Summer Internship - Ethiopia

Hi, this is Billy again.  Ethiopia was awesome!  Here's the details about my trip.  I flew from Phoenix to Seattle where I had about a 24 hour layover.  I stayed with Gene and Michelle, Cait's aunt and uncle who recently moved to Seattle.  It was fun to get to know them a little better and way nice of them to let me sleep at their house and drive me to and from the airport.  Then in the Seattle airport I met up with the rest of the Canadian Humanitarian group - Rachel, Cori, Madeline (she goes by Mouse...), Daniel, and Myah.  I knew Rachel from Canada, but I was meeting everyone else for the first time.  We were all kind of anxious about our long flight.

We flew to Dubai and I got a headache about two hours into the flight that lasted quite a while.  I just tried to sleep a lot because it made my head hurt to watch movies.  We had a long layover in Dubai and the airport put us up in a hotel which was nice.  Everyone was really tired, so we just kind of hung out at the hotel in the afternoon, then at night we did a tour around Dubai which was pretty fun.  We saw the Blue Mosque, the Burj Al Arab, the Atlantis resort, we stopped at a silk rug place, and then the Dubai Mall/Burj Kalifa.  We stayed at the mall and told the tour company that we'd take a taxi home since that was the last stop of the tour anyway before going back to the hotel.  We watched a water show outside the mall in front of the Burj Kalifa which was pretty cool and just walked around the mall for a while before heading back.

The Blue Mosque

Water show outside the Burj Kalifa

The next day we flew to Ethiopia.  The flight was so funny because most of the people on the flight didn't know how to read their seat assignments and just sat anywhere.  The flight attendants where moving people around like crazy!  I think we departed late too because of it.  Ethiopia was awesome and it was wild just thinking that I was in Africa.

Canadian Humanitarian has education centers in Ethiopia where vulnerable children can be admitted into their program and receive one meal per day, participate in extracurricular activities, and have a place to be that is safe outside of school.  It's really a great program they are running.  Most of the centers are located in or around the capitol, Addis Ababa, but they also just started a program a couple hours outside the city in a place called Haleku.  We got to go out there for a couple days and that was awesome!  It's more rural than the city.

We spent our time visiting each center twice.  On the first visit to each center we would do crafts, play ultimate frisbee, hang out with the kids and tour the center.  On the second visit, we would visit some of the homes of the kids in the program and meet their guardians.  We'd also have some going away parties at the centers and just play more with the kids.  Oh yeah, and we would give them all the donation stuff we brought with us from Canada.

It was an awesome trip!  The group was really fun that I was with and I got to work with a couple other people that we met there from Canada - Michelle and her adopted son from Ethiopia, Mubarik.  Mubarik was super annoying, but funny, and I missed him after they left (they left at the time we went out to Haleku).  Some unique things about the trip:
- Every morning a man would sing a call to prayer song from the roof of the church.  He started at like 5:30 every morning.
- Ever morning every rooster in Ethiopia would crow super loudly around the same time or earlier than the man on the church would sing.
- Every morning every dog in Ethiopia would bark like crazy, sometimes all through the night, too.
- Discarded or unwanted animals like horses and donkeys would roam freely through the city and hang out in the middle of the roads (I learned it's because there are less flies there because of the traffic).
- There were no traffic lights and tons of cars so things were crazy on the roads.
- All of the houses had fences with razor wire on top and security guards outside or inside the gate.
- The year in Ethiopia is currently 2007

Here come a bunch of pictures!

Carting our gear to the vans after arriving at the airport in Ethiopia

I thought the scaffolding was pretty safe looking...

This boy has been in the Canadian Humanitarian program for about 12 years.  His parents died when he was little so his grandma and step-grandpa took him in.  When his grandma died, his step-grandpa kicked him out of the house.  I think he was like 7 at the time and now he is 18.  Canadian Humanitarian has a house for emergency situations which he lives in for now.

This boy is ranked #1 in his class academically.  They live behind a nail factory which is super noisy.

This was the only house we visited where they had couches.

I felt like a giant here

Her house burned down so the community helped her into a temporary house.  We got her a bunch of household items that she had lost in the fire.

The kids at the Kirkos center have a dance club and they have won competitions.  They are pretty good!

Kids at the Guelele center

The Kality center

Arts and crafts at the Kirkos center

Mubarik!

Waiting for the gymnastic club to start at the Guelele center.  They call it the circus club.  It's mostly tumbling.

Donkey with no tail that I saw while doing a service project outside of the Kality center

Ultimate Frisbee at Alemgena

We had a celebration at the Guelele center.  This tradition is supposed to celebrate the events of the Mount of Transfiguration.

Abandoned donkey in the middle of the road

At church on Sunday

Ethiopian Pepsi

The next series of photos are from our trip out to the country in Haleku.

Service project of planting trees around the school area

Giant anthill

Cows walking around with us

This group of men get together regularly to do service around the community.  Here they were doing road work.  Their organization is called Foresight Fathers.

This group of kids followed us around as we were touring the village

lil shepherd

That little cow was right next to me during the home visit

The kids were doing crazy things just to get their pictures taken

They'd all crowd us to look at the pictures we took of them

Our drivers and translators, Getu and Ketema

It was definitely a memorable experience.  Thank you Canadian Humanitarian!