May 12, 2009

We did our usual home schooling in the morning and then the boys and I took a little expedition into DZ this afternoon. One of the ironic things about DZ is that a rather small, rural town that doesn’t even have consistent running water for its inhabitants, has this huge, Olympic sized pool with a three level platform diving tower. It’s really rather astonishing. So off we went to check it out. Other than the fact that it doesn’t get cleaned very often and looks rather murky, it’s really a great pool. We put our faith in the germ killing power of chlorine and jumped in. There were only about eight other people in this huge pool since swimming isn’t a great part of Ethiopian culture. (You can’t swim in the lakes because of strange organisms and who can afford to go to the few pools that are available?) Sol especially had a great time jumping off even the highest of the towers. The Ethiopians were quite impressed. There were two teenagers there who said that they were part of the Ethiopian Swim Club and they challenged Sol to some races. They weren’t impressed when this farinji (foreigner) kept beating them!

In the evening I attended a small women’s English Bible study led by a Nigerian woman. It was interesting to hear about the story of Hannah and Penninah from her perspective since African culture has some significant similarities to the original Old Testament culture when it comes to infertility. While we were there, there was a massive downpour which was the first rain we have had since we arrived. Everyone was very grateful for this since it will settle the dust and cool things off a bit.