Update One

Selam!
Hey everyone,
Sorry its taken me SO long to write an update, I can’t actually get onto the website to update the blog, so we’re going the route of me writing an update, sending it to Melissa, then she’ll post it (thanks, twin). So since I can’t get on this website to see anything you might be leaving fantastic comments about, but you still feel the need to say something really insightful, shoot me an email…I love email.
So here is round one.

We left Seattle two weeks ago very early in the morning, flew for two days, and arrived in Addis Ababa (the capital of Ethiopia) on a Sunday night. We had absolutely no idea what the game plan from there was going to be, but we were met at the airport, then headed to “HQ” (yes, they call it HQ, though is definitely not cool enough to earn that title). Our trip from the airport was the first I got to see of Ethiopia, it was kind of neat, lots of lights on, some cool buildings here and there- I learned the next day that the city is much prettier at night. After we made it a little ways from the airport there was a distinct change in the city, I’m not sure if it was the area of town, or just because I started looking in front of the car, not out the sides. There were people running all around our car, lots of little kids, widows, people who were crippled, begging for money. It was kind of hard to not do anything because duh- I came to Africa because I wanted to help people, so it was kind of hard to just sit there and do nothing. We finally got to headquarters and learned we would stay in Addis two full days then fly out that Wednesday morning. Monday consisted of just orientation, I didn’t like when we met with the nurse and she found out we hadn’t gotten our rabies shots. She had a minor freak out (the next morning we got stuck with round one of the rabies vaccine). The next day was a little better because we got out and got to explore a little of Addis, it’s a neat city with a lot of history, but definitely is not somewhere I would like to stay for an extended period of time. We were very relieved to leave Addis the following morning and head up to Mekelle.

Fun fact about Ethiopian Airlines…they leave whenever the heck they want to. We got to the airport at 530am for our 730am flight, and were met by people yelling “Mekelle?! Mekelle?!!” apparently the flight was leaving early. We caught our flight (after paying 200Birr for excess baggage), and everything went smoothly. We sat in front of an Ethiopian professor who was trying to convince me that if biology doesn’t end up working out, I should switch my major to agriculture and come to Ethiopia to do something with crops….right. We made it safely to Mekelle, and we were met by Jon, the American missionary who runs the Youth center. We went straight to his house and did some orientation, then went out to lunch for our first Ethiopian cuisine experience. I ate sheep, and actually enjoyed it. Ethiopian cuisine is a little weird, you eat with your hands (or should I say hand, major social taboo to eat with your left hand), so basically you tear off a piece of Injera- imagine sourdough bread that is the consistency of a pancake- and grab whatever paste-like entrée they have put in front of you. The texture was weird, but the taste is pretty good. I’m still getting used to the Injera…but I think I’m slowly beginning to enjoy it.

So Mekelle is quite the town. A population of 200,000 with two main paved roads and ridiculous chaos all around. One of the first things that really said “Welcome to Mekelle!” was the herd of camels (yes, camels) wandering along the busiest street. As we got farther into town, we realized it wasn’t just camels, but horses, donkeys, goats, cows, sheep, dogs, you name it and its probably wandering the streets of Mekelle; and they don’t just wander alongside the road, but just decide to hang out in the road, no one really seems to care though, drivers just zoom past, and the animals get out of the way. I’m not sure if there are traffic laws in Africa, if there are, no one observes them. People drive all over the place, don’t stop for pedestrians, and are basically just ridiculous. Crossing the road usually presents a daily challenge, but what kind of day would it be without a little adventure, right?

Ok, so that’s sort of the feel of the town, but what the heck are we doing here and how are we spending our days, right? Well, when we are not avoiding potentially rabid animals on the streets of Mekelle, we are usually found hanging out at the Mekelle Youth Center. There is an Ethiopian staff, and then our staff…which consists of me, Mindy, and another intern from England named Joel. The first week we just kind of hung out and got to know the in’s and out’s of the youth center. We are supposed to be targeting two groups of girls, the high schoolers and the middle schoolers. It has been very hard to break in and find common ground with them, but we are just hanging in there and earning our right to be heard (thanks, Young Life). It was getting tiring playing endless games of Uno, Skip-Bo, and I-Spy, but we have finally set our schedule now that we have figured out what we want to do with our time here. We work 6 days a week and get Sundays off. We spend our mornings at various other ministries around Mekelle (a couple orphanages, a blind school, and an orphanage for blind girls who are older). Our afternoons are all at the youth center putting on our various programs. We do Anti-AIDS clubs for boys and girls, table tennis tournaments, organized games, little boys and little girls’ bible clubs at our house, and English conversation and English reading classes four times a week. We also hang out with the older girls in our free time and lead a couple bible studies with them. It’s pretty neat and we are solidly booked from 9-5 Monday-Saturday, but its great and we can hang in there for seven more weeks just going non-stop.

Overall, it’s been a really good experience so far, we are learning to just roll with whatever gets thrown at us. My favorite is that there is an energy shortage and so every other day we don’t have power, but we find ways to entertain ourselves, we are pretty far along in a jigsaw puzzle we do by candle light at night. We also have people over and have recently gotten into baking. We made our own tortillas (they actually look like real tortillas) AND we made Joel a birthday cake (and no, it did not come from a box). We are both still in pretty good health (knock on wood), but prayer for continued good health would be fantastic. I’ll try to update again soon now that we have a system figured out. But I’ll leave you all with this little nugget of information:It is the year 2000 in Ethiopia...there are also 13 months in a year, and they go off the traditional Jewish time schedule, so everything is 6 hours off. The days start and end at 6, not 12. It is very confusing when an Ethiopian asks you for the time and then you have to automatically add 6 six hours before you tell them. It’s quite the experience to be living at a different time of the day, in a different month, and in a different year