Ethiopia Trip Update #1

I am writing before I leave Addis Ababa for 5 days into Southern Ethiopia and wanted to share some of my initial adventures and observations. .

INITIAL THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES IN ETHIOPIA

After traveling for over 24 hours we arrived in Addis Ababa at 9AM on Tuesday January 2nd. The last couple of hours on the plane were truly beautiful as we watched the sun rise over three African countries and looked down at the dry and parched desert to reach Addis. We could see the sun from a thin sliver to painting the whole horizon a beautiful red. It was like we could also see the shape of the horizon as we were heading south.

We arrived at the airport and we walked around the slightly tarnished but made to look like a modern airport. After clearing customs they ex-rayed our luggage and we jumped into Yohannes Land Cruiser and drove into Addis. The first site we saw “hit me through the eyes” and both of us said “wow this is not like anything I have ever seen”. We slowed down and banging on the window of the car (with a cane) was a young man in tattered clothes, bending down, disabled and broken back, walking on all fours with a cane, banging on our car window, begging for money. Welcome to Ethiopia.

Almost every time we slowed down, because you don’t stop for lights, because there are none, people would come up to the car and if you made any eye contact with them they would start talking to you and asking for money. Traffic is crazy driving around this town of 5,000,000 people. There are few street signs, most streets don’t have names and if they do, the names are constantly changing. Few people have car insurance and if you are stopped by the police you usually can give the cop 50 burr( about $5.00) and you are on your way. Therefore, being a cop in Addis is an extremely lucrative profession. It is the most dangerous city I have ever driven in because nobody pays attention to anyone and people just wander all over the streets and cars are just driving without paying much attention to protocol because there is little. The only streets that are paved are the main streets and everything else is a dirt road filled with pot holes 2 feet deep with beds of rocks and teeming with people, goats and cattle walking on them.

For two days I did not see any white person except when I went to the Hilton Hotel to make a plane reservation to fly to Jimma, which is in the Kaffe Province in Southwest Ethiopia and is the coffee growing area of the country. It was also the birthplace of coffee. However being a westerner did not make me feel uncomfortable at all, even though everybody stares at you.

We went to the US Embassy to register to let them know that we were in the country because the US State Department issued a travel warning for parts of the country bordering Somalia. The Embassy was closed for the day because they were observing the passage of President Ford. The Embassy is an ugly building totally surrounded by two “levels” of barricades. When went back to register today there were hundreds of Ethiopians standing outside trying to get exit visa’s out of the country. We had to go thru three screenings and then went upstairs to register. The only happy people were the couples with Ethiopian babies in their arms and on their laps, waiting exit visa’s to take their new babies to America. Daniel and I said that these were the luckiest kids in the country. I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful these babies are.

After this we went to a restaurant to get something to drink and to try to understand our feelings. Going into the restaurant we were searched and screened. After this we went to a money changer (black market) that was in the back of a little store that sold tee shirts and wooden carvings of African animals. The exchange rates they were giving were much better than banks. You cash $200 USD into $3,000 Burr and you have a wad of money that stretches incredibly in this country. I took out Yohannes and an employee to a pizza restaurant tonight (Daniel was thrilled because it was the first meal in two days he ate) and the total bill came to 70 Burr that is a little over $8 USD.

Then we visited Ethiopia Reads library which is the first and only public children’s library in the country. This is where Yohannes is the executive director. This NGO is the one I have been working with for the past year and is developing 6 children’s libraries during the next few months, and is publishing kids’ books in Amharic. This organization is the only one in Ethiopia that is providing books and reading assistance to children. Their offices are down a dirt road with huge pot holes (these act as natural speed bumps) and you have to open a gate to get into their compound and it provides for kids a little island of giving, enrichment, and sanity in a sea of poverty, survival and chaos. I loved the library in Addis. Almost every seat was filled with kids (over 100 kids) sitting and looking at pictures and trying to read books. Even though many of the younger kids did not understand English at all, they were engrossed in the pictures. Daniel picked up two books that Jane Kurtz had written and started to read to about 20 kids. It was very special seeing Daniel reading to these kids and making a human connection on a universal level. I started to cry when I realized how little chance most of these kids have to a life that even remotely compares to some of the poverty situations I was in during the civil rights movement in the United States in the 60’s.

We met with an interested man yesterday afternoon who was an educaor and leader at St. Mary’s College/University. . This is a private school (in Ethiopia this means that it is a for-profit entity) that is 7 years old and already has over 10,000 students. During the past 10 years almost 40 of these private colleges have sprouted up in the country to fill a crying demand to try to get an education and break out of this “culture and history of poverty and powerlessness”. Hewas a very impressive and extremely bright man who started to talk about the educational system and the society in general in Ethiopia. He believes that the government does not put alot of money into kids and does not have a high priority for their education. They seem to forget them after the age of 4 or 5 years old he was saying. Almost all available money (after the military and war efforts) is going to fight hunger and AIDS so there is not much left for kids. I asked him some questions about philanthropy and charity and he says there is almost nothing. Charity BEGINS AND STAYS AT HOME and what little money people make stays with the family or the Diaspora sends them back to their families. He gave us a tour around the campus and it was exciting to see every seat in the business library occupied with students doing their homework; students taking a test and others outside talking. It was a very normal scene like you would find at a “serious university” in the states.

Driving around this town, you quickly realize there is almost no middle class. Either you have Burr or you don’t and most people don’t. Everywhere you drive, every turn you make (outside of the Sheridan and Hilton hotels) there are people scratching and clawing to survive. You look at people and they are seeking something that seems nearly impossible. Yet you look into the beautiful kids eye’s at Ethiopia Reads, and you watch them at St. Mary’s College and you see beauty, hope and opportunity that is crushed by the reality of the society they are living in.

Tomorrow we are having a car and driver pick us up at 6AM to drive 10 hours to Awasa and then to Arba Minch which is where the Nechisar National Park is located. Ethiopia Reads has a donkey library in Awasa and we are going to visit that place and then drive down to the national park to see the African wildlife and to experience a part of the country, its beauty and serenity. We will be there thru Monday. Sunday is the Ethiopian Christmas so it is a big holiday and we can’t get a driver to drive on this Sunday and you can’t rent a car without renting a driver.

I talked with Dr. Rick Hodes today who is this incredible humanitarian physician who came to Ethiopia on a Fulbright 16 years ago and never left. His takes care of the Ethiopia Jewish Community and then on Sabbath, volunteers his time taking care of the kids at Mother Teresa’s orphanage. We brought him a number of items from the states that he wants and we are celebrating Sabbath with him next week and Daniel will be spending time at the orphanage while I am consulting and training with NGO’s from throughout the country.

I am going to sign off now because I have not had more than 3 hours of sleep since leaving Denver and I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Both Daniel and I are well and we are just an emotional basket case trying to figure this all out within our context of being a protected, comfortable, and lucky people from America.