Tafa

Tafa… Amharic for “where have you been?” Well, its been a busy couple of weeks. This is no excuse for blog silence, but at least it gives me lots to talk about when I get the chance to write. Two weeks ago, the Cherokee team visited Awasa and Nazeret to lay the foundation for this year’s Cherokee Educational Exchange Program (CEEP), where 20-30 students will have the chance to study for one year of high school in the US. It is always nice to get out of the city and visit someplace new, but I particularly liked these two towns. Awasa is on the edge a lake in the rift valley and Nazeret is just a hundred kilometers south of Addis as well as the country’s third biggest city. Most of our work was administrative, but we also had the chance to meet the students who will actually apply for the program. The 50 top students from each government high school are eligible to apply, and in Nazeret we met with this group—chosen from their class of 1400 students. Most of the questions were to-be-expected, but one student raised his hand to ask Binyiam a question in Amharic. He came to the front of the classroom and unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket. The scholarship opportunity had apparently inspired a poem on the subject of ambition. I couldn’t catch the whole thing, but I think it was based on some comparison of himself to a computer. I couldn’t really follow. I guess that sort of thing can fly in Nazeret, but I don’t know that it would have gone over so well with my cohort at Northwood High School.

I’ve also been working on a promising coffee project here in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is known as the birthplace of coffee, where a shepherd named Kaldi found his goats dancing around a bush with red berries. He decided to see what all the fuss was about and eat some of the berries himself, and he was the first human to taste the glory of the java bean. It took some time for coffee as we know it to evolve, and now it represents Ethiopia’s number one export and a critical part of the nation’s economy. Many of those who work in the coffee industry are small farmers. Some are organized in efficient coops and unions, while others are either in inefficient organizations or none at all. Some friends in Chapel Hill have been working with an inventor to develop a device that would allow coops to process the beans post-harvest, thereby earning a premium on their crop. I’m working here in Ethiopia to see how this device might fit in the production chain and how we could get the tool to the farmers. I’ve had some great meetings that have helped to define our market, but we still need to better understand our sticker price and, most importantly, what other such devices are already in the market. Even though there’s along way to go, we’ve had a lot of positive feedback that this manual machine could help poor farmers earn a bit more for their harvest and empower them as the industry continues to grow.

I’m juggling a couple of other projects as well. One of which is the development of an entrepreneurship education course for the skills training program of the Digaf micro-finance institution. They have over 200 young women enrolled in vocational training for hairdressing, handicrafts, food preparation and tailoring. They learn skills and almost all obtain jobs upon graduation, but the organization would like to empower more of these women through micro-credit. With some basic business education, more women might be encouraged to take out micro-loans and with this training they’d be even more likely to repay them. I’ll be visiting the workshop next week and presenting a curriculum outline a few weeks after that.

This past week, we met with the Clinton Climate Initiative here in Addis to talk about possible collaboration on environmental projects, particularly the capping and redevelopment of a huge landfill in the city. We also toured the factories of a successful Ethiopian entrepreneur who pulled himself out of poverty to build a company that is responsible for 80% of the elevators in Addis. He’s expanded beyond the original business, and has been successful in his other ventures, but he has an absence of ego that is absolutely astounding. So many who have achieved success believe that they themselves deserve all the credit. Daniel Mebrahtu is something different. Finally, I had the chance to attend a conference at the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the third largest UN facility in the world (after New York and Geneva), right here in Addis.

So that’s the update. After a weekend of rest, I’ll be back at it again this week.

Face to face

Some days are harder than others. Last week, after a day of running from meeting to meeting, I came back to the house/office to meet with an Ethiopian friend. He is suffering from Hepatitis B and we’ve been helping him for the past few months. We’ve been able to connect him with one of the best doctors in the city and to obtain the medicine he needs to stay alive. But if its not one thing its another. The medicine that is keeping him alive is stimulating his appetite. He doesn’t have much family to speak of, he doesn’t have the money to eat, and the doctor won’t let him work. As we spoke through a mutual friend and translator, he told me that he would rather suffer through Hepatitis than die of hunger. The thing is, he doesn’t need much—maybe 20 dollars a month—but its just not that simple. As I sat and listened to him talk, it all came down on me. I have the ability to help him in the short-term, but how does he ever fundamentally improve his situation? Will he ever be able to work again, or will he always be reliant on the handouts of others? And what about the thousands of others in this city alone with stories just as bad or worse? What about the kids who sleep under the bridge at night wearing nothing but t-shirts? Or the beggars that line the streets? What do you do for them?

Though on these sorts of days, it can all feel very heavy, I try to find hope in all of the amazing people working to make things better. I am inspired by so many here: the doctor who has adopted 15 Ethiopian children and who is performing medical miracles for the indigent; the Ethiopian couple who quit their comfortable jobs to open an incredible school for the poor; and the list goes on and on. And I’m inspired by people like Solomon, my friend who lost three limbs in a train accident, who don’t or can’t give up.

As for me, I try to keep busy and learn from these heroes. Though sometimes its hard to face the personal perspective of poverty, it makes it all real and it keeps me going. There are people in this city who spend their days “working for the poor,” but never spend time with those they serve. As we develop our own work here in Ethiopia, I hope to build up from these personal relationships to try and do something more, not the other way around.

Six weeks in

This past weekend, the group of volunteers here at Cherokee House traveled to Bahir Dar, a city north of Addis. Bahir Dar is located on the shores of Lake Tana, the biggest lake in Ethiopia and the headwaters of the Blue Nile. The water from that lake flows all the way into the Mediterranean Sea. This is how they describe it in the guidebooks, but they bury the fact that it takes 13 hours of potholes, gravel, and switchbacks in a mini-bus to get there.

I’ve been lucky to drive south, east and north in my six weeks living in Ethiopia and each drive shows a new face to this country. This weekend, we drove through the Amhara region, the breadbasket of the breadbasket of the Horn of Africa. If Ethiopia feeds the region, then the Amhara state feeds Ethiopia. We passed fields of corn and sorghum, but the most prominent crop by far was teff. Teff is a short grass/grain and the main ingredient in ingera. Ingera is a staple of almost every meal in Ethiopia, and so we drove through oceans of teff. At this stage in its growth, the teff is a soft green color and almost glows under the sun. The wind blows across the enormous plains and the teff would ripple like a river. At some points, there was teff in all directions as far as the eye could see, but in that same area, not a single tractor could be found. The fields are worked by manually pulling weeds and turning the soil with oxen and plow, the same way its been done for hundreds of years. We were making good time, and after hours in the highlands, we climbed over a ridge to face the Blue Nile Gorge and things changed.

The Blue Nile has cut a slice through the earth so large that from one rim you can hardly see the other. We had to decline a vertical kilometer to cross the bridge and climb back the same distance on the other side. The road was undergoing improvements, but I still stared out the window down sheer cliffs. It was a beautiful drive and farmers from top to bottom are cultivating the green canyon.

We arrived to Bahir Dar just after sunset and the next day we explored the Blue Nile Falls, or Tis Abay—“Nile that Smokes.” The name comes from the clouds of mist that used to fill valley around the falls, but a few years ago, the government built a hydroelectric facility conveniently located just up-river from the falls. Now, when the turbines are running, the falls is only part of what it once was. But it is still spectacular. We hiked in to the falls, past young girls selling scarves. It was the best marketing I’ve seen in my whole time here. “Hello, my name is ____, look at this scarf, isn’t it nice? If you’d like to buy, I’ll be here when you come back, okay? Remember, my name is _____. Just ask for me—don’t buy from anyone else, okay?”

We hiked down to a green patch of grass, close to the base of the falls. The mist from the Nile blew in clouds all around us. We hiked around the falls and crossed the river by boat at sunset.

The next day we rented a boat and set out across the giant, brown Lake Tana. The lake is 30 miles by 90 miles, I believe, and as we set off from the south shore at Bahir Dar, you couldn’t see land on the horizon. We took the boat to the Zege peninsula, home to five ancient monasteries. The lake is dotted with such monasteries from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, one of which is said to have housed the Arc of the Covenant for 800 years. We spent quite some time in one of the monasteries, dating back from the 14th century. The structure was a large round building, with mud walls and a thatch roof. Inside, there was a square room, into which only the most holy elders are allowed. On all four walls of this room were beautiful paintings depicting religious events and stories.

The Zege peninsula is filled with native coffee plants. The plants grow wild beneath the taller trees and their branches were full of green coffee beans. One of the volunteers saw a baboon dart across the path to pick up an orange and on the return to Bahir Dar, a hippo swam circles around our boat.

Back in Addis this week, I’ve been practicing with the semi-professional Belk-Cherokee basketball team. Our team is semi-pro because some of the other teams pay their players, but that’s not so much our style. So far I’m holding up okay, but my stubby five-foot-nine-on-a-good-day frame is no match for my Ethiopian teammates. I’m going to be somewhere between Dewey Burke and Wes Miller.

I’ve also made some progress on a couple of my projects here in Ethiopia. I’m working with an NGO in North Carolina to introduce a manually powered agricultural tool to small coffee farms in Ethiopia and met a great contact with the second largest coffee union in the country. I’ll also begin volunteering with a vertically integrated micro-finance organization next week. The company, Digaf, issues small loans of 50-100 USD and provides services to its beneficiaries. The borrowers receive business-training, skills training (cooking, hairdressing, etc.), free education for their children and basic health care for their entire families. I’ve got a lot of work over the coming months, but I’m excited to learn and grateful for the opportunity.

Dire Dawa and Harar

Early on Monday morning, before the sun was up, I woke up to begin my journey to Dire Dawa and Harar, in the east of Ethiopia. I was going to visit a young man named Solomon who has lost three limbs in a train accident. He has a dream to prove his worth, start a business and provide for his family, and we are going to try to help.

The beginning of this trip was my first experience on mass transit outside of Addis. I jumped into the deep end on this 11-hour journey. I was traveling with an Ethiopian friend, Girum, who helped find a mini-bus traveling to Dire Dawa. The bus was 90 minutes late, but we got a seat. I would guess that there were about 30 regular passengers on the bus and a handful of others standing in the aisles from time to time. We had a four-person crew on the bus, which seemed like overkill, but which came in handy later on (I’ll get to it).

Once we left the bumpy back roads of Addis, the roads were actually pretty good. We traveled east along the primary corridor between Ethiopia and Djibouti, the port that sends and receives most of Ethiopia’s imports and exports. We dodged the cattle, dangerously passed the big-rigs, and traveled through some absolutely gorgeous countryside. We drove down from the highlands around Addis and through the Awash National Park with bleached white grasslands and dry mountains all around. There are supposedly large mammals that live in the reserve, but they wisely steered clear of our bus as we careened through.

There weren’t many towns besides those that had developed around intersections, and we would occasionally pass rural residents who came to the side of the road to sell firewood or charcoal. In this hot and dry part of the country, I could see houses that were built into the ground—a hole was dug and the roof was put at ground level. But theses houses and any others were few and far between. And then we started to climb back into the mountains where the country grew greener and we saw many more signs of life. This was Oromo country and the round, mud-stick walled and thatched roof houses were even more common than I had seen during my trip south to Awasa. The road from Awash National Park to Dire Dawa must be one of the most beautiful in the country. We wound up the hills and drove along the ridgeline with stark valleys on each side. You could see for miles and the Oromo villages dotted the landscape.

This is also the chief chat producing area of Ethiopia. Chat is a small plant that is cultivated for its properties as a stimulant. People eat the leaves (and eat and eat) and become focused and mildly intoxicated, or so it seemed. If it is popular in Addis, then it is a way of life in the East. Our bus driver stopped several times and almost all the men on the bus, except for Girum and me, stocked up on a “bouquet” of chat. Between the winding roads, and the driver’s extra “focus,” it wasn’t possible to sleep and looking out the window helped me forget about fearing for my life.

It wasn’t just the chat that made the rest stops exciting, every time the bus pulled over, there would be people pushing and shoving to catch a ride. I always decided to stay inside and keep my seat, but things got physical at one of the gas stations. One of our “crew” told a hopeful passenger that there wasn’t room, and before I knew it, all four were outside and shoving at a group of local residents. It didn’t escalate beyond that, and for everyone else on the bus, it didn’t seem to be out of the ordinary. I was glad that our instigator had his back up (maybe this is why they keep four crew members on staff) but I was even gladder to get back on the road. After a couple of traffic tickets (too many passengers, a cracked windshield) and some customs checkpoints, we were cruising again.

As we crossed yet another ridge, the sight on the other side was much different. There were no more ridges and valleys, but flatlands as far as the eye could see. Down in the bottom somewhere was Dire Dawa. Dire Dawa, the second biggest city in Ethiopia, is a much different place than Addis. Its streets are laid out in a grid and shaded with large trees. The dusty streets are filled with small taxis and you could walk from one end of town to the other, just don’t try to do it in the middle of the day when things get really, really hot.

In Dire Dawa we met with Solomon to talk about starting his new enterprise. Solomon is in a wheelchair and missing both legs and one of his arms. He was left in the desert for three days after a train accident along the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway over on year ago. His mere survival is a miracle. I asked him what his dream was, where he wanted to be in ten years from now. He said that his dream was to support his mother, who has no husband and no other children, and prove to her that he is still worth something despite his accident. He requested a loan to start an internet café, but Girum and I suggested that a more modest venture might be a better place to start. Solomon agreed and we decided on a DVD rental shop. This would accommodate his limited mobility and provide an entrance into a related business, while reducing risk and start-up costs. We spent the next two days discussing the details of the business and connecting Solomon to mentors and support networks in the area.

We then traveled to Harar to meet with Solomon’s mother to discuss the venture. Harar is an ancient Muslim city with a historical walled city that dates back to the 15th century and maybe even earlier. The city is at a higher elevation and cooler than Dire Dawa, and the old walled city, the jugol, is bustling with life. There are many small mosques and shrines all around the old town and each of the buildings within the walls is connected to the next, all painted white. Solomon’s mother lives just outside of town and we had to carry Solomon is his wheelchair to reach her. She lives in a one-room house, not much bigger than my bedroom here in Addis, with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. When we met her, she was shelling peanuts and caring for an infant, her two forms of income, which garners a few dollars a day. She had hoped that Solomon could operate his shop out of her home, but the location wasn’t suitable at all. We explained this situation to her, and though she was sad that her son would move an hour away, she understood that it was in his best interest. As we left, each of Solomon’s old neighbors came out to say hello and many looked at him as if he were on his deathbed. They remembered the Solomon that had four limbs, and acted as though the Solomon with one limb was less of a person, less Solomon. As we waited for our taxi, you could see in his eyes that this attitude affected him. Girum leaned over to me and said, “I don’t think this place is good for Solomon, I think he needs a fresh start.” He couldn’t have been more right, and in Dire Dawa, Solmon was much happier and more hopeful. There’s a lot of work to be done—finalize the budget, acquire land and the shipping container to be used as the storefront, buy the merchandise, etc.—but there is much promise. I’m looking forward to going back.

We paid for a ride back in an SUV that was returning from a trip to Dire Dawa and we made much better time. We left early in the morning and I saw the bright desert stars in the sky. The early morning clouds filled the valleys and the sun rose above the ridge. Even thought we made better time, we didn’t avoid the traffic cops, custom agents, or hustling at the roadside. But at least there wasn’t a fistfight.

Oh, and I tried the raw meat, tre tsiga. The jury’s still out—I’ll tell you more next week.

A week of holidays

Its hard to believe that almost a month has past since I arrived in Ethiopia. It seems like only yesterday that I was cleaning out the sunscreen that burst inside my checked luggage… And now I’m not phased by donkeys passing me on the sidewalk downtown, I know when I’m getting ripped off in a taxi (most of the time), and I’m even more addicted to coffee than when I left. But I still haven’t tried the raw beef… there’s always next month.

I spent Monday of this week exploring Mercato with my Ethiopian friend Abraham. Even when the rest of Addis operates at a more strolling pace, Mercato pulses with movement and it is hard to keep up. It seems like everyone is on their way and moving fast. People are buying, selling and carrying goods from one place to another. A truck will be packed high with refrigerators and deliverymen will carry the appliance on their back through the crowds. Young men carry huge bags of grain on the back of their necks and I saw one vendor with 14 shoeboxes stacked on his shoulder.

The sprawling market is supposed to be the biggest in Africa, but its unclear to me where it begins and where it ends. It is loosely organized by “department”: a row of office supply booths, electronics, fabric, plastics, shoes, books, metals, and on and on and on. My favorite section is the spice alley. Up and down and on either side of this small side “street,” vendors display bags of colorful dusts, rocks, dried plants, sticks, and every other spice or natural supplement you could imagine. Distributors hammered giant blocks of natural incense and the smells rushed me like a dog with his head out the window.

Though the shops are small and often the color of the mud in the street, the shelves are filled with colors. Stores offer ornate umbrellas used in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, bright plastic containers, and shoes made from Croc-like plastic that come in every color and variety (loafers, tennis shoes, etc.). We found our way deep into the Mercato, and if it wasn’t for Abraham, I’d still be stuck in the middle, surrounded by umbrella stands.

This was also a week of holidays. On Wednesday, I was invited to dinner at Dr. Rick’s. Dr. Rick is an American physician who’s been working in Ethiopia for years and years. I met him at the Mother Theresa’s clinic here in Addis, and I was amazed by his work. I jumped at the chance for dinner, but I didn’t know I was in for such a treat. Wednesday was the Jewish holiday of Sukkot and I joined Dr. Rick’s family of over a dozen adopted children by donning hats (including giant felt menorahs) and eating in the hut that they had constructed outside their home. Almost all of the kids have suffered medically, and Rick has made sure that they receive the care they need.

Also in attendance was a documentary film crew who were interviewing Dr. Rick as one of the change-makers for the new Ethiopian millennium. They had been filming Rick for a few weeks and traveled up to Gonder with him while he paid one of his regular visits to a clinic in the rural areas around the city. Just before returning to Addis, Rick crossed path with a small girl with a hunched back. Many of Rick’s kids have suffered from scoliosis or TB of the spine and the girl, Zemnawork, caught his eye. She had been in Gonder with her uncle for about one week. Her uncle, the only person in the family with means to escort her, had taken her to Gonder to try to find help for her condition, but after a week of waiting at the hospital, they were turned away. As Rick was headed back to Addis, Zemna was headed back to her village. Rick traveled with Zemna and her uncle back to their village and explained Zemna’s situation to her family. Rick could help her, but she would have to spend some time in Addis while receiving care. On Wednesday night, Zemna had only been in Addis for a few days, and had seen her first TV, orange, and much more during those few days. But she was glowing. When I walked in, she was working on homework and you could feel her courage and sense her intelligence. And I saw one of the most amazing smiles I’ve seen in my entire life.

But the holidays weren’t over. On Thursday, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians celebrated Meskel, marking the finding of the true cross. Orthodox tradition holds that Jesus’ true cross was found in Ethiopia when an Ethiopian queen lit a fire and followed the smoke to find where the cross was buried.

I followed the troupes of singers and dancers toward Meskel Square at the center of Addis. The square sits at the center of town and is a crescent of stairs facing a large paved plaza. Young Orthodox Christians from each church around the city had prepared songs, dances and floats for the celebration and the sights and sounds were amazing. At Meskel Square, the crowds had already arrived and the police presence was pervasive. I filed into the “bleachers,” which were really terraced mud pits, and waited. Below, in the plaza, Orthodox leaders dressed in white and holding brightly colored umbrellas surrounded a giant pyre. Opposite the steps was the VIP box with the Ethiopian President, Prime Minister and the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

I expected a quick ceremony, but each church performed before the pyre was lit. The Church passed out candle-torches to each of the attendees and we were all eager to light up. Around the square, where now over 100,000 had assembled, groups would start to light their torches and the speakers would ask them put them out. This went on and on until the organizers gave up and the crowds were filled with points of light.

The Patriarch gave a moving speech about love, hope in the new millennium, Ethiopia’s history of religious tolerance, and about the dangers of fratricidal war. And then they Patriarch stepped into the Patriach-mobile to light the giant bonfire. Night had fallen, and as the bonfire lit up, fireworks went up all around. The crowds were singing, the torches were waving, and the skies filled with smoke, dimming the sight of the fireworks, but not the sound. The crowds surged forward to get closer to the fire, but I slopped through the mud and began the long walk back home.

Life in the New Millenium

A week ago this time, we had three new sheep camped out in our driveway. The streets had been full of sheep before the millennium, and I was worried there wouldn’t be any left, but we got our hands on three of Addis’s finest… sheep. Our house celebrated the millennium on Saturday and killed the three sheep for the festivities. About 70 friends joined us at the house and it was impressive to see the faces that have been touched by the people and work of those who have come before me. You’d be surprised at how much food comes from three sheep—even with 70 guests, we still had about a half-a-sheep left over.

On Sunday, Heather and I began a site visit down the Rift Valley in Southern Ethiopia. We were investigating a well-drilling project and traveled south in white land rover (the most popular form of non-public transport) with our host. Driving out of Addis, we first encountered a ring of industrial sites. Some factories seemed to be operating successfully while others sat half-completed with the brush grown up around it. We traveled along one of the main roads out of the city, and commerce has grown up along the thoroughfare as Addis has grown. Before long, we were in beautiful rural areas—wide plains with mountains rising in the distance. There is still a lot of activity along the roads, even in these rural areas. Instead of cars and shops, there are donkeys, goats, cows, and vendors selling firewood, charcoal, water or fruit on the side of the road. None of these animals have any natural fear of cars, and on multiple occasions we had to slam on breaks to avoid a donkey or bob and weave to thread the needle between herds of cows. But the worst were the horses. When we would pass through the small road side towns, skinny, scared and abused horses would just stand in the middle of the road as cars whizzed by, as if saying “kill me now.” But besides the daredevil animals, the countryside was absolutely gorgeous. Much of the natural forests had been depleted for firewood, but what remains are enormous trees that burst into the air and create their own canopy.

We visited villages where cheap, efficient pumps had been installed and fresh water has replaced streams, lakes, and puddles as a source of water for drinking, bathing, washing clothes, etc. These villages were on the border of Lake Langano, one of a series of lakes bordered by green mountains. Villagers pay with a goat or two and then provide the labor for the drilling process. It takes anywhere between one day and one week to drill the well, then a manual pump is installed. Each pump is designed to serve 200 people, but some wells served nearly 600. We took the Land Rover deep into the forest at the edge of one of the lakes to visit one of the villages where a drilling has taken place. The family lived in round structures with stick and mud walls and thatched roofs. The family did not speak Amarhic, the national language of Ethiopia, but they spoke Orominya, the language prevalent in the south. They farmed corn, among other crops and we visited with one of the women who ground the fresh kernels into a type of flower. Each of the young men carried a spear with them, and one of them spoke English quite well. As we drove away from this compound, we passed through thick forest, under trees with thick bone white trucks. A group (pod, haggle…?) of baboons ran infront of the SUV and our host told us to look out for warthogs. We drove to the edge of the lake at the end of the day and as we took in the view, we heard a loud breath, like a whale surfacing for air. “That’s the male hippo,” our host told us, “he doesn’t sound like he’s too far away.”

From hippos back to the highlands of Addis Ababa. I had my second Amharic class this week, and I can say hello and find a bathroom. Got the basics, up next: “can you please cook this meat?” I’m getting to know the city better by the day, and I’m becoming more conditioned to awkward moments and being a spectacle every time I walk down the street. I arrived at the end of the rainy season and we’ve been getting regular downpours between noon-4:00 each day, sometime with hail and very stong winds. Today was the first day without rain—you could see the mountains that ring the city and the air finally felt like we were actually at 8,000+ feet. Ethiohpia’s “13 months of sunshine” might have finally arrived.

Welcome to Addis

I arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia a week ago today, and I’ve been inspired, exhausted, amazed, and frustrated by the city, the people, the language, the culture and the country. Often I feel all of this at once.

Ethiopia uses the Coptic calendar, given up by most of the world for the Julian year, and after I departed from the US on September 5, 2007, I arrived in Ethiopia in 1999. Our September 12th marked the first day of the new millennium for Ethiopia and this occasion has been evident in every part of life in Addis Ababa. Driving from the airport, the buildings were covered in red, yellow and green lights, the colors of the Ethiopian flag. Busses pass me on the sidewalk, filled (and I mean filled, some passengers are only holding on to the door with their bodies outside the bus) with Ethiopians singing and clapping to new year’s songs, despite the fact that the bus is at four times capacity. The streets, sidewalks, underpasses and everywhere else were full of sheep brought to the city for millennium. Today, vendors sell fresh sheep skin, the only remnant from this week’s celebrations. As I walked to the bus stop yesterday, I passed a man trying to figure out how to load his sheep, very much alive, into the front-trunk of his old VW bug.

Many Ethiopians have a great deal of faith that this new millennium will bring new growth and prosperity for the country and most celebrate with a great deal of national pride. Around the city, new buildings are being built and new roads are under construction. Except for a few areas in the city, modern buildings are surrounded by much less developed cafes, restaurants and kiosks—a sign of the change and the dichotomies which mark this city. The streets are filled with blue and white taxis that go from point to point on set routes around the city. The most common taxi is a mini-bus/van that is built to accommodate 10, but which often carries over 20. Brave pedestrians weave between cars and trucks on eve the city’s busiest roads and accidents are, apparently, quite common.

In only a week, I have seen the beautiful and disturbing. I have met incredibly kind and generous people who would willingly give more than they have. I have eaten delicious food such as the Ethiopian ingera flat bread, torn to pick up spicy meat and vegetables. I have seen Ethiopian traditional dance performed by a dancer awarded as the best in Ethiopia (I later saw him in a music video on Ethiopian Television). The most common form of dance is to put your hands on your hips and move your shoulders up and down to the music, but this dancer could do things with his shoulder that no man, woman or beast should be able to do. But I have also experienced things that were much more difficult to process. I visited an orphanage where 400 HIV positive children live. The orphanage also provides dignity and care to the dying. Today I sat with an AIDS patient weeks away from death, who was unable to communicate in Amharic though I don’t know what I would have said even if I could have spoken. Earlier this week I was riding home on a taxi and witnessed an 11 year-old taxi worker fall from the back of a moving truck. He eventually was able to get up from the pavement, but it was a sobering reminder that some children don’t have a childhood.

I don’t know what to expect over the next year, but I do expect more of these moments. This is a wonderful place at a critical point in its history—I feel lucky to have this opportunity, and I will continue to share stories of my life in this new Ethiopian millennium.