Wednesday, February 16, 2011

I woke up in the middle of the night really hot. It wasn’t long before

I knew I was actually feeling sick and when my alarm went off at 7, I

got out of bed. I have continued to feel hot, feverish and

lightheaded. My throat is sore and it’s hard to swallow and my nose is

stuffy. I feel like I’m allergic to Ethiopia because this same thing

happened last time. My stomach is fine and I don’t feel like I picked

anything up here; more like I picked something up in NOLA or on the

airplane and it’s finally manifesting. Here’s hoping it won’t last

long.

We’re waiting at RoPack for Tom to head over and pick us up for the

second distribution. I’m thinking about taking a nap and hoping I can

sleep some of this sickness off.

Back from distribution number two. Today was another school of younger

children. Everything was set up by the time we arrived because Tom

needed to make two trips; the first with Hayley and shoes and the

second with the four of us. We started with four fitters, one “runner”

(the person who gets the shoe sizes we think we need, which happened

to be Brian), Hayley was writing registration numbers in shoes, and

five Ethiopians helping with registration. Two and a half hours later

and 200 shoes later, all the children in the school and one from the

community who didn’t have shoes were showing off their new kicks. We

were much more efficient and have worked out some of the kinks from

the first distribution which will make creating the plans for future

distributions much easier.

We finished up with some late lunch and headed to the local market. It

was a nice change of pace to check out some different things and Ang

and I both picked up a scarf. We exchanged a little more money and

once we got home (back to RoPack), we took a walk and grabbed a

macchiato. We’re finishing up a few things around the house before we

head to bed and do it all again tomorrow! We’re set for a third

distribution of 400 kids and we’re pretty excited. I realize that I

really haven’t explained very thoroughly the shoe distribution process

and all that goes along with it, so that’s definitely my agenda for

tomorrow (or soon).