Relief Work and School Start

Dogs wake up David for school.

It is getting late on a Sunday evening of our second full week back in Addis. As Rebecca wrote in the last update, this time it is for keeps. That is, after the many months of tag-teaming, then going for home leave, we are finally here in residence. 

Our first week back seems a bit of a blur, arriving on a Tuesday morning, I did try to go over to the office (reminder note: our office is in a building in our compound so going to work is only a 25-meter walk). Solomon, one of our program officers was there as well as Eyerus our accountant, and Wondweson, who picked us up from the airport. I made it through about half the day before I went home to sleep in the afternoon. Jet lag seems harder coming in this direction, and for several days it was hard to sleep through the night or stay up through the workday. On top of that, I found I had picked up a cold, probably just before leaving the US, and felt under the weather much of the week. 

Despite that, we did take the opportunity to do some exploring on our first weekend and returned to Entoto Mountain Park, which is hard to describe well. It covers several hundred acres on top of a mountain near Addis, and at points along a 10-kilometer walk, various activities, scenic overlooks, and restaurants. Included in the activities are a ropes course, trampoline park, zipline, go-carts, a playground, a future waterpark, laser tag, climbing wall, and I probably am missing a few things. But it is all in a forest and these activities are not all together. 

Going to an outdoor place has risks during rainy season because there is guaranteed to be at least some rain every day. This was not an exception, although most of the time we were there it was clear. David and I tried out the go-carts and he jumped on the trampolines as well. On the 3km way back to the car, we were glad we had our raincoats as it drizzled most of the way back. 

It was also good to be back in the church we are calling home here on Sunday. Our new next door neighbor, Pete, was preaching. It was vision Sunday as people were starting to come back from summer vacation, and it was good to hear something about how the church perceives itself. It has a new name too Redeemer International Congregation. The service was somber in some ways because of a freak flash flood that happened when a river in Addis breached its banks and tore through the Lutheran Seminary where some of the congregation works. It killed about 9 people and destroyed the homes of several of the missionary families. Many of the people there had been involved in clean-up and support of those affected.

Pete is an Anglican and during our home leave, he, his wife Katy and 3 kids started renting the house next door to ours. This seems almost like a miracle as we were really hoping to find a way to connect with friends in the neighborhood. One of their kids, Seth, is David's age, and they have already spent many afternoons together playing outdoors or on the computer. It is also a blessing to us, because Pete and Katy are a very nice couple, who have helped us settle in, and we have shared several meals together in the past two weeks. 

Oren has also inherited a friend in the neighborhood, Bereket (or Barry), who is Oren's age and the son of one of the MCC guards who lives close by. He and Oren both enjoy many of the same activities (admittedly quite a bit on screens), but also chess, and other board games. We also inherited a basketball goal that is set up in our driveway and I am hoping it will become one of the activities that kids can do at our house. 

I feel like I was back in the swing of things at work by the end of week one and the beginning of week two. We are facing an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Northern Ethiopia with an ongoing conflict between a rebel group coming out of the Tigray region (TPLF), and the National Defense. In the past month, the conflict was centered in Tigray, but after a govt. withdrawal the TPLF began moving South and has caused the displacement of over a quarter of a million people in Amhara. Our partners, who have been carrying out food security and WASH projects in parts of northern Amhara have needed to pivot to providing relief aid, especially those working in areas where IDP camps have been set up. 

This has meant a ton of work in the office as we have received no less than 5 new concept papers asking for support for food and non-food emergency aid. In order to release funds, we need a full proposal that includes objectives, criteria for selecting beneficiaries, coordination with work of other relief organizations, gender analysis, environmental impact, risks, a monitoring and evaluation framework, etc. It takes teams at both the partner office and MCC to move this quickly to approval. We have managed to move 3 forward at this point, but it takes a lot of time. 

In addition to office work, we have had some visitors come by including the project coordinator from our Somaliland partner, World Concern, who has been overseeing our maternal and child health project there. It was good to get an update, but we will probably not be able to continue to support after the end of this year. I also did a visit to one of our partner's offices in Addis to discuss relief work they intend to do with IDPs in one of the towns where they have a regional office.

We have also been dealing with a fair amount of hardship in our office. Some of it COVID related. Several of our staff have sick family members, and two have lost parents in the past month. We continue to work in the office with masks, but were greatly relieved when the govt. announced that the Johnson and Johnson vaccine was available to anyone over 35. That was all of our staff (8 people) but one who is younger. They all got vaccinated last week. We are hoping this reduced the risk of spread through our office, but we all continue to use masks with the virulence of the delta variant and number of breakthrough infections. 

The other big event last week was the beginning of school. Rebeca and I drove the kids to and from school for week one and will do so for several days this week as well. But we have arranged for them to share a minivan with some other kids in a compound near us. That will be nice not to lose nearly an hour in the morning and afternoon, although frankly, it is great that the trip to school is actually pretty quick--20 minutes each way. That is an improvement over Tanzania. 

There was actually an orientation on the first Monday for new students and parents. The kids had a good impression then, and after coming home on the first real school days both of the kids expressed pleasant surprise about how good it was. Oren, who is doing A levels starting this year felt like the place seemed like University, with a lot of independent time to study. He is doing Chemistry, History, and Psychology, and will need to take his A-level maths online as it met at the same time as history. We are still working out the logistics of that. 

Weekend number two, we decided to try a new adventure, this time with the dogs. We went over to the botanical gardens, which is again, more of a forested hilltop with many hiking trails. We took Bereket to help us avoid getting lost. Again, almost as soon as we got out of the car it began to rain. Fortunately, it was kind of a Seattle drizzle so we did take a long walk with the dogs and only got a bit wet. (The dogs did manage to get quite muddy as they happily romped through the woods whenever they were off-leash.)

We have slowly been making our house a home when we have the time. We were happy to see that it had been painted while we were on home leave, and we have put up new hangings on the wall, had some bookshelves built, and rearranged a lot of furniture. David has been keeping us active with projects. He built a lego Taj Mahal in the first week, then set out a 1500 piece puzzle we have been working on. I am glad I set up two tables in the dining room so we still have a place to eat when we are working on puzzles. 

There is probably a lot left out, but that is a synopsis of our first two weeks here. I am not sure when we will begin to travel in-country, at this point, going north is off limits with active conflict going on in several of the places where we have projects. We will see if going South will be possible in the weeks ahead.