Ethiopia Trip: Final Thoughts

I am flying out of Addis Ababa this evening for the US and want to write my last email partly about my week in the coffee growing/jungle area of Southern and Southwest Ethiopia and my final thoughts on leaving this wonderful country and this incredible experience I have had during the past three weeks.

Most of the past week was spent in Southern Ethiopia in the towns of Jimma (the capital city of the Kaffa region) in the birthplace of coffee. I also spent time in Bonga and Chira that are smaller towns and villages. My hosts for this visit were the Catholic Secretariat that has a series of schools, health care clinics, programs for women, economic development activities where they provide coffee plants for farmers and help with forming coffee growing cooperatives.

Shabbat In Ethiopia

The following story is written by Rich’s son, Daniel, who went with Rich to Ethiopia. Rich and his wife wanted to share the story:

Friday night my dad and I had a Shabbat dinner we will never forget. But let me tell you, this wasn’t just any Shabbat dinner. At home my Shabbat dinners usually consist of getting dressed up nicely, sitting down at the table as a family (while my mother makes sure we’re wearing nice kippot), singing Shalom Aleicham, Eishat Chayil, and following up with Kiddush, washing, and a Motzie. We would then proceed to eat the meal in courses: fish, soup, salad, the main event (usually chicken and kugel), and then dessert. My mom might throw in a d’var Torah. But for the most part it’s a traditional Shabbat dinner.

This dinner on Friday the 12th was as opposite as I could get while still being Jewish. We were invited to the home of Dr. Rick Hodes, a Jewish American internal medicine doctor who lives in Addis, and was hired by the Joint Distribution Committee to take care of the Falasha Jews. In addition, he volunteers some of his time at an orphanage/medical clinic.

Ethiopia Trip Update #4

I am so pleased and relieved that my two day training session on Thursday and Friday went well. I had been studying, organizing and planning for this session for three months and spent an inordinate amount of time preparing. Over 40 NGO’s from throughout the country registered for the session and they are working on a wide variety of issues around health care, AIDS/HIV especially for kids, reproductive rights and family planning, disaster and famine relief, rural community development, and women’s groups that are fighting the female circumcision issue.

I don’t know why I was so worried about this session because I have conducted literally hundreds of training workshops on this topic, but I was concerned about the cultural and language issues distracting from a rhythm I need to feel comfortable in the training sessions. It did take me about 4 hours until I started to relax and then the rest of the training was super. Ethiopian people and NGO’s are very formal that have their coffee and tea breaks at a certain times as well as the lunches. Having these breaks is a ritual and the coffee they make is almost a sacred ceremony.

Ethiopia Trip Update #3

Wow what a country of contrasts!!! For most of the time is all we see are dreary browns and battered landscape surrounded by sad looking faces of people designed to spend their life in poverty. Then the past couple of days we say a totally different side of life (for a few hours).

It started with Noel Cunningham, our wonderful friend who owns Strings Restaurant helped us set up an appointment with the President of Ethiopia, President Girma. So Yohannes and I put on a suit and tie and went to the presidential palace. We stopped at the gate and the guards checked to see if our name was on the register and then let us inside and proceeded to conduct this 20 minute security search of our ‘85 land cruiser including sweeping the bottom of the car with mirrors. We drove in and parked the car surrounded by beautiful manicured lawns and flower gardens. We walked into the palace and right when we entered there was a huge red rug with four Stars of David embroidered into the carpet. We walked to the President’s office and engraved into his big desk were two Stars of David. It is interesting to see the biblical connection this country has to Jewish people. We spent almost 90 minutes with this delightful man, who walks with a cane and appears to be about 80 years old but very smart and sharp. He served us coffee and tea with western style cookies and was extremely courteous and engaging. Once he found out that I worked with NGO’s he asked me to assist one of his favorite NGO’s that he founded a number of years ago. It is called LEM Ethiopia and it is an environmental organization designed to protect the forests and replant tree’s throughout the country that have been devastated because of the need for poor people for wood to cook their food and to sell for income. Yohannes invited the President ( and he accepted) to be the featured person at his book week event in Addis Ababa on April 1st.

Ethiopia Trip Update #2

Daniel and I just returned from five days in the rural parts Ethiopia heading south of Addis Ababa to the towns of Awasa (that is the regional capital for the province) to Arba Minch and the Nechisar National Park. This is an area that is only about 60K from the Kenya border.

 

We first drove down to Awasa (about a five hour drive) where Yohannes used to live and where Ethiopia Reads has a regular library and a mobile library that is pulled by a donkey that goes out into the neighborhoods and kids read books. It was really great seeing all of the young children reading books and some of the kids read the books out loud to us. After lunch we headed another 6 hours south to Arba Minch that is a large city in Southwest Ethiopia. It is a town with grubby streets, very chaotic but with lots of charm and we did not arrive until night and made a reservation at the Swayne’s Hotel.