Wow...... Its great to be back home, sorry it took so long for me to update my blog because of some problems with my password last week. It was hectic at work after being gone for 2 weeks and then I was traveling to NY for the weekend for my little cousins, Madison Grace baptism on Sunday. On Friday night I had a little birthday party @ Savannah, then on Saturday I made 6 quick stops to my family's houses to say a hello..... and flew back to Florida Monday morning.
Finally I have the time to tell everybody what my experience was like. So much to process it's hard to get started, so let's start from the beginning. My cousin Eileen and I landed on Sunday night approximately 9 pm. We were met at the airport by Solomon, Mesganaw, Mesganaw's father Tesfaye, Briana and Peter. Solomon is the young man we came to see graduate and help get established after moving out of the Kolfe Orphanage.
My cousin's Eileen & Jerry unofficially adopted him. He is the oldest out of the 6 adopted kids. They have 5 kids under 6 years old, a 16 year old daughter, Ellie, 19 year old son Jonathan, and their oldest, Melissa. She is 27 years old, married to Randy and they have 2 young children. Solomon turned 18 last May so he is too old to be legally adopted and brought back to America. Knowing she can not bring him to America at this time, Eileen was praying to find a Christian family to take Solomon in to live with them in Ethiopia. One Sunday at Open Door Church in NC, she met Mesganaw, an exchange student from Ethiopia. Her daughter Ellie saw him walking in the parking lot after the service. She said to her Mom, "Doesn't he look like Solomon". Mesganaw is a student from Ethiopia in the Cherokee foreign exchange program. His host family lived about 10 miles away from Open Door. He usually attended another church, but on that Sunday he went with one of his friends to visit their church. Long story short, Eileen and Mesganaw had a conversation and she invited him for lunch. A couple weeks later he came to her house. After speaking for a couple of hours she asked him if his family could possibly take in her son Solomon. He said he always wanted a brother and that he would ask his parents. He had an appointment scheduled to call his family in a couple of days. When he spoke with his father he asked him and he said, "YES". (1 miracle)The Tesfaye family lives 15 minutes from the Kolfe Orphanage.
Briana is from NY and was working as the assistant manager of the Cherokee House for the last year. This was the house were we would be staying for the next 2 weeks. This was also the program that brought Mesganaw to the states . Eileen already had a relationship with Lyston Peebles, the head of the Ethiopia division of Cherokee Gives Back, because she was trying to get Solomon in the program last year. Unfortunately it didn't work because of his age. Peter was Ethiopian and he was picking up Ginna who was also on our flight. They work for a company called The Childrens Hopechest. Childrens Hopechest is a company that helps coordinate sponsorship for orphanages around the world and they are working with the Kolfe orphanage as well.
After leaving the airport we rode in Peter's Van to the house. The roads were very dark and bumpy. Some roads were OK but others were unbelievable, big cobble stone rocks, ditches and pot holes bigger than anything I've ever seen on Atlantic or the Van Wyck. We pulled up to the house which had a 10 foot Brick wall, barb wire across the top and a big metal gate. Peter honked the horn and the security guard opened it up to let us in. We went into the house and met J.T., a 23 year old American, who is the manager of Cherokee House. The house was pretty nice considering what we had seen on our drive from the airport. Once we brought our luggage in and talked for a little while they told us that Eileen would be staying in the main house, and Solomon and I were staying in the bunk house. OK, No problem, they said take your flashlights cause the power is out. I made a joke about the food that I brought from the US in my suitcase and they said I shouldn't worry that the rat's don't usually come in the bunk house but you will hear them running across the roof...... I was like no way, that's terrible.
The bunk house had a metal roof and six bunk beds with foam mattresses. The bathroom and shower were in the area before you walk into the bunk house. I was looking forward to using the bathroom after traveling for 24 hours to get there. I looked at the toilet on my way in and saw that there was a puddle of water next to it. Because of this I decided to wait till morning because of the lack of lights at that time.
In the morning I woke up about 5 am to dogs barking outside the compound like they were wolves looking for food. I fell back asleep, woke up about 8 am and I went into the bathroom. It was the worst bathroom and shower I had ever seen. The shower had mold all over the walls and the floor was concrete. The toilet still had the puddle right next to it. After you flush the 1st time the water does not come back for almost 10 minutes before you can flush it again. Then you brush your teeth with bottled water because you can not drink any of the water, not even to rinse and spit it back out. (Before we left for the trip we received emails from the U.S. Embassy about the sickness from the water and to make sure we did not drink the water.) While I was getting ready my cousin knocked on the door and said the driver was here, I was still shaving and in a towel, so now I have to rush and get dressed for our 1st day in Ethiopia. Most of you know I need my time to get ready. So now I come out like 15 minutes later, say good morning and meet the driver. He is a taxi driver that Cherokee uses.
Now we start on our way going down roads that I would not even ride my mountain bike down and there are people everywhere-- kids, adults and animals... Yes, live stock everywhere-- sheep, chickens, goats, cows, bulls, wild dogs eating garbage and donkeys with stock on their backs. Such a very poor, very dirty and very sad environment. These were the back roads down to the city. We were in the city Addis Ababa it is the capital of Ethiopia. A lot of people thought I was going to be in the tribal villages that you see on TV with kids that have flies around them. Thank God that's not where I was because this was hard enough. As we are driving down to get breakfast I looked in the air. It was thick with smog and fumes. Most of the cars are old and use diesel fuel. There are a lot of blue taxi cabs and blue shuttle vans. They are owned by the government. People have cars but they charge you 220% tax if you own a car so most people can not afford it. The average salary is $350 per year. There are no emissions rules like here in the U.S. and no yearly inspections. As we were driving around I was asking myself what am I doing here? Did I make a mistake by coming to a fourth world country? I am used to living a very good life, enjoying the pleasures of traveling and to top it off, I volunteered to come here! Wow, was I confused at that moment! It was caotic because the cars drive fast and there are no traffic lights. You either have a police officer directing traffic or it's whom ever can get by 1st. So the cars just creep out until the other one stops. Yes, for real! I've seen crazy drivers in Spain, Mexico and Germany but the difference here is there are so many people walking in front of the cars. It was just nuts and they have no lines in the street to separate lanes, its a free for all.
We went and had breakfast at a cafe. While we were eating I was observing my surroundings as thinking about the car ride. The place was cool and everybody looked okay but I was looking out the window, watching the caotic traffic, the fumes in the air were horrible and all I kept thinking is, "This is CRAZY". I told Eileen that I had to get a couple of things. I needed a broom so that I could sweep around my toilet in order to be able to go to the bathroom without my clothes being in a puddle and get some kind of shower mat so I didn't have to stand on the cement floor. I like to go camping and do outdoor stuff but this was not cool.
We drove around the city sightseeing and bought the things that we needed but I was not feeling so hot. I literally felt like I was sucking on a tail pipe. I felt like the car we were in was worse then outside. Here I am cramped in this little front seat with fumes in my face and the worst poverty I have ever seen everywhere. When you stopped in traffic, beggars came to the car and asked you for food or money. It's not your normal beggars like we have here. It's mothers with babies on their backs or in their arms crying and looking really sad. There were crippled people literally crawling in the traffic to the car, blind people with someone leading them to the car and when you looked at some of their eyes they were just white, no eye balls. One guy came over to my window, pulled his jacket sleeve up and had 10 fingers on one hand. Yes, he had 15 fingers total. I didn't even know how to react, I felt so bad and so sad to say disgusted at the same time. I said, "Eileen did you see that?" I reached in my pocket and gave him a couple of birr (Ethiopian money). As soon as I did that the car got rushed by other beggars. We learned our lesson that as much as it hurts and you want to help, you just can't because you can not afford to give to everybody. We got the things we needed and Eileen asked me if I was OK because I was nodding out in the front seat. I said I am not sure if I am tired or it's these fumes but I am done, let's go back to the house.
When I got back I went to the bunk house and took a nap. After the nap I felt better. We had dinner with everybody staying at the house. There were 2 other young Americans staying at the house who were volunteer teachers at the children orphanage; Scott who is 23 from another part of North Carolina and Brittney, 21 years old from California. Two great young people trying to make a difference. We ate home made pizza and shared our stories and got to know each other a little better.
This is just day 1. My first post on this blog was July 17th only 2 months ago. My family and friends chipped in and supported me financially and made this trip happen. This trip definitely changed my life. Trust me I will never be the same after seeing and experiencing what I did. These are the families that I want to thank for their donations (aka Fazalino's) THANK YOU all for helping make a difference. God Bless all of you. The Albano, Altimarano, Barnes, Behan, Benedetto, Berkowitz, Bertolini, Brower, Canales, Cantave, Capace, Cerese, Constantin, Conza, Cornish, Damkohler, DeMarco, Delahunty, Devito, F.Delucia, Festa, Folise, Gordon, Greenstein, Guida, Hasset, J.Jenkins, James, Jiminian, Johnson, L,Jenkins, Linz, McDermott, Medina, Monteleone, Murphy, Novoa, Olivares, Paiz, Peranzo, Pfeiffer, Pinto, Pisani, Puig, Ramprashad, Ruffilo, Shwan, Troisi, Tsikitas, Wilson, and Zwang. I also want to THANK everybody for your prayers.
More to come....
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