Christmas Day -- Eastern

A lot has happened since the last blog and I want to bring my blog up to date (and all you as well). So I shall put it in ‘bite size’ entries, three to be exact. This one will cover this past week,the next one around New Year’s and the third one the time around Christmas.

Monday, January 7 was likely just another day for 98% of North Americans but for your Eastern Orthodox friends it was a special day, Christmas. And for the nation of Christians in Ethiopia, Christmas was yesterday as well. The nation of Orthodox, Catholics and “Pentes”, or known as Evangelicals here all celebrated together, at least they have the Christian holidays in common with each other (one of few things they can agree on). So there were midnight services, bonfires and the flow of liquor (at least that is what we hear from the Pentes about the Orthodox believers). There were major services all weekend in churches and in public places. The Evangelicals rented out the national stadium and the International Millennium Hall for services which were open to the public. Very different than what most western Christians do for Christmas. We see the Christmas season as a family time and when we attend church as a family. But it is seen, by the Pentes, as a public celebration with mission implications.

The Amstutz family did not participate in any public celebrations on Monday. Instead we went to a very small house in a compound where 5 orphaned children are living together, Mom & Dad dead. They take care of themselves with a little help from friends and a family member in the states. Our fellow MCC’er has been personally helping them herself but invited us to join her on Christmas Day as she visited them with gifts from us and her. The children (oldest is maybe 19 but she doesn’t know for sure) were a little stunned to see all the gifts. It was good to see shy smiles from the boy and 4 girls as they opened gifts of shawls, jeans, shirts, skirts and tops. They were given new shoes as well. The scene was almost Dickensian, but even poorer than the Cratchitts.

Then we headed to the Hilton Hotel to go swimming for the afternoon. It costs a bit of money but can be written off as combat pay (ok, I mean ‘worker renewal’). So the girls swam in the cross shaped pool which is supplied by hot spring water. The regular pool is bathwater warm and the 4 smaller, shallower pools built in each of the corners of the cross are hot tub hot. The girls swam all afternoon until they were drained of energy. The ride home was the quietest we’ve had with 3 girls in the vehicle in a long time! No one complained of going to bed that night.

Tuesday night was to be a special night for me. Wanda and I went to our friends house to watch the BCS championship Bowl with Ohio State vs. Louisiana State in New Orleans. I didn’t look up the score on the internet but the end was hinted at in an email from Sports Illustrated, which made it clear that LSU had won. So it was with a heavy heart I went to the BCS party. But in getting together with friends it was enjoyable in the end. We watched just for the joy of watching NA football, a treat in spite of a disappointing outcome.

The girls went back to school on Wednesday, January 9. Except for Sophia. She was ill for the last couple of days so she stayed home. Everyone needed school to start and a routine to be established once again. But it may be hard for everyone to get up at 6:15 a.m. for a while. At least it becomes light out around that time all year around so that is good for our internal clocks.

So we are back in the routine, about a week later than most of you with school age children. And now today (Thursday) we will be throwing a bit of a party for our MCC workers and staff after school. There will be food and drink and gifts for each of the 10 families represented (sugar, coffee, k’olo, biscuit cookies, cooking oil). Prices of staples have risen sharply in the past year so we were told that this will be appreciated. When was the last time that such gifts were appreciated in your family history?

Season’s Greetings, New Year’s Weekend

Christmas Day was on a Tuesday and the rest of the week was controlled chaos in our office. Our two priorities were to finalize a purchase of a vehicle and to secure residence permits for the Wanda and the girls. Little did we anticipate that it would take the rest of our week.

Mekonnen went to the various Ethiopian Ministry offices to get the paperwork approved on the vehicle and there was resistance in each place. Meanwhile we went as a family on Wednesday afternoon to the Ministry of Immigration and expected to wait but at the end of the day to get what we needed. But no, 2½ hours of waiting brought us nothing but new orders on what we needed to have for approval. What made this so hard to swallow is that on Monday when we visited the Ministry an official looked at our papers and said that they were all in order. He gave us a Wednesday appointment time and signed off on our papers with his initials. So we expected that his word that we had all that was needed for residency permits was good enough. The woman at the desk on Wednesday simply refused to listen to our pleadings, unsympathetic and unhelpful. Who to trust anymore? Who to believe? We thought it couldn’t get worse after that depressing afternoon, little did we know ...

We were also preparing to leave on retreat on the weekend to a place called Wendo Genet. It is the site of a hot springs ‘resort’, one of many hot springs in this country, evidence of a volcanic past. It was a “Mennonite Institution” retreat with MCC, EMM and MC Canada Witness folks gathered together to grow in relationship and to dialogue on how to work together with each other and with Meserete Kristos Church. The plan was to be at Wendo Genet from Saturday through Tuesday. Wanda and I were to be in charge and we were to leave Friday. But it became quite clear that we needed Friday to work on the vehicle and residency issues. Time was running out and Ministry officials were not in helpful moods. We planned the weekend on Friday while Mekonnen was out doing the legwork on those issues. So instead of breaking up the driving into two days and staying overnight at a hotel on Friday night, Saturday was a full day of driving down to Wendo Genet. Everyone was tired; drivers and passengers.

Wendo Genet is a government run resort that was built around a hot springs. The hot springs provides hot water for the showers and pools at the bottom of the hill. The large pool’s temperature was bathwater warm all the time, the children’s wading pool was warmer and the other pool was hot-tub hot. The girls were excited about swimming but at first were a bit shy to go in the pool because they felt the eyes of the locals, mostly males, on them. But we got up at 6 a.m. in the morning and found we had the pools to ourselves and that helped a lot. Also, once Sunday was over, most of the guests left. We were given rooms next to each other and that was good. They were generally acceptable overall, but nothing remarkable. Clean sheets but not clean floors. Heated water (naturally) but a strange ensuite combination of shower and toilet in one room next to the bedroom and the sink in the hallway. The toilet became wet with each shower. Oh well. The grounds were in a minor state of disorder. The children loved the monkeys that came up and begged for food. Our food was acceptable, but the menu limited.

Probably the most important thing that came out of the weekend was an understanding and renewed appreciation for the ties between MCC and EMM. The two were forced to combine as Mennonite Mission in Ethiopia (MME) for many years as a result of government pressure (easier to have one Mennonite institution to monitor). We heard the stories told which benefitted both young and old, new and experienced. We also talked about our future ties and how decisions back in North America will affect us. There are challenges ahead but it will be important to gather and talk to each other.

Worship was good for our group. We worship differently but worship the one God through Jesus Christ. Wanda and I brought hymns old and new down, we asked Mekonnen to lead songs in Amharic that would be familiar to the Ethiopians and we all sang together. We learned from each other. It was powerful at times. Imagine singing, “In Christ there is no East or West” with Christians from East and West, a wonderful testimony of unity.

Over the days we were at Wendo Genet I became aware that this used to be the exclusive retreat for Emperor Haile Selassie. The room we rented used to be the bar for Emperor Selassie’s use. There was a bar countertop and interesting curios that had remained in the bar even up to today. A bird in a cage, not alive, but wind up the mechanism under the cage and it ‘sings’. From the paintings on the wall to the plates and cups and silverware enclosed in a glass shelved case, it all spoke of a time long gone by when His Majesty frequented the retreat for his pleasure. So the two buildings next to each other were His Majesty’s personal retreat lodge and dining area. Such history fascinates me because I enjoy imagining a scene where the Emperor, his family and personal staff and a few friends are in those buildings and how it would have looked and sounded.

And so we rented Emperor Haile Selassie’s bar. We moved what chairs, soft and hard, that were in the room into a big circle and had our meetings there. We brought in the tables that were out on the porch/veranda and played games after meetings. And we ended the weekend on New Year’s Eve, staying up with a bonfire supper, then gathering in the hall we had rented, telling stories and jokes and playing card games such as Pit, Dutch Blitz and Rook (doesn’t that sound like a good Mennonite party?).

Amani and Abby just couldn’t stay up for New Year’s Eve, even though they had wanted to all day long. They were so tired they just went to bed. Sophia, on the other hand, made it a point to stay up no matter how tired she felt at one time, and she did! She made it to midnight as the only child in the room among the adults. She laughed at the jokes along with the rest of the adults, she played Pit and then, after a couple of hands, became the roving ‘expert’ helping all the first time players in the room. And when the party hats came out along with the noisemakers, she joined in at midnight as everyone blew their noisemakers and shook the large windows with noise (I was afraid our prolonged blowing of the noisemakers would wake up the entire compound and stopped, but people kept on blowing them for almost a minute long!).

So on January 1 we drove back to Addis Ababa, a drive which would take all day with the roads and stopping for an afternoon lunch. Driving 300 Km in Ethiopia isn’t like hopping on the interstate in NA and arriving, 4 hours later, at your destination. No, it takes a day of driving on various road surfaces, with obstacles on and beside the road and vehicle traffic that varies in how well they drive (from the majority who completely ignore the laws of the road, or are completely ignorant, to the minority who do know the laws and futilely try to observe them amongst the majority). We arrived in the late afternoon tired from the day’s drive. Home, safe and sound, thanks be to God.

Season’s Greetings, Christmas

Season’s Greetings friends and family!

We were fortunate to be invited to several Christmas gatherings; each one of them had a different flavor. At our Danish friends’ home, we ate a curried dish and afterwards Lars tried to show me and another colleague, Sam, how to make a Danish Christmas star from paper strips. I brought home a wonderful creation, like a Moravian Star, that was probably 25% mine and 75% Lars.

The Mennogroup gathering was at Bob and Jo Yoder’s with a potluck fellowship. The food was familiar with chicken, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole and much more. There was singing of Christmas carols and a White Elephant gift exchange for the adults which turned out to be a real hit (the children all got a stocking stuffed with small gifts). At our Canadian friends’ home on Christmas Eve there was food and the meeting of new people, friends and neighbours of Sam and Kathy’s. We had gone to the Christmas Eve service at ‘our’ church, International Lutheran Church, and had sung the Huron Carol with the other Canadians in the congregation. Now we were staying up late, past 11 p.m. and everyone was tired but happy. Christmas Day was soon here.

Christmas morning broke with sunshine through the windows, slowly waking us up. The girls were ready to open presents and we spent time opening all the gifts from loved ones; Grandpa & Grandma Amstutz (the girls had opened gifts from the Roth Grandparents a couple of weeks earlier), Aunts & Uncles and cousins from both sides.

Tamara Hayes, our MCC worker, neighbor and friend arrived in time to join in on the end of the gift opening, which included Christmas stockings for each of us. Then we put together a brunch of coffee, eggs and toast, cinnamon rolls and fruit. It was wonderfully relaxing to move leisurely from the scene around the Christmas tree to our table then back to the dining room to watch the girls enjoy their new gifts. I will keep warm memories of our first Christmas in Ethiopia, opening gifts with Christmas music in the background, sunshine pouring in on a quiet day in our peaceful house. We missed our family, yes, but a new family tradition was begun on that day. And it was gratifying to see Amani, Abby and Sophia enjoying the day so much.

That evening, as dusk settled outside we gathered in front of the tree and fireplace, where the lights and candles are, and I began reading Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to the family. The power went out but no matter, I used a flashlight. I didn’t get through the whole book but no matter, it was enough to sit in a semi-circle of chairs doing something that doesn’t happen often, gathering together to read and be read to. It ended a relaxed day, Christmas Day 2007.