Sunday 25th September 2011

I got a bit homesick last night. It doesn’t happen very often but sometimes I realize how far away I am and you think about what’s going on back home and, well, you know it starts a spiral of thoughts. So at 1am in Ethiopia I called home and it was all OK. Slept like a log after that. Woke up just before the alarm and realized it was Sunday. It dawned on me that as visitors we would be asked to say something at the church. Made a mental note and headed off for breakfast to a local café.

The first job of the day was to film Abyot playing football with some of his team. He’s very passionate about football and it’s uses in outreach and this came out when I interviewed him. Every answer to every question somehow seemed to go back to the beautiful game. He was obviously buzzing because his favorite team, Arsenal, had finally won a game. But the reason he loves it is because it crosses the barriers of religion, status and culture. In his team he has Christians and Muslims playing alongside each other and he uses that to build relationships and hopefully demonstrate the gospel.

With Abyot off to get changed and ready for his part in the morning service Sintayehu introduced me to his mother. An incredibly striking woman, very confident and obviously very happy to be at the church, she told me that the pre-school has been a real blessing to her and her family.
Its tragic that such a young family should be devastatingly touched by AIDS but beautiful the way that despite the odds they still had hope for the future. Sintayehu wants to become an airline pilot. I hope he does.
Church was great. I had no idea what was happening and when we were introduced and asked to say something I suddenly found that mental note. I think I pulled it off; I did get a clap!
After church we made our way down to the water pump where we found a hive of activity. Children, sometimes in pairs but usually alone, were pumping water from a hand pump into a variety of containers and bottles and then hauling them away, presumably to their homes. I was amazed by a girl who couldn’t have been more than eight years old filling a container that stood up to her waste and then dragging it off. It’s a common job for children to collect the water but I’d never realized the effort that went into it.
As we sat together at lunch, Kifle said that we’d be getting some heavy rain in the afternoon. He was right. No sooner had we started the drive to the rural school 40km away in Ja Jura when the heavens opened. I will never comment on the wetness of British rain again. Within five minutes the road had been transformed into a mud bath and we were sliding our way slowly along, trying to keep the 4×4 on track. At one point we passed a lorry that had quite literally slid into the ditch.
The journey took us just over two hours and the rain was still coming down when we arrived at Ja Jura Kindergarten and church. There was a crowd of mainly adults there to greet us who spent the next 15 minutes watching me with vague amusement as I trotted about in the rain with my camera aimed at vegetable patches, goats and the outside pit toilet.
We talked to Tagersech and her daughter Tirngo about the school and about the micro-finance scheme. They showed us their home, a 1 roomed hut with a round house out the back. There was living space was in the hut and the eight children and their parents slept in the roundhouse with two cows, a goat and the cooking space.
Again it was Tirngo who demonstrated hope for the future when she told me she was going to be a teacher.
We seemed to create quite a stir and walking back to the school from Tirngo’s house we collected a large crowd of children. Kifle explained that we were probably the first white people to be seen there in a year. The rain had stopped for a while but was now hammering down with a vengeance as we set off for Hosanna. It was getting dark and the road was treacherous and at times Kifle struggled to control the 4×4.
Back at the guest house the rain still thundered down. How glad I was for bricks and mortar and Paul’s travel kettle and tea bags.