To start off, I’d like to know if anyone is even interested in these stories. If not, I’ll move on to some other topic and write about the trip elsewhere.

This one will be a little shorter than the others because I’ve been up for almost 24 hours now, and I’m a little loopy. I want these to be some semblance of coherent, so let’s see what we can do.

Our first trip away from Addis took us to the town of Debre Zeit. In Debre Zeit, we were to teach at a government-run school for what they called “change agents.” They had gathered 50-60odd students from villages all over the country to teach them agricultural technique, basic medical care, STD prevention, education techniques, business theory, and a number of other skills that would be useful in turning their villages into more laterally connected units from their original seclusion. The idea is to move away from mere subsistence to trade between villages.

At the school, we taught first aid, basic structural engineering, water purification, English, and several other things. Our last day at the school, we were approached by the head master, and asked if we could stay for just a little while after we were done teaching. We gladly agreed, and what a treat it turned out to be.

As we sat under a grove of trees, the sky greying as some clouds grew, foreshadowing the coming rainy season, a girl brought out a tray of popcorn (a popular treat there!), and began working at the low fire. She picked some berries off of the bush behind us, and began to roast them. To my surprise, the green and red berries she had started roasting were turning brown, and the subtle smell of coffee wafted through the humid air.

The girl, whose name I also could never pronounce and now don’t remember, as you can see, is beautiful. In fact, a great number of the Ethiopian people are beautiful. They all seem to share similar patrician features which bring such richness to their faces that I haven’t seen anywhere else. After roasting and grinding the beans, they made us coffee. I’m no coffee drinker, but I’d have to say, if I was ever going to be one, home-grown coffee would be the way that I would have to drink it. Nothing else could ever suffice after having tasted it once.

The coffee, we later were told, was no small gesture of thanks. The ceremony performed for us was usually to welcome esteemed guests into households, and that for the other couple of groups who have come to visit the school (Neither of the other two had come to work, they were mostly large donors to Buckner Orphan Care) had not been honored with the coffee ceremony.

There we were, seven college students, giving what little talent and knowledge we had, and we were met with a great honor in their culture. I still feel that glow of pride whenever I think about it.

NaBloPoMo entry #9.

This recounting won’t really follow the trip’s actual itinerary; rather, it’ll be in the order of 1)the pictures that I’ve gotten processed and 2)what I’m thinking about at the moment.

Most of the pictures I have processed came from the Bantu region, which is the most remote place we stayed during our time there. If memory serves, we were there for four days, sleeping in the empty ward rooms of a clinic in the area, no electricity, a 2 burner gas stove with which to cook for 9 people, and all the mosquitoes you could ever ask for.

The scenery outside the barbed wire boundary, which during the days made me feel as if we were carnival fare: objects of gross fascination, spectacles of the macabre or something, as the kids (who were all, supposedly, supposed to be in school) stood staring at us for hours when we had some down time. Never being one to disappoint an audience, I took to entertaining them by juggling rolls of toilet paper.

A couple of families lived inside the clinic, and when we arrived, the smallest boy just stared wide-eyed as all of these white people piled out of the van. Until I got out. At that point, the boy ran and hid behind his mother’s skirts, at the site of this, well, mountainous mountain man. I’m a pretty corpulent fellow, and I have a large beard, and at the time, my hair was also pretty long, too, so I can’t really blame the kid.

After we pulled out the Frisbee and taught a few of the people there how to play (they were almost instantaneously better than we were), the little boy, whose name I could never pronounce and have now forgotten completely, decided that we weren’t so bad after all. He ran around with us, picking up the Frisbee and throwing it as hard as he could, usually resulting in the Frisbee’s landing about 3 feet behind him. Just thinking about it now curls my all too cynical lips into a smile.

After a couple of days, he warmed up to me, and rather enjoyed playing with my beard. He also rather enjoyed playing with my camera, and I was glad of his extreme youth, which allowed me to keep the camera just out of reach.

The boy was truly a joy to have around, and we all had a good time playing chase or peek-a-boo, or whatever other games we could play through both the language and age barriers. He lifted our spirits in the midst of some pretty heavy times on the trip, and his presence couldn’t have been more welcome.

More stories from Ethiopia tomorrow!

NaBloPoMo entry #8.