Love Does

So the girls woke up today pretty fearless, then came getting ready in the bathrooms. The smell engulfs you as you are greeted with soiled damp concrete and you can’t really tell the difference between the showers, the toilet and the sinks. The water coming out of the faucets is a shade of sand brown that turns your stomach. With horror on their faces Kim and Maddie realized that they had washed their faces in this water the night before in the dark……yes they did. After getting ready you feel dirtier than then you went into the bathroom.
I opted for washing my hair in the spigot in the courtyard and taking a baby wipe bath. God bless baby wipes. Not glamorous but it worked just fine. We then were given tea and sweet bread with jelly which we enjoyed casually on the porch. I can’t say enough about how much I love out team. We all fit together just like a puzzle. Each one of us is uniquely different and beautiful, but together we all are a wonderful powerhouse and a picture of beauty. It is such a joy being together.
They told us we were not allowed to work on the day of rest so we were planning on visiting a sugar cane plantation but instead headed up the mountain where we found some hot springs. As we pulled up, working our way through the most desolated town I had ever seen, we were greeted and flocked by 50 kids. To say the least we stood out. They all kept looking up at us with watery eyes, their hands out saying “one birr, a gift for me”. We were all slightly taken aback since we all have a huge heart for children. We proceeded to hike up mountain accompanied by a local guide and about 10 kids. As we crossed over the bridges made of logs and stones and piles of baboon poop (which I stepped in ;)……in my flip flops), we learned the language and all stayed in awe of what we would see next. About half way up the mountain we realized we each had a child that had “adopted” us for the hike to make sure we were safe.
They were all little angles. We got to see volcano glass, showers that were hot springs flowing out of the mountain, a small village family that lived at the peak of the mountain and views that made us stop and took our breath away. I just can’t even describe how much you could feel the spirit of Jesus as we stood up on the top of that mountain. So we headed back down for lunch after a choral of a welcome song from the kids at the top of the mountain.
The hardest part for me was the end of the hike when the little guy who was my angel had brought me some sugar cane. It meant so much to me until he held out his hand and said 20 birr. At that moment I realized I was being used and it wasn’t about the fun, or the friendship or keeping us safe. Every moment of every day that he lives, he is living to make money for survival. I almost started crying but at the same time felt a bit angry. I had been punked into caring.
So we went to lunch and enjoyed the sugar cane I paid so much for. We had spaghetti and mystery meat sauce. I am just telling myself it is goat 😉 Then back home we went. On the way home I was talking to Yosi and he opened my eyes to the fact that it was no easier for him to see these children than it was for us. I guess it doesn’t matter how much you see it….the sight of poverty breaks everyone’s heart. Living here doesn’t make it any easier. So after returning to the school we took naps and had some quiet time. We then ate dinner which consisted of 2 pieces of Njira which is a sour crape like patty with some kind of sauce resembling very thing chili. We had our team meeting then the girls decided to take showers.
We opted for the spigot shower in the moonlight and the other three not showering were portable walls for both privacy and for the sake of the other women in the compound. Kim almost fell over trying to put her clothes back on. As you can imaging we were all rolling with laughter. Then came Lizzy’s turn. She did fantastic and was multitasking….washing her clothes while she showered. Then Maddie lit up the whole experience. She couldn’t get over how she felt like an elephant in the rain forest. She proceeded to throw her arm over her head like a trunk while soaking the moral support team (me ;). Her giggles were so cute and she said to pass on the word that if you haven’t had to live in Shashameni…… “Put your big boy pants on ;)”.
So after throwing out the bug spray…. Summer is not in the room with us. Goodnight to a fantastic day…..Goodnight Day 3
-“Jesus Juker “ ie Averee 😉

Tonight was such an exciting night. We went to the college in Shashameni. They told us we were staying in this courtyard that was surrounded by 3 dorm halls, a bath and washroom and the house of mamie and her family. Greeting us in the courtyard were clotheslines strewn with brightly colored tattered clothes, flies, bees the size of half dollars, small cobblestone paths being engulfed by grass and weeds. We then headed to our dorm room which all of the girls shared and there we found metal hammock bunk beds with a flower patterned mattresses.
After meeting the wash ladies, mamie and the president of the college we began moving into our rooms. We dressed the beds and then started the ordeal of getting our bug nets hung while trying not to get covered in the cockroaches as we lifted each of the ceiling tiles. After about a half an hour we all finally had our mosquito and roach free fortresses. We then made the decision to escape for a bit and head into town for some dinner. We had lovely pasta dishes and lots and lots of coca-cola. I ordered a water and little did I know I was getting a foot and a half tall bottle and with a hole in the ground for a toilet- my nice cold bottle of water was a challenge in the making.
We then for three hours tracked down some sugar and flower (which is near impossible to find). While shopping we bought some sugar cane toothbrushes which you gnaw on till the fibers fray and then you proceed to brush each tooth with the frayed end. This as you can imagine was quite the commodity.
We then traversed the bumpy dirt roads back to our courtyard sanctuary, which even though not physically the most comfortable, was quite the escape from the heartbreaking scenes in the city. The overwhelming scenes of animals that were bones with skin, children who were only 40lbs wearing xxxl shirts that were so dirty and full of holes they might as well be naked, flies swarming the eyes of the babies who had become so accustom they bore the discomfort, the laborers breaking their backs under the sun just trying to earn enough for a mean and the horse and donkey buggies bulling 15 times their weight in grain and straw being beaten with whips as they tried tirelessly to pull the loads they could barely move.
Needless to say, it was great to feel safe again. It gave our hearts a break. We then tried to head to bed and as we were settling down the whole team hung our heads in exhaust and started laughing as we realized it was only 7:30. The boys headed to their dorm which was as far as you could go across campus and the girls began the experience of their lives.
As we headed into our bug net forts, we realized there were cockroaches spotting our walls. They don’t harm you so this would not have been so bad except that Summer is deadly afraid of them and started fogging our walls with roach spray. This in turn caused hundreds of them to flood out from behind the door frames. Kim and Melissa started grabbing shoes and killing the roaches left and right as the roaches started darting around the room trying to scatter to save their lives. After one hour we could not breath because of the spray. After enough migraines to go around, we finally were sleeping and Summer spent the night in the van.
Goodnight to a great start to the trip….Goodnight Day 2

i can’t read your mind but my guess would be that you think traveling to ethiopia to help others is a fairly noble cause.  maybe so.  at the least, i thought i was pretty noble at the outset. 

then i realized i had so much more to learn than i had to offer.  last year when i was here the project (building the wall… in case you  have short term memory loss) had a foreman who liked to talk on his cell phone, give orders, and insert himself in the work only near its completion.  maybe, at the time, that’s what the project needed.  or maybe not.

this time around the project has a new bossman named, mamaroo (yes, the coolest name ever!).  from him, i have everything to learn.

as the leader of the project he immerses himself in the work.  if that’s not admirable enough, his leadership, from an outside view, shows him doing the same amount and type of work (hard manual labor) as everyone else under his leading.  essentially, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make the project a success.  he cares about the people working with him and the project itself.  after 6 days of work, i’d say that mamaroo is the definition of servant leadership.

and so it stands, as i set foot in ethiopia for the second time, i am reminded that i’m nothing greater than these ethiopian friends who i’m working alongside.  maybe i do have something to teach or offer (and hopefully i freely give of that) but i’m finding i have so much to learn.

ethiopia is teaching me to have a moldable, teachable spirit because there are leaders like mamaroo with valuable lessons to teach.

honestly, all this learning might just change my life.

-chris townley-