Tuesday, February 15, 2011

No distribution today because it’s a holiday. Monday night the Muslims

read the moon to determine if Tuesday would be a holiday or not. I’m

not sure what they needed to see (or not see) in order for them to

declare it a holiday, but it was. Tom picked us up from RoPac and we

headed to their house closer to the city. Our main objective for the

day was to sort and organize the shoes we needed for the distributions

Wednesday and Thursday. We will be doubling the size of school and

community outreach each day, so the number of shoes gets larger and

larger. We had a pretty efficient system and it took less than a few

hours to sort and pull out another 800 pairs of shoes from the

original delivery. Our school on Wednesday is mainly younger children

again, so we learned the first time around that we will need very few

larger sizes. Thursday’s school, however, goes up to eighth grade

which we learned will include people up to their 20’s.

We headed into the city to pick up a phone and a SIM card. Once we’re

in the city we’ll need a phone to coordinate meetings and times and we

figured it would be beneficial to have it now because as I’ve learned

from my first trip, things are never as easy as you think they’ll be.

We found a phone (used, but a phone) that they were willing to sell me

for 400 birr (my limit on how much I’m willing to spend) and tried to

get our SIM card. They wouldn’t sell it to us without two Ethiopian

picture IDs. We don’t even have one. We though perhaps Tom would be

able to purchase it with his Ethiopian driver’s license, but no dice.

I called Yemamu and asked him to pick us up a phone and SIM card. No

problem, he says. He’ll get it in the merkato and bring it to us on

Saturday. We also stopped by our guest house to see if we could check

in a day early. Also no problem. The guest house is on the street I

lived off of last time. I chose the area because I know how to get

from everything from there and it would be much easier for me. It took

me a few minutes to recognize, though. Things have changed SO much

since I was here only a year and a half ago. The area where the

government was trying to take back their land, where the wood shop

disappeared from our first trip, has been successfully wiped out from

the once-thriving business area. What used to be a big open space is

how surrounded by high corrugated tin walls. A few things were

familiar and I smiled at the memories I have from my first trip. It

was good to be in familiar territory.

We walked to a pizza shop close to Tom and Sally’s and snagged some

pizza for dinner. We just had the marghireta pizza but Ang ordered

French fries. Literally, we watched the woman peel the potatoes and

cut them into fries. Everything was fresh and delicious, particularly

because hadn’t eaten since breakfast which was just multi-grain

Cherrios in soy milk. Meals are kind of funny that way here. You just

are never on a schedule and you eat when you can eat and are pretty

ready for the next meal.

We spent the evening in Sally’s living room talking about all sorts of

things. Ethiopia, adoption, life, climbing. It was fun to connect with

someone who I met just briefly my first time here and whose journey I

have followed throughout the year. We got home late and I was

exhausted, so all plans were out the window and I headed to bed.