I had the great privilege of celebrating 2 Christmases, New Years, and the Ethiopian holiday Timkut while we were in Ethiopia, it was almost like Christmas everyday. We arrived in Ethiopia on the 22nd so Christmas was not that far away.

Holiday #1: Christmas

Christmas time was here and it was a little different for me being with a team of people who celebrate Christmas on January 7th. My Christmas is normally so filled with family you barely notice Christmas has come and gone sometimes. This year, I had no family.

Just me surrounded by great friends who…

don’t celebrate Christmas the same day I do. I was dreaming that I would be home Christmas.

We decided to still have a big meal and do a small gift exchange. We invited the German missionaries that we lived with for dinner and they graciously accepted. The menu consisted of meat (we love our meat,) stuffed peppers, boiled potatoes, bread, green beans, and belinchiki (basically crepes.) I managed to make a yummy gravy which was a big hit. We chatted about what everyone does on Christmas and ate until we were busting at the seams. The gift exchange ensued after we cleared the table. Yulia brought some corn for popping and we ended the night with a movie. Christmas here was certainly green and bright! 

Holiday #2 New Years

This was a fun time. For whatever reason my team thought it would be fun to have a fruit party. I did not understand this at first, but apparently we had to pick a fruit, dress up like it, and create a game to use the fruit. Kinda strange, but it was fun.

Mmmm, meat!

I chose an avocado since not too many people on my team had eaten them before. I got caught up in cooking dinner and did not have time to go out and find some so I asked Ruslan to buy me 6. Seems simple to someone like me who has bought avocados before. Ruslan came back with 6 bright green avocados. I had to revamp my game real quick. I basically did the relay with an egg on a spoon but substituted the egg for an avocado. We had a watermelon eating contest, race to peel a mango, and conversation starters with bananas.

We ended our time with communion and sparklers. Ethiopia’s New Years is in September so nothing special happened in the rest of the country.

You can see our Christmas tree up in the background!

Holiday #3 Orthodox Christmas

This was my first time celebrating an Orthodox Christmas. Nothing really different except for the day. We had almost the same menu as before but we had mashed potatoes, shashlik (kebobs), and fruit salad.

The highlight of the night was dessert, I got to teach my team how to make smores! Yulia had found some marshmallows when we were in Turkey so she had saved them this whole time until we had built the firepit and could properly roast them. At first they were trying to use skewers, then I cut down a branch from a tree and showed them the real way to roast a marshmallow.

I pulled out some crackers and we all shared chocolate to make as close to smores as we could. They all loved them and I was happy to have something that reminded me of home. We did our main celebrating on Thursday night and then on Christmas day we went to church where there was lots of dancing and singing. On our way to church, low and behold, here comes Santa Claus walking down the street. He was there mostly for the tourists, but it made me laugh! I think we had ourselves a merry little Christmas.

Holiday#4 Timkut

This holiday is supposed commemorate the day Jesus was baptized. This is THE biggest holiday in Ethiopia by far. People all dressed up in white and went singing down the street; there were parades everywhere. Streamers were hung over the streets, the majority of places were closed. We had a great time simply walking around and watching the celebration.

P.S. Did anyone notice how many different Christmas song lyrics I used in this post? Yes there are references to Christmas song. Can’t guarantee a prize, but you can always have bragging rights!

One of our main tasks was working at the Mother Theresa home. This was a huge emotional undertaking. Before we even arrive at Mother Theresa’s home, we had quite the trek. We walked 40 minutes one way to get there every Tuesday and Thursday. We followed a drainage ditch in which everything from water, oil, sewage, and garbage flowed.  Through a forgotten dump that has been filled in with dirt and turned into a soccer field. Up a dirt road, past small houses. Past schools, beggars, businesses and shops, past a beggar that often wore no clothes and slept by the road with a pile of garbage that also served as his belongings. This is all before we arrive at Mother Theresa’s home.

Once there, the facility is divided into different buildings and rooms. There is the men’s side and the women’s side, with in each side they have it divided into rooms of people with TB, AIDS, mental and physical disabilities, the sick, the dying, the hurt, and children.

Those receiving care at Mother Theresa's home

Us girls worked on the women’s side, while the boys worked on the men’s side mostly with disabled children. The boys played with the children, bathed them, brushed their teeth, fed them, and gave massages. The also occasionally helped serve food to the men.

Gena pushing children around

Ruslan having fun

Us girls did a variety of things. We usually started the day by helping serve breakfast which was followed by cleaning. Everyday there was a huge pile of laundry to be done. We helped wash clothes, hang them up to dry on the roof, and then fold the sheets and clothes that were dry. We helped clean rooms, move people, and crunch dried chilies. We also played with the disabled children, who liked to dance and clap their hands. We also brushed their teeth and fed them lunch.

Lunchtime!

Ready for love!

Our first day there, we saw a deceased woman being carried out on a stretcher and at once we knew this would not be an easy job. It was often difficult to see so many people in one place who were in such need of love, care and attention. We saw how the volunteers there were also people who were being treated for one thing or another. Everyone helped everyone, people in wheelchairs helped fold clothes, the lame helped feed the disabled. It went like this in every room. I was amazed to see such love, God’s love is for everyone. We wanted to do the same, our main job became rather simple.

Just love the people.

I want some love!

Ok, so I am finally sitting down to write out a TON of blogs! I know. I said I would do that like two weeks ago. I’m sorry, that’s all I can say. So I don’t want to forget about Ethiopia, but lots of things are going on now. I will work my way through Ethiopia and end with what is going on now, or I will throw in the current stuff while putting up posts on Ethiopia. Who knows how this blog dump will go.

We will start with where I lived in Ethiopia and what we did there. We lived in a small oasis of sorts in the midst of the big capital city, Addis Ababa. It really was like an oasis, we had big walls around our compound and there was a beautiful yard with a Hollywood swing, some other lawn chairs and umbrellas. We built a fire pit while we were there so that pretty much completed the oasis picture.

First breakfast outside

The swing with the smaller one bedroom building behind

The compound is made up of three buildings. There was the main house where the missionaries lived, and where we did a lot of our construction work, there was another building that had three bedrooms and one storage room. The third building simply had one bedroom with a bathroom as well staff showers and a space to dry laundry.

View of main house

Our quaint little kitchen

We did quite a bit of construction work while we lived in this quiet oasis, which certainly was not quiet while we worked! We did several projects. One was to take apart three rooms to replaster and repaint. Before we did any plastering, we had to pound four holes in the walls to make room for some plumbing. This sounds like a one day thing, which maybe it would be in North America, but we were in Ethiopia. The walls that we had to pound holes in were made of solid rock and cement. Again, walls in North America can be made with solid rock and cement, but in North America we have power tools, and again we were in Ethiopia where they do not have such power tools. The walls we pounded holes in were 50-60 cm thick and all we had was one chisel, hammer, and a giant crowbar.  Not any easy task!

Ruslan pounding away at the giant rock

Making a trench for the plumbing in a small dusty room

I will make a long story short and just say that after pounding and pounding, recalculating, pounding some more, recalculating again we discovered that one of the walls was 2 meters thick making the plumbing project impossible! This naturally was only discovered after 2 of the 4 holes had been made. Since the calculation was not our fault we were treated to a burger and pizza joint, making it all worth it.

Mmmm, my first burger in 3 months!

So now our projects turned into filling in the giant holes, before replastering. We replastered and painted three rooms before we left Ethiopia. We also built a nice fire pit, moved a rock pile, cleaned up some areas around the compound and created a wood pile. All of which we were able to enjoy.

One tough team, moving rocks and mountains!

My last posts were about getting our visas in Turkey and all the adventures we had there. Way too many adventures, so this post will mostly be made up of pictures! Hooray!

In front of the Hagia Sofia

Rise and shine in the Istanbul airport

In Ankara

Spending time with Riza's sister's family

Beautiful Ankara

Yes I am still alive, contrary to what it may seem according to my blog.

Just to set the record straight about why I am so late in blogging… When you have to pay by the minute and every computer you sit at moves slower than a glacier, and after you have already been at the computer an hour responding to the kind people who spent time to email you (and letting your family know who were still alive) and you have a team of people waiting for you to finish, the blog had to take a back seat. Sorry, that’s life.

Now that I have that off my chest, I can update you on just about everything! I will try to ease you back into my blog, but I have a lot to update you on so take a deep breath. I will put up posts based on topics with a few random things to break it up. This is just the post to give you a head’s up.

And… I leave for Moldova for a week just to relax, so my posts may have to actually wait a week. I know, suspense!! I have to build the excitement! I will try to put one more post up tonight, maybe two if I feel like it. 🙂 There is just so much, where do I begin?!