Tuesday, April 5, 2011


So, my amazing aunt from Pennsylvania sponsors an Ethiopian boy through a Christian organization called Compassion. When she heard that I was going to be here, she contacted the organization to arrange that I visit her sponsored child.

On March 12th, a driver and a translator for Compassion picked me up in Addis Ababa and drove me to Ambo, a town about two hours (150 km, roughly 100 miles) away. In Ambo we were met by the boy, who is nineteen years old and studies at a university in eastern Ethiopia. He had come back to Ambo just for the weekend in order to meet me. We went to his home, which was a small stucco house off a dirt road in the hills. Standing just outside of their gate, one has a gorgeous view of the mountains. Inside their property they have a small garden next to the house. There we met his mother, his two sisters, and two of their neighbors. Inside, we sat down in a small living/dining area. The kitchen and sleeping area were hidden by a doorway covered by a long curtain.

Ethiopians honor guests by performing a coffee ceremony. Ethiopia is famous for its coffee—for good reason, Ethiopian coffee is definitely the best coffee I’ve ever tasted—and they generally drink it black with a lot of sugar. A traditional coffee ceremony is when they roast green coffee beans over a bowl of hot coals on the floor, before grinding the beans very finely by hand—they don’t use filters—and heating the coffee over the same coals. It is served with sugar in very small cups. Popcorn is also traditionally served at a coffee ceremony. Except for making the popcorn, everything is done (usually by a woman) sitting on the floor in front of the guests. The room fills with smoke and smells like roasting coffee beans. At our guest house, Selam, our wonderful cook/Ethiopian mother/friend performs the coffee ceremony the day of or before a volunteer departs. She also serves cake.

So anyway, the boy’s mother served us injera and performed the coffee ceremony while we all sat around and talked. He is studying civil engineering, and plans most likely to go into construction. His mother described him to us as a “free spirit,” and he looked embarrassed but pleased. He showed me pictures that my aunt had sent him of her family and talked described how grateful he was to her, and how much he wants to meet her. It was a short visit, but it was very sweet, and I’m very glad I went.
It was also the first time I’d traveled far out of Addis Ababa, and I got to get a good luck at the countryside. Addis Ababa stops very abruptly, and suddenly it’s all hills and planes and it’s absolutely gorgeous. For lack of a better description, it looks exactly like Africa. There are huge, rolling mountains in the distance, and on the planes there are those trees with the flat tops—I don’t remember what they’re called—scattered all over the place. We went through a few small villages, which were mostly clusters of mud huts and hay bales.


I have suddenly become Ethiopia’s designated mural painter. Last Thursday I commented on a painting of some shepherds and stars that had gone up in the classroom at Little AHOPE, and mentioned idly to the teacher that I’d love to do some kind of painting somewhere while I’m here. She looked at me and asked with surprise why I hadn’t asked earlier, and then told me that I was welcome to paint the rest of the classroom if I wanted to. So I went straight to the classroom and dug out some of my favorite children’s books from their collection and went to work. That day I painted a giant Cat in the Hat on one of the walls. Then the teacher, who we all call “Miss,” asked if I would paint Spiderman on another wall. I thought it was a bit weird that a schoolteacher would want a giant Spiderman painted on her kindergarten classroom’s wall, but I started Spiderman on Friday, and when the children came in to see my progress, they were all very excited—they hardly glanced at Cat in the Hat. (I think Cat in the Hat’s much cooler, but I guess he’s not terribly popular in Ethiopia.) Anyway, since finishing Spiderman I’ve also painted Winnie the Pooh, Barney (their idea, not mine), and flowers in the Little AHOPE classroom. I’ve started a painting from the children’s book Guess How Much I Love You in the classroom at Big AHOPE, and they want a Spiderman as well. On top of that, one of the nurses is married to a man who teaches English at a local private elementary school, and last week he asked me if I’d be willing to come to his school and paint something. So on Thursday (March 17th) he picked me up from AHOPE and I got to visit his school. He had told his fifth grade class that I was coming, so for the first half hour I stood in front of the class answering questions they’d all prepared (it felt very much like that other English class I’d visited) and then I got to work. They also requested a Cat in the Hat, which I was more than happy to do.


On Friday (March 18th) Selam taught me how to make one of the wet sauces often served with injera. Selam is an excellent cook and she taught me a few new cooking tricks as well as the recipe. We couldn’t make the injera itself, not having the pan/machine thing they use to cook it, but we whipped up the sauce and then went out and bought the injera from the bakery around the corner. It was actually very simple—just onions and tomatoes and garlic and potatoes and oil, as well as water and a ton of a spice I don’t know how to pronounce. I’m going to try to bring some of this spice home with me.



On Sunday (March 27th), two American women arrived from Seattle. They’re on the board of AHOPE for Children, so they’re basically in charge of all the funding for AHOPE Ethiopia. Obviously this is kind of a big deal, so everyone seems to be bending over backwards for them while they’re here—I actually had to give up my room in the guest house, cuz it was apparently one of the nicer ones. Anyway, on Monday the cooks at AHOPE made a huge, amazing meal, and I decided to help in the kitchen that day. I didn’t do all that much—I basically just cut cucumbers and arranged the salads and watched as they bustled around expertly whipping up meals for both the children and all of the staff. They did let me try to make injera though, which was a bit exciting. Injera (the flat, sourdough crepe-like bread that they eat for basically every single meal) is cooked on a stove that is a flat surface griddle thing over a fire. The batter, which is just teff flour and water, is poured onto the stove in a spiral pattern, usually from the outside inwards. The cooks do it quickly and expertly, and they end up with a large, very thin pancake. I was slow and clumsy, and my injera was extremely fat and uneven. They served it anyway, and I was very proud of myself.



On Tuesday (March 29th) Camille and I went to the Mercato. We’re both in the process of scrambling around to finish our gift/souvenir shopping. The Mercato in Addis Ababa is the largest open-air market in Africa. It’s huge. We were there for a good two or three hours, and we didn’t even see a fraction of it. You can literally buy anything you could possibly need somewhere in the Mercato—you just have to know where to go. It’s always extremely crowded and there are lots of pickpockets—foreigners are especially advised not to bring a bag or even wear hanging jewelry. My camera was out of the question, unfortunately. We saw sections where shops sold nothing but spare car parts, or hot peppers, or toilet paper, as well as sections for traditional clothing, or beverages, gadgets like cell phones, TVs, computers, etc.



This will probably be the last time I blog before I leave…I'll be leaving this coming Saturday (April 9th). I absolutely can’t believe it—these have been without a doubt the fastest three months of my whole entire life. It’s going to be an extremely busy last week—it’ll be full of pictures and painting and coffee ceremonies and last-minute touristing and shopping and not to mention spending every single possible minute with these kids who have stolen my heart and will most definitely be keeping a large part of it when I go. I’m dreading saying goodbye to them. I promise I will write again when I get back to the States. Till then…I hope everyone’s having a good beginning of the springtime!
See you guys soon! All my love!

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