Faces of Common River

Our family spent six days at Common River, an organization in Aleta Wendo, Sidama that runs an independent, non-tuition-based private elementary school (sound familiar, Harmony School?) - you can read all about it on their website.  They also have a successful women's literacy program, a working farm and a coffee production enterprise, and they host volunteers in their "eco-lodge."   We were lucky enough to be hosted by the warm and caring executive director, Tsegaye, and his delightful staff, including their dedicated teachers and the boys/teens that have made Common River their home.  They have created a lovely community of cooperation for the most marginalized in the area, with plenty space for kids to play and flowers to grow.

We'll save the stories for other posts, meanwhile here are some portraits of the beautiful kids, students, mothers, etc. of the community (plus Shebo the dog), some of which were taken during the graduation ceremonies. Not much else to say for this post, just lots of beautiful Sidama faces.  Enjoy!

Betam Amesegenallo! Many thanks!

Horizon House (former)

 Many thanks, betam amesegenallo, to all of you who donated stuff for the different orphan homes we visited.  The first we visited was Horizon House, where we adopted Amare and Zenebe.  Since adoptions have slowed down in Ethiopia (yay for more government fact-checking!), Horizon House has downsized considerably since our boys lived there.  In fact, the house where we all stayed was no longer part of the organization, and they have now consolidated the kids' home and offices.  We were glad to have a couple days at the old Horizon House as they got ready to move.  

Most of the kids in the above photo were adopted between our first visit in early June and our last visit in July!  We gave Horizon House all the baby-related donations (diapers, wipes, etc.).  I didn't take any photos of the roomful of babies, since they were breaking my heart (even knowing that they all had parents matched and waiting for them)!  At one point Dave was holding two infant girls playing with a plastic bag(!), Amare was snuggling on the floor with two toddlers, Zenebe was sitting in a rocker with a little dude, I was making goofy faces and goo-goo noises at four in cribs, while the nanny changed one's diaper!

We also visited AHOPE for Children, a home for HIV+ kids made famous by the book There is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Green.  The bulk of our donations went here: one tub full of medications and medical supplies, and another one full of games and toys for older kids.  These kids behaved very differently from the Horizon House kids, who were so desperate for attention and love -- their dreams for "mommies" and "daddies" were very much alive.  The AHOPE kids were much more reserved (resigned?).  The upside is that the home was much bigger and more kid-friendly, with lots of things available to play with with.  The kids also played so well with each other that there was not a single conflict during the entire afternoon of our visit!

All the soccer players rushed out of the AHOPE compound gate after an exuberant kick sent the ball over the wall and into the highway.  There was some kerfuffle as not one, but two, guards were deployed to retrieve the ball from whomever had managed to catch the escaped precious ball.  Really, who is going to steal a ball from a mob of ill children?!?!

Visiting AHOPE was very much a sobering, educational experience for Amare and Zenebe.  Though I had explained how this orphanage was different from theirs, the boys were a little clueless till they noticed how some of the kids had visible skin lesions, and they all had to take breaks to get medication from the nurse or just to rest.   They have since had a lot of questions about HIV (and malaria), as they try to understand epidemiology of these pervasive diseases.

The educational supplies that we collected went to the school at Common River in Wendo, Sidama.  We'll have more on this amazing organization in future posts, but here are some photos from the students' graduation performances. 

Ato FirFir and Ato Shiro eat their way across the country

Happy boys polished off yet another ear of roast maize.

Oh, how we miss the food!  And the prices of the food!  We each discovered new favorite dishes beyond our beloved injera with wots.  Amare ordered firfir for almost every meal, and Zenebe couldn't get enough shiro, earning them the nicknames Ato FirFir (Mr. Injera-mash) and Ato Shiro (Mr. Chick-pea-sauce).  I fell in love with chebchebsa, which is pastry, fried in berbere butter and served with yogurt and honey; a specialty at our favorite little chain restaurant, Yeshi Buna.  Dave rediscovered a whole new world of enset kocho (see below).  

Ato FirFir and Ato Shiro meet our dear friend
Zoe's sweet family, who have given us plenty
of delicious ingredients for firfir and shiro!

The boys ate SO MUCH, almost like they were making up for three years away from unlimited, all-you-can-eat injera.  Plus there was good pizza (thank you Italian occupation!), and we were blessed with not a single major illness or injury to strike our family in the entire month of our visit.  Phew!  A little gurgly tummy business here or there, some sports-related ouchies, a couple of sinus issues, and some malaria medication side-effects, but nothing that required medical attention. Of course I should not forget the infamous vomit-on-the-nation's-most-valuable-hominid-fossil scene (wherein Zenebe barfed all over the display of the Australopithecus afarensis specimen Lucy).  

Below are some of our most memorable meals:

LUNCH (before)

LUNCH (during)

This was our Fourth of July feast with the family in Sidama.  What you see is that dear white and brown goat rendered as stew, poured over buttery delicious enset wasa, cooked with eggs and served with strips of enset bread.  Enset is also known as "false banana," since the plant looks like a banana tree, but there the similarity ends.  Banana trees make a fruit that you simply peel and eat raw.  But enset trees require an entire culture of cooperation and months of work to become edible kocho.  You can only eat the starchy stem after some poor woman laboriously scraped it into a pulp, dug a hole in which to ferment it,  wrapped it in leaves, hauled its heavy mass from the farm to the kitchen, kneaded it, sifted it and then cooked it.  

LUNCH (after)
Amare loved the milk cultured in smoked clay pots.
It's a little bit like kefir, but richer and a bit bubbly!  

This photo is to remind us of some lessons learned: 

1. The only Ethiopian beer worth drinking is St. George. Just because the other beers are more expensive or use the word "premium," it does not mean they are better.  Don't waste your time.  
2. Only drink the amazing avocado-lime juice from fancy, touristy hotels.  Sure, it looks sooooooooo delicious and tempting in all those cute little jus bets, but don't do it, even if you are an invincible American teenager.  Microbes will cure your hubris. 
3. Those cute monkeys (lurking just off-screen) will hop right onto your table and take your dishes if you give them so much as a friendly glance.  Dining while armed with slingshots is approved.

Who does eat these giant bugs?
And what about all those termites with their huge mud colonies and all those wings they leave everywhere?!!?   What eats them?
Answer: Ants!  The ants also have a taste for human, so watch out.

Ethiopians are hygiene geniuses and have a fancy hand-washing ritual to make sure everybody has clean hands before they go sticking their fingers in the communal plate. 

Toasting our last night in Ethiopia with tej (honey wine) for the adults and "soft beer" (malt beverage) for the underage.

(Amare and Zenebe had an dramatic collision in their final neighborhood soccer battle, resulting in a sprained wrist and perhaps yet another concussion(!) for Amare -- thus his glassy stare above.  Poor dude, but he instantly recovered upon setting foot on US soil the next day.)

Point A to B, to C, to D, to...

This post features our travels in various modes of transportation.  Our general itinerary for our 30-day adventure was the following:  

Weeks 1 & 2: Emily and the boys explore Addis Ababa

Week 3: Dave joins us and we head down the Rift Valley to Common River in the Southern region (SNNPR)

Week 4: Visit the lovely lakeside, regional capital of Hawassa, with an epic journey to the district of Aroresa to visit family

Addis is a huge, huge city -- especially in contrast to sweet little Bloomington, Indiana -- with lots of construction all over the place.  I'm not sure if we ever totally got used to the crowded streets, and there is no way to get comfortable with the homeless kids on the sidewalks.   We had quite a few conversations about why we gave the funds the boys raised to organizations, since of course the sweet kiddos just wanted to hand cash to everybody.  

I didn't take any photos of us walking the hilly, gritty strees of Addis, often squished under one little umbrella during the many downpours, so you'll have to imagine those scenes.  Nor did I commemorate any of the ridiculously expensive taxi rides.  We'd rather forget about those.  And then were countless undocumented hours we spent in the rental 4x4's, when the boys grieved the fact that their Nintendo DS charger did not work with our international plug adapters.  

Dreamliner!!!  We weren't so lucky on the way home.  Humidity on an airplane is a beautiful thing.

Day 1: you can see the jetlag on Zenebe's face!
Those of you that know me, it takes some kind of serious sleepiness for me to buy my kids Cokes.

The horrible traffic in Addis meant lots of time sitting in mini-bus/van seats and breathing horrible exhaust.  Blech. 

Too bad the traffic was so crazy that I did not allow the boys to take the bikes out of the parking lot, but they were happy to cruise around and show off their cycling prowess.  A few Birr to rent the bike for a couple laps, and despite the pressure from the rental dude, I did not let them try the motorcycles, too.

Dave's first day with us!  Everyone is exhausted from the excitement of anticipation.

One of the vehicles that carried us on many kilometers of bumpy, bu-uh-uh-uh-mm-mm-mm-mp-p-p-py roads.

Is a caption really necessary here?
  "Oh-my-god don't crash into that donkey/dog/cow/goat/sack of potatoes/toddler in the middle of the road!"

The roadside in Aroresa; the most beautiful place in Ethiopia (en route to Amare and Zenebe's birthplace).

Camels on a truck!  
Not exactly the camel caravan we might have expected to see.

Yup, that's a goat up there with the baggage.

Stretching out before the 18-hours in a Boeing 777.

July 2013

Lastly, for a bit of nostalgia, here are pics to compare the boys at the Bole Airport (ADD) waiting to board a plane to America.  See how much they have grown compared to the white handrail in 3+ years!

Zenebe Dec '09

Amare Dec '09

Birthplace of Coffee

As most of you know, this entire trip was made possible by a Teacher Creativity Fellowship from the Lilly Endowment.  They gave me some $$ to go experience the "Birthplace of Coffee," which - of course - happens to be in Sidama, Ethiopia, the birthplace of Amare and Zenebe!  This also created the delightful excuse to stop at as many coffee shops/buna bet as possible during our travels.  

This was a little place on the side of a major road interchange in Addis.  We stopped for a treat to console ourselves because the restaurant we were headed to was closed on Mondays, and we hadn't known.  The consolation coffee was necessary because the trip involved an expensive taxi ride, and then a hike up and then back down the steep hill.  These little buna bet are everywhere and they serve up the traditional thickly boiled, amazingly strong stuff in teeny cups.  You add enough sugar so that the cup is almost overflowing and sip it down.   Not all of them serve the charcoal burner with incense and the sprig of rue for garnish, so this was particularly awesome!  

This is a "cappuccino" at Kaldi's Coffee.  Kaldi's is an Ethiopian combination of Starbucks and Applebee's (or what I imagine Applebee's are still like; I haven't been inside one since high school).  They serve coffee drinks, but also burgers, fries, etc.  At this point, I was starting to realize that the Starbucks versions of "cappuccino" and "macchiato" don't mean the same thing in Ethiopia.  (I suppose this should not be surprising, since aren't we all constantly confused by Starbucks' grande/tall/venti sizing scheme?)   An Ethiopian cappuccino is an American mocha.  A macchiato is more like what Starbucks calls a cappuccino.  And then they have the "ranger" macchiato! This is a macchiato with extra espresso so that the milk and coffee swirl to look like a camouflage police "ranger" uniform.  Too bad I didn't learn about that one till our last week in the country.  

Sweet little buna bet on the lakeshore of Hawassa.

Here I am squeezed into the historical coffee roasters in the old Piazza district of Addis Ababa. We visited To-Mo-Ca on our first trip to Addis Ababa, and it was where I clued in that coffee was really everything to Ethiopians.  This teeny place is packed to the gills with tourists and Ethiopians ALL THE TIME!  The staff wear lab coats and take themselves quite seriously.  Originally an Italian enterprise back in the day, the story goes that the owner wound up marrying his Ethiopian cashier and now her family runs the place.  Amare and Zenebe thought it was hilarious that the only seat open in the place was under the "USA Type" roast bin, and so they snapped this photo of me.  They also wondered why there was no "Ethiopian Type" bin, so I found myself trying to explain that only outside of Ethiopia are we Europeans and Americans silly enough to roast our coffee hours/days/weeks/years (gasp!) before we grind and then brew it.