Website

Please check out the Fields of Hope wesbite for info about the work that I cam currently doing.

Moving in

Well, I arrived safely back in Ethiopia yesterday. Was a shorter trip
than most of mine (though still totalled about 20 hours). It was a
wonderful feeling once I walked out of the airport and was greeted by
a group of my friends. The whole family I am staying with (Dr. Frew's
family) was there, along with Eshete and Birhanu. As we started
driving away from the airport I had this feeling as if I never left,
it was wonderful. I felt completely at home and completely at peace
about my decision to move here.
This isn't to say that it isn't hard. Especially to leave all my
family behind, I love you all.

This week will be pretty mellow. Both Melese and Frew are out of
Addis. They are both in Awasah. Frew and his family are there for
vacation and Melese is there for work. So, I will spend time moving
in. Hopefully seeing my other friends. And spending time with Ruth
after she finishes work.

After this week I will start having meetings with Frew about Fields of
Hope and how we can get all of that work started. Also, Ruth and I
will start having meetings with Melese for our marriage counseling.

Also, please check out facebook.com/fieldsofhope
This is acting as our temporary website until our official one is up
and running, which I hear should be pretty soon.

Well, that's all for now.
I'm gonna go get some breakfast and start unpacking

Take care,
Dan

some pictures, finally

so I finally put some pictures up online. I didn't take as many pictures on this trip as past times, because I wanted to be able to just spend time with my friends over there. But, I still found time to take a few...so here they are, enjoy and let me know what you think.

Ethiopia 2008

back safely

I arrived safely (though one suitcase short...it's schedule to come today) on Wednesday night. The trip wasn't too bad. Virgin Atlantic has personal TVs on each of the seats where you can watch a whole list of movies. So, between that, reading and sleeping the trip went relatively quickly. Though I did almost miss my flight in London, if I had been another 15 or 20 minutes I don't think I would have made it. But I did, and I'm back now.
It's always hard for me to leave my friends in Ethiopia. I have become so close to them, especially on this trip. So it was really hard to say goodbye to them again. I feel pretty confident that I will be returning within the year, hopefully for good - or at least a long time.
Now comes the hard part: preparing to move there. I have some things I need to do, such as become ESL (English as a Second Language) certified, work more on my Amharic, and of course get rid of these loans. I'm hoping that the time passes relatively quick and I can get back to Ethiopia soon.

My laptop with all my pictures is in the lost bag. Once that shows up, I'll try to upload some pictures to the blog.

That's all folks.

the hardest day

Well, my trip has come to an end. Today was my last full day in Ethiopia, I leave tomorrow around lunchtime. I always hate the goodbyes, especially when I don't even want to leave.

 

This morning we went to Sendafa. It was a bit busy, we had to hand out some more salt and vitamins to the kids, then we had a meeting with a water official, then we saw one of the existing wells (Andre and Felix, from Water Missions International, had some work that they wanted to do on it), then it was off to the Beke church to see how the construction was going. After that we came back to Addis. I rested this afternoon and started to pack.

Later in the afternoon I went out for a machiatto with Ruth and then I invited everyone out to dinner. We had a nice time at dinner, though I would have liked to stay with all of them longer. I think some of them are going to try to come to the airport to see me off tomorrow, so that will be nice.

But I'm really having a hard time leaving, I know I've said it before and I'm sorry for being repetitive. It's just that it was so hard for me to be away from here and from these people over the last year and I am not looking forward to dealing with that again. I know it's good for me to come back, mostly because I have a lot of stuff that I need to do in order to finish preparing to move here. But that doesn't make it any easier.

 

Well, it's past midnight here, and considering I have a long trip tomorrow I should get some rest.

See you all soon.

Tebareku.

just a quick note

I don't really have a whole lot to update on. But I have a few extra minutes today, so I thought I'd send something.

 

I have mostly been thinking about what it will be like coming back to America. I know I keep saying this, but it's going to be really difficult. I keep thinking about how much I wish I could just stay here. I know that I need to come back and continue working to pay off my loans, to become ESL certified and do some other preperations for moving here. But, especially these last few days, I have been able to envision what living here would be like - and I don't want to give it up. It's really hard for me to be able to see this, to have it within my reach - but to have to put it on hold for another year. I guess a year isn't so long and I'm sure it will be over before I know it...

 

It's still been raining a lot here. Everyday for the last week or so we have gotten rain, and not just a little bit, but a lot. Last night there was some minor flooding on the roads. Even as I am typing this it has just started raining. Most people would assume that the rain is a good thing, and maybe in a way it is. Though it may start to cause some problems for the crops. The wheat and teff grains should be drying out now, but if they continue to get wet the crops might be ruined. People here are starting to get worried about that. Those two grans are used almost every day for Ethiopians - so if there is a shortage it might be a problem. We will see what happens.

 

Tomorrow I will go to Sendafa in the morning. It will be my last time there on this trip. Luckily it seems as if I will have quite a bit of time to walk around and possibly even visit some old friends there. In the evening I invited all my friends here out to dinner. We are going to go to Karamara, which is a cultural Ethiopian restaurant. I took them all there last year and it was a really nice time.

 

Well, it's about time for lunch so I should get going.

Hope all is well back in America and nobody is getting too stressed about the election...

some stories i haven't had time to post...

Today I was thinking of some stories that I haven't had time to post, and I think it's about time I shared them with you.

 

Let me start with what has, by far, been the most amazing story about this trip. I wanted to post this sooner, but Frew asked me not to because he was afraid people would me mad with him or worried for me or something like that (Frew tends to worry a lot, especially about me...he always thinks i'll be robbed, or something like that...).

I'm not sure how many of you remember, but last year when the team from LWCC was here they had a bus accident on the way to Sendafa. Those in the bus said it was a miracle, they said that it felt like the bus had already tipped over and should have fallen but it felt like something (or someone) pushed it back upright. They nearly rolled over a cliff and after that almost ran into some trees. Miraculously nobody was hurt, not even a scratch or a bruise.

Well, we had a similar experience on Tuesday. The week prior we were having some car trouble, the steering wheel and the gear shifter were both shaking when we hit about 65 km/h (40 mph). So we took the car to Frew's mechanic and spent the whole day there. They rotated the tires, worked on the axle and all seemed fine. In fact, there weren't really any problems for about a week. Then came Tuesday. We were on the way to Sendafa and were in sight of the sign that says "Welcome to Sendafa". All of the sudden it felt like we were dragging something. There was a loud noise and it sounded like there may have been a large rock wedged underneath the car. Frew immediately stopped the car and we got out. We found that the rear drivers side tire had completely fallen off. All of the lug nuts were gone and the tire was wedged under the wheel well. The dragging sound that we heard was the brake dragging along the road. What was amazing is that nobody panicked. Actually, I remember that my reaction was "oh, the tire fell off. guess we should jack up the car and put it back on". It didn't even cross my mind the severity of the situation. Frew's jack wasn't working, so him and I walked into Sendafa to a tire repair shop next to the Central Hotel. We rode back to the car on a horse cart and the guy from the shop jacked up the car and put the tire back on. When he saw the car and where we had lost the tire he said "there must have been someone very religious in this car because you all should have died". That's when I realized it could have turned out much worse.

When we looked at the road it was only about 10 feet from where we started skidding on the brake and where the car stopped. It was a completely flat part of the road without any potholes (which is very, very, very rare on the road to Sendafa). Actually, the road to Sendafa is under quite a bit of construction. There are detours off the road onto a dirt road every once in a while. We had just passed one of these, maybe 100 feet, when the tire fell off. If it had happened at almost any other part of the road the situation would have been much worse. It was a miracle that none of us were hurt. We found out the next day that there had been a bus accident on the outskirts of Addis Ababa where the bus lost a wheel. 18 people died. We were incredibly lucky. Or was it a miracle?

The best part about this story is that we didn't even let it stop us from doing the work we were supposed to do that day. We hired a horse cart to bring all of the iodized salt and multivitamins into Sendafa and we carried them around the village and handed them out to the kids in our program while the car was being fixed.

The car is now back in top notch condition. We put brand new tires on yesterday. We had them tighten them as tight as possible. We checked it again this morning. And again before we left Sendafa. All was fine. Even the shaking in the steering wheel and gear shifter is fixed. So, what could have been bad has turned out to be something quite good.

 

The rest of what I want to share isn't as drastic and often does not have as good of an ending as that story. But, I'll share it nonetheless.

 

Two days back I was with Frew, Eshete and Birhanu at the mechanics. After that was done we were on our way back home and we drove on the street where Frew started Yenoh Merkeb (Noah's Ark, it's the organization that the Sendafa project is a part of). The other part of Yenoh Merkeb is to help prostitutes in Addis Ababa - they send the women through business school and help them get set up in a business other than prostitution. The stories of these women are incredibly sad and prostitution is quite rampant in Ethiopia, especially Addis Ababa. I remember one night I was with Frew and we were coming home late from the Semien Hotel (which is where the LWCC teams stay when they are here). We paused at a stop sign and about 4 or 5 prostitutes started running to our car looking for work. Many times these prostitutes will do a trick for 50 Ethiopian cents, or maybe one birr. This is about 5 or 10 US cents.

This street that Frew showed me where they started Yenoh Merkeb is one of the worst parts in Addis. It is right next to a military camp and the soldiers in these camps always support a lot of prostitution. Frew told me that most of the women on that street were prostitutes, and there were so many women. They each have a tiny little house, probably not much larger than the bed and they have a curtain on the front. When the curtain is closed, it means that they are with someone. When it is open, they are available and are often sitting outside simply waiting for customers. They do this the whole day. It was quite a long street and I saw more of these small houses than I cared to. It was so sad.

 

In other news we visited Maeza today, the little girl in Sendafa who is HIV positive and who is quite sick right now. I went with Frew and we gave her some powdered milk to help give her some strength. He also said she is very anemic and so we gave her some liquid vitamins that included iron. She seemed to be a little bit better today, she was able to get out of bed for a minute or two. But she is so thin compared to when I saw her last year, it really just breaks your heart to look at her.

 

I think I should end with something a bit happier than these stories. I cooked some of the famous Butera pasta sauce for dinner last night. I started cooking it on Wednesday evening. Yesterday I added the meatballs and potatoes and let it cook for most of the day. We had it with penne pasta, parmigiano reggiano and ricotta cheeses and a side salad. Everyone loved it. We were all joking that Frew sat at the table for a record amount of time (normally he rushes through dinner and then goes and relaxes on the couch). Ruth said it was the best meal she ever had (though I don't quite believe that). I was really happy to be able to give something to them, because this family is always giving so much to me.

 

That's all for now. I'll try to update another time or two before I leave. Though I'm only here another 4 days and I want to spend as much time as possible with the people here.

 

Ciao, tebareku (God bless you)