Continuing on the Ethiopian Adventure, here is my March 8th (my oldest daughter’s 5th birthday)….

We started off our morning by “loading the truck.”  What this meant was taking the hundreds of pounds of hockey bags, filled with medicines, medical supplies, toys, shoes, and clothes, and carefully packing them in to the truck for Asossa.  The truck would be taking an hours long journey over “uncomfortable” roads to Asossa, so we sent it the day before we were to fly out there ourselves.

After this, we were rewarded with a nice lunch at the Hilton in Addis.  Except, I didn’t quite get my lunch.  We ordered, got our drinks, and then I was asked to leave to head to a feeding program for about 75 HIV/AIDS children living in Addis.  Of course I couldn’t pass this up!  I grabbed a granola bar & my camera and we were off!  This feeding program is run by Solomon – a local Ethiopian – who started out feeding the children once a month and is now up to feeding them once a day!  It’s just an amazing site to see.  The children, and their families, live on government land that they don’t own in Addis, so they are basically squatters.  They can’t afford to live in the city, so this is their only alternative.  As we speak, Solomon is feverishly trying to obtain land for them, legally, to start a larger scale feeding program, school, and facilities where they can grow, and live, and thrive.  It’s just amazing to hear him talk about it!

Here are the kids….

John & Jana LOVE this stuff…they LOVE getting to connect with these kids.  It’s so sweet to observe.

This little guy just melted my heart!  He caught me snapping away at him & then gave me this smile!

Here is Solomon sharing about the feeding program.  I have video to share later!

This little girl about broke my heart!  She was covered in flies (even before we gave her the lollipop) and walked around with no pants, no diaper, nothing on her lower half!  And she was very wary of us.

We gave the children simple airplanes to put together & play with.  Here is one of the boys hard at work on his.

This is another new friend, Glen.  He’s a Texas Longhorns fan through & through, and here he is teaching the boys the longhorns sign!

Here are the children receiving their meal for the day.  Scrumptious!

This mother was so excited when she got to see the photo of herself with her baby!

Here’s another new friend, Tiffany.  She’s with the Touching Africa Ministries team.  This photo cracks me up.  These girls loved her blonde hair & Tiffany told them they could “try” it too!  Here she is letting Hannah see what it’s like to have long, blonde hair!  HA!

And dear sweet Philippa!  Enjoying her favorite types of people:  cute children or cute old men!  These are obviously children.

And I’ll leave you with this last one of John.  He always takes such time & care with each patient.  Here he is showing these girls how to use a stethoscope.  They loved the attention as much as he did!

Okay, that was way too long of a title, sorry! You know you have to title it just right so it will show up in Google…that’s what I was trying to do…sorta!

Since I was away for 14 days in Ethiopia (and away in jet-lagged state for another week after my return to the states), I am waaaaaaay behind on my Project 365 photos. However, I did take well over a photo a day while in Ethiopia, and I’m happy to share some of them with you here! If these few meager photos don’t satisfy your appetite for what I did & saw while I was away, then go here and see over a thousand! Be prepared, get a comfy chair, your next meal, plenty to drink, and take breaks – there are a LOT of them!

Here’s how my Friday, March 5th went…

That’s  pretty much it.  I was on an airplane on Ethiopian Air for almost the entire day!  I didn’t feel secure enough to whip out my huge camera too much during the flight since it’s kind of frowned upon due to airline security.  And I don’t own a point and shoot…AND…I didn’t take my iPhone.  Sorry people.  You’ll just have to trust me that I met about 10 new strangers in the airport, tried my best to make friends, borrowed anti-nausea medicine from my new friends Anne & Sam, ate a TON of airplane food, had to go to the bathroom a LOT, slept a LOT, looked at my girls photos over & over again, and prayed and prayed that my plane would land safely at each stop.  It was an adventure.  I am not the best flier, but by God’s grace I made it!

When we landed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, it was Saturday morning their time.  Now, Ethiopia is kind of strange because they are still in 2002!?!?!  And their clock is like 6 hours different from ours!?!?!?  The sweet, kind Ethiopian woman on the airplane tried to explain all this to me in her limited English, but it went right over my (medicated) head.  Just Google it.

Here was my March 6th….

These are a few of the MANY bears from Mother Bear Project that we handed out to some lovely children.  These things were a HOT item.  I have photos of near riots over these things.  Where we were, toys are NOT a common thing for children, and getting a bear was like Charlie getting the golden ticket!  B-I-G D-E-A-L!

After we got in to our super duper sweet hotel in Addis, we lugged a butt load of 50-pound hockey bags up to the 5th floor to sort and repackage them.  Now, what nobody told me about Addis is that is has the elevation of a city about equal to Denver, CO.  I was huffing and puffing up those stairs.  Whew!  This photo features my new friend Kari (and the arms of many others) sorting medicines in to dose sizes.  We were like our own makeshift pharmacy – without a license!  John & Jana Turns (from Doctors Giving Back) organized a TON of different medicines to be bought/donated for this trip.  There was everything from antibiotics to inhalers to heartburn meds to simple pain relievers.  These people were prepared!

This is after our pill sorting at the hotel…our first clinic in Addis!  This was a building next to Tom’s church (more about him later) where we hosted a little clinic for church members to see the doctors.  This is my new friend Lisa taking someone’s blood pressure.  A lot of us had no prior medical experience, but we were given the chance to learn to take some basic vitals:  blood pressure, temperature, pulse, and respirations.  The clinics were set up like this:  triage & vitals at the entrance, see the doctor next, pharmacy following that, with reading glasses as an option at the end.  Very efficient in my opinion.

This is the reading glasses table in Addis.  I helped the most with this aspect of the clinic.  We spent quite a lot of time sorting the glasses into their strengths.  We’d have people sit, with an interpreter, at the table and try on different strengths and read an Amharic bible.  It was basically a trial and error type of deal.  Most people found something they liked.  Some picked solely on fashion.  Others just wanted glasses.  But the big thing, and what I’ll remember for next time, is sunglasses!  They LOVE and WANT sunglasses!

These were just a few of the kids waiting outside the clinic before the Saturday night church service.  The first thing they said to me:  “Give me chocolate.”  Apparently that’s a common phrase in Ethiopia??  And apparently all Americans have chocolate on them?  Yeah right!  I didn’t have anything to give them, but one of the other team members provided them with lollipops.  I simply provided them with unlimited poses in front of the camera!  They loved it!  We’d snap a few photos, and then they’d want to see RIGHT AWAY what they looked like.  They’d also push each other out of the way for a chance of a portrait all by themselves.

After a few hours of clinic, we went straight to Saturday night church service at Tom’s church.  And unbeknownst to me, we were in the presence of an international Ethiopian superstar!  Bethelhem “Betty” Tezera was our guest for the trip.  I’ve been told she’s the most widely known Ethiopian singer in Ethiopia, Canada, and amongst the Ethiopian community in America.  She sang for us many times and got those people on their feet!  Now I just need to read her lyrics!

And now my March 7th….

It was, unfortunately, very uneventful.  Apparently everyone gets sick at some point on these kind of trips, and this was my day.  Which actually turned out to be a blessing.  The days following this were filled with many photo needs and I was able to be there to capture them.  I spent Sunday sleeping in until 4pm.  There wasn’t any definite thing I could pinpoint as being the cause of my sickness, but I just felt like my batteries were drained.  My muscles ached, I was hot, then cold, I couldn’t eat, I felt sick at the thought of food, and I just wanted to sleep.  Homesickness???  After my long nap, I stepped outside to get a view of our hotel:  Pacific Hotel.

Later that evening, we were all invited to the Top View restaurant for our first team meeting to eat, fellowship, and learn about what was ahead of us for the next week.  It was here that we got to learn about the other half of our team from Touching Africa Ministries based out of Colorado.  We were the medical side of the trip, they were the missions & Christian outreach side.  It was wonderful to be partnered with such an amazing, well-established organization.

And I’ll leave you with this view of Addis at night…

Well, it’s been a little over two weeks since I posted on my blog.  Sorry to keep some of you waiting so long.  I know you really rely on my daily snippets to get you through your day….right???  Haha!  Well, anyways, I’m going to try to get back on track ASAP!

For those of you who didn’t know, I just returned from a two-week medical missions trip with Doctors Giving Back.  Now, I realize I have no medical background, except applying Princess Band-Aids, but I do have the ability to document with my camera!  And that’s what I did.  As I sort through literally thousands of photos, I’ll be catching up on my photo of the day project as well as sharing what I did with you over in Ethiopia.  Let me just sum it up in two words:  life changing!

The following isn’t technically a photo, but it was shot with my camera!  I am so glad to have been able to figure out the video features.  It was awesome to have some 1080P High-Def footage – even if it did eat up my memory cards!

Here are Daniel & Kokebe singing “Jesus My Lover.”

Jesus my lover from Mandy Sroka on Vimeo.

These precious envelopes are notes from the girls in my high school bible study for ME!  They gave me an envelope for each day that I’m away in Ethiopia to help pass the time, to remember them, and to remind me of home.  *sniff sniff*  They are so sweet!  When I arrived at bible study this evening they had these notes, a poster saying “We’ll miss you Mandy” and yummy homemade cupcakes!  Girls, you make me cry!  You are so sweet & thoughtful & teach me more than I could ever hope to pass on to you!  Thank you for thinking of me & for your constant prayers!  I love you all!

There’s really not any great way to make this photo “artsy.”  It’s just my luggage, my life for the next two weeks.  I’m finally finished packing for Ethiopia.  I have my Pelican case with all my camera gear, my carry-on back pack with the essentials, and my check bag with everything else I could squeeze.  Ethiopia….here I come!