| |
August 20, 2008
Letter #1 from Ethiopia
Dear Friends,
We arrived in Ethiopia two weeks ago. Our flights from Louisville, Chicago, and Frankfort were uneventful, except for our sense of the steadily accumulating distance between us and everyone we were leaving behind. We saw the Alps, still carrying lots of snow, the little islands along the Croatian coast, and finally the shoreline of Egypt, bleak ochre meeting the intense blue of the Mediterranean. The Sahara was shrouded in haze that increased as we came south. We left Khartoum at sunset and climbed to Ethiopia between two layers of starless, monsoon clouds. We were met at the airport with hugs from our waiting hosts and bouquets of roses presented by an eighth-grade girl, the daughter of the principal of our school. It felt wonderful to finally be here, just one day before the first anniversary of our interview for this call.
We are living in the walled compound of the Bethel Mekane Yesus School for Girls and feel surrounded by helpful friends, but our transition has not been easy. The apartment that the school was to have completed for us is still just a concrete outline ensnared with wooden scaffolding, part of an addition that will eventually house an extension to the chapel on the first floor, a new library on the second, and two apartments for teachers on the third. When the school realized that they couldn’t afford to finish the new construction, they converted an unused clinic in a classroom building into a small apartment for us. After two weeks of work on the electricity and plumbing, it’s now pretty comfortable. We have cleaned the kitchen cabinet so that it no longer smells of old medicines and have decorated the walls with pictures of our family, a house-warming gift basket, and the small painted cross that has accompanied us on all our travels. We are now home.
Remember the children’s story that we shared in our July letter? Well, Mt. Entoto is a real mountain on the north side of the city, mostly shrouded in clouds this time of year, and the rainy season wind really is cold! We have had rain every day, along with violent hail storms. We snuggle down at night under two thick wool blankets and a quilt that my mother made. Lora got to wondering the other day why she could hear birdsong so clearly, and realized that one of the window panes in our apartment had no glass! Somehow, in the midst of all the other remodeling, neither the school’s workmen nor Lora and I had noticed it. That’s why we’ve been so cold! So the work continues, and we appreciate the efforts of our hosts to make us comfortable.
Adapting to the altitude has been tiring. Being born in Montana does not automatically confer an easy adjustment to living at 8,000 feet, and there were a few days when I felt so sluggish that I doubted this call. Day by day, though, we are gradually feeling perkier. Lora exercises each morning on our living room floor, but feels trapped because there are no green spaces where she can walk, especially not in "immodest" exercise clothes. So far I’ve had one bout of diarrhea from rinsing my toothbrush under the tap instead of with boiled water, and one bite from an army ant when I stood still and tried to see them instead of moving instantly when I was warned.
For a couple of nature-lovers from Montana, Addis Ababa is overwhelming. On the sides of the streets there are little huts, maybe three feet tall and built of trash. Each shelters an old man huddled over a tiny charcoal burner. Other old men and women squat in their rags in the rain. Traffic is amazing, because all seven million people share the road: pedestrians trying to stay out of the bright orange mud while carrying babies and bundles and huge loads of firewood, blue and white taxis, and trucks and buses and cars by the thousands, all honking and crowding together. If your bumper is in the lead, you have the right of way! There are also herds of goats and flocks of sheep, stray Brahmin cows, and strings of little donkeys heavily piled with hay, firewood, or food sacks. Beggars come to car windows at every stop, and when Lora and I walk we are trailed by little kids yelling, “Ferengi!” the local word for foreigner. Our eyes burn with diesel and dung and woodsmoke, and the sun sets orange/brown into a sky thick with monsoon clouds. If there is beauty in Addis, it’s behind concrete walls topped with razor wire or broken glass.
But while we complain about unsafe water or poor email connections, four million people in the south are threatened with starvation. The price of the basic food grain, teff, has doubled in the last year.
So where is God in Ethiopia? In hugs and roses and welcoming strangers. In warnings which we are too slow to heed. In the challenge of learning, of stretching in understanding and tolerance and compassion.
We wake to the sound of the muezzin calling from the neighboring mosque’s loudspeaker at 5:00 a.m.. I carry our laptop across the dark, rain-slick stones of the compound to the computer lab and download email while the connection is uncrowded and fairly reliable. Then Lora and I read your letters along with the Mission Yearbook devotions at breakfast, starting each morning with reminders that the miles have not blurred our ties of love with you. In Addis Ababa, God is in your prayers and letters.
Thank you.
Love and peace,
Bruce and Lora
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer &
Study, p. 223 |
|
