this is the capital city of Addis from the top floor of my hotel. Addis is about one hour south of Sendafa.
These are some of my new friends I met at the lutheran school where I taught 200+ pastors on the perils of leadership and finishing strong in christian leadership.
Sendafa pickup trucks:
sifting lentyls from the husks, the black dirt in the background are the lentyls drying after washing.
market day in sendafa:
goats on top of toyota micro bus taxi, heading home from market. All are alive:
going for water with a herd of pickup trucks:
going to market with grain:
Library which my church built. We also filled it with books and built shelves and benches for inside and outside. Note the homes in the background and the "wheel barrel" in the foreground.
homes of the wealthy being built. Eucalyptus branch walls, mud, then cement on the outside. Built on slabs of concrete. Running water in front yard only. These are for the wealthy. The less fortunate have hovels of sticks, mud, tin roofs, and newspaper on the walls. We entered these homes and put up cloth of their choosing and covered the lava rock and dirt with vinyl.:
The sendafa plain. Sendafa sits inside a dorment volcano:
Sendafa is at 8200 feet elevation. the ridges in the background go well over 9000 feet.
We built these stalls this week, providing a place of business for 18 merchants. They were in use by saturday of our 5th day there. :
this woman coverd her face with her child as I went to take the picture. she is in traditional dress in front of her home. She lives along the road to the church we built in Beka. The chuch has grown 4x since they opened the doors a couple of months ago. We traveled there for the dedication. Teams from my church have traveled there for last two years, twice a year to complete the church:
And this is the note I sent to friends this am talking a bit about the trip in more detail:
Subject: Trip to Sendafa Ethiopia
Its good to be back in the states, though I felt there was so much to do in Ethiopia that I was torn in coming back. I left Dulles airport on Sunday the 13th at 5pm. Flew to Frankfurt, had a small layover, then traveled over the alps, med and Sahara dessert to land in Kartoum, Sudan for a layover, then on to Addis, Ethiopia, the capital, around 10 pm on Monday their time, (+8 hours). We got through customs, loaded on the vans and arrived at hotel after midnight.
Goals for the trip were many fold: I was too team teach the Perils of Leadership and finishing strong in Christian leadership over the next four days to over 200 pastors from all over Ethiopia. I taught in the morning with one of the pastors from my church, each splitting the 8 topics, one each for 4 mornings. I am currently studying for my Phd in ministry leadership so this was a great chance to give back a little of what I was taught.
In the afternoon, I traveled an hour north to the town of Sendafa to work on some projects: We built some shoe shine and cobbler work stalls, dressed up the inside of the eucalyptus stick and mud homes, covered with tin roofs, with cloth and vinyl flooring. The walls are normally covered with newspaper, the floors are dirt/stone/mud. Inside is a bed which perhaps I could sleep on in the fetal position, and in the corner an open fire with perhaps a flue if the owner had scavenged such material. Clothes and a few items complete the decoration. A single light bulb provides dim light to the 8x8 home. We put vinyl plastic floors and covered the newspaper with cloth of their choosing, stapling each to the mud walls.
We also worked at the library that the church had paid for. It is a very nice structure, one of the newest we saw there. the church shipped a shipping container of hundreds of boxes of books to them. We sorted and filled shelves and built benches and tables.
We distributed vitamins and salt to the many homes and children. We clothed people and provided hundreds of pairs of shoes to the people. The people responded with love and acceptance of the meager gifts.
We visited many HIV patients, 109 of them, passing out their Govt supplied drugs and made gifts of cloth, clothes, salt, vitamins, and helped in their homes.
We constructed a 9 stall shoe shine and cobbler shops, open air stands. Sendafa has sunshine for 9 months of the year. It's dry season causes the volcanic ash which makes up the soil to rise in clouds of dust that permeates your every pore. Clean shoes are a thriving business, earning the worker 5 birr or 50 cents per job.
We worked on completing a water survey. 20,000 live in Sendafa and the water supply is enough for half. My main goal was to quantify, and qualify each source of water, trace out the source, distribution, storage and transmission of the water through out the town which lies at 8200 feet elevation inside a dorment volcanic crater. We hope to put in more wells, storage and chlorination pumps to provide the people with enough fresh water to meet their needs. 80% of their disease comes from water born pathogens. We will first chrlorinate their current supply systems, then drill a well and put in more storage, then route it through the 3x2 mile city. It will be a many year project and require lots of trips to make this happen.
We vistied a church in Beka, the next town up the road, which my church had built with volunteers over the last year. The previous church was 8 x16 with the same stick, mud, tin construction. On the inside, scripture verses were still stuck on the wall. The new church, complete with concrete walls and floors and windows and new doors, electric and lighting, houses about 60 and they are so very happy with it. It was a blessing to be there.
We visited several schools, handing out pencils to children in classroom housing 90 students each. We made presents of soccer balls and volley balls to the schools and we were delighted when the 2000 elementary school students were released to come get their gifts and joyfully played with the new gifts. We visited kindergarten classes and passed out pencils and beenie babies.
On Monday before we left, we visited an orphanage and for several hours, the 20 of us just held babies up to 2 years old and gave them some love they so desperately needed.
that pretty much sums up the work we did there. Simple but personal and deeply moving for me. The many impressions I had of the place are still yet to see paper. I was filled with awe of a people who are so poor yet have such a lovely spirit about them. As we walked through the town or the market, a half dozen children would grab onto your fingers and walk with you, just happy to be touching and to show some love back to you. Crowds gathered as we taught children how to tie their new shoes. People gathered as digital photography showed them the first glimpse of them selves in a picture. They were fascinated in deed by that technology. The burro is their pick up truck and upon seeing one dead along side the road where a truck had taken away someones valued animal, i was struck with the contrast of technology clashing with culture. These wonderful people struggle for the very basics of life. Some walk their burros, 10 miles round trip to fill plastic jugs with dirty water to cook, clean clothes, wash. Everyone is on the move there. Always going to and from market for their meager meals or to sell their wares.
The place smells ancient at first. Then the dust and filth fills your senses. The smell of spices of their food makes their way to your nose and takes residence there, making possible to stand the onslaught of the other smells. Always the people, the abject poor, some of the poorest in the world. The capital city of Addis has some 70-100K street kids, living in the dark sewers, or alleys of the streets. 300k prostitutes work their single room abodes, standing in the doorways for 24 hours a day, hoping to attract a customer and earning 80 cents for protected sex, 4 times more for unprotected sex. HIV is said to run in about 5% of the total population, but the much higher in this walk of life. Young girls are pushed from their homes by parents to work this life. Brothers forcing sisters into this life. Husbands selling their wives. All to merely survive to the next meal.
There is wealth there but it is hidden from the masses. It is a nation enslaved by a president that uses his army to protect himself from his people. We were stopped every day and searched for arms as we approached Addis from Sendafa. Millions have disappeared in the 17 years since communism was over thrown in the is govt. The population was disarmeed, the dissidents either killed or taken away, lost from their families forever. The national police interrogation camp is just outside Sendafa. It is a horrible looking place.
The pictures attached come from phone. Those in my camera are not yet downloaded. I am glad to be back but am already planning to go back. There is so much to do and few willing to go.
.***