Mekele, here we are!

My goodness, it's tough to make a simple blog post here in Mekele, Ethiopia. I won't bore you with the details, maybe Mark will set up a tech corner on this blog and tell you all about Ethio telecom, wireless routers (or lack thereof), and hotspots. Even now, as I type, I'm mourning all the amazing pictures our network didn't have the patience to post.  Be my friend on facebook if you want to see them.

But here is one that did upload. And a fitting picture it is; the happy five en route to Ethiopia. Of course, since that picture was taken, we've smiled some and cried some.


 Yes it's true, even people as lucky as we are, with every resource and all the good wishes of the world at our backs, can shed a few tears.

To start with, Addis Abeba doesn't provide the most gentle intro to Africa for boys who've been raised in suburban Maryland.  This quote from Daniel, who is unfailingly polite about everything, sums their initial reaction up: "Mom, no offense, but I'm not sure about this city."  The sheer volume of traffic, and the brazen disregard for pedestrian rights shocked the guys.  Me?  I slipped back into the Kenya mode of street-crossing; a combo of strategic dashing and playing chicken with taxis.

Our hotel in Addis, while lovely, had no hot water.  In this rainy, muddy, and cold season, that was tough.  On the flip side, it was a great introduction to Mekele, where water shortages are a constant feature of life, even during the rainy season.  I tell you, no family has been better able to cope with short (or no) showers upon entry to this wonderful city.  Let's go back to the flipside again, though; we might be pretty funky.

What can we say about Mekele other than that it has presented us with some predictable but also some unpredictable experiences.  We knew we would be met with people who would care for us and help us settle in.  We knew we would eat well.  We knew we would have water and electricity challenges.  We did not know how helplessly we would depend on people here because we do not know the language well, or how things work.  We did not know that we would be eating out most days because we didn't know where to get groceries, or how to make food safe for eating and milk safe for drinking.  We didn't expect that our biggest water problem - even as water is short - would be flooding.  In fact, my first and most urgent purchase was towels. Towels for the floor.

But perhaps the sweetest treat has been that our arrival in Mekele coincided with the annual festival of Ashenda.  I wish I could post more pictures here of this incredible few days where the whole town is dressed up and ready to celebrate.  While the main idea behind the festival is to end a fast dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the young girls of Mekele commemorate the occasion with singing and dancing.  Give them a little money, and the delirious group of girls will run to the next shop, car, or cafe.  Or you could just point to Mark and they'll swarm to him.  Mark has been serenaded by countless groups of girls, all smiling hopefully up at him, knowing full well that white dudes always pay up.  It's been cute to see, although as the days progressed, the girls became more brazen and would run to him and say simply, "Money".  Sing, girls, sing, he would say with his international language of hand movements and earnest smiles.  So these last few days have proceeded to the soundtrack of youthful singing and drumbeats.

Let me end with a few stream of conscious observations:

I am happy that within the first few days of being here I was able to look Mark in the eye and ban him - for the remainder of the year - from using the words "to-do list" and "agenda for the day".

I told people before we left that I was excited to be bored again.  Boredom is....well, boredom.  It doesn't feel great, and I realize why we fill our time up so much in the States.  But the hope is that something beautiful fills that space; like the conversations I've had with Micah about the books he loves and wishes he downloaded, or the card games I've learned to play, or just listening to the conversations the boys have; they're so silly but they take me to my youth with my brothers.

I am impressed with the guys and their diligence with their school work.  I'm very hands off, and they tend to dive in and immerse themselves for hours.  On the other hand, could it be an escape from a world outside our ornate gate where other children play soccer on the street with battered soccer balls?  Or from the hordes of girls who sing and dance for a little spare change?  Or from the countless eyes that stare and stare and the little voices that shout "Ferenji, ferenji!" (white person, white person!).  Mark says we should give them time.  And he's right.

Meanwhile, we will continue to figure our lovely, quirky house out, ration our use of water (pretty useful exercise, I must say), learn to ignore power outages, and generally count ourselves lucky for the incredible circumstances that have placed us where we are.  We only have to look around to understand that we are among a tiny minority of people who live as we do in this city.  And soon we hope to begin our volunteer work at Operation Rescue Childcare Centers, which will hopefully continue to remind us of what a lucky lot we are.

That's it from me for today.  I know it was a disjointed posting, but I felt I had to give the old blog a test drive, if only to record initial impressions and feelings that will fade and change as the year carries us along with it.

As always, pray for us, and think of us fondly until we meet again!