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Author: Team Ethiopia

Rampant Immapancy

Rampant Immapancy

Our team has heard it’s fair share of “why are you going to Africa right now” and isn’t all of Africa in upheaval?”  To be fair, sort of. However, in my experience (which is neither deep nor wide), people usually talk about Africa as “Africa”…not about individual countries within the continent – mostly because we don’t actually know how big it is!

I’ve encouraged our team to talk to their worried friends and family about this:  At the moment, Mexico is #3 on the list of places the US Government advises you NOT to travel to.  That being said, would you have a moral dilema visiting Texas? Unless you don’t like to sweat or hate accents, my guess is no. So let your fears be assuaged, Ethiopia is more than a hop, skip and a jump from Egypt/Libya and has been pretty stable for the last 5 years 😉  

We’ve traveled back in time!

We’ve traveled back in time!

Well we’ve all arrived, almost. The 8 of us from Journey (Chris & Kate, Kim, Rex, Melanie, Kally, Dylan, Joe) landed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at 8:30 PM on May 5th, 2002! Really!

So, Ethiopia is on a different calendar, and it’s 8 years earlier here. Funny, huh?

Aaron arrived from Harvest last night, and Taylor gets here tomorrow morning. Then the team is complete!

Yesterday we woke up, most of us before 6AM, ate breakfast and spent time with the staff and other guests at the EGH (Ethiopian Guest Home). Then we loaded into the van and took all the clothes we brought (thanks alll of you who donated!) to CWA and then went hunting for shovels. We asked Yoseph, our translator, if there was anywhere on the way back to the EGH to get a shovel and he said, no, there was only one place to buy a shovel. This is a city of 4 -7 million people (depends on who you ask), and there’s one place to buy a shovel. Haha! It doesn’t surprise anyone here 😉

After lunch we visited Entoto, which is where Emperor Melinik II’s palace is. There are these women carrying eucalyptus branches down the hill…they’re just bundled and piled up on their backs, it’s hard to see because it doesn’t seem fair…

Later we grabbed some coffee and then had dinner at a traditional restaurant (Hebir), where most of the team had injera for the first time. Surprisingly, everyone loved it! We ate enough to last a couple days, drank some coffee, and then came home and passed out until 6 AM this morning.

Today we’re off to Bright Hope to check it out, then we’re going to get out of the city for a little bit.

I think Rex is going to blog later tonight about what he’s been seeing feeling, so look forward to that 🙂

We’re having a great time and I’m so thankful for our awesome team!!

Kate

What we’re going to do…

What we’re going to do…

We heard from Tsegay (CHI’s Ethiopian project manager) this week about Bright Hope and their preparation for our teams this May.  This is what he said:

The fence phase-2 is 210m long. The foundation is already dug and it is also started to fill with stones. When the volunteers come it will be probably completed. The next is 180 m long and the fourth is 170 m.

The chicken house is almost completed except smoothening the inside walls. The next work is to get the doors and the windows fixed and purchase of cages for egg hens. Then also purchase about 700 chickens for both egg and meat. It also needs to built prefab store house, burning place for dead and isolation house for sick chicken.

Finally, there are two places set for veggies. The first one is already started. The second one is got cleared and ploughed and the workers are getting training from agricultural experts to do it more effectively.

Check out the pictures below to see what we’ll be working on (sort of) 🙂


Hey Friends//Family

Hey Friends//Family

This is where we’ll be sharing what we’re seeing/learning/doing while we’re in Ethiopia. On Wednesday, May 12th, 8 of us will fly out of Bozeman to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It will take us more than a day to get there, and we have a LONG stay in Minneapolis, but then we’re on the ground for about two weeks. Pray we get a lot accomplished, physically, emotionally and spiritually!

Kate