Negotiating post COVID illness, and a Rep. Retreat in Kenya

Illness has been a constant companion to our family, since our return to Ethiopia from the US, though we rarely speak about it in this blog. I will say now that from the day we arrived back, there has rarely been a week in which all four of us were well at the same time. If you add our office staff, it would probably be never. 

Since we have returned, with the relaxing of COVID protocols (COVID prevalence remains extremely low here) and largely abandoning masks, we seem to constantly be contracting and sharing any number of respiratory and gastric viruses. Either David or Oren have missed school days each month since school restarted. And we have all been to the clinic for stool specimens and blood tests multiple times,

Check dams in gulley

I bring this up now because we had an unfortunate conjunction of Rebecca being very ill and bedridden in the past week, while I was out of town showing some back donors work we do with watersheds in a town about 9 hours north of us called Debre Markos. I was gone for three days and during that time Rebecca's condition deteriorated to the point where she went several times to a clinic over 3 days. Without my support at home, the boys stepped up well and got themselves down to the bus and home each day. But we were grateful for friends and neighbors to help with food and making sure the kids had a place to go after school.  I am happy to say, we have a community that is unbelievably supportive.

MSCFSO project team and guests

Oren was even sent, one afternoon, on a challenging quest to find a local pharmacy, and purchase doxycycline without a prescription in hand. He succeeded! Needless to say, it was hard to be away from home during this time and I was very glad to be back. During the 9-hour drive home, Rebecca was taken to a clinic once again for evaluation and got home about the same time I did. At that point, her fever was not returning but she was left with a massive migraine. (fortunately, that has abated as well, although Oren and I currently have a stomach virus.)

The purpose of my travel to Debre Markos, as I said, was to host some representatives of an MCC back donor called the Watersheds Foundation. They are an environmental group that supports the work of watershed rehabilitation in multiple countries including one of our projects in Ethiopia near Debre Markos with our partner MSCFSO. 

soil bund

Krista, who serves on the Foundation board, and travel companion Ivan, arrived at the beginning of last week. We have been planning for their visit for several months, and early on Wednesday, Wondeweson our logistics officer and I picked them up from their hotel and took them on the 8-9 hour drive north to Debre Markos where we would meet our partners at their office on the first day. 

The drive cuts through some interesting parts of the country with extensive amber waves of wheat and teff almost ready for harvest, and then a plunge into about 50 kms of the Blue Nile gorge. It feels like a long drive into the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up. Although it is picturesque, it also very slow as an endless line of trucks bringing gypsum out of the bottom to cement factories at the top, means stop and go driving. The road has also deteriorated from all the trucks drving on it, and at one place, an enormous boulder had slid into the road allowing only one line of traffic to pass at a time. 

Despite delays, we made it in the late afternoon, checked into our hotel and had a late lunch before stopping by the MSCFSO office to meet staff and discuss our agenda for visiting the field. 

Tibteb watershed rehabilitated

I have discussed our support of watershed work in the past, but it bears mentioning again. It is one of the more impressive types of projects we support, as the impact is evident on such an enormous scale. Usually more than 1000 hectares per year. The work involves restoring the health of soil on the large hilly terrain of the Ethiopian highlands, degraded by over 5000 years of farming. Gulleys have become vitual canyons and entire fields are washed away into deep gulches. 

The work of rehabilitation has a number of activities: There is extensive work on stabilizing and reducing the size of gulleys. This includes installing check dams within them to re-catch soil that is washed into them. The gully sides are then planted with indigenous trees and grasses that can prevent futher erosion. Higher on the slopes of the watershed, soil bunds (like terracing) are constructed and planted with forage crops. These forage shrubs planted on bunds serve two purposes-- first to stabilize the soil, but secondly to provide fodder for grazing animals. Farmers are trained to cut the grasses and fodder shrubs to feed cattle outside the watershed area rather than letting them graze freely on crop residue left on the fields (one of the most damaging traditional practices in terms of aggravating erosion.)

As a final step, farmers on the edge of the watershed are trained in livestock management as well as low tillage agriculture methods, and crop rotation to fix nitrogen in the depleted soil. 

It is an impressive sight to see several hundred hectares looking across the watershed with green fields on what was once brown barren land. 

Our guests were quite impressed as they are big supporters of the project.Yihenew the project manager and his staff did a great job explaining the phases of implementation and the various shrubs and crops that are currently being grown. One statistic I remember is them saying they have planted approximately 3 million trees in the Koso Ambo and Tibteb watersheds since they began about 4 years ago. 

Lupine planted for nitrogen fixing

Besides visiting the watershed, we had opportunity to give our guests some cultural experiences, mainly though food, and Wondweson was a very good cultural translator regarding Ethiopian delicacies that Debre Markos is known for. 

I wish I could have been more present, but I was getting daily updates from Rebecca telling me she was getting sicker and had to visit a clinic on both Thursday and Friday. Her symptoms strongly resembled malaria or dengue, yet a variety of blood tests could not give a definitive diagnosis beyond something viral. What really helped though, was the way that our team in Addis, as well as our community came around us. Rebecca and I can be strong together but if one of us is down, we are really hobbled in terms of our MCC work as we need to both parent and work very full time jobs most of the time. 

Talking with field and gender officers

Despite the challenge, we returned to Addis on Friday, another long drive, and Rebecca, who had spent the day at a clinic getting more tests (escorted by our accountant Hana), also was arriving back at the house. We thought things were looking up, but Oren sprained his ankle pretty badly at volleyball practice Friday evening. It was good to be together again Friday evening as a family and we laid low that evening, with Oren icing his foot and went to bed early. 

Saturday looked even better as Rebecca improved, but as fate would have it, Oren and I both came down with a stomach virus which meant Oren spent most of Saturday night vomiting. I think we are all on the mend again today on Sunday evening. Praying for a week where we all go to school and work. It will be tough for Oren though, navigating crutches.

All Africa Reps and families

I need to backtrack now to the week before which was quite out of the ordinary and needs a recounting of its own. Rebecca actually got sick last week on our way back from Kenya. The week prior was our kids' fall break from school, and our Area Directors and HQ leaders had scheduled the first All Africa Reps Meetings for the first time since the COVID pandemic hit. This is usually a once in 5 year gathering, and we were very pleased that our Area Directors, who were hosting, decided to have it at Turtle Bay Beach Resort on the Kenyan coast in Watamu. This is a very cool eco-friendly beach resort which can host a large gathering as well as provide lots of activities when we are not in session (especially for the kids.)

We met our new International Program Co-Director Rebecca for the first time in person. There were Reps from Kenya/Tanzania, Rwanda/Burundi, Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, South Sudan, and DRC, as well as Area Directors for North/East as well as South/Central Africa. From HQ a number of people came, including a special children and youth counsellor who speciallizes in working with third culture kids. She was a great asset who planned activities and counselling for kids while the adults met. 

We had several days of meetings by region as well as several days of meetings as a whole group. It was good to see many old faces, and especially the diversity that has been a focus of MCC come to frution. I remember the meeting 10 years ago was composed almost entirely of people from North America (US and Canada). Now more than half are from the African continent, although MCC usually has people work as Reps in a different cultural context from their passport country. So for instance, the Chad reps are Ugandan, etc. 

We had a great time working and playing together. Among the extra-curricular activities we did included a dhow trip down a large inlet which included a stop where they weighed anchor and we were able to jump and dive off the high poop deck like pirates! It was a lot of fun. 

Oren on the dhow

One of my favorite parts was the square/line dancing that Rebecca and I were asked to lead. This is always a very popular and effective team building activity, and is often new to many people who participate. Kids also love to be part of it as well, so the whole family is involved. I try to find new line dances from around the world so it is not too American. 'Yerusalem' still remains popular in our group even though it is from 2020. We added a few 'figure' based dances (a cotillion where you had a chance to dance with everyone). 

We also had some sports competitions as two teams including volleyball, and some games finding prizes in the sand, water polo, as well as building the tallest sand castle and trying to bury someone in the sand completely. 

Our family stayed two extra days to take advantage of snorkeling which is an activity we love. We went out on our own at low tide a number of times right off the beach in front of the hotel, but on the last Friday we took a boat out and snorkeled for several hours over a coral reef conservation area. It is always great to enjoy the quietness of floating over this exotic world and between us we saw, a sea turtle, octopus, lion fish, moray eels and dozens of other species. I will say though, having come here several times in the past 12 years, that there seems to be evidence of coral dying, probably from global warming. It was not as vivid as I remember it.

Sadly Rebecca was already getting sick when we were snorkeling, and by the time we left for Mombasa to catch our plane on Sunday, she was feeling pretty bad. 

We wanted to leave by Mombasa so we could do some shopping at a good grocery store to bring back stuff before we left. Ethiopia's foreign currency has meant there are virtually no imports in stores, so we stocked up on cheese, lunch meat and chocolate among other things. Kenya has great shopping!

Our flight back was quick, less than 2 hours. It was good to be back and we were happy to see that the kitten had survived a week alone (with our cook and neighbors coming in to feed her). 

We have been in intense work week starting right when we got back as quarterly reports had come in, as well as end of the month activities. Rebecca was already too sick to be in the office and  I worked madly on Monday and Tuesday before departing for Debre Marcos on Wednesday, which is where this blog began. 

We continue to do other activities including church and youth group. David's Birthday passed this weekend although we are planning a small party for next weekend. Among the new activities Rebecca and I have joined a choir that is run by our friend Lori K. and are preparing some songs for Christmas. David is Charlie Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas at his school, and Oren is busy with college applications. That should catch us up for October.