The full welcome

By the time we reached the Yeshi Buni after church last Sunday, we were famished, and fairly excited, since this was the supposedly most respected place in town to get Injera. We washed our hands, drank sparkling water from a sealed bottle, and heartily enjoyed our meal with our fingers, with Ethiopians from church.
Sunday afternoon was completely over by the time we got home. It was after 4PM and I thought that I was going to be late for the soccer game. I wasnt. It was close to 5 before all the Ethiopians were ready to play. They all laughed that I had brought 'boots' from America and my team cheered "We get the Whitey." Sadly, I didnt play long before we had to leave to have dinner and prayer with the Warren's and the New City team. But it was in my best interest. The difference in altitude is noticeable, or else I am really out of shape. The night ran long, but time at the Warrens is rich. We really enjoyed the New City Team as well.
With a full day teaching ahead, my nerves woke me up Monday--I didnt think twice about my stomach griping. By the time my last class was over, I rushed back to our apartment and Betsy had the same look in her eyes:
"Welcome to Africa. You are now part of the African Legacy."
It had started out gradual, but it was all downhill from there.
Neither of us slept Monday night. We greeted each other with the grimacing nod at regular intervals. It wasnt just gastro-intestinal; it was a fever, too.
Thankfully, I have a light class load on Tuesday, and as the bell rang ending my one class for the day, I was the first out the door. I didn't wave on the way out.
By Wednesday, we were up and wandering about. I made it through all of my classes. Its such a standard occurrence around here that there's not much sympathy to go around. Its not of matter of if, its a matter of when. Its probably the same reason that they call Pepto Bismal an 'after dinner mint.'

By Friday, the fever finally departed. Still some residual side effects, but our initiation ceremony is more or less complete, so we think. I was just glad to have made it to all my classes but the ills were still plaguing us. Sunday after church one week later, of all places, we went with the new MTW team from Baltimore and NYC back for, none other, more injera. By this sunday night we decided to quit acting tough and take the Cipro. Within hours, the disease was gone. We slept like never before, until 5AM when the Mosque next door starting blaring the loudspeaker of Amharic chanting. Bets crawled out of bed and stumbled to find leftover airplane earplugs for the both of us, and as I put them into my ears, I never had so much love in my heart before--so much so that I fell back asleep almost instantly.

PS The internet has been almost completely nonexistent. We blog at its mercy. More anon.

This has been our first weekend in Addis. It has been quite busy, but every day we are getting more and more settled.

Friday night we ate at the Bryan's house. Dawn Bryan is the Recruitment director at Bingham; she and her husband Steve have been living in Addis for 14 years. Steve works at a graduate school (which has a seminary) for Ethiopians. She's from Denver and he's from Oklahoma City. They have three boys. Dinner at their house was a fun and rambunctious night. The boys are 10, 9 & 7 and a lot of fun. After the boys headed for bed, we had some good conversation. We learned a lot about them and life in Ethiopia.

Saturday morning we took it pretty easy, doing laundry (which FYI takes 10 times as long in Africa than in the US), making breakfast and trying to clean up (cleaning here takes 50 times as long!). Daniel worked some on his classroom prep, and I made my first high-altitude lunch failure. We both ate it, but there was way too much water in the rice and it totally overcooked -- so our 'chicken and rice' dish looked more like overcooked chicken and rice soup. Of course, there was not enough chicken and the rice had turned mushy; the tomatoes I added ended up turning the dish an alarming shade of PINK. At any rate, the Pakistani directions on our basmati rice are plainly not for 7600 feet.

Saturday evening, Erin & Jared Miller took us out to dinner at a place called 'Family Restaurant.' They had many things on the menu -- Nachos, Falafel Burger, Veal Souvlaki, Sweet & Sour Pork, Bacon Cheeseburgers, etc... Basically all genres of cooking that ferengis might order (ferengi is Amharic for foreigner). It was cheap and pretty good, but it was fun to get to hang out with the Millers. They are close in age to Daniel & I, and we got a lot of the low-down on Bingham. The Millers are from southern Ohio and very Midwestern (their son Trussell is named after the 2004 OSU football coach). Jared is the Bingham Athletic Director. Erin grew up partially as a missionary kid, so she has lived in Ethiopia during the Dergue (communist regime) and France and Western Africa. She moved back to Ohio as a 7th grader and her father is now a pharmaceutical director. Quite an interesting couple. Needless to say, they are adventurous and know a lot about Addis, even though they have only been here since August.

After dinner the Millers' took us to Shoa (a ferengi supermarket -- the term supermarket is used loosely), where we bought clean tupperware (the stuff furnished in our apartment as been here for too many decades) and large coffee mugs with Amharic letters on them.

Sunday morning we got up and had breakfast, but had to be ready at 945 to go with a couple of girls who invited us to church. We had to get there a bit early so that Erica could practice singing with the worship group. Remember what I said about everything in Africa taking a lot longer than it does in the US? Well, the service didn't even start until 1115, and it lasted a solid two hours. Then there was plenty of hanging around and chatting afterwards. We didn't head to lunch until almost 2 PM. Beza, the church we attended, was more like an Ethiopian evangelical service (aka, fairly charasmatic and long) in English. It was very international, with just as many Ethiopians as westerners. It was great to get a chance to go and see how Ethiopians worship. Everyone was very welcoming, and the girls who took us (who are probably older than me -- why am I calling them girls?), who are teachers at Bingham, are friends with lots of Ethiopians and speak very good Amharic. In fact, they took us and a couple of Ethiopians out to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant after church. Our table had the only white people in the building. But the injera (Ethiopian crepelike-pancakes made of teff) was delicious, and we had beef tibs, botswa shiro, and tomatens (tomato, jalapeno, vingar salad) all heaped on injera. We sat on stools and ate off low injera-tables. Our table of 6 ate for 18 US dollars. It was delicious.

Tomorrow, I am starting language school in the city. I will be studying Amharic every morning for a month. It really is crucial for me to be able to speak some Amharic so I can relate to the beneficiaries of the project. Daniel starts school tomorrow with Grade 8 Social Studies. In fact, he is at the teacher's lounge right now, working on his lesson. Do be thinking of him tomorrow, as he descends into his first week of teaching middle-schoolers.


PS: We never found high-speed internet this past weekend; whenever we get something besides shared dial-up, we will upload pictures.

Thursday, being our third full day in country, was our first go to see the AIDS project. Jacqui was to meet us at 8AM and take us across town to the Lideta area. Immediately out of the Bingham gate, Jacqui zips through a flock of school kids all matching in colorful uniforms with the same look on their face: another day of school. I am starting to get the hang of riding in the car. It doesn't matter if its a small child, a body sleeping by the street, a donkey or a SUV truck, 6 inches is plenty of space to navigate around them and maintain full speed. Driving to Lideta, we pass the Merkato which is the huge open air market. To no one's surprise it is jam packed, and to be honest, doesnt look much different from the rest of the city.

Once we arrive at the compound, we meet the various Ethiopian staff and make our way upstairs to the main offices. The three offices are littered with Macs. The first thing through the door is an iMac and Airport Extreme. Towards the back is a slew of Mac Minis and then, a couple of Dell PCs cowering in the corner. Downstairs, a team from Chattanooga's New City Church are working construction. They are renovating the back courtyard to accommodate future interns. This involved moving the outdoor toilet, or 'squatty potties' around to the rear of the yard and turning a small shed into living quarters with a kitchen.

Finally, Alemu, (the spelling is mine, all mine) greeted us and asked us to come along with him as he makes visits to nearby beneficiaries. As we walk, I am surprised we are not bombarded by the local folks. I was worried that walking next to Blondie was going to cause a groundswell. The first individual we visit is bedridden. Alemu asks him questions to see if he has been taking his medicine. His cough is long and deep. Alemu thinks he has TB. His daughter works at the little stove and the room is barely larger than an average bathroom. The smell is the same. As we walk out of the door, Alemu explains that the wife is positive as well but they are waiting to test the three daughters. They dont want to know.

The next beneficiary we visit is an ex-prostitute. Her house is the same size but very clean and orderly. She appears healthy, vibrant. She is very friendly and shows us pictures of her son and her as a young girl. Her eyes sparkle.

The third patient we see is elderly and has just returned from the Black Lion Hospital. Her legs are swollen and Alemu admits that he is depressed by her situation. Her children do laundry while they are there and they smile as we leave--its rude not to greet people as you pass them. Finally, we come to our last visit for the morning. A beautiful girl who most be 5 or 6 runs up to us and after Alemu play-kicks with her, we enter her home. Its obvious that she lives with her grandmother and Alemu explains that the little girl is not a beneficiary but they help her with her medication because the grandmother has a difficult time cutting the pills into halves and the little girl does not like to swallow the pills. Her parents died of AIDS 4 years ago. We play with the girl some more and Alemu tells us that she is actually almost 10 years old and when her parents were ill, she was never enrolled in school; since she can't read/write, she can't go to primary school and she is too old to be admitted to kindergarten. At this point, her only option is to practice her letters and numbers in a homemade, newspaper-bound notebook.

After lunch, we return to Bingham and sleep, for two hours.

Well, we have just finished up our second day in Addis. Here are a few highlights:

We went to the embassy bright and early to register and start the process of obtain Ethiopian drivers' licenses. It took us half an hour to go less than 10 km in the morning rush hour traffic. Now in AA, rush hour does not mean bumper-to-bumper cars -- it means throngs of people walking in the middle of the road, donkeys loaded up with wood and packs, and masses of sheep being herding along by their owner. And in the mix are a lot of old cars and trucks -- minibus taxis (like minivans painted with soccer stars on the back), old private taxis, and personal cars and vans. Oh, and everyone is always beeping their horn, at all humans, vehicles and animals.

Getting things done at the US embassy was just like any sort of bureaucratically line-waiting scenario. Following signs, showing passports, filling out forms. Then I realized I didn't have my US driver's license; Daniel had a manila envelope with all of our important documents in it, but he assumed I had my license on me. Whoops! So, then we had to go back to our driver Kassahoun and another guy who was helping us (forget his name), and explain that we needed to go back to Bingham basically because Betsy was dumb and forgot to get the one document that was the most important.

One hour of AA driving later, we arrived back at the embassy, swore our statements of driver's license legality, and we off to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There we handed off documents, took a number, and waited for our turn in line. Actually, it felt a lot like the US DMV, where you go in knowing you will be sitting patiently on a hard bench to fork out your money to people are just trying to move you along. The interesting thing is that we sat outside under a corrugated metal pavillon, as the Foreign Affairs people had windows that reminded me of a fast food drive-thru window. Oh, and there was also a TV outside playing CNN news which was covering bits from Bush's State of the Union Address. After we bumbled through the lines and had our papers soundly stamped, we were back off to Bingham.

After a light lunch, I met with Jacqui to 'go for a shop' in Addis. She is doing all the cooking for the 7th grade retreat this weekend, so she took me to several different groceries. First we went to a place that a lot of locals go to called 7/11. It is run by a muslim man and has the best fresh fruit and vegetables. I learned a couple of things:
1. The grocery workers don't want you touching their produce; you tell them what you want, they pick it off the shelf, give it to you to inspect, then they weigh it and they place it in your trolley (cart).
2. The grocery clerk handed Jacqui and I macchiatos (strong ethiopian coffee and milk) as we shopped; it was quite nice, but makes shopping difficult as you carry around your demi-tasse and saucer.
3. Never hand something to an Ethiopian with your left hand. It is considered rude; I kept forgetting this as I struggled to fish Ethiopian Birr out of my zipped up purse.

Jacqui took me to a meat shop, another grocery which caters more to ex-pats, and a cafe called Chocolata. At Chocolata women who have come off the streets are given a job making pastries and nacho chips (sorta like tostitos) and homemade salsa (which they freeze in weird jugs). It is a really cool place to support since you are helping people to have jobs who would ordinarily have nothing.

It took quite a while to get all the shopping done, but I got home just as Daniel was getting out of another meeting. Then I spent time bleaching vegetables and rinsing them before we had dinner at a neighbor's house. Tomorrow we will be our first day at the HIV project.

Thank you everyone for all your thoughts and prayers.

If you have any interest in sending anything to us, our address is:

Daniel & Betsy Collins
Bingham Academy
P O Box 4937
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Hope everyone is doing well!

Hello Everyone! We have just finished up our first 24 hours in the lovely city of Addis Ababa (AA).

Last night, we arrived in Bole Airport just before 9PM. Our flight from Geneva to AA was quite pleasant. We connected in Frankfurt with no problems. We also had a stop in Khartoum (Sudan) which we were unaware of until we boarded the plane. In Khartoum some people got off, and they refueled the plane. So we sat in the plane on the tarmac for over an hour. Looking outside the teensy plane window, Khartoum seemed dry, hot & orange. Very much a hot desert.

Hence, landing in AA was nice and cool. The skies were dark and there was a light breeze. Andy & Bev Warren picked us up from the airport. We got all of our bags safe and sound and through customs without a second look. We were pleasantly surprised, considering all the computer & video hardware we had in our bags. The Warrens' greeted us warmly, and we piled into their SUV and drove to Bingham Academy (where we now live).

From the airport to Bingham, you roughly cover the east-west direction of AA. The streets were in good shape, and relatively empty. The Warrens' gave us a verbal tour of the different roundabouts and sub-cities we went through.

When we arrived at Bingham, Murray Overton, the director, had waited up for us to greet us and show us to our apartment. Murray is from New Zealand, with a wonderfully dry and slightly inappropriate sense of humor. His jokes are often sarcastic and hilarious. He showed to our apartment, which had been stocked with bread, milk, eggs, fruit, jam & kola nuts (a peanut/barley snack mix).

Our apartment is large and airy with lots of windows. It is actually a converted dorm, so we have two bedrooms and one bathroom which has two shower stalls and a large bath tub. We have a nice sitting room and a large kitchen with a fridge, gas range, etc... Everything was nice and organized and clean enough considering its an old building. It has a lot of character. It sort of feels like souped-up summer camp. We got all of our things unpacked, explored a little and were in bed by midnight.

We woke up to a sunny morning and took it a bit easy. I made eggs and toast for breakfast, and we poked around our apartment, taking in the sites and sounds of morning. We got showered and dressed, and headed out to the school office for some orientation with Murray. Murray gave us a tour, introduced us to a bunch of folks and went over the necessities. Then we had morning tea with all the faculty. We had coffee, tea, and fresh cinnamon rolls, as the kids run wild during a 20 minute recess. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly. In fact, we have people either taking us out to dinner or having them over at their house for the next 5 days!

After morning tea, we went for some more information-session with Murray. Then we strolled around some more, had lunch in our apartment and continued to settle in. In the afternoon, we went to the office to meet with Dawn Bryan (the recruiting coordinator -- she is quite wild and extremely friendly). Then Daniel met with Murray and had his first staff meeting. I went back to the apartment to try to figure out the internet situation and get us a bit more settled.

We just got back from having dinner at the Warrens' with Andy, Bev & Kit (their 10th grade son at Bingham). It was very interesting to drive through the city more during rush hour. The Warrens' live in the sub-city Lideta, which is a really poor area of the city. So, as we were driving to their house we passed many slums and open window shops. It seems that everyone here lives behind a gate -- even if you live in a shack of corrugated metal, there is some fashion of a gate. And the thing you don't expect, is that total slums are located right next to giant mansions (which also have large gates). And people and chicken and children are within spitting distance to the Chinese ambassador's large, gated mansion. You also see a lot of open window stalls where people are selling everything from shampoo to fruit to DVDs to hot coffee to cigarettes. And these are in rows right next to the slums and everything else. It makes you think -- if people are living in corrugated metal shacks, who is buying DVDs?

Dinner was delicious and it was great to sit with them and talk about their project and HIV work in Ethiopia. We talked some about the different teams that do different things here and some of what I might be doing. Bev prepared dinner that was delicious -- fruit and sauteed vegetables and a good meat stew with green peppers on rice. The food here is so fresh.

The only drawback is that you have to bleach every piece of produce and then rinse it with 'clean water.' Clean water is not tap water. Clean water is what has been treated to kill all the bacteria -- we have a tank behind the school kitchen that we refill these big plastic jugs. That is also the water you brush your teeth and shave with.

The weather here is so mild and sunny. There are lots of eucalyptus trees, so it smells good. I haven't really noticed the change in altitude, but I probably will when I attempt to go for a run tomorrow. Bingham has a track that runs around the compound -- right alongside the compound wall (which is topped with barbed-wire). It is almost a kilometer long.

Tomorrow Daniel & I are going to go the US embassy to get registered, and to foreign affairs (in case Somalia attacks Ethiopia and the try to get all the Americans out), and to start the process of getting Ethiopian drivers' licenses. Apparently it's easier to get an Ethiopian license if you are American -- but you still have to pay over 100US and it takes two days. So, by Friday we will be able to drive legally in AA. Hopefully.

I am also going grocery shopping with Jacqui (Murray's wife) tomorrow afternoon. Then Thursday morning Daniel & I are both going to the AIDS project. Mainly to get acquainted with everyone and talk about specifics. I am looking forward to that!

OK, it's approaching 11PM right now ... so I need to go get ready for bed. We have to leave at 8AM for our errands. Sleep well everyone!

XOXOXO
Betsy