Enough said

Tonight my husband was gracious to grant me my third night out alone in one week!  I got to have dinner & play mini-golf with my new (and southern & single) friend, Rachel.  Don’t worry, I warned her that I aspire to be like Emma in Jane Austen’s book & play matchmaker for every single friend I know.  It’ll happen one day.

Well, we played mini golf after a very fulfilling dinner at Bella Italia.  And, like the title says, I was the loser.  Rachel won by 3 “strokes” – is that the right term?  She beat me!  Probably because she got 2 holes in one & I got zilch.  Oh well, it was about the fun, not the competition (until I am the WINNER!).

We got to talking a little about humility & how she lets herself be photographed even though she’s totally un-photogenic.  So, I decided to emulate her good advice & start liking myself & how I look in photos.  And that starts with actually being IN a photo.  So, we set up the pose, set the self timer, looked out for stray golf balls, and jumped in front of the camera!  Here’s a second one with me looking more stupider…or more stupid.  It’s okay, it’s a start….

Thanks for the “date” Rachel!

Now that I’ve moved our office & it shares space with the play kitchen, this is what I often get to look at while I’m working…

Better than an office with a window, I’d say!

March 10th was our official start day in Asossa – I think!  Between the jet lag, the time changes, and the culture differences, I’m getting my days mixed up.

Well, here is our looooooong March 10th….

We began with breakfast in the Upper Room, lovingly prepared by Anne from the Touching Africa Team.  I wasn’t a fan of oatmeal, so I quickly learned  the word for bread (daboe…I believe), and asked one of our dear helpers, Nati, to get me some bread at basically every meal.  I had a peanut butter sandwich for every meal that had milk or that I thought my stomach couldn’t handle.

After breakfast, and a potty break at the Bamboo, we headed off to our first clinic in the sanctuary of a local church.  Here we are having some prayer time before we opened the doors to the public.

This was the outside of the church where we held the clinic.  It has the tin roof, windows on both sides, a few fluorescent lights inside, and many benches for seating.  But that’s about it.  No carpet, no majestic sound system, no artwork, no glass in the windows, no heat or A/C.  People who came to this church came because they WANTED to, not because of what the church building itself had to offer.  It was beautiful to behold.

This is Elise.  The is the 13-year-old daughter of one of the team members who came along this year.  Here she is donning her “doctor” gear.  These were the typical things most of us wore throughout the day:  scrubs, gloves, and the occasional mask.

This table was one of three for reading glasses.  Here, Jessica is helping a woman choose frames in the reading strength she needed.

This is a view directly outside the front doors of the church.  These people are waiting to get into the clinic to be seen.  They sat here after they had gotten through the large gate at the front of the church.  We heard stories of people at the gate who had slept overnight and others who had walked as many as four days to be seen by the doctors.

Some more reading glasses magic by Michael Elliot….

And these people are ones who’ve gotten into the church and are now waiting to be seen by the triage team.  As I mentioned earlier, before people saw the doctors, we took a medical history on them along with vitals.

This is Alice.  She and Marie, were team members dedicated solely to prayer.  They would seat people after they’d seen the doctor and simply pray for them.  It was a sweet sight to behold.

And now, after morning and afternoon clinic, we move on to the BIG church.  This is the church where Pastor Califa preaches.  It just oozes over with people.  I tried my best in the next photo to show you how many people come to this place.  The lighting is very challenging, but in this photo, after you can’t see any more heads in the far back and it’s just light…well, that’s more people sitting outside the church in even more rows of benches.  It was just amazing to behold.

This little girl is one of many who were following me around during each and every church service.  Apparently it’s not a common thing to have an American girl with a large camera walking around during church.  I tried my best not to cause a stir, but some of these little darlings were too cute to resist snapping a photo of!

I had to shoot at 6400 ISO here, but it was the only way (I knew of) to capture all that I wanted to see.  This is Betty, the Ethiopian singer I mentioned earlier, leading worship.  I have some great video of this too that my husband is working on for me.  Can’t wait to share it!

And lastly, I’ll leave you with Elise.  This is during another late night pill sorting session.   She just couldn’t last the whole time & fell asleep on the hockey bags!

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…