Monday, June 14, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Home Again
Thursday June 10
I home, up early, sitting in bed and marveling. Thank you Lord, for keeping us in Your mighty and gentle hand. I keep looking back and being amazed at how You moved in protecting, sheltering and guiding us on this trip! It is wonderful to be back. My heart and mind are so full right now. But I am missing those 21 amazing team members and waking to the orthodox church call to prayer on loudspeakers at 4 am and the loud and happy sounds of 23 people scrambling around the Ethiopian Guest House at all hours laughing and roughhousing and singing and playing the guitar. 23 shared three bathrooms and we still all got along!? Evidence of God’s hand and His people’s prayers. And I miss all those smiling Ethiopian faces. They are so beautiful and joyous!
Last night Blake, AK, Daniel and I stayed up until around 10:00 pm talking until I hit a brick wall. I think I fell asleep at 10:30 mid-sentence. But I woke up at 6:00 am for the bathroom thinking it had been only a few hours. Now I am sitting in bed on the Mac and Blake has left for work. Balcony door is open and I am listening to the fountain, the birds and looking out the window at the lush and very green outside. I can’t believe the mimosas started blooming while I was away! And the hydrangea! Images and faces from Ethiopia are bouncing through my mind and I am hoping I can record and remember them. What a trip. So many smiling faces! One day in our van one of us asked one of the interpreters how many white people were in Ethiopia. The answer was 23!
Right now I am thinking about broad impressions. Before we left, I read that Ethiopia was never taken over or oppressed by white people (except a brief period when Italy invaded but they were quickly ousted) so there was little to no resentment or anger toward white westerners. But I didn’t expect to be treated like a rock star! We were welcomed with big smiles everywhere we went. Children ran after us and people pointed and stared and called “Ferenj!” which means foreigner.
One of the biggest impacts to me was Kora, the leper colony, and the massive dump where so many spent their day searching for items of value. On Saturday when the whole team was back together, all 23 went in the morning to the church in Kora. It was a tent structure with tarp floors and walls and acted out two Bible stories on the stage with John York narrating. David and Goliath and the good Samaritan. Anna Kate got to use her dramatic skills as first an Israelite with David (played by a convincing Joel) and then as the injured man lying in the road.
There were so many kids there. None of them had leprosy but they were the children or grandchildren of lepers. Nobody there had active leprosy since it can be easily cured now, but the stigma attached keeps them virtually imprisoned in the walled off area that is their home. In the prior government (out of power for a decade maybe) they weren’t allowed out of the colony. We were told that soldiers would come in occasionally to shoot whomever they saw. The current government allows them to come out to beg. The man who runs the ministry and one and only Christian church there was named Sammy. He is in his twenties and was born there and lived and worked in the accompanying dump for years before being sponsored and getting an education. He worked for the Guest Home as an interpreter/guide before returning to minister to the people there full time.
Sorry, I am getting off track. So, we’re there acting out Bible stories and introducing ourselves to the kids in the church. I’d say there were a couple of hundred kids crammed in there. After that, we moved out of the church and some of our group began painting a tin paneled wall and some began singing and playing the guitar and some were just visiting. By then a few more hundred kids had swarmed the small enclosure of the church. There were so many! All of us were overrun but Anna Kate was swept away in a tide of children touching her and asking her name. It was scary there for a moment and everyone else in our group was similarly occupied. I have a few pictures where she is literally in the middle of about 50 kids, all trying to be closest to her and feel her hair and touch her skin. I was so proud of her. Even though she was sending me panicked glances, she kept smiling and talking and hugging and being swept along. It took me a while to reach her and even then I wasn’t much help. One child with her was holding a baby I thought was her sister until she pulled down her shirt and began to nurse...she had been living in the dump and was raped. Now she lives in the leper colony.
Eventually I was able to pull Anna Kate off to where they were painting and stuck a brush in her hand. That gave her a moment to breathe. She began to feel sick (overwhelmed too) and we eventually got back in the van and she lay down on the back seat to rest and hide. She said “I never want to be famous, Mom!” Our driver, Sraphael (a guess on spelling) was protective and kept checking on us and shooing kids away from the van.
About thirty minutes later it was time to leave. I think we were all overwhelmed with the sheer number of kids in such poverty and their delight in our visit. We later found out that months pass and nobody comes to visit and love them. We couldn’t give them the toys and things we had brought - we left stuff with Sammy to hand our after we were gone. So the two vans pulled out and we were all very quiet. Jake and Sammy were in our van and Jake told us we were going to go by the dump. I thought that meant we were going to drive by and see it from the windows. But we stopped. Then we got out. I thought we’d get right back in because I was feeling none too safe and the smell was something else. But we all stood around Sammy who was talking about the people who live there. A few of us were on the outside and had trouble hearing his soft spoken words. Some men began to come toward us and I’m thinking “get back in the van, we’re all gonna die!” I am looking around doing the math and thinking “this is how it ends. What kind of a mother am I?”
But they just stood near us and watched. It was hard to read their faces because of the dirt. Their clothes and skin were all the same color. More come and we were so outnumbered. I was looking around for Jared, the former special forces ninja dude in our group. And then, we began to walk deeper into the dump. There were mountains of garbage. We were walking on garbage and breathing garbage and I was thinking about the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in my backpack and how it I wanted to swim in it. More and more of the dump people walked our way as we went deeper and deeper into the dump. The people nearest me, Anna Kate, Dana, Mike and Janet - we still couldn’t hear what Sammy was saying and were on the outer edge of the group. The vans had left and we couldn’t see the road anymore anyway. I was studying the ground and the trash and Anna Kate and the noise of the massive trucks dumping even more garbage and was too stunned to fully form a single thought. I can’t describe how thick the flies were. I kept thinking it wasn’t real and I wasn’t really there.
A man crept close to us and sat nearby. He was covering his face and head and peeking out. When I smiled at him and said “salaam” he scurried away. Then several girls Anna Kate’s size slowly inched near. There eyes were on AK and one got close enough to touch Anna Kate’s hair and then giggled and backed up. Anna Kate turned around and smiled and the girls giggled some more. They were so shy, but would occasionally meet our eyes and smile and whisper “salaam” back to us. I shook some hands that didn’t feel like real hands but dirt clods. I was overcome.
Soon we began to walk back toward the road, and when we were almost out of the dump, Sammy came within earshot and said something that sent me over the edge. “Thank you guys so much for coming. You have made them feel important by visiting them. This means so much.” I hadn’t done anything. Our presence alone, the fact that we would touch them when they considered themselves untouchable, mattered to them. I couldn’t grasp that concept but it made me feel so humble and small.
Earlier when Anna Kate and I were waiting in the van at Kora, I said to her that it was hard for me to grasp the difference in our situations. I knew God didn’t love me any more than the children living in Kora and yet I had so much and they had so little. I told her I was having trouble reconciling how that could be, how they could live in such abject poverty and in such a place. She looked at me and said “because He can use even this for His good.”
I am so amazed. I will write more later.
I home, up early, sitting in bed and marveling. Thank you Lord, for keeping us in Your mighty and gentle hand. I keep looking back and being amazed at how You moved in protecting, sheltering and guiding us on this trip! It is wonderful to be back. My heart and mind are so full right now. But I am missing those 21 amazing team members and waking to the orthodox church call to prayer on loudspeakers at 4 am and the loud and happy sounds of 23 people scrambling around the Ethiopian Guest House at all hours laughing and roughhousing and singing and playing the guitar. 23 shared three bathrooms and we still all got along!? Evidence of God’s hand and His people’s prayers. And I miss all those smiling Ethiopian faces. They are so beautiful and joyous!
Last night Blake, AK, Daniel and I stayed up until around 10:00 pm talking until I hit a brick wall. I think I fell asleep at 10:30 mid-sentence. But I woke up at 6:00 am for the bathroom thinking it had been only a few hours. Now I am sitting in bed on the Mac and Blake has left for work. Balcony door is open and I am listening to the fountain, the birds and looking out the window at the lush and very green outside. I can’t believe the mimosas started blooming while I was away! And the hydrangea! Images and faces from Ethiopia are bouncing through my mind and I am hoping I can record and remember them. What a trip. So many smiling faces! One day in our van one of us asked one of the interpreters how many white people were in Ethiopia. The answer was 23!
Right now I am thinking about broad impressions. Before we left, I read that Ethiopia was never taken over or oppressed by white people (except a brief period when Italy invaded but they were quickly ousted) so there was little to no resentment or anger toward white westerners. But I didn’t expect to be treated like a rock star! We were welcomed with big smiles everywhere we went. Children ran after us and people pointed and stared and called “Ferenj!” which means foreigner.
One of the biggest impacts to me was Kora, the leper colony, and the massive dump where so many spent their day searching for items of value. On Saturday when the whole team was back together, all 23 went in the morning to the church in Kora. It was a tent structure with tarp floors and walls and acted out two Bible stories on the stage with John York narrating. David and Goliath and the good Samaritan. Anna Kate got to use her dramatic skills as first an Israelite with David (played by a convincing Joel) and then as the injured man lying in the road.
There were so many kids there. None of them had leprosy but they were the children or grandchildren of lepers. Nobody there had active leprosy since it can be easily cured now, but the stigma attached keeps them virtually imprisoned in the walled off area that is their home. In the prior government (out of power for a decade maybe) they weren’t allowed out of the colony. We were told that soldiers would come in occasionally to shoot whomever they saw. The current government allows them to come out to beg. The man who runs the ministry and one and only Christian church there was named Sammy. He is in his twenties and was born there and lived and worked in the accompanying dump for years before being sponsored and getting an education. He worked for the Guest Home as an interpreter/guide before returning to minister to the people there full time.
Sorry, I am getting off track. So, we’re there acting out Bible stories and introducing ourselves to the kids in the church. I’d say there were a couple of hundred kids crammed in there. After that, we moved out of the church and some of our group began painting a tin paneled wall and some began singing and playing the guitar and some were just visiting. By then a few more hundred kids had swarmed the small enclosure of the church. There were so many! All of us were overrun but Anna Kate was swept away in a tide of children touching her and asking her name. It was scary there for a moment and everyone else in our group was similarly occupied. I have a few pictures where she is literally in the middle of about 50 kids, all trying to be closest to her and feel her hair and touch her skin. I was so proud of her. Even though she was sending me panicked glances, she kept smiling and talking and hugging and being swept along. It took me a while to reach her and even then I wasn’t much help. One child with her was holding a baby I thought was her sister until she pulled down her shirt and began to nurse...she had been living in the dump and was raped. Now she lives in the leper colony.
Eventually I was able to pull Anna Kate off to where they were painting and stuck a brush in her hand. That gave her a moment to breathe. She began to feel sick (overwhelmed too) and we eventually got back in the van and she lay down on the back seat to rest and hide. She said “I never want to be famous, Mom!” Our driver, Sraphael (a guess on spelling) was protective and kept checking on us and shooing kids away from the van.
About thirty minutes later it was time to leave. I think we were all overwhelmed with the sheer number of kids in such poverty and their delight in our visit. We later found out that months pass and nobody comes to visit and love them. We couldn’t give them the toys and things we had brought - we left stuff with Sammy to hand our after we were gone. So the two vans pulled out and we were all very quiet. Jake and Sammy were in our van and Jake told us we were going to go by the dump. I thought that meant we were going to drive by and see it from the windows. But we stopped. Then we got out. I thought we’d get right back in because I was feeling none too safe and the smell was something else. But we all stood around Sammy who was talking about the people who live there. A few of us were on the outside and had trouble hearing his soft spoken words. Some men began to come toward us and I’m thinking “get back in the van, we’re all gonna die!” I am looking around doing the math and thinking “this is how it ends. What kind of a mother am I?”
But they just stood near us and watched. It was hard to read their faces because of the dirt. Their clothes and skin were all the same color. More come and we were so outnumbered. I was looking around for Jared, the former special forces ninja dude in our group. And then, we began to walk deeper into the dump. There were mountains of garbage. We were walking on garbage and breathing garbage and I was thinking about the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in my backpack and how it I wanted to swim in it. More and more of the dump people walked our way as we went deeper and deeper into the dump. The people nearest me, Anna Kate, Dana, Mike and Janet - we still couldn’t hear what Sammy was saying and were on the outer edge of the group. The vans had left and we couldn’t see the road anymore anyway. I was studying the ground and the trash and Anna Kate and the noise of the massive trucks dumping even more garbage and was too stunned to fully form a single thought. I can’t describe how thick the flies were. I kept thinking it wasn’t real and I wasn’t really there.
A man crept close to us and sat nearby. He was covering his face and head and peeking out. When I smiled at him and said “salaam” he scurried away. Then several girls Anna Kate’s size slowly inched near. There eyes were on AK and one got close enough to touch Anna Kate’s hair and then giggled and backed up. Anna Kate turned around and smiled and the girls giggled some more. They were so shy, but would occasionally meet our eyes and smile and whisper “salaam” back to us. I shook some hands that didn’t feel like real hands but dirt clods. I was overcome.
Soon we began to walk back toward the road, and when we were almost out of the dump, Sammy came within earshot and said something that sent me over the edge. “Thank you guys so much for coming. You have made them feel important by visiting them. This means so much.” I hadn’t done anything. Our presence alone, the fact that we would touch them when they considered themselves untouchable, mattered to them. I couldn’t grasp that concept but it made me feel so humble and small.
Earlier when Anna Kate and I were waiting in the van at Kora, I said to her that it was hard for me to grasp the difference in our situations. I knew God didn’t love me any more than the children living in Kora and yet I had so much and they had so little. I told her I was having trouble reconciling how that could be, how they could live in such abject poverty and in such a place. She looked at me and said “because He can use even this for His good.”
I am so amazed. I will write more later.
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