OT - Ethiopia Trip journal LONG!!

[rjohns94]

I want to thank each of you for your thoughts and prayers while I was away on the missions trip to Ethiopia. Below is a summary of the trip and the success we had.

Saturday 17 Jan:

14 from my church met at 1 for final luggage weighing and such, and left the church with a send off at 2 pm, arriving Dulles around 430. We flew out at 1015 pm local, to Rome, an hour on the ground and then continued on the same plane to Addis Abba arriving on Sunday the 18th at 830 pm local time. (8 hours difference). The ride to the hotel is always interesting as the luggage is piled three high on the vans and the driving is less than organized chaos as there are no street lights at night, nor any lane markings on the pocked marked roads in the city of Addis. Dark allies attempt to hide the tin covered hovels where the mass of millions live in what we would consider filth and squalor, yet they call home. All sense of proportion and justice, and balance are put on tilt in such abject poverty, disease and living conditions. The streets are openly markets for the sale of human flesh of ages. As I slowly make my way across the city and observe the all too familiar patterns of human despair, I think this must be hell on earth.

Monday morning 19 Jan. The nights seem long as we try to adjust to the 8 hours of jet lag and unfamiliar beds. At 5 we rise and get ready for the day, eat, have devotions and are on the road some 40km north to the towns of Sendafa and Beke. The population of the towns combined are around 20,000. My Church has adopted these towns and we pay a group of 5 to work in and around the town year round. that group is called : Project Adopt a Village or PAV team. The nature of this trip is many fold and each group from the team will be working on in the various areas of the missions of the PAV team. Today I travel to Beke to work on painting the inside and outside of a church. Others will do home visits to HIV patients in the program where the families will receive meds, vinyl for their dirt floors fitted by team members, cloth to cover the mud walls also fitted and hung by team members. The roofs of tin will be caulked as we balance on ladders fashioned out of eucalyptus wood and nails. the children will be given clothes that we have brought, and will be played with and attended to in the paths that connect the homes. Love is a universal language and the barriers of communication are broken down with simple phrases and gestures. Laughter is heard from the children as they cling to the members of the teams that now total 20 as our friends from a sponsored Romanian church have joined us also.

I am tasked with painting off a ladder on the inside of the church. The paint is cut with gasoline to help spread the meager amount of paint to help the paint adhere to the walls. 10 of us and at least that many of the church folk set about painting and in 6 hours, we are done. Other members were making curtains for the windows, doors and alter area. Work will continue here for four more days as we retouch up some paint and trim, continue with the making of the curtains and hanging them, and caulking the roof. The size of the group will shrink each day.

Back in Sendafa the home visits have started with the reaming team members. We have traveled on dirt roads which promise to soon be paved by the Chinese who have negotiated road work for mineral interest in the country. The 40 km of pot holes and dust takes nearly two hours to travel each way. We all meet at the main structure in town to have lunch of peanut butter or chicken salad, or tuna salad which we make there with provisions that we have carried some 8000 miles in a battered suit case. We eat snacks of trail mix, drink warm Pepsi or bottled water and are grateful for the food after all of the work. The humanity crushes at you during the day, always children pressing in on you and others looking for a gift of anything. We don't randomly give out too many gifts. A riot would ensue if we did. The hopeful prayers we lift up in each home seem so small in the face of the needs of this people. Once the teams are back together, we eat and travel back to the hotel in Addis where we wash off the dust and paint of the day and go out to eat. The day ends near midnight.

Tuesday 20 Jan

The routine continues. Wake, shower, eat, devotions, load up in the vans and travel two hours. Teams in Beke at the church will continue to work on the painting and curtains, and also handing out clothes to 200 children who have gathered at the church property. Later many of the same children will be running around playing soccer with the team members who have gifted soccer balls to the church. At 9200 feet of elevation, it is not long before the international group is sucking wind and being schooled in soccer by 5 year olds. Laughter is heard by all, even among the hunger of the children. Their smiles as wide as their faces. Parents look on, the weight of their condition seen in their eyes, but even they laugh at the inadequacy of our attempts at play.

Teams in Sendafa doing home visits and visiting micro businesses which we sponsor. Children are given vitamins and Iodized salt, HIV patients given their meds, homes are given care and color, the people receive our love openly and willingly.

I travel this day to all the wells, working with world vision, to inspect and catalog the wells with a cable camera, lowered by hand. Three wells supply the town. The first I call the chicken well because of the local inhabitants that cluck and scratch for their meals all around the well head. We are in the middle of pasture of dried cattle grass, where children tend to small five or six head of cattle, a few donkeys, and sheep. All herded to the near dry stream where people bath, draw water for use in their home, for their daily drink . The well is currently producing 1.5 liters of water a second and the town needs 8 l/sec min. The second well is in the middle of a field 5 miles away. It takes 30 mins of driving to reach it. The well camera reveals plastic bottles and debris and rocks in the well, and though this well is the best at 5 l/sec, the road work by the crews have severed the supply line to the town so its water is not getting used. The third and last well is in the flood plane and is dry already. It will be capped and isolated from the storage tank. Sendafa is dry. Less than 1/8th of the needed water is available. On Friday I will meet with the Bishop of Ethiopia and Government Officials to discuss the much needed well to bring an end to their water shortage.

Wednesday 21 Jan

I was on the teams today doing home visits. A smaller team was still in Beke working on the curtains. The huts are heated with their charcoal burning clay stoves. Their diet is mostly engira and wat. think of engira as a sponge like tortia (made from the small grain known as teff. and wat as meat or lentil based sauce which is picked up with pieces of the engira. The wat can be beef, chicken or lentil and is infused with the various spices of this country. Everywhere you go, the spices are ever present and your olfactory sense is overloaded with constant bombardment of them. The huts are dark, dirty, and house 3-8 people this day. they are the size of perhaps 8 feet by 12 feet. Tin or straw roofs depending on status and wealth.

Thursday 22 Jan

I visited schools today, handing out supplies and trying to touch the lives of the school children. We sing with them, we give them supplies. We give supplies to the teachers too. In the dirt school yards we play with new soccer balls, or push swings or other school yard games. the children laugh. these are the lucky ones. Other teams are finishing the work at the church. the food offered there this day causes four of our teams to come down with illness, ciprio is offered to kill the bacterial infection. by this day, the four hours of travel have taken their toll on our bodies and the vehicles. this morning, we had to McIver a new radiator cap for the Toyota van as its own had fallen off. We shaped a cap out of tin and cut floor mat and some wire to bind it strong. We fill the radiator with water from the puddles of the nights rain. At least the dust was not bad this day. The cap in place, the teams pressed on to their assignments. Later in the day we visit the library we have filled with books. Shipping containers of books. I am struck by the number of students using the facility. I am so pleased. We decide we will be back on Friday to help unpack some more boxes of books still left to get on the shelves. One team is visiting the micro-businesses we have sponsored, another is doing home visits. This will be my last day in Sendafa or Beke. tomorrow my business will be in Addis.


Friday 23 Jan

I met today with the Bishop of Ethiopia to discuss the drilling project. CRS is agreeing to offer their services to drill a 300 meter well in Sendafa for about half the price of the organizations I have been in contact with over the last 6 months. The talks go well and the Reverend Father is one of the most impressive men I have ever met. I instantly like him and our discussions lead to an agreement and the promise of starting the drilling in some two months time, the height of the dry season. At least we will know if the well flows, it will be available to the town all the year. The trip was made this day and in the agreement to proceed. the Water officials are happy and promise to start to build the well enclosures that will house the chlorination systems we have brought for three wells. The town will have its clean water after all.

In another part of town, we stop at the Romanian embassy and discuss with he Ambassador the reason for the visit to the country and vital help his countries citizens provide to our team. They had problems with their visas and almost could not join the team. This visit was to smooth over the process for future trips and for now, we have an agreement of their help in securing access for future team members. another success of the trip.


While this meetings were going on, the curtains are finally hung in Beke and the pastor comments that "this
Sunday we can truly worship". Tears of joy stream down the faces of those there. Again a soccer match breaks out with team members and the children.

In Sendafa, more books are unpacked, and final home visits are made. The 20+ suit case of materials, vinyl, school supplies, clothes, medications, vitamins, salt, are all gone. Dozens of homes have been visited and hundreds have been clothed. Our work is drawing to a close.

Saturday 24 Jan

The teams travel south this morning to visit a model agricultural project that may be used in the town of Sendafa. This one provides work for 600 town people. Their wage is 12 Berr a day, or $1.00 a day. Our guide rides his bicycle 45 mins each way to come to work for his 10 hours. here they harvest eggs from 12,000 chickens, milk from their cows for cheese and yogurt and, grow a variety of vegetables. people travel from an hours drive away to purchase the goods there. It is the most modern and cleanest facility of its nature I have seen anywhere in the world. We purchase some feed and unique chicken cages to start the egg producing for some individuals in Sendafa. After the water, then this project will direct my future efforts there in Sendafa.

We have lunch at the Ethiopian Air Force Officers club which sits on a lake. It looks like paradise compared to what we have seen to date in this country. We linger to enjoy the coolness of the day, the serenity of this place, and the lovely gardens. The food was excellent also. The drive back to Addis takes another hour an a half. That evening we dined at an authentic restaurant, complete with music and dancing show.

Sunday 25 Jan

We went to church in Addis with the PAV team. We had the chance to see an official wedding during the service.. During the week, two wedding celebrations were at the hotel, but this is the first wedding we had the honor to see. Afterwards, we check out of the hotel, eat lunch and visit with the team until dinner. We stop on the way to the airport for a meal, then unpack the loaded vans for the trip home. We leave Addis a little late, but by 1030, we are wheels up to Rome, then on to Dulles, landing in snow at 0800 on Monday am local. customs are cleared by 0930 and we are back in York by noon.

Pictures to follow.

[Hobie]

Quite the trip!

[RKrodle]

Mike I'm not good with words, so I'll just say WOW...good job and may god bless you and your work.

[alnitak]

Mike, welcome home. Glad you are safe. Nice report, well-wriiten, and the compassion and feeling of all the vounteers comes through loud and clear. I am humbled by your actions and devotion to God's work.

[66GTO]

Very humbling to read about the conditions in that part of the planet. As Paul Harvey says, "It is not one world". To think that we all complain about minor inconveniences while having an excess of material goods all around us. Even our poor seem rich in comparison to what you described.

God bless you for doing the Lord's work.

[Ysabel Kid]

Truly amazing Mike. Thank you for sharing the details. I could see much of this in my mind's eye, and the heart swells with pride knowning the good work you are doing for these poorest of poor people.

Amazing!!!

[JimT]

Thank you!! WOW -- and I think I can tell that you're like me -- CAN'T WAIT TO GO BACK!!!

[Bill in Oregon]

Mike: Really appreciate the post, and look forward to seeing photos. You are an inspiration.

[C. Cash]

Great to have you back safe and sound Mike, with a successful trip behind you. Chris

[rjohns94]

thanks guys. I give thanks to all here who prayed for the trip, donated items, donated cash, purchased items from me, and mostly to God above whose Holy Spirit preceded the trip and moved in and among us as we sought to do his will. Jim T, you are right, I am ready to go back. Still uploading the pictures and selecting those for posting here. Will be done soon. Blessings to you all. You share in this work and God looks with favor upon you.