing today (Wednesday)? (At least until I think they understand…) Soccer was fun (duh). In the beginning, Anisha and I were one goalie, and we were playing with some little balls with Estifanos and Tamu (basically keep-away, Anisha and Tamu vs Estifanos and I). After I played for a little while, I ended up leaving the game (full court again, ick) and playing the same keep-away game, but this time it was Meskerem, me, and the nanny, Wobenesh, against Tamu, Estifanos, and Samuel. So much fun. I went inside early to try to use up some of the fresh produce we bought (not fully understanding how many leftovers we would have) before it went bad. I invented something. It had potatoes, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, garlic, and it was pretty good. Anisha fell on a rock and got a bloody knee. Her knee attracts trouble. Yikes, Anisha wants me to cut her hair tomorrow. I felt more comfortable on the other end of the scissors with Amanda. Oh well. After dinner, we cut garlic. For three hours. And still did not finish.
Wednesday: We worked on inventory in the clinic again. It was fun to know how to draw some (or parts of some) from Organic Chemistry. Boy, I miss school. Back to the house for lunch, then I changed the powerpoint to Amharic names and chopped some more garlic. Class went really well for the most part. They understood the Amharic name powerpoint, and wanted to do the English name one, so we started that. They were excited to hear that tomorrow we would do my family. Afterward, we were supposed to have a Pathfinder meeting to practice “Jesus Loves Me” in ASL, but only like six people showed up. Then Nehemiah and Ruth and Samson had to go study (the 8th graders have to study after school), so it was like, four kids and the three of us practicing. Emmanuel was somewhere else, Kibret was picking stuff up for the Camporee, and Girma was driving sick Bereket home. Those are most of the adults in Pathfinders. Anisha had a rough day in class. Almost no kids were there, and those who were were super disruptive and rude. Soccer was fun, even though I wiped out. I ended up rolling somehow, and I landed on my hands and chin. I always land on the weirdest body parts (Cyrano—landed on my hips, thanks Kveton). Supper was… leftovers! We watched “Summer of the Monkeys,” which I had already seen, but it was still the best Family Film we have watched. LKFj;l ;l there’s a spider on the floor but it ran away when I went to get a shoe. Oh goodie…. I found him. Bye bye. I have failed miserably in writing more for an audience. Sorry peoples. And hi, Meredith and Curtis, who I found out are following my blog! What more do you know about your baby? Bed time!
Thursday: Pretty much the same as yesterday. Inventory, leftovers, class. Ooooh and I did my family and they totally liked learning about my family. They thought Jeffrey was a girl sometimes, though, and that Grandma was a boy. Oh well. Mostly successful. I have to do more powerpoint. We had a lot of fresh produce going bad still (molding potatoes) so we made potato chips and Laura Lynne. Cameron said he falls in love with Laura Lynne more and more each time we eat it. The school has only a half day tomorrow, so people can set up for the Pathfinder Camporee.

Saturday-Sunday, during which we cook, cook, cook, and have a party!

Saturday is our busiest day here at the Learning Village. This week, Cameron taught Sabbath School. No one else understood, so Bereket taught, kind of, after him so everyone else could understand. Potluck was delicious, as usual. We had prepared a Pathfinders’ song service the night before, and talked about ideas just in case Emmanuel asked us to do Pathfinders (he did :-)). After song service, we ended up talking to them about the Christmas pageant, having them sign up for what part they thought they might want (and I made them write their names down so I could 1. know their names, and 2. learn how to spell them!). While the list went around, we practiced the alphabet and then did a game I made up on the spot. I shall give an example. I had six volunteers come up front, and I whispered a letter to each them. They took turns holding up their letter, and the people in the audience would have to say the letter. Once all six people had done their letter, they all held it up at the same time, and it spelt a word (once again, guessed by the audience). Temmy even got “youthforlife” without spaces. Then people volunteered to fingerspell their names. They have no double letters in Amharic, so I will have to explain how to fingerspell with two of the same letters in a row next time. Even though we described what all of the characters were in the play, we still had one girl want to be Elizabeth, one girl want to be Hannah, and one 16-year old boy want to be Jesus. Thank you, Samson, for making my day. After recruiting some angels (everyone wanted to be shepherds), I taught everyone to say “Can I please have a cookie?” in ASL. They had the hardest time raising their eyebrows, and everyone laughed at everyone else when they came up front to ask. Kiberet came up and asked, very seriously, if he could have two cookies. Kiberet is a grown man. In the end, everyone ended up getting a cookie—even Girma, who fingerspells with his hand facing himself. All in all, I think it was a successful Pathfinders.
No resting allowed, we started cooking for our party on Sunday right after Pathfinders. We had invited Dr. and Mrs. Pearson, Mr. and Mrs. Kim, Hareg, Dr. Gemechu, and Azeb (and Yared and Abebe, but they did not end up coming) to come for lunch on Sunday after the former two couples got out of church. Anisha made dhao (basically lentil soup) and chickpea curry that night (lots of chopping). When I was done cutting onions, I did casting for the Christmas Pageant. I now understand why it takes PT the whole weekend to cast for a play. I mainly went by what they had signed up for, since there were only a few people who wanted to be the same part. Double spaced, it is six pages long, not including the fact that we are singing five songs (and half of the people will be signing one of those). I will email it to Emmanuel to translate.
On Sunday, we woke up early and continued cooking. I made pumpkin cookies for a dessert, and Anisha made hardboiled egg curry and we made a bunch of rice. (“A bunch of rice” plus two messed up batches=LOTS of rice.) S’ike stopped by with a loaf of birthday bread (which is over a foot in diameter and at least four inches high), and Hareg and Azeb brought three Ethiopian dishes, a salad, and a cake sampler from Bilo’s Bakery. THEN S’ike stopped by with injera! We had SO much food! You should see our refrigerator.

We tried to give as much as we could to the Pearsons and Kims, but they did not want much, unfortunately. We had a really good time, though. After eating, we moved into the living room and had pumpkin cookies, tea and cake. We chatted and showed them pictures we took of the Rift Valley. Much fun was had by all. It will take us two weeks to eat all of this leftover food, and we are leaving next week to go to Gimbie (in the west—we know people there) for Thanksgiving. Thank you, freezer. No one was very hungry for dinner, having eaten so much at lunch, so after a small dinner, we watched another Family movie. We watched White Wolves II, which also had bad acting and a very predictable plot, but it was good.

Wednesday-Friday, during which we go on a trip and see lots of cool things!!

So Cameron/’s family knows this couple (Mr. and Mrs. Yost) from Florida Hospital who is organizing a mission trip to Ethiopia in April, and they came out here for two weeks to check out here and Gimbie and plan a group trip and see the needs and stuff. Dr. Gemechu said it would be very nice if we skipped class Wednesday-Friday and went with them. They also paid for it all. Super nice.
On Wednesday, we met them at their hotel, and we met the driver/tour guide Tamrat, and headed to see some historical/archaeological sites. *goes to copy written entry… darn, I wrote it in Spanish…* Anyway. The Yosts are really really nice people and it was fun to spend time with them.

The first place we went brought us through country with volcanic rocks and other really pretty country. We saw a goat on the side of the road who had died giving birth—that was very sad. We stopped at a rock-hewn church, styled after Lalibela. It was very cool. There were two entrances—one for the men and one for the women. We had to take our shoes off too… great idea, Jennifer, to wear your hiking boots…. In every Orthodox church, there are three sections. The first is a general one, the second is where people go to take communion (anyone can go in those two), and the third is the Most Holy Place where only the priests go. It was really cool, and Mr. Yost and Cameron had to duck in parts of the passages. There were little crevices in the rock on the outside where the nuns pray.

On the road again, this time to a place called T’iya, which resembled Stonehenge. They are ancient warrior graves, of both men and women. The height depends on how important the warrior was, and the number of swords on them correlates to how many other people they killed.

After that, we stopped for lunch along the side of the road. While we started a fire with some sticks, our driver bought and slaughtered a goat. We helped him cut it into pieces and roasted it with some herbs we had brought until… just kidding, we had brought some peanut butter and jelly. We also brought pumpkin cookies and the Bole Mini crackers, and the Yosts brought apples and chips. We had a feast... sans goat. We then hustled along to a museum/archaeological site. The tour people had gone home for lunch, so Tamrat drove in and found one and brought him back. There were a lot of evolution posters and rocks and bones in the three hut structures. Then we saw a site that they had finished excavating, and a hippopotamus slaughtering place. It is amazing that there used to be a lake there—it was very dry and safari-esque.

Back to Addis, to the Holy Trinity Cathedral. It had amazing stained-glass windows, and is known to be one of the most beautiful churches. Then we went to some museum, the one where Lucy, the “missing link” or whatever, lives when she is not touring the United States. The bones here are replicas.

Then we went to Entoto again (with cameras this time, yay). The tour was more rushed because they were closing, but at least we got pictures. Anisha got a guy’s address. Everyone thinks that Anisha is a Habisha, which is the opposite of a feranji (white person). It basically means an Ethiopian. She’s Indian and they do not believe her at all. That was the end of our amazing day. Back home to make dinner, take showers, and pack for overnight. In the middle of making dinner, the power went out, came back on for a little while, then went back off until the middle of the night. Luckily, I woke up to turn off the lights, and switch batteries to be charged. We woke up eeeeearly, and packed up and were ready when Tamrat picked us up. We picked up the Yosts, and headed south! We saw five wrecks alone the way (not actually happening, but wrecked trucks)! It was terrible! We also got to see some lakes, and camels along the side of the road, and giant termite mounds and birds. We saw a bunch of Meribu Storks at Lake Ziway (the first Rift Valley Lake). Lunch was really good. I got this rice and vegetable dish that tasted like sourkraut (yum!). We went to Abijata-Shalla Lakes National Park, and that was super cool. The mission trip that comes in April may not get to go, because you cannot bring busses (only 4-WD trucks). There were a bunch of ostriches and gazelles, AND (shoutout to CRH) we even got to see some warthogs (are they the same thing as wild boars?)! They ran away, so we did not get to get pictures, but we have pictures in our heads. Tamrat brought us to this cool overlook thing, and we got to see Lakes Abijata and Shalla. Looking through Tamrat’s binoculars, we could see some dots that were flamingos. The Yosts and I each bought a souvenir house made out of limestone—they got theirs for 35 birr, and I got mine for 20! Heehee. It is pretty cool. We saw more camels, and were taking pictures of them from the truck, minding our own business, when this teenager camelherd comes running up to the truck threatening to throw a really big rock at us! We were like, “whaaa?” Tamrat was kind of laughing at him and stuff and he eventually put the rock down, but he gave him 10 birr. Apparently, that usually happens :-). We drove down to the shore of Lake Shala and saw more flamingos (there were two kinds), and we touched the water, which was surprisingly warm. THEN we got to go see the hotsprings! Wicked cool!

Some were just regular hot, and there was one that was scalding hot. The locals roast corn and potatoes in there. There was another guy there who thought Anisha was a habisha. He was very friendly. Everyone was very nice there, except that guy with the rock. From the park, we drove to Awasa, on the shore of Lake Awasa (another one of the Rift Valley Lakes). We checked into our hotel, and went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. I asked what “cream” meant on the pasta menu, and they said that, yes, it was like cheese. Well, it was not. It was cream. It was not very good, but Anisha had two dishes, and there was one with pasta and spinach, and Ethiopian spices and yams or carrots… THAT was good. Haha and we had breadsticks. Then we went out on the town haha. We found this cool little shop with some authentic stuff—Mrs. Yost wanted a head-shawl, and both she and Anisha bought some earrings. We went back to the hotel, showered (it had problems draining, and if you left the door open, it squirted out), and used the internet on Anisha and Cameron’s itouches. The beds were very hard, but we slept our first night under mosquito nets (which are hard to keep in place).
Friday came very early. We went for breakfast at the hotel restaurant again. I ordred French Toast, and Cameron got Bulla porridge. The porridge is made from the false banana tree, and the dish was invented during a famine. It was funny, but apparently very filling. My French toast was very good, especially when they brought my honey. It was a little less sweet than the honey we are used to, but it is thicker, and very good as a spread. We put our leftovers in zippy bags, and gave them to a little girl on the street outside our hotel.

We went to a fish market on the shore of Lake Awasa and there were lots of people, fish, Maribu storks, and Vervet monkeys. One monkey even took bread right from Mr. Yost’s hand!

We drove to the top of Mount Tabor and saw the fish market and our hotel—it was all very beautiful. On our way back, we went to the National Park again to try to see/get a picture of the warthogs. No luck. On our way back through Shashemane, we went by the Rasteferians’ community. During Emperor Silasse’s reign, he gave some land to the Jamaicans, so a bunch of them moved to Ethiopia. They were all very nice, albeit high on marijuana. They asked us to smoke with them, but after several minutes of careful consideration, we decided to decline :-). They go to church on Sabbath too! One of the boys there goes to the SDA secondary school down the road. Neato. I am happy to report that we saw no new wrecks on our way back to Addis. Tamret brought us by Tomoca (the best place for coffee) so the Yosts could get some, and he also took us by a souvenir shop, which was really good. We were so tired by the time we got home, but we had an awesome, awesome time.