Intersecting Time Streams

Our family has been taking a bit of a deep dive into Sci. Fi. literature. I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus and found that she is (I believe correctly) credited with inventing the genre. After that our family listened to a more recent iteration with Ready Player One, on audiobooks. I thought it might be relatable for the kids because it is an unapologetic adventure romp into a virtual world akin to what Zuckerberg's 'Metaverse' hopes to be. We are now on a book called We are Legion (We are Bob). It is the story of an artificial intelligence, cloned from a real person, who captains an unmanned spaceship and experiences hilarious adventures and hijinx while operating a 'von neumann' spacecraft that can replicate itself so he can explore the whole galaxy. (spoiler alert: all of his replicated personalities turn out not to be clones of his own!)

I mention this by way of preface because we seem to have found ourselves in an eerie kind of parallel universe here--an alternate time stream drama (see Loki). From our last entry, you may know that we have evacuated from Addis and are currently living in Arusha, our old stomping ground. The irony of having left Arusha no less than 6 months ago to move to Addis is not lost on us. It is apparent that we are not the only ones feeling a bit strange by the many double takes we get from people we know, and even street vendors and waiters that see us and stare with a querying confused look on their faces that seems to say "You shouldn't be here, right?"

Fortunately, our Swahili (recently put into deep storage) has been put back into active memory and we find ourselves saying repeatly: Tuliondoka Ethiopia. kwasababu ya hali mbaya sana, vita kubwa. (We left Ethiopia because the situation is bad, there is a big war.) People shake their heads and click their tongues and assure us that there is peace in Tanzania.  

What has made the situation even more surreal is coming back to our old compound where we have been renting tents and waiting for a house of a friend to be vacated. As that led to some complications, the owners of Joshua offered to refurnish our old house and rent it back to us since it was still sitting empty. Long story short, we agreed. So now we are back in our old house in our old compound. 

We have even found that our drivers' licences, local bank cards, and Gymkhana membership are still fully active, so we have effectively stepped completely back into our old life. The fact that we left several suitcases of stuff here for others to bring us just adds to the number of personal things we have here. 

On the good side, we have re-entered our established communities of support. Our small group is still meeting and we were very happy to join them a week ago Sunday. We have also become involved with our old church again. Last week Rebecca and I even played instruments and sang with the music team. We also have joined the Advent choir that meets Wednesday evenings to prepare for a Christmas Lessons and Carols service. 

I cannot say we have not enjoyed visiting many of our old haunts even though it seems very strange. Connecting with old friends has also been very satisfying. We have spent a number of evenings with our friends the Taylors and Oren and David count their two boys as their closest friends. I have been able to go out for a round of golf with Mike and hope to do so every week that we remain in Arusha. (My golf clubs were among the items that we left in Arusha for a future pick-up.)

On our old compound we have also been blessed to find most of the people we left behind are still here. The family in the house next to ours have 2 boys a bit younger than David who love most of the same things he does so they have enjoyed getting filthy as they explore secret places and discover strange fauna. (Hedgehogs mainly, but also another baby owl is nesting in our water tower.) 

On our first Saturday, our next-door neighbor-family took Rebecca and David on a nearby new adventure. They walked all the way down to the end of the paved road (about 3 km) and then down a narrow path of switchbacks into a river canyon. It was quite spectacular with 200 m high steep canyon walls and a rushing, very dirty river. On the opposite bank, a large group of women was washing clothes and goats came down to drink. We walked upstream for a bit and the boys tried their hand at fishing, fell in the water in the process of course, and then ended up swimming. It was fun for our newer neighbors to show us something we'd never done before.

Last Thursday we had one of the residents' potluck dinners that met once a fortnight during our 4 years in Arusha. It was good to reconnect with all of our friends on the Joshua Foundation base, and we enjoyed sitting around a fire pit talking about what has changed in the past 6 months. (There is generally a very good feeling about the new President: Mama Samia Saluhu!) 

Another interesting social event that gave us a chance to catch up with old friends was a Thanksgiving dinner (held the Sunday after Thanksgiving) hosted by some friends of ours, another family from Maryland with 2 kids about Oren's age. It was a big outdoor event, with a lot of familiar faces, who were again supportive and interested to hear about our adventures.

I think the apotheosis of these social events and by far the most surreal (in terms of intersecting time streams) was a gathering I organized last Friday. By way of background, our next door neighbors in Addis, who have rapidly become our closest friends there, the Myers', were required to evacuate and ended up going to Moshi, a town about 1.5 hours from us. Pete and Katy are not entirely unlike Mike and Katie Taylor, our friends here. They are both working with the Anglican church as bible college theological teachers. The Myers are Brits and the Taylors are Aussies. I planned an evening where we could all meet up at a safari resort for dinner middway between Arusha and Moshi. I wanted everyone to meet each other. I find it a bit amusing that it is almost as if we deliberately tried a bit too hard to  'replace' the Taylors with a carbon-copy family in Addis. (Actually it was purely chance that the Myers moved into the house next door.)

We had a very nice evening together, and when it got late, we invited the Myers to come and crash at our newly furnished house (on the first day we were going to sleep there, before we had even been to the store to buy toilet paper!). That was a good thing because on the way back, in the dark, their car broke down (about a quarter kilometer from the Taylors house!). We limped the car over to the Taylors' and left it for the night. We all stayed at our house and had a somewhat chaotic morning with their kids, neighbor kids, dogs, etc, running around in the morning and Pete and I figuring out what to do about the car. 

Fortunately it was running fine the next morning so Pete, his oldest son and I went to AIM mall for some shopping while Katy, Rebecca and the other kids went to a Christmas fair. After a long day they headed back to Moshi that evening.

That same day though, Rebecca and I hosted an ultimate frisbee game on the compound (using the old whatsapp group), and had about 20 people turn out for a very fierce game. David has become another force to contend with as he has shot up and is about as tall as Oren and me!

Work has a certain familiarity to it as we had to do remote work from Arusha to Addis last spring while we waited for the kids to finish school. It has been good to connect with staff almost every day and we have a virtual team meeting every week. It is hard to be away from them and try to find news about the conflict from them and any other source that seems reasonably accurate. 

The big challenge has been the kids returning to online learning for the month of December. (We are praying it is only for this month.) It was pretty much a nightmare trying to do our job in 2020 between March and May when they were online. As parents we had to do a ton of executive oversight to be sure they were keeping up. They are fantastically unmotivated to do assignments online and it takes a fair amount of coersion to keep them on task. In addition, the computer is the place they go for their favorite addictions, and it is hard to monitor every time they switch from work to play. We are looking forward to Christmas break. (And have even pulled together some bits of Christmas paraphenalia to try to decorate the house a bit.)

Situation Update:

In recent days we have heard of a 'turning of the tide' in the conflict with the National Defence Forces finally getting an upper hand having successfully warded off an attack of Addis. This is good news for us and the 8 million residents of the capital. If there had been an actual invasion of Addis, loss of life and property would have been catastrophic. While as pacifists it is hard to say you are on a 'side' in the war, it is our feeling that the best outcome, assuring the continuation of a united Ethiopia, would be that the current (democratically elected) government prevails in this war. A successful coup by the other side would almost certainly result in a Balkanization of the country. I won't say more on this as we presume all our communications are monitored and our organization has a good working relationship with the government. 

Other good news is that the gathering of church leaders we sponsored attracted a number of high level govt. and church officials including the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, the minister of defense, and mayor of Addis. There was good press coverage as well. Despite many having differing sympathies on the conflict, they did reflect on why the church has not taken a lead role as a peace builder. One of the takeaways was a renewed commitment to be true reconcillers and healers, and not just "entrepreneurs of peace-building". (By the latter I think they meant not just offering trainings in peacebuilding but actually practicing peace.)

Given the current news, we remain cautiously optimistic that we could return to Addis on Jan 8th, after our Christmas break. We have heard that recovery and rebuilding in many of the previously occupied areas may take 30 years after the destruction of infrastructure wreaked by the departing junta. The healing of devastated hearts on all sides of this conflict will also take time and an abundance of God's grace. We expect many of our partners will be focused on recovery work in the years ahead.