The Adventures Continue

I told you how we were supposed to be going to Entoto mountain with the other parents but that plan did not materialize. Fortunately we got chance to go to the Entoto mountains yesterday with the Addis Kidan truck. I just gave the driver some money. That was so beautiful….the air was clear and clean. The air is very polluted down in the city and it sort of makes you feel tired at the end of the day . We had a great view of the city. We visited the first palace of the Emperor Menelik (that’s the emperor before Halase Lassie) which was built on the top of the mountain (quite simple buildings). Then we took a little side road back down the mountain. I thought surely the truck will flip over or a tire will blow up. On a way down we saw group of people separating grain from the shaft by the old method that is cows trampling all over the shafts in a circle over and over again. Also we saw many older women going up and down the mountain backs loaded sky high by straw and firewood and what ever. Donkeys are a very common sight in the city as well as in the country side. They are lovely workers. Some times you spot one of them just standing head down in the middle of the road catching a little siesta.

Today we had a new experience….we went visiting 3 families in the tin city close to Mekanissa church. We went there with this missionary we met at the International Church and 3 people from the Mekanissa church; 2 young women and David the HIV Positive ministries program coordinator. That was an eye opener…I have to tell you we tried sitting without touching anything…They had dirt floors which were covered to best of their abilities with worn out linoleum. Each ‘home’ had only room for a bed, little makeshift coffee table and a low bench against a wall. Bathrooms….I don’t even want to think about that. Food preparation areas…here and there coal fires. Everyone seemed to possess an injera pan hanging somewhere on the wall. That’s their kitchen. You can cook everything on it as well as eat out of it. I think they carry the drinking water from some community tap.

First home we visited the woman had had 3 husbands and they all had passed away. Now she is sharing ‘a house’ with an other woman and 3 children. All the people we visited today had aids except (and very fortunately) their kids. In the second home we met a young couple and their 2 year old daughter. This was the mother's second husband. Her first husband had made her work in a bar and then left her for an other woman when she got pregnant. Her husband works as a guard (lots of those needed in Addis by more well to do since all the homes are surrounded by big walls and gates which have to be guarded and opened and closed by the guards). Guards make 300 birr a month and the rent of these homes in the tin city is around 120-150birr a month. In the third home we met a young mother, her husband, 6 month old baby and toddler daughter. The husband was sitting by the sewing machine, assembling pieces together for a cultural shirts I have seen sold at the markets. ( I even bought some of them not really knowing where they have been produced). I am sure this man is not making very much profit off those shirts.

We brought food to these families as well as few pretty things to the women (I and an other lady at the guesthouse made couple of necklaces with the beads we had brought here)….We were trying to tell them to remember when they wear these pretty little things that’s how it is with God’s gift of salvation….It’s a sitota….it’s free, you don’t work for it you just need to receive it.

Satu and Erik