Where is Ron?
Ethiopia: January-March 2006
Ron, windblown in Malta, February 2005
Report from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
27-30 March 2006
19 April 2006
Afton VA USADear family and friends,
At last, three weeks after his return, here is Ron's final report on his trip to Ethiopia. Many people have asked me (and I've nagged him!) when we'd get the report and the last set of photos. The report is below, the photos from Harar (including the ones of feeding the hyenas) are linked from the Harar page and the final two photos from Addis Ababa are linked below.
Knowing he had a really tight connection in London, in Heathrow where it can take quite a while to change terminals and clear multiple security checks, I hoped all day on 30 March I wouldn't get a phone call from him saying he'd missed his flight to DC. By the time I had to leave to drive to DC, his scheduled flight from London has been in the air for several hours, and I hoped the fact that I hadn't heard from him meant he really had made it -- but I didn't really believe it until I saw him walk out of the international arrivals area.
We are enjoying being together again, particularly at this beautiful time of year here in Virginia: warm spring weather, trees and flowers in bloom, everything turning green. It is a wonderful season to be at home!
Love to all,
Ellen
19 April 2006
To see the photos from the Hope for Children in Ethiopia Project, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Afton, Virginia, USA
Last days in Addis Ababa and return home, 27-30 March 2006Dear Ellen,
OK, now that I have been home for a couple of weeks, finally, I am finally writing the last chapter of my trip to Ethiopia.
My seat mate on the flight from Dire Dawa to Addis Ababa was a young nursing student from Harar going to visit her sister who was married to a German living and working in Addis.
It is often hard to figure out people's situation, and she was full of contradictions. Her father I think was a high level government manager of some sort and her mother was a teacher. With a sister married to a German, there were resources in the family; however, as a nursing student, her resources were very limited.
She found the conditions in the hospitals and clinics to be so bad that she didn't think she would practice as a nurse after graduation. But through her work in the hospital, she had met many children who were orphans living on the street. What limited resources she had, she was spending on these kids and they were becoming almost her family. She had rented a small place where a few could stay and she helped with food, clothes and education. I was most impressed by this young lady and she is one of my leading candidates for a personal project: getting help to someone through the fewest levels of management.
When I returned to Addis Ababa after feeding the hyenas in Harar, there were a few things I needed to accomplish before I left and time was short and rushed. It took me a while to pack my Bike Friday into the suitcase, with all the little things put in the small spaces between the wheels and frame, including stuffing things between the spokes on the tires. The larger Samsonite suitcase makes the packing simpler, but it is also still a new experience, so it takes me quite a while.
Someone told me that I could buy scarves made by local weavers at Shivo Meda, which is on the same road as the American Embassy, just a couple of van stops north. However, when I went there before I left Addis Ababa for Djibouti and Eritrea, I found lots of vendors selling all kinds of scarves but I was not sure they were made in Ethiopia and not China or somewhere in Asia. And I could not find any weavers.
In an Internet cafe, located on the same street, on the east side just south of 6 Kilo, I had met a young lady who offered to take me to see the weavers when I returned to Addis Ababa. While she worked in the Internet cafe, she was also an art teacher at a school set up for the street children (an unusual combination of computers and art) and she offered to show me the street children project also. I found her again and made an appointment for a tour on the morning of my last day in Ethiopia.
Our first stop was at the office of the Hope for Children in Ethiopia (HCE), Relief & Development Assn. where I met Yonas Tesfaye, the Director. He was a young guy and I knew nothing about this project. He slowly and mildly just started telling me his history which was quite amazing. Seems that while he was in high school, maybe around 14 or 15 years old, he and several of his friends discovered that there were children living on the streets. This was quite a surprise to them and they decided to find out more. Ten of them organized for a weekend day to divide up and go to different places looking for kids living on the street to interview them and find out why they were living on the streets. Their parents were upset when they found out where they had been and what they had done, and made them promise not to do this again.
But when they turned 18 and could do what they wished, they got together again and started finding and talking to the street kids. This led to renting a small place where a few kids could sleep at night and they could use for an office. The project grew from this and there are still three of the original 10 involved today.
When he was telling me about the long period where he couldn't pay himself because there was not enough money to pay the staff, I remembered carrying 6 months of my paychecks from the Workshop because I was worried about the paychecks to my staff bouncing.
Next we toured a home where the weavers lived, with an attached studio where they did the weaving. We also visited a small store selling some weaving thread and vegetables, run by some of the street kids. Then we visited one of the schools they built and run.
At the end of the tour we returned to the office where they had a large selection of the scarves the weavers made, and I bought a bunch of them. The prices were higher than what I saw on the street, but this was a nice way of supporting the project and being sure I got locally made material.
During my last days in Addis Ababa I feasted on pizza, hamburgers, Chinese food, shrimp soup, and peanuts. I certainly ate more than three meals a day and must have gained back some of my lost weight. When I returned home I noticed I lost a few pounds in the first three or four days, which must have been all that pizza. All in all, I lost about 23 pounds on the trip and met one of my objectives for traveling: weight reduction.
When I confirmed my return flight I was told it was going to leave for London about an hour and a half later than originally scheduled. This meant my connection time in Heathrow would be very short! When I arrived at the check-in desk in Heathrow for the flight to DC, they said the flight had been closed. However there were three of us making the same connection so they reopened the flight and put us on in a rush. The plane left immediately.
There was a doctor I met at the airport who was also late for a flight leaving very soon. As we went through the control point he was trying to go through very fast, he looked and acted "rushed", and tried to get them to let him go through fast. You guessed it, they chose him to go thought his suitcase looking very closely at stuff. I doubt he made his plane. So a tip. Don't look in a hurry and you get through quicker. I was calm because I thought I had plenty of time and breezed right on through.
What really surprised me was to discover my luggage was also transferred in time for the flight!
Now that I am back home I am still going through the box of mail and the large backlog of email messages. If you sent me something that needs a response...please contact me again, because I may never ever get through all the email. It is hard enough to keep up with each day's.
Already we are discussing delaying the trip to Russia we've been considering, from August to late September -- or canceling it altogether. So stay tuned to see what the next adventure will be.
Ron PS: The article on Money in Djibouti is going to be published and I am going to be paid! Hope the check doesn't bounce.
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Last updated: 19 April 2006
