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 . . .

The Carpet

One of our jobs as Country Reps for Ethiopia is to make sure that our service workers’ needs are taken care of. This means that I spend significant time getting apartments and houses set up for our workers. This doesn’t sound like a big deal and generally something I would enjoy. However, this is Ethiopia. Let me tell you about the day we went to look for carpet.

Ethiopia is home to Africa’s largest outdoor market called Merkato. Merkato stretches for kilometres and one can find almost anything here if one has the time and the patience. Each section of Merkato houses the same type of thing so there is the hardware section, the fabric section, the rubber boot section, the clothes section and …the carpet section.

The streets are narrow and crowded. Assefa, our driver, can barely make his way through the sea of people to get to the part of town we need. We finally arrive at the carpet stores. Now, don’t think North American carpet stores. No such thing here. Each carpet “store” is about 1.5 x 3 meters (4 ½ x 9 feet). There are gigantic roles of carpet stacked horizontally leaving only enough space for one person to squeeze in to take a look.

We go to three stalls before we find someone who actually has the type of carpet we are looking for. He pulls out a sample pallet with twelve beautiful little swatches of carpet and asks, “Which one do you like.” I have been down this road before. I have been in Ethiopia long enough now to know that it doesn’t really matter which one I like because, almost certainly, the one I like will not be available. I learned this much shopping for ceramic tiles for my kitchen last year.

So, before I even think about which one I may like, I say “which ones do you have?” Sure enough, he has about five of the twelve. But, not really the one we like the best so we move on.

Keeping a close eye on each other so as not to get separated, we make our way across the street to another merchant. He has some but not the one we like. So back, across the street, once more. Again the pallet of samples gets pulled out for us. We point at the green one, “Do you have this one?” He points at three large rolls of green carpet.

Yes, the sweet taste of success. Then the question “sinteno” (how much is it)? The price quoted is higher than all the others. Then comes the game of showing enough interest to keep the conversation going but not too much interest so there is no incentive to bargain. With a little coaxing the man agrees to our price. The room measurements are given and two young men hoist the gigantic carpet rolls on their shoulders and take them out into the street.

There is our newly paid for carpet being unrolled in the middle of the sidewalk, with people coming from both directions walking on our carpet, some carefully and others not so carefully. As they make the measurements and start cutting the carpet I keep my eyes both on the skies, which are threatening, and on a very persistent beggar I am trying to stave off. “Please let it not rain.” becomes my mantra.

All of a sudden we are aware that our surroundings have changed dramatically. The streets have swelled with people. Men are everywhere. We realize that we are straight across from a mosque and it’s time for Friday prayers. Wave after wave of Muslim men descend upon the street, their carpets or papers in hand and start to kneel down. Everywhere, in the street, on the sidewalk, in the allies, in the gullies, there are kneeling Muslim men. We realize that our window of escape is narrowing. We make arrangements to pick up the carpet in a couple of hours.

It’s a sea of Muslims now. Wave upon wave continues to break upon the street. We start to make our way quickly through the crowd trying to find even a small pathway that will lead us out. Just as we make our way to the truck parked on a side street we see wave upon wave of Muslim women descending upon us. We are parked in the area where the women pray! We quickly jump into the vehicle and Assefa begins to make his way painstakingly through the waves of women. Thankfully we make it to a main road where it’s open and the car to able to make it’s way out of the Muslim ocean. We can breathe again.

The carpet is retrieved a couple of hours later and even though there was a downpour on the way home the carpet makes it to the MCC compound safely and is now in the new house where our service workers, Krista and Megan, will be living. It’s never easy, but what we set out to do was done successfully. We never take that for granted here.

Note: Krista Allen begins a new term with the MKC Peace Office writing a childrens’ Sunday School peace curriculum for the MKC church and Megan Weemes continues her assignment working with a local NGO on HIV/AIDS and peace related work.

Roth Amstutz Travelouge

Saturday, August 22 entry:

Greetings from Addis! We can say this finally after quite an ordeal in traveling. We were taken to Toronto by a cloud of witnesses, that is Howard & Shirley, Deb, Kris & Krista. So many thanks to you folks for doing all you did for us, especially in that final week. Those last couple of days were hectic, trying to get all the baggage weight right, sweating away in the room where all our stuff was. The ride to the airport was uneventful, parking was uneventful and getting our luggage checked was uneventful (all bags were accepted at 23 kg. even though the scale sometimes said 23.8 or 24). We had bought a U-Haul box and made it overweight in order for everything to fit, agreeing to pay $150. I had taped the box in the corners and put string around it and the last we saw of it it was making its way through Frankfurt to Addis.

That was the last uneventful part of our journey. Soon after we boarded at 6 p.m. the heavens opened up and a huge thunder and lightning storm engulfed Pearson International Airport (it was spectacular). The deluge gently rocked the airplane as we sat motionless on the tarmac at the gate waiting for the storm to pass. The control tower didn’t clear us to fly until almost 9 p.m. That would prove our undoing. However the flight over was smooth and quiet, 7 hours later we landed in Frankfurt. Unfortunately the smooth ride didn’t help Amani. She couldn’t help throwing up as we landed and we couldn’t find the airsick bag in a moment’s notice. The attendant quietly covered up the mess on the floor and opened a couple of bags of coffee on it to neutralize any smell. (don’t worry about Amani, she’s fine, it was that first time coming down and having just eaten a large meal).

Our connecting flight was to leave at 10:25 a.m. We landed at just before 10 a.m., got out of the plane about 10:05 and were at Gate B62 at 10:15 only to be told by some security that the plane had left the gate. What? It turns out that the 10:25 means take off, not leaving the gate, at least that is the excuse we were given. In my tired state I was pretty upset and I let the airport staff know it. Several other families who had gotten off with us and had run to Gate B62 too. But there was nothing for it but to go find out what options we had (later, in retrospect, I realized that the reasons given by Lufthansa staff at the gate and upstairs at the desk was flawed. Passengers and agencies around the world don’t care what time the pilot has to be out on the tarmac, that departure time listed is for the passengers to know when the plane is leaving the gate. They didn’t have an excuse and probably knew it). And that was the beginning of the ordeal.

We found the Lufthansa re-booking desk upstairs and proceeded to book a flight on Ethiopian Airlines for 11:30 p.m. on a nonstop flight to Addis arriving the next morning (Saturday) at 7:30 a.m. and for the rest of the day we wandered the airport. We didn’t mean to. It just happened. We wanted to find a place to relax until the time came and were told we could go to a ‘sky lounge’ and rest. But it was on the opposite end of the airport. There was a ‘skyline’ tram we could take and we did and after walking what seemed like forever we finally found the lounge. The price of admission was much more than we were told ($40 per person, although the lady was will to charge ‘3 for 5’) and it was cash only, euros or dollars. We had neither. Now we went looking for McDonald’s. Unbeknownst to us, there is more than one McDonald’s, one for travelers only and one for the general public and travelers. They only told us of the public option and soon as we arrived we realized this wasn’t the one we wanted. Busy, dirty, noisy, lots of kids with no room to stretch out. The problem was that we had to pass through passport control and security each time we went in and out. It’s a long story but we had to do that several times because of our confusion. We went back to terminal 1 in search of McDonald’s for transit travelers, back in B area. We visited A, B, C, D, E areas and terminals 1 and 2 from end to end. We did find McD’s in the end but were exhausted. My feet, legs, back and neck hurt. We found some ‘lazy boy’ type chairs in C and rested there for several hours. We were told that ET would probably depart from C area. Turns out they left from B area very near where we started the day. If only we had known . . .

We were the typical tired travelers when we finally were able to board late night. ET flight 707 was fine but not as nice as Lufthansa would have been. It was mostly full, with us near the back with the crying babies and Ethiopian families who wouldn’t talk quietly when the lights went down and everyone tried to catch an overnight nap. The girls all were able to sleep with Sophia having the best spot. My whole center row was unoccupied so she came and laid down across 2 seats for most of the flight. Wanda and I dragged ourselves off the plane in the morning’s light but the girls were almost perky. Customs wasn’t a problem and we were thinking that our luck was about to even out, we only needed to pick up our luggage. 9 pieces came out immediately in the near empty airport but we waited for the box to come out on the carousel . . . in vain. It didn’t show. Well, there goes our 7 lbs. of cheese and 10 lbs. of sliced pepperoni . . . as well as clothes and yard rake head for our gardener.

There were a whole cloud of witnesses waiting for us here in Addis. We were met by Mekonnen, our program manager and Assefa, our driver, at the airport. Yeshiareg, our secretary/bookkeeper and Yeshi, our housekeeper, were waiting at the house along with our new SALT’er Lydette and YAMEN’er Nindyo. Of course there were a whole host of animals to welcome the girls. At first Peanut and Coca barked like we were strangers but when Peanut realized who we were she started yipping, crying, barking and dancing all around the girls and me. Princess Waffles and Spot showed indifference but there were 4 kittens lurking in the laundry room, half wild (they’re now in the house, Princess Waffles personally brought them in and the girls are getting to know them and vice versa).

Wanda and I had a couple of hours of shut eye this afternoon and are working on unpacking all our goodies. So to sum up; we arrived alive, though tired and weary. 90% of our luggage arrived and we are holding out hope that our box will be coming in tonight’s flight. Amani, Abby and Sophia were GREAT! In spite of all the ordeals, all the unexpected twists that are part of traveling they soldiered on, keeping up a good humor for the most part. Wanda and I told them that they are now world-class travelers. And they are.

Thanks to all of you who hosted us on our way through home leave. We were so glad to see each and every one of you and were sad to leave our dear family and friends. But a couple of friends of ours helped us think of our 4 years like a work week; the first 2 years were like Monday and Tuesday, our home leave was like Wednesday (sometimes called ‘hump day’ because as you are climbing through the week you get over the hump of midweek and can see the end of the work week), a break between our term. Thursday and Friday are like the next 2 years, they’ll go by fast, I’m sure.

Tuesday, August 25 entry:

First things first, the prodigal box arrived! The box we brought from Tavistock that didn’t arrive with us on Saturday morning, was in the airport on Sunday morning when I went to pick Megan Weemes up at the airport. Her flight came in at 5:10 a.m. I went back into baggage claim to look for my box. A chill of thrill ran through me when I saw the box in the locked area of the airport baggage claim. It had apparently arrived the night before, on Saturday evening, same flight that brought Krista Allen in. The other wonderful thing was that I didn’t have to pay anything to get it out. No baksheesh, just a smiling official who found the key opened up the door and wished me a good day. Lots of warm and fuzzy feelings toward Ethiopian Airlines and Bole Airport Authority that morning.

Holding our breath, we opened up the box. Would the cheese and pepperoni still be good? The cooler was still intact, the Rubbermaid ice blue cold packs were no longer frozen but were still cold and the cheese and pepperoni were also still cold. Amazing, after 4 days in transit! We immediately sectioned the cheese and pepperoni for freezing and put them in the freezer. We believe it is all still good, the cheese crumbles easy but small price to pay for bringing it all the way from Amstutz Pantry in Kidron, Ohio in July to Addis Ababa in August.

Jet lag is no fun, but the internal gyroscopes are slowly righting themselves, although we’re not out of the woods yet. Wanda and I are still tired in the day and waking up at night. It’s no fun to be groggy when you are working in the office. The girls seem to be doing alright. The compound is in beautiful condition. The rain has made everything green and our gardener, Gutu, has done a great job all around the yard. In addition many things we asked to get done were done. Screens were put in all bedroom windows, the flooring is finished, the painting is done, the shelter for the ping pong table has begun, a wood shed was built, a door for the trash incinerator was installed. That was all encouraging.

How about water and electricity? Things we take for granted we immediately became aware had not changed much here. We were told that electricity was being rationed out, every other day. Our water was beginning to trickle. Only too late did we realize that our 2 water tanks were completely empty. I got a shower on Saturday before we realized it on Sunday. We didn’t even have the jerry cans back up water in place and our house had swelled to 9 over Sunday night! On Monday we had water trucked in but still the hot water wouldn’t flow. Finally in desperation I started drawing bath water in our bathroom and let it run for the next hour. It started out as a trickle, to a tiny stream and finally to a decent stream. It seems that the lines needed to be bled. So now we have running hot and cold water, a real blessing! As for the electricity? Everyone told us that it would go off on Tuesday at 7 a.m. and it did, but then came back on again within the hour! This afternoon we heard that the government decided that the city would have uninterrupted service until the new year (Sept. 11). That’s good news for everyone! (p.s. turns out that that wasn’t accurate; we have had intermittent power outages since Tuesday, including power off all day on Friday and Saturday. Nothing is certain here . . .)

Bingham started school today (Tuesday) and our girls were very ready to go. Monday night they started a new era by making their own lunches (with some mild supervision). This morning they were up and at ‘em early and actually left the compound early, wow! This afternoon they came home so excited. Amani and Abby said that 6th grade is awesome! Sophia said that her grade 5 teacher is awesome (Mr. Peters). So it’s great to hear them so bubbly. (p.s. the mornings leveled off quickly, by Friday we were pushing them out the door, behind schedule)

P.S., Saturday, August 29

We are all getting back into the swing of things. Wanda and I spent the week catching up on our work. Our house and office are more organized than at the beginning of the week but the next week looks as busy as ever. We’re doing orientation for Nindyo and Lydette, we’re meeting with partners and friends in the coming week and planning major workshops and MCC visits at the end of September and early October. We’ll be ready for a break by the end of October.

A Midsummer’s Dream

We are past midsummer and it is not a dream, we are in North America. We landed on Saturday, June 20 after a long transit from Addis. It was on the eve of midsummer, solstice, and the day seemed to go on and on (in Addis Ababa the sun always sets between 6:30 and 7 p.m.).

The first couple of weeks were spent with Wanda’s family and in St. Catharines, with health appointments and with friends. Lots of good food (too good, I think I’ve gained weight) and good exercise. For my part I’ve been able to walk every morning, in part to maintain my weight and in part to simply enjoy the free and open space. Amani, Abby and Sophia have been freed too, taking advantage of the wide, open spaces to bicycle and roam around. One doesn’t realize how confining our compound in Ethiopia has been until one is ‘freed’ here in North America. As white North Americans in Addis Ababa, we stand out and the females are sometimes the target of harassment.

So far we have all had our eyes checked (the girls are fine, no correction needed. I need a small correction to the better and Wanda is going to need bifocals, effectively ‘crossing over’ to middle age), the girls got booster shots at the health clinic, Wanda and I have had our teeth checked (the girls will be checked in August), and we saw our M.D for the first time in two years. I am feeling more relaxed since most of the health obligations are now done.

But shopping is another matter. Wanda and the girls are really enjoying hitting the stores, lots of happy smiles after each mall experience. I prefer shopping online. My two favorite stores right now are Amazon and LL Bean. This can be fun with a broadband connection (as opposed to a slow dialup connection). DVD’s and clothing make up most of the purchases (DVD’s have become our way to cope in Addis with two government run TV channels and our choice not to purchase a satellite dish), along with checking out news, sports and weather online.

The weather has cooperated most of the time, with only an occasional rainy day here and there (southern Ontario has had more than its share of cool, wet weather). For the most part it has been sunny and warm, but not hot and humid, which is another wonderful weather gift for us.


We have already enjoyed very good company of family and friends. We have been invited out to homes and out to eat and in all of these places we have been welcomed. It feels good to catch up and we are warmed by the hospitality of family and friends.

‘til next time . . .