The boys say THANK YOU

Thanks to the donations of friends and family one hundred families received d-Lights.  The process of choosing the families was carried out by the four social workers at Operation Rescue Ethiopia, and their manager, Anteneh who is going over the list with Eli, below:

Eli goes over list of the 100 families most in need of d-Lights.

Signing the check.

Once the donated money had been transferred to Operation Rescue Ethiopia's bank account, there was still a lot of paper-work to do to make the purchase official.  Here, Netsanet (Assistant to the manager) signs the check for the d-Lights, while Eli, Micah, and Getachew (Operation Rescue Ethiopia's manager) look on.

At the d-Light office

Eli and Micah deliver the d-Lights to ORE

Above, Eli and Micah are delivering boxes of the solar lights to Operation Rescue Ethiopia for distribution.

Below, Eli explains to the mothers how the d-Lights work.  He gets translation help from Anteneh.

Eli and Anteneh explain.

Teame, a social worker at Operation Rescue Ethiopia helped translate Eli's instructions, as well.

Teame and Eli

Finally, the d-Lights were distributed.  Below, Birho (social worker and Operation Rescue Ethiopia nurse) signs each d-Light to a family while social workers Alem and Anteneh look on.  Micah is handing out the lights.  In the background, the final social worker at Operation Rescue Ethiopia, Merid, is taking pictures.  These kinds of activities can be encouraging for other international donors to see.

From left to right, Alem, Anteneh, Micah, Birho, mothers receiving lights, Merid in the background.

THANK YOU to all of you who donated.  Your kindness and generosity is making a direct impact on people's lives.  Even we have a d-Light, and with frequent power outages, it is a very useful thing for families to have.

Even though we gave out 100 lights, it was hard for the social workers to choose the right families to receive them.  And other families came forward and asked if they could have some, too. 

It is not too late to donate to this project.  Even if your money doesn't go to d-Lights, it will go towards supporting some of the most desperate families in Mekele by providing food, hygiene facilities, school aid, clothing, nursing care, and social care support.  In fact, one of the best ways to support the work of caring for vulnerable families at ORE is to sponsor a child, using the link below.

You can donate (or sponsor a child) at: http://www.fieldsofpromise.org/?page_id=72   We understand that it is not easy to provide a note to make sure your donation goes to the Woodward Family Project.  Don't worry, every time a donation is made, it is reported to us by the US administrator of that website.

Thank you again.  We boys will be departing to the US in three short days after almost a full year in Ethiopia (our parents leave a few days later).  We are so grateful you have supported us along the way, and that you have also supported the work of Operation Rescue Ethiopia.

Staying Present

It’s been a while 

....since I posted anything on this blog.  Repeated efforts to convince other family members to blog have fallen short - not because they don’t want to write, but because each week goes by faster  than ever before now that we’re ending things here.  And each moment seems to be accounted for.

And yet, this ending seems interminable.  Each day I wake up with a nervous feeling in my belly; I experience this emotional paralysis while waiting for the day to start.  It’s the paralysis of not knowing how to either live with or speed along a painful process of saying goodbye.  There’s the technical part; get rid of stuff, shop for gifts, finish up trainings and lessons at ORE, get the last of the boys’ school work done and off to the DHL office, find a job for Azeb our house help, find an owner for the dog, clean the house.  Then there’s the emotional stuff.  The goodbyes.  I just typed out a long list of goodbyes and then deleted it.  Not yet.  Not yet.

So anyway, time is speeding by slowly - if I can put it that way -  and this has us in a bit of a funk.  I told someone the other day that it has become nearly impossible to commit to anything, get invested in anything, or get energized about anything.  At this point it’s all about figuring out how to end things.  The friend who heard me said a prayer that contained a very wise request; “Help the Woodwards stay present until the very end.”

So in the spirit of staying present, I refuse to let this blog die.  Darn it, it’s almost Thursday, and I have to post something, if only to go through the motions.  So this is a blog post that includes the stuff that struck me as funny, frustrating, or moving, but that didn’t seem to be blog-worthy; the scraps that stayed on the cutting room floor of my mind.  Now, they will have their moment.

“The thing about cooking from scratch in Mekele is that you have to make the scratch.”

I don’t know if this has been said about other locations in the world, but it was so apt that I wanted to shake the hand of the woman who said those words.  I have seen friends attempt to make corn flour from grinding popcorn.  I have learned to make tortillas.  I have partaken of the ice cream made from avocados and condensed milk. I own a recipe for condensed milk. I’ve helped to make the most delicious cookies, some of which - as a final garnish - were dipped in peanuts that were hand shelled, dried, roasted, and then ground by a friend.  I’ve run a fistful of gooey, glutinous dough over a hot frying pan to make spring roll wrappers. 

Arianne, a Phillippina who can cook anything at all, demonstrates how to fry the perfect spring roll

I am NOT GOOD at cooking from scratch, at least not the Mekele way.  Even with the help of some very motivated ladies with cookbooks that tell you how to make your own everything, I just can’t help looking at the ingredients available in the shops and feeling exhausted.  We’ve had the same few meals in rotation for 11 months because I'm so resistant to experimentation.  I will not, like my friend Sandy, attempt to make corn-flour from popcorn.  I will not dry chillies and then extract some essential oil from them and then perform some other miraculous act to produce Korean barbecue sauce.  That is not who I am, and it’s one of the sad, humbling lessons I’ve learned about myself here.  Where food is concerned I’ve learned that I’m a path-of-least-resistance person.  Our rotation of meals is this:  Saturday-Monday/Tuesday - Ethiopian food cooked by Azeb.  Tuesday - some sort of pasta.  Wednesday - some sort of chili, or taco thing.  Thursday - maybe some sort of chicken thing - soup, roast, salad, fried (once).  Friday - oh thank God for Friday - we eat out.  Then it’s back to Saturday.  I mentioned Azeb's name once in all this; truthfully she cooks all the meals with occasional, minor assistance from me.

Cooking well here requires inventiveness.  Take, for example, what our Swiss friend Sandra (that same corn-flour enthusiast) once said.  We were talking about cake.  I said something about carrot cake and how that would be easy enough to make, but what about the cream cheese frosting, which my research showed me you can’t make from scratch unless you have a starter?  Her eyes grew really wide and she said, “I saw this once in Switzerland!  You know how cows have four stomachs? Maybe we can identify which stomach has this one enzyme you need to make a starter for that kind of cheese.  Let’s get a cow!  Once we have that enzyme-“  

Well you can imagine, I had my hand out to stop her by the time she said the word “stomachs”.  I would live without cream cheese.  I would live without it, by God, if it meant slaughtering a cow for it.  

This delicious carrot cake was made for a baby shower.  The cream cheese
frosting did not involve the killing of a cow; just some advance planning and the
transport of some frozen goods from America with the hostess's visiting relative.

What have I missed about the US?  Oddly enough, I've missed the very thing I hated perhaps most in the world: grocery shopping.  I can’t wait to breeze into the store and buy whatever I need right there and then.  Never again will I look at a won ton wrapper the same way.  When I get to the cheese section of the store, I might cry.  I will buy chicken breasts, pre-ground beef, brown sugar, icing sugar, heavy cream, milk in liquid form, every thinkable vegetable or fruit I desire - in season and out.  You responsible enviro-conscious shoppers - just butt out of my reverie. I will buy every blackberry in the land, no matter how much fuel was consumed to get it to my kitchen.  My family - who will cook side by side with me from now on - will eat so well that all of our friends will clamor for dinner invitations.  And cooking will be so easy that we will insist that they come over whenever they like, no advance notice necessary.  They will ask if we cooked everything from scratch and we’ll say - because we’re honest people - “By American standards, YES!”

A Chopped challenge:  What could you make with the ingredients in the picture and some tomatoes, onions, cabbage
carrots, and (surprise ingredient) string beans?

The Cloud Can Be Your Enemy

I just want to provide a word of warning for people like me; people who don’t understand that when you buy music, sometimes it hangs out in The Cloud.  If you’re in the States or many other places, that’s a fine place for your songs, because as long as you’re connected to the internet, you can listen to them.  Only don’t forget to actually download them onto your iPod or phone before you come to Mekele.  Because you will be sitting down, desperate to listen to all your music, but only able to access the most inexplicably random selection of songs that decided to descend from The Cloud and live in your ipod/iphone.  If you live in a land with slow internet and want to spend a year listening to anything other than some old Quincy Jones, one or two Beck songs, a selection of Broadway anthems, some random movements of a symphony, and three jazz standards, then you should make sure you liberate your songs from The Cloud and confirm that they are firmly embedded in your listening device.  Or else you’ll be singing along to Beck, calling yourself a loser, baby, and meaning it.

So near, and yet so far...

Some Clubs Will Never Die

I’ve written about Devotions/Fight Club several times.  The last time I wrote about it, though, was to announce its demise.  I didn’t write about how it rose again from the ashes; crippled, inglorious, and perhaps - as a direct result of its near death experience - with a slightly avant-garde twist.  Take, for instance, our first performance back.  It was about Jonah and the Whale, a bizarre story all by itself.  I did not wish to direct this particular group of thespians anymore, but they made me do it.  As a result of their headstrong attitudes and my more hands-off approach, we ended up with this costume in the mix:  

You might ask what place a clown costume had in the story of a reluctant Jonah traveling in the belly of a whale to Nineveh to preach to the terrible people of that Assyrian city.  You’d be right in asking that question.  The answer is that the clown suit was the whale.  It might have confused the young children in the audience, but they’ll get there eventually.  All great art challenges convention.  That will be the lasting legacy, perhaps, of Devotions/Fight Club; the clown suit and what it represents…

Never, Ever Take Good Health Care For Granted

I once sort of mocked a friend because he and his family would never spend any time in a country without good, reliable hospitals.  I want to go back and tell that friend to keep on keeping on.  I don’t know how people from the West come here to Mekele with small children and just trust that everything is going to be ok.  There are plenty of westerners who live in even smaller, more remote Ethiopian cities, and this amazes me.  There are one or two things that make me realize I could never live here long term with my children.  One of them is the serious lack of reliable health care.  I’m grateful that most of the time, children’s injuries are not life-threatening.  But sometimes you see kids here with conditions or scars that would simply not exist back in the States.   

I’m sad that Micah will have a pretty significant scar on his jaw from the dog bite (see prior post).  But when I hear of a friend who cut her hand and had it stitched without anesthesia at the same hospital where Micah got his wound stitched (which got infected, by the way, and then fell out, resulting in our now treating with iodine and prayers), I’m grateful we were so lucky.  It has been my greatest fear that one of these boys hurts himself and requires medical attention, because honestly, as brilliant  and resourceful as the docs and nurses here are, they just don’t have much of anything.  

I count down the days now…fourteen more days for these fellows to not have to go to the hospital, thirteen more days, twelve.  And soon it will be none.

The President Isn’t So Scary From Over Here

It has been beyond refreshing to be away from the US and the bitterness of the political/social scene there.  I hate to use the word "refreshing", but I can't think of a better term to describe what has happened to our world-view since we left the States.  Our perspective shifted, and we were reminded that the world is a big, big place, where people face many immediate and relentless challenges daily.  We've watched reporting about the US, and read a lot of social media postings about the president.  As the year has gone by there is one goal we (Mark and I) have grown to share very clearly.  When we return to the States, we will remember that the vast majority of the world goes on, despite what Donald Trump says or does.  And while we will always protest whatever he's responsible for that is blatantly wrong, we will survive him better if we don't pay him quite so much attention.  If some will accuse us of escapism, that's fine.  It's important for mental health. 

Breaking News!!!

That's it from the scrap pile, but I should mention one new development from this part of the world that's pretty exciting.  I’m writing from Adwa, a town in Tigray quite close to the Eritrean border.  We are on a final tour with my dad, who has returned to bookend our time here in Ethiopia (he dropped us off back in August, so many moons ago).  Anyway, Mark and I were watching the news earlier when we heard that the Eritrean president had accepted an offer of peace talks from the Ethiopian prime minister, the first steps to ending a twenty year stalemate over a border issue.  We shared this news with Dad and he raised his arms high.  It’s something he had been praying for for decades.  And now, things might actually change.  The Eritrean-Ethiopian border not too many miles from us might open up - not during our time here, unfortunately - but one day soon.  

Mark scales the wall to Debre Damo Monastery 

Could it be that once we've been home in the States for a while and soaked in the relative ease of life back there - back in the bosom of our friendships and routines - we will begin to plot our next move?  Will the time come for us to do another year, this time in Asmara, Eritrea, my other homeland?  The men in my family stood on top of the flat top mountain that hosts Debre Damo monastery yesterday (oldest church in Africa), and looked towards the Eritrean border.  I was not allowed up because the only female animals allowed up there are hens (for the eggs) and cats (for mouse-killing), but when they descended, the boys pointed out the mountain that sits on the border.  It hurt to know that some of my closest relatives are behind that border; out of reach, and basically out of touch.  Wouldn't a year in Eritrea be something?

Looking out to Eritrean Border from Debre Damo Monastery

All Good Things Must Come To An End But When God Closes A Door Somewhere He Opens A Window And How Can Baby Donkeys Possibly Be So Cute?

The answer is that we will probably not be leaving Silver Spring, USA for a while.  We have a kid going to college in a year, and two others not far behind.  All good things must come to an end, I suppose.  It's time to get back to work.  Time to save up again.  Time to start shaking off this paralysis, get through the goodbyes, and march forward with gratitude.  Time to anticipate and overcome the challenges of staying present - more so than ever - back home in the States.  The few broadway songs on my iphone remind me of one of the best lines ever written for a musical; "When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window."  

While I distinctly feel the weight of an ending, it's ironic that windows seem to be opening up all around me.  The rainy season is just beginning here.  Farmers are plowing the fields after a hot, dry season.  Little baby goats, sheep, cows, and donkeys bounce along beside their mothers on the roadside.  The lush green countryside that greeted us when we first arrived will rebound, but we won't be here to see it, and that's okay.  Unbelievably, Ethiopia offered a hand of peace to Eritrea, and Eritrea looks like it might just accept it.

Things move on, and so will we.  

Farmer plows his field

 

Little man, enjoy this time in your life.

PS.  Hazal eloped to marry a member of the Balkan Mafia, but her birth mother got wind of it and shot that guy down at the altar.  Hazal returned home in her wedding dress and collapsed on her bed in tears.  Why does she make such self-destructive choices?