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?

The Foo Fighters Weigh In

Visiting is pretty, visiting is good…. 

I started writing this blog post and these opening words from the Foo Fighters song “This is a call” kept coming to mind.  That song wound up on my iPod thanks to my cool cousin Selome who downloaded a bunch of music for me something like fifteen years ago.  I cannot make sense of the rest of the song.  But that is not the point of this blog.

The point is to try to jibe what everyone says about visiting Ethiopia with our experience of living in it.  To hear it told, visiting Ethiopia is not only pretty and good, but the prettiest and goodest.  I’ve heard it my whole life from tourist friends; “Ethiopia is amazing!  I can’t wait to go back!  Oh my gosh, the people…so kind, so beautiful!”

And really the point of moving here for a year is so that we don’t have that wide-eyed wonderment that comes with the territory when you’re a tourist.  No; we wanted our boys - our whole family - to know the country.  And if at the end of it we could walk away and say Ethiopia is pretty, Ethiopia is good, well great.  If not…

The day we left Silver Spring

Well, what then?  What if you’ve lived in a country for a year and no amount of open-minded curiosity can quite make-up for the resentment and bewilderment you regularly navigate?  What if your kids feel even less Ethiopian than they did when they first moved?  Do you decide that your grand experiment to connect with a culture and its people is a failure?  Do you accept that you’re too mired in your own expectations and anxieties to receive the full blessing of this radically different culture?  Do you concede that a year is too short a time to connect with a country?

Or do you turn yourself back into a tourist and go visiting?

My college friend Mary’s visit to Ethiopia gave me just that opportunity.  She came armed with an especially wide-eyed enthusiasm for all things Ethiopia, being a resident of Doha, Qatar, world traveller, and lover of less beaten paths.  She held the distinction of being our last true visitor, and found herself in the company of a family who didn’t quite share her head-space. For my part, I was done trying to find the charm in the people of the country, its terrible toilets, strange jumbling of history with myth, etc., etc,. etc.  Mary got off the plane at Lalibela already practically teary-eyed at being in this “amazing” country, finally, while I was like, “Let’s go see these churches already.”

Mary arrives at Lalibela Airport

We did go see the churches in Lalibela.  They are indeed amazing.  I had to remind myself of this.  I had to put my hands on the stone walls and recall that they were built by priest-kings using nothing but sharpened pieces of metal, rock, and single-minded devotion.  This is not unique to Lalibela.  In Tigray, priests climbed impossible cliff ledges to dig into mountain faces to create cool, darkened hollows filled with color and the scent of incense.  The more difficult the challenge of creating a worship space, the more magnificent that space.

An areal view of the cliff with Abuna Yemata Chuch in Tigray (entrance is the little oblong hole far left on ledge;
The little white figure on the ledge is the priest.  Note the lack of railings.)

My father navigates the ledge outside Abuna Yemata Church

The nine Syrian saints who helped to establish Christianity in Ethiopia
(Abuna Yemata Church ceiling)

In Lalibela, many churches were built out of single rocks, springing from the vision of priest-kings that were part architects, part sculptors.  Lalibela was the geographical center of the Zagwe dynasty (begun around the 10th Century AD), which  followed on the heels of the Axumite kingdom (between 1st and 7th centuries AD).  While the Axumite kingdom began as a pre-Christian dynasty, by the fourth century AD, Syrian missionaries had helped establish Christianity as the predominant religion in Ethiopia.  It is the faded paintings of these saints that adorn the interiors of the cave churches of Tigray, where we live.  However, Christianity - if the New Testament is to be believed - first came to Ethiopia via a high-ranking eunuch who was baptized by the apostle Philip on the side of the road.  So between that eunuch and the Syrian missionaries, by the time of the Zagwe dynasty, much of the country was already deeply Orthodox Christian (today it is 44% Orthodox, 34% Muslim, 13% Protestant, and 3% Animist/Traditionalist).  

St. George's Church, Lalibela

Bet Gebriel-Rafael Church, Lalibela

In other words, while the grand cathedrals of Rome (where visiting is indeed very pretty and very good), speak to a very old and illustrious Christian past, Ethiopia’s Christian past is not much newer.  But why does it even matter?  

On a personal level, it goes some way to explaining life here.  In Mekele - which is a very Christian part of the country - you are constantly reminded of the presence of the church and its place in people’s lives.  The priests from St. Gabriel church have been silently cursed by this very writer on many a night when their chanting reaches our house across the valley through loudspeakers, beginning at around 10 pm and continuing through six am.  These hours correspond exactly with the human body’s intention to sign off for the day.  And Christian history here also matters because you might be walking among a group of warring children who will stop their warring to make the sign of the cross in the direction of a church a few hundred meters away, only to resume their warring once the church is out of view.  It matters because your van driver might be listening to the most foul, most filthy hip-hop at a deafening volume - all bi*#hes, and n*!#as and choppas and bricks and whatnot - but will stop to give the monk with the upturned umbrella on the side of the road a few birr (coins) and slow to make the sign of the cross as he drives by a church on a distant hill. Life goes on in very human ways, but the church is never far from people’s minds.  This sort of piety calms me, for some reason.  I feel very safe in Ethiopia - at least physically.  Emotionally, it's a different story, but I'll get to that.

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

One "small" detail of the ceiling in Santa Maria Maggiore Cathedral, Rome

You can visit old cities and churches anywhere in the world, but occasionally those churches feel like museums, or attractions.  I know that sounds offensive because a great deal of people likely worship beneath the Michelangelos and Titians in Rome and Florence.  But stepping into an ancient church in Ethiopia is like stepping into an extension of Orthodox worship as it happens anywhere else here - the street, the home, open fields…There’s nothing relic-y about the Christianity here.  I can’t say that makes it any more or less authentic than it is anywhere else; who am I to judge that?  But I can say that as far as the church is concerned, I can see a straight line connecting today’s Ethiopians to the Ethiopians of the early part of the last millennium.  If you’re visiting Ethiopia from the developed world where things move and change at breakneck speed, that’s a really grounding thing to see.

Is that a good thing?  Maybe.  But it’s not always easy for me, who just wishes Ethiopia would somehow get on with it.  But then I’m not sure of what I mean by “get on with it.”  It’s great that the church is so resilient.  But I wish there were more cold cokes in the cafes, I wish sugar wasn’t so hard to get, I wish the internet wasn’t so slow.  While these sound like petty first-world concerns, they do bear some relation to genuine problems for the country.  If coke - so widely available world-wide that no little town seems beyond its reach - is not available in the second largest town in Ethiopia (Mekele), then what the heck is going on? Is it a supply-chain issue or is it the result of the sort of complacency that is satisfied with a fridge full of sprites because none of your customers are going to complain anyway? 

But forget about cokes. Forget about menus with thirty dishes offered but only two available.  Forget about shops that advertise one hundred products only to have half that number in inventory.  It isn't quite false advertising, more...wishful thinking, perhaps.  It's irritating and baffling, but ultimately no big deal.  Here's what I really care about; in a country with such a grand past, I wish there was more exposure to the outside world so that being different doesn’t always require it being pointed out.  While Ethiopia is a very cool place to visit, maybe I selfishly wish it would be an easier place for a Western-minded person to live.

But that’s exactly the Catch-22.  If Ethiopia were just another Kenya (sorry Kenya!), with the African-tinged post-colonial mind-set, well then it would just be another Kenya.  Easy to visit, expensive as anything, English everywhere, modern conveniences - a country whose history is intricately connected to the Commonwealth.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  Even ancient Rome was heavily influenced by ancient Greece.  But Ethiopia is not just another anything.  It’s Ethiopia.  Never colonized, molded through history primarily by its own internal struggles waged by its people against each other, and by nature against them all.  

It’s what people like Mary come to see.  At our final stop on our day long tour of Addis Ababa, she put her hand on the Emperor Haile Selassie’s tomb and could hardly stop talking about it all day.  This last emperor was a forward-thinking and outward looking, yet Afrocentric ruler, who on top of everything else, inspired an entire religious movement (Rastafarianism).  Mary had heard about him since the time she was a little girl.  And through her eyes, I saw the connections she was making.  Her enthusiasm was infectious, and in spite of myself, I spent a lot of time taking in the aura of this man, how he fought for his country’s identity and for African self-reliance. I started to make my own connections between those old churches, that ancient history, the more recent history of an empire brought low by the same things that always seem to bring empires crashing down (famine, European aspirations followed by European wars, and communism), and its resurgence as a country with one of the world’s fastest growing economies. It’s tough, even for Ethiopia-cynics, not to be impressed by the story of Ethiopia.* 

Emperor Tewodros (Theodore), who united Ethiopia
(ruled 1855-1868.  I feel especially connected to him because I shared
his hairstyle for my entire childhood)

Behind us is reputed to be Ethiopia's first Eucalyptus tree, brought
from Australia by Emperor Menelik II (reigned 1889-1913), who established Addis Ababa
from Ntoto Mountain, where Mary and I are standing.

In Emperor Haile Selassie's palace in Addis Ababa (reigned more or less from 1916-1974)

The tomb of Emperor Haile Selassie in Trinity Church, Addis Ababa

But then you leave Addis, and you are at the mercy of the people out there…in the smaller cities, towns, and villages.  Well, what can you say about these people?  

I’ll tell you what most visitors say, which is that the people are so nice!  And I confess, I always just keep my mouth shut, because which visitor wants to have that notion contradicted?  But I have to say, it was with some satisfaction that I heard someone call my dear sister-friend Mary out.  Mary, the relentlessly positive charmer that she is, had struck up a conversation with a group of Ethiopian friends at a gathering.  At some point, she provided this throwaway line about people being so nice, and a thoughtful older Ethiopian woman cleared her throat.  She said, “When people say that kind of thing, what do they mean?”  And dear old Mares said, “Well….”  She looked at me for a little help, but none was forthcoming, you see, because I honestly didn’t know how to help her out.  

Look, if I were visiting Ethiopia, as some of my friends have, and then leaving within a couple of weeks to resume my busy life wherever, I would probably feel that same way.  After all, I’ve claimed that the people of Cambodia/Vietnam/Thailand/Malaysia are just the kindest ever.  That’s a luxury you get when you’re a tourist.  I have no idea if I would be saying that about the people of Southeast Asia if I lived there.  I really don’t.  But I have lived here in Ethiopia now for nearly a year, and I can reliably say that the people of Ethiopia are just people.  There’s nothing especially nice about them.  Some of them are very nice.  Some of them are rotten and I wish I could meet them in a dark alley somewhere and practice my newfound martial arts skills on them (they’d have to be drunk or very elderly to succumb to my “skills”.  And I’m afraid Mark might not be much help - I mean this in the best sense, but he punches like a Quaker).  And generalizing is no good and one shouldn’t do it unless one is writing one’s own blog so I’ll go ahead and say that many young men of our town and many others we’ve been to tend to be quite - shall we say - cheeky.  They like to get a rise out of you.  Maybe you like that, perhaps that’s part of the tourist experience.  I do not like that.  And I’m not a tourist, so I’m stuck with it.  Poor me.

Alas, that is my problem with Ethiopia in a nutshell.  I expect there to be a direct correlation between this rich and unique history, and the behavior and development of this country and its people.  In short, to be perfectly honest, I want life - not just for me, for everyone - to be easy and comfortable.  And when it isn’t, I sort of blame the country, and wonder what happened between the Axumite kingdom and today. Were there rock-throwing youths back then?  In this kingdom that used to trade with the Roman empire, were there constant calls of “Ferenji, Ferenji?”  Wouldn’t a group of ancient Axumite young men have had better things to do than to mock the Ethiopian lady and her Oregonian husband? Would there not have been cold cokes in all the Zagwe Dynasty cafes, for heaven’s sake?  It’s not that we can’t survive without clean toilets, cold cokes, anonymity.  It’s just that you look at the accomplishments of past Ethiopians and develop a steady refrain; how hard can it be to….  As in, here’s an entire church carved out of one rock, so how hard can it be to throw some cokes in the fridge?  How hard can it be to clean the toilet?  How hard can it be to just watch us walk by with your mouth shut?

Yes, yes.  Even in the writing of this, I realize how absurd it is for me to judge an entire country based on my own expectations including how people should behave when blessed with such a rich history, how the service industry should work, how such pious and public religious practice should look in your interactions with others (as in don’t stop beating up that tiny kid just because you’re in front of a church, stop because it’s wrong to beat up that tiny kid).  Perhaps tourists don’t have those expectations.  Or maybe they never stay long enough to have those expectations disappointed.  Which is just as well. I want people to love Ethiopia.  Having lived here now, I can honestly say there are few countries in the world that deserve as thriving a tourist industry as Ethiopia does.  It’s that beautiful a country, with that delicious a food, with that rich a history.  In spite of all of its challenges, it's a remarkable place to visit.  And live.  Maybe.

Gheralta Mountains of Tigray, fields of tef in the foreground.  

Moral?  None, really.  If you ask us if we’d rather have forged a connection to Ethiopia by being tourists, rather than residents, we would say no, of course not.  Well, the boys might respond differently.  Connecting with anything - a country, your friends, your spouse, (maybe even your dog) - means living with the good and the bad.  But there is something to the idea that regardless of whether you live there or not, you should be a tourist of your own homeland sometime.  It may not fundamentally change your gut feeling about the place, but it might shift your biases ever so slightly, and remind you that you’re just one tiny part of a bigger story.  The moment you realize it’s not all about you is the moment you might be lucky enough to feel a lightening of resentment, a feeling of common humanity that allows you to participate in the story more fully, instead of holding yourself outside it, waiting for it to entertain you in some way and make your life easier.  This is as true for Americans as it is for Ethiopians, now more than ever, perhaps. 

A small story that I hope will illustrate what I’m trying to say, please excuse its black comedy nature.  Mark has had stones thrown at him once or twice when out jogging.  The boys have also had stones thrown.  It doesn’t happen often, but it’s weird that it happens at all.  The usual explanations flow from well-meaning friends; Curious kids will do stuff like that just to see your reaction.  They don’t really hate you or anything.  Great.  Anyway, last Sunday, some of the presumably Orthodox teenagers who play soccer outside our Lutheran church began throwing stones at the church, and eventually hit someone.  I assume it was an Orthodox vs. Protestant thing (long story).  In any case, the young boys were taken by the church elders to the police station and - with the blessing of their parents - have spent a few nights there so they can consider their actions.  I’m sure there’s a lesson here about how parents here brook no nonsense from their kids.  But the lesson I wanted to share with my family was this:  See?  They throw rocks at everyone, not just you!  

I’m so glad Mary’s visit allowed me to be a visitor to Ethiopia again.  Ethiopia’s tourism slogan is “Ethiopia, where it all began” (because of Lucy, the 3 million year old Australopithecus female, who was found in the Danakil depression.)  I think its slogan should be “Ethiopia, the land of contradictions.”  Either way, there’s no denying a visit here will be unlike any other you’re likely to have anywhere else in the world.  There’s just…nothing like it.  It’s like a therapy session; it will put you in touch with ALL of your feelings.  In fact... New slogan:  “Visit Ethiopia; it’s like visiting your shrink.”

The Lucy walk

PS:  Hazal is officially too boring to warrant an update.  Okay fine, that bimbo has somehow let herself fall in love with a bearded member of the Balkan Mafia.  

PPS:  In all seriousness, let me just say that if you do visit this amazing country, you will NOT be disappointed. 

* I will note that part of the story of Ethiopia includes how the Emperor Haile Selassie annexed what had been an Italian territory in1962, and included it formally within Ethiopia’s borders.  The territory was called Eritrea and the emperor’s annexation of this slip of land and its coastline (given to the Italians by the victorious Emperor Menelik II following the Battle of Adowa in 1896) precipitated a nearly forty year war for independence.  Eritrea eventually won its independence and recently celebrated its 27th anniversary.  As three of my grandparents are Eritrean, and the other was raised there, I consider myself an Eritrean/Ethiopian.

The first time our dog bit our son...

...was the last time.  That's the only reasonable way that sentence should end. Right?

Bad dog

I have a short story for you.  A friend told me about the time his little baby girl was bitten in the face by his ex-partner's dog.  He demanded the dog be put down or else.  His ex-partner loved that dog.  She and her mother tried to convince him that the dog was just adjusting and had always been a good dog and why not give him a second chance?  My friend got in his car, took the dog from his ex-partner's house, drove him to the vet, and had him put down.  I heard that story in disbelief of the ex-partner's attitude.  What kind of people would keep a dog that bit a child on her face?

Over the years, I've marveled at the devotion and love friends and family members show towards their dogs.  They let them share their furniture, miss vacations to care for them, spend thousands of dollars on vet bills, usher them in and out of the house a thousand times during a single meal, worry about them as they age, and then let them go when it's time. 

Not us, I've always insisted.  And for damn sure, if I ever - I mean ever had a pet that bit my kid, that pet would be history before my kid had stopped crying.  Except something happens to you when A) you actually get a dog, and B) you live where we've been living this year. 

First, A:  I grew up with a dog, a German Shepherd, in fact.  She was very sweet and gentle, and she lived a good, long life.  Her name was Cleo.  When we arrived in Mekele, an American family was desperate to get rid of an 8 month old German Shepherd they'd been saddled with when his owners had to return to the US unexpectedly.  Enter Marta Woodward, whose boys had never had a dog, and who'd always sworn that if she ever lived in Africa again, she'd get a dog.  We took the dog, changed his name from Howard (come on) to Teddy, and proceeded to experience what every dog owner I've ever known experiences; the almost total loss of previously held boundaries.  No, Teddy does not share our furniture, and no, we don't get up a million and one times to let him in and out of the house.  But that dog became a sort of salvation for our family.

To imagine how our boys' lives changed when we came to Mekele, you have to remember that we yanked them from every single routine that had structured their lives for years:  School, soccer, friends, youth group, the NFL, Chipotle - all gone with the decision their parents made to bring them not just to Ethiopia, but to a relative frontier town in Ethiopia.  There is no one their age in this town that even remotely shares their day-to-day background.  Sure, they play soccer sometimes with the very kind neighborhood boys, and they have a good time playing with the kids at ORE, but otherwise, their friendships have been distilled to include just them.  The three of them.  And their dog.  Our dog. 

Our dog, who loves to play fetch so much that if you don't bring him his toy, he'll find a papaya branch and bring that to you, or his blanket, or a stone; anything that you'll toss for him so he can run and bring it back to you.  Our dog who greets us so heartily every single time we walk back in our gate that we stand there and laugh at him spinning in circles as if to take us all in at the same time.  Our dog who made the boys feel normal after hearing the constant calls of "Ferenji, Ferenji" - which we're always told is never meant to be an insult, but which at best sounds to me like "Different!  Different!"  These cries follow the boys still; every single day.  For these boys, Teddy was a bright spot in their day and hearing their laughter as they played with him made us feel less guilty about uprooting them.

So that's A.  The dog starts to mean something to you that's hard to describe; a bonding agent between you and your kids, a presence in your lives that is relentlessly playful and silly - even when you feel different, lonely, and homesick.

As for B (where we live), Teddy is an amazing guard dog.  Plain and simple.  He's an exceptionally nervous dog, barks at anything that moves outside the gate, knows strangers who might be out there from people that regularly visit, and is so tightly wired that he barks at beetles and pieces of paper floating by on a breeze.  These are great traits for a guard dog.  And although Mekele is said to be safe, we know people who've had their homes burglarized, including one family whose home was invaded as they slept.  We live on the edge of a neighborhood that overlooks nothing but scrubby trees and the hyenas that come out at night.  We are fully exposed to anyone and anything, and we are - as we're constantly reminded - mostly Ferenjis; we're known, and are therefore easy targets.  If it weren't for Teddy, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. 

So, the first time he bit Micah, we were horrified.  Mark and I took him to a hospital here and were blown away both by the insanity of the place, and by the ability of the staff to navigate it calmly and cleanly.  Micah had his wounds (two puncture marks on his forearm and a cut on his shoulder) cleaned in the same room as someone who seemed to be having a heart attack, a woman with acute appendicitis, and a man in agony having his ingrown toe nails removed.  There was a lot of moaning, bewildered looking family members, old people who were sick and had no one with them.  Since Teddy had been vaccinated, the doctor gave Micah a tetanus booster after cleaning him up, and sent us on our way so she could figure out what to do with the chaos going on around her.  We left that hospital and thought, "Thank God we never have to go through that again."

Teddy would have to die, that was clear.  I didn't know how, but he would have to go.  Except for A.  A meant that Micah was terrified of him, and yet was even more terrified that we would put him down.  Eli and Daniel were silent and brooding about it all.  It was five months ago.  We still had seven months to go in Mekele.  I hesitated.  What would it be like to not hear the boys laughing outside anymore?  And what about B - what about security? 

We went over and over what happened, and did what I could not ever imagine us doing.  We justified the bite.  It happened like this.  We'd slaughtered a sheep and had given Teddy the head.  Teddy had been hunkered down with it for a while, with Micah chilling nearby.  Micah came over to pet him and Teddy lunged.  Protective.  That's what dogs are, especially German Shepherds.  Of course, we thought.  That was bound to happen.  Don't get between a dog and his bone, he's young, he'll learn, Micah needs to appreciate dog mentality...you get the idea.  We justified it, and we did exactly what my friend's ex-partner wanted to do with her dog.  We gave Teddy a second chance. Micah adjusted quickly and the two became fast friends again.

So...the second time Teddy bit Micah....well.  That was three days ago.  We'd all recovered from the first bite and Teddy had again become the apple of our eye.  Laughter filled our compound, and we felt safe all the time.  So when our landlord came to visit three days ago and Mark and I were outside the gate with him, Teddy naturally wanted to know what was going on.  He ran to the gate and Micah - who's horrified that he'll get out and bite someone else (because, ahem, that did happen once when the gate was left ajar and he saw a kid running from him, then nipped his calf before Micah caught him and dragged him back inside the gate) grabbed him from behind.  Teddy - being single-minded and nervous by nature - jumped up and bit Micah.  This time, on his face.  His jaw, to be precise.  He also left tooth marks on his belly and neck. 

We ran inside and Mark disciplined the dog with - shall we say - great passion. I took one look at the flap of skin hanging off my son's jaw, and commenced to bawling.  Micah kept asking, "Is it bad?  Is it bad?" and I just kept crying.  Yes, it was bad.  But I was crying because I didn't know what to do.  Didn't know where to take him, didn't know who would repair that awful cut, didn't know what to do with Teddy because I didn't have a gun and couldn't take him out to the scrubby trees and put him down humanely with a single shot.  I was overwhelmed and helpless, as I've been many times this year.  But this time, my kid's cheek was open and a flap of skin was hanging down his jaw like a shirt collar.  His dad and I'd made that possible. 

Sarah and Bill, friends who live here, came and took us to the major hospital in town. It was a bigger and more chaotic version of the first hospital we'd taken Micah to.  In a sickening replay of earlier events, we filled out a form, got him examined, received a prescription, were sent to the pharmacy to buy everything needed to treat him, and handed it to the doc.  Yes, you literally have to buy saline solution, syringes, gauze, gloves, tetanus vaccines, and anything else deemed necessary for your own treatment before you can be treated.  All around us were villagers who'd brought their desperately sick little babies, people sitting on mattresses in the hall, heads in their hands.  The sounds of crying babies, the looks of their exhausted mothers, the young doctors handling it all with calm and grace - it made me look at Micah's wound and feel grateful that it wasn't more serious. 

Our regular Sunday group, minus the Patterson family (who'd agreed to temporarily keep Teddy
before we came and took him off their hands).  Many of these
folks helped us out on bite night, and have helped out many times before.
front row: Elizabeth, Marta, Carol, Kristi, Sarah, Micah, Jake.
back row: Bill, Mark, Eli, Daniel, Thomas (visiting from UK), baby Rowena, Greg, EJ, John.

But.  I knew it would scar.  I knew it, and there was nothing I could do about it.  Bill called a doctor friend in Addis and he talked us through what usually happens with dog bites, stressed the importance of cleaning it thoroughly, and said often they don't close the wound immediately.  He was extremely helpful, but ultimately, he was in Addis, and we were in this crazy ER with docs who'd pulled the short straw because it was a holiday. 

At some point, an intern told me that Micah had to be seen by a maxillofacial specialist for the stitches.  She pointed to a central area of the ER, and I assumed that was where the specialist would see us.  But it was an ER doc who tended to us, and on his instructions, I held the bag of saline for him and wet some gauze with it so he could clean the wound.  He kept reminding me ("Don't touch me, don't touch me!") not to let the dripping needle of saline touch any part of him.  Such was the sterile technique of the ER. No face masks on anyone, all kinds of stains on the floor, lots of people standing around looking at this Ferenji kid with his skin hanging down his jaw.  Craziness. 

So when the same ER doc pushed some lidocaine into Micah's cheek and hurriedly pulled out a curved little needle and some absorbable thread,  I saw what was coming.  I gently leaned towards him and asked "Are you the maxillofacial specialist?" And he was already pulling Micah's cheek together with the curved needle.  He calmly said, "No.  I am the ER doctor on call."  So then I stood back and thought, "Okay.  This is what you get.  You came here.  You got the dog.  You kept the dog. So this is what you get."  And we just watched him do the best job he could, pulling Micah back together again.

Carol, a nurse friend, has told us that when we're back in the States, a plastic surgeon can fix the scar.  My friend Zeb in Addis talked to a couple of docs who saw the pictures I sent them of the stitch job and said basically "small wound, leave it be."

And it is a smallish wound.  But it's ugly.  Not because it's nasty looking, but because I see it and am reminded of the risks we've exposed our kids to this year.  I jokingly have told Mark again and again, "It's the year of living dangerously." Maybe, but looking at Micah's bruised face reminds me that the greatest price has been paid by our kids.

The boys and a younger Teddy

But life goes on in weird and surreal ways.  The very next morning, we performed in a martial arts show, of all things.  Readers of this blog may recall that we've hired a personal trainer. He is a Tae Kwon Do black belt whose dedication to the Ariana Grande song "Break Free" knows absolutely no bounds; it plays on a loop for an hour straight every single workout session.  He scheduled a performance for the kids of ORE featuring our family and Sandra (Swiss volunteer).  He asked us to wear red t-shirts.  When we got there, he handed us a roll of gauze and told us to make headbands. 

So there we were, Micah's face looking like he fought a lion, all of us sleep-deprived and anxious, standing in a straight line in front of the kids and staff of ORE with gauze tied around our heads, and Ariana declaring over the speaker, "This is the part where I say I don't wanna..."   To make matters worse, our trainer threw in an unexpected move and told us to run and leap into two somersaults in a row, each ending in classic martial arts fight stance and the battle cry "KYAH!"  If you don't think that's a big deal, go out and do a somersault right now, and then imagine you're forty-six and haven't done one in thirty-six years.  Needless to say, my "KYAH!" was more like "KY-OW!"  But the kids all clapped. 

Sadly, I don't have any pics of our show, but a soccer game was played
immediately after.  ORE believes the best way
to bid volunteers farewell is to form a staff/student team (yellow)
and decimate a team of volunteers (red). This was Sandra's last day after
a five month stint at ORE.  Our trainer, Teame, crouches between Daniel and Sandra
in the front row, hand on heart.

We did our show and it made Micah happy to be there and active.  And it made me think of the bravery of our boys as they went along with the program, kicking and punching in beginner style for an audience of kids they were certain would make fun of them afterwards.  Teame, a born-again Christian, was careful to ask Micah, "Are you okay, Brother Micah?"  Brother Micah was okay.

So what do we do with Teddy?  Here's how I imagine conversations going in the States: 
Me:  I think we have to keep Teddy.  We're leaving in less than two months.  We need the security.  Even Micah wants him to stay.
Friend in America:  I'm sorry, but I'm looking up Mekele Child Protective Services.

Here's how it goes here:
Me: We're going to keep Teddy until we leave, then we'll give him to an Ethiopian family who still wants him.
Americans in Ethiopia: Good.  So glad you don't have to deal with finding a way to put him down.  Micah will be fine, keep your eye on him.

Or:

Me: We have to kill that dog.
Ethiopian friends: Why????  I'll take him!

So...the dog stays.  I know, I know.  But if I told you how friends here have had to put their pets down (think strychnine for a cancer ridden dog, or holding a kitten with a broken neck under water), then you would understand that putting this guy through that when he was the one who brought laughter back to my boys would be really, really tough.  And you would look at Micah's nicely healing scar, the big valley outside where anyone can hide at night, and the dwindling days on our "year away" calendar, and you might make the same decision.  Anyway, our friend Jake has offered to take Teddy for the remainder of the time and swap him with his old dog, Trisca.  Just so that Micah can feel safe, and the rest of us can too.  Isn't that something?

The third time Teddy bit Micah....just kidding.  Too soon?

ps:

Hazal's completely boring now and her goody-goody sister Kansu is now the crazy one, having lost her unborn baby in a car accident and then - being from a filthy rich family - allowed her mother to buy a baby off a poor family so she wouldn't feel so bad.

More importantly, Mark and I - with the help of the incredible ORE staff - took the kids who'd performed well in their schools this year on a field trip to Wukro museum an hour away, and to an ancient rock church that dates back 1664 years.  Daniel came along, and a good time was had by all.

Me'areg, tour guide, explains some of the exhibits at Wukro Museum - a
joint venture of the Tigray Regional Government and The German Society

We carried lunch with us.  A huge cauldron of injera fir fir, and eighty egg sandwiches
prepared by ORE staff early in the morning.
These girls were chosen as part of the lunch committee (left to right, Rishan,
Girmanesh, Elam, Zenebu, and chaperone Susanne)

The museum staff stood by in awe as our students - without being asked -
found brooms, swept up their lunch mess, and washed up all the dishes.

Outside the ancient Wukro Chirkos