The Recovery Act

So what have we done to recover from the blitz of activities from August 22 to October 11? On Monday, October 12, Wanda and I sent the girls off to Bingham for their normal school day but closed down the MCC compound. We gave our staff the day off as well as our housekeepers. A quiet day with just the two of us. Nice. Oh yes, we did go out shopping, we needed a lot of groceries, but somehow it didn’t feel rushed like usual. We played a game of Scrabble without interruption or time constraints. Wow. Nice.

But that wasn’t all. This week we are down at Sabana Lodge Beach Resort on Lake Langano. As the girls and Wanda are down at the beach (with a family we know also here) I am sitting in our room letting you know the recovery act is going well. Bingham Academy (and the other American school) are on Fall break all week. We came down from Addis on Tuesday morning and will go back on Friday morning. Three nights. Nice.

The lake shimmers in the morning sun below. The little lodges are built on the side of a hill, terraced one level above another. At the 400 level where we’re staying we can see for miles and miles across the lake to the other side. Everything works here, the electricity, hot and cold running water. The beds are comfortable, the décor is tastefully done. But most of all, it is quiet. Except for birds and the occasional bellow of a bull or a donkey, all is quiet. No traffic, no jet planes overhead, no crowded city streets. Peace and quiet.

It will all be over too soon, I know that. We’ll be back to the city on Friday and a host of issues will be waiting for us. Still, this will put some wind in our sails. A little wind at our backs is what we need . . .

Are You Coming?

Ethiopia is hard to describe. Daily life is so different from what we all know in our first world experience. We tried to convey some of that this past summer on our home leave and also in these blogs and with e-letters to friends and family. But as they say, you have to see it to believe it.

That is why I am hoping to see some friends and family in 2010. If folks don’t want to come by themselves, if they would feel better in a tour group then there will be a couple of opportunities next year to do just that. The first is a tour in March out of Canada (Americans don’t need to feel left out, I’m sure your money is as good as theirs). Darrell & Florence Jantzi are putting together a tour from March 3-20 that will include both Meserete Kristos Church and MCC activities as well as traveling to cultural and historic sites in Ethiopia (and I believe a safari in Kenya). I don’t know the details but I saw the advertisement in the October 5 issue of the Canadian Mennonite. Contact Darrell for details at Jantzi@golden.net

The other opportunity is not out yet but I hope it will be by the end of December. MCC has what they call ‘Learning Tours’ which go all over the world. I have contacted MCC Akron about the possibility of doing such a tour. I envision a historical tour of northern Ethiopia, a tour of MCC and partners, including Meserete Kristos Church. I am tentatively planning this for November 2010. We’ll work out details on this end, work with MCC Akron on that end and come up with a plan before the end of the year. In the meantime, to all our friends and family, including all the good folks from our churches we pastored in, think about coming here for a trip of a lifetime. Any takers?

Routines

Routines

Most of us don’t think about our routine, we just do it. But routines give us a sense of stability, especially when we are strangers in a strange land. So I might share my routine to give a sense how it may be at once familiar and unfamiliar to you.

I wake up early. The call to prayer is what often brings me out of my sleep. In the darkness, even with the windows closed, the Muslim call to prayer usually starts around 5:30 a.m. Sometimes it begins earlier, I don’t know why, but 5:30 a.m. is dawn; the moment when, in ancient times, the muezzin can distinguish between a white thread and a black thread. The local mosque has a good loudspeaker, Friday sermons are loud and clear, fortunately the morning call to prayer is not so harsh, almost melodic.

As I lie in bed becoming more fully awake, the birds begin their morning routine. Singing, call out to one another. The twittering and chirping moves the wakeup call from manmade to natural. It’s now 5:45 and I cannot sleep anymore so I get up. I set the alarm on my cell phone for 6 a.m. but I rarely need it. I turn on my computer in the semi-darkness and check my email and the overnight sports scores. While we were sleeping North America was still busy. There are usually some emails from MCC Akron or Winnipeg and occasionally some from friends and family.

Another alarm rings. It is Sophia’s new alarm clock the next room over. It is loud and obnoxious but she insists on letting it wake her up instead of me these days. 6:15 is when I go offline, open the bedroom curtains and go to the girls bedrooms, open their curtains and say it’s time to wake up. Then I leave. I have learned not to push lest my daughters turn grumpy.

I go out to the kitchen and turn on the shortwave radio. Either the BBC or VOA. They give me the best morning news updates. I go around an open all the curtains in the house just as the sun is ready to stream its light through the windows. I drink my 14 oz. of water with some vitamins. Boiled water in a large pot from the night before is cooled and ready to put into our water filter.

Time to feed the dogs and cats. There’s been whining and meowing outside the doors since hearing me get up. We feed them a homemade rice/lentil/canned dog food mix. Hard to find food for animals here. I open the door; Spot and Princess Waffles the cats come in meowing in protest (where have you been? I’m hungry) and Peanut the dog darts in, often heading straight for Sophia’s bedroom. I put the mix in their bowls on the back porch and take some for Coca the dog out the other door. Coca is always waiting by the kitchen door, tail wagging, friendly eyes looking up at me. I’m popular amongst the animals, feeding them does that.

I eat a banana and start getting the kitchen ready for breakfast. The girls don’t enjoy cereal in Ethiopia because the milk tastes ‘different’. It’s true. Both the fresh and powdered milk don’t taste light NA milk. So we don’t eat nearly as much cereal as back in NA. The choices are cereal (granola and yogurt), fruit, oatmeal, pancakes, french toast or eggs and toast. I often make either scrambled or overeasy eggs or sometimes an omelette. Abby usually asks for pancakes but I try to limit that to twice a week. I will also clean up the kitchen as I am making breakfast.

Around 6:30 I see faces. Wanda comes into the kitchen to finish making the lunches that the girls worked on the night before. Every half hour the news programs change on the BBC and VOA, I keep track of time that way. At 7 a.m. it is time to start warning the girls to finish up their breakfast and get a move on. At 7:15 they are to be out the door. Their backpacks are filled with books, lunch bags and other ‘little girl stuff’. They trudge out the door and head for the compound gate where one of our guards is ready to escort them down the street (a 5 minute walk) to the SIM Press Compound. There they will climb into the minibus taxis to take them to Bingham Academy. The morning traffic jam will turn a 10 minute drive into a 40 minute one.

Now we have time to finish our breakfasts and get ready for the day. By 8:30 our staff should be arriving. We throw open the office curtains, turn on the computers and get ready to start the business day. MCC business is usually answering email, working on the computer database called PlanWin, calling people or receiving calls and simply going through a checklist of things to do. Sometimes we have to turn on the generator because the power is off. Sometimes we have to work on water issues, either in our compound or our service workers’ compound. Wanda and Yeshiareg deal with the finances and Mekonnen and I deal with the programming.

There are breaks at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Tea and k’olo in the morning, coffee and popcorn in the afternoon. Everyone stops and gathers, a prayer is said and we sit and talk. It is one way to get to know each other better.

Lunch is at noon and the staff usually gets 2 hours to go and get something. We have our share of ‘power lunches’, scheduling meetings with partners around a lunch. If we leave the compound we usually go grocery shopping as well because getting around town is so time consuming. It makes sense to shop.

The girls arrive home around 4 p.m. from school. If they have to stay after school for activities they come home on the late minibus, arriving in the compound around 5:30. A long day for them. Our day ends between 5 and 6 p.m., just as Akron and Winnipeg are waking up. I can always tell who gets into the office when, the email receipts start flowing back to me between 3 and 5 p.m.

Our supper is usually between 6 and 7 p.m. Our housekeeper Yeshi has made supper earlier and we just heat it up. It’s a good time of day to catch up with each other. Sometimes after supper we watch something together, like The Waltons or Planet Earth. The girls need to be in their rooms by 8:30, lights out by 9 p.m. Wanda and I will often watch a Everybody Loves Raymond or M*A*S*H* show (yes, DVD’s are amazing, we brought back whole seasons from our home leave this past summer in NA). Our lights are usually out between 10 and 11. We’ve heard the call to prayer 5 times today. We may have heard also an Orthodox liturgy chanted over their loudspeaker. There’s the braying of donkeys and the sound of thousands of vehicles down at the bottom of the hill. But now, relative to the day, all is quiet. The barking of dogs is heard from the various compounds as they hear the street dogs gather.

The routine will start again tomorrow, a variation on the same theme.

Running to Stand Still

I know, I’m borrowing the title of this blog from a U2 song. But that is the way it has felt since we arrived back in our offices in August; falling behind and running hard just to get to the place we are supposed to be. No getting ahead.

But now, I think we are almost caught up, thanks be to God. Let’s see, what were a few things that happened between then and now that caused us to feel like this:

Orientation – last year we had a large group of newcomers and spent August planning orientation for them. This year we came back from our home leave to find 2 people already here one week and starting their language class. So we had to catch up and plan an orientation as we were doing it. Visiting MCC sites and partners, visiting various cultural and social sites around the city, introducing them to their host families and work places. Fortunately Lydette (our SALT’er from Indiana) and Nindyo (our YAMEN’er from Indonesia) were flexible and were able to handle less structure.

Bingham Academy – School began the week we returned. Not too much a problem, it was good to get the girls back into a routine again. Yet Amani and Abby were transitioning to middle school which means a new schedule during the day and more activities after school. They are very excited and happy about it but it does mean more after school and evening driving. Fortunately it’s not too bad yet. Sophia is also very happy about her class and her teacher. Mr. Peters is a teacher with many years of elementary experience from Michigan and she really likes him. That is a relief to us.

Service worker transition – Two of our SALT’ers from last year have transitioned to service worker status this year. Megan and Krista moved out from their previous host families and moved in together in Addis, across the city. Finding a suitable place, moving them in and getting furniture and appliances for them took some time. Wanda needed to spend days going shopping with them and our office staff in order to get decent furniture and appliances for them.

Planning for workshops/meetings Participating in PME and EARM – As organizers of events know, it’s not easy to participate in something that you have been organizing. This is what happened to us. We sat in on the PME workshop when we could but in the end Wanda and I both were needed in other places. EARM was a bit different since the venue was almost 2 hours southwest of Addis in a resort compound, we were ‘stuck’ there (in a good way). Still, we worried about details and whenever the Negash Lodge manager needed to talk to a spokesperson for EARM, that was me.

Hosting – from the time we arrived in August our ‘guest container’ was occupied. Sometimes even our living room and, when we were gone, our bedrooms. We welcome visitors and guests all the time and enjoyed having MCC’ers staying with us. But it was a relief to have a quiet house this past week.

September 15 and October 15 – These are MCC administrative deadlines; the first is for reporting on activities of the previous quarter and the second is for applying for funding for peace, HIV/AIDS and Global Family projects for the coming fiscal year. In both cases we couldn’t get the work done on time. For the project proposals we have, we asked for an extension of the deadline until October 30 which the admin folks in Winnipeg and Akron kindly granted. So we are in the midst of working with our partners on finishing the proposals.

I think we are almost at ‘stand still’ right now. It may be that we’ll never get ahead, at least to our (and MCC admin) satisfaction. There’s still too much to do. Yet Wanda and I have the feeling that we have ‘passed through the waters’, to use a Biblical phrase, and have survived. We are grateful for this. This confluence of events was a ‘one-off’, as our Brit friends say; it will happen only once. We won’t be hosting EARM again while we are here, the PME workshop is a one-time event, the transition for our service workers is done for the next 2-3 years. Slowly our schedule is settling back to ‘normal’ busy (I still have a full page of things to do). But we are healthy and happy and recovering. How are we recovering? That would be the next blog . . .