May 6, 2009

6 May 2009
Today was our first experience with a scheduled power outage for the area, from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. The college doesn’t use any generators and simply carries on without the use of lights or computers – quite a novel idea for us westerners. I spent the day in the library talking to the staff and beginning my assessment of the collection. I was able to convince Karen and Abram to join me in the dining hall for lunch, only because lunch was rice with cabbage and onions instead of the traditional injera with wot. I’ll have to describe this dish in more detail some other time. After lunch we discovered that the power was back on, which was the earliest that this had happened in recent memory. Karen and the boys walked down to an orphanage to offer their services but were basically turned down, so they will be visiting a school next door tomorrow. We are optimistic that something will come together for them. Our boys have volunteered to help with the watering of a number of newly planted trees and shrubs on the campus, and have been told that they could assist with conversational English for the students taking the ESL classes, but nothing structured has been set up yet for them. We hope the school option works out.

For supper we went out with Fanosie and Dianne from across the hall and Mike from our apartment to a local restaurant. Sol wasn’t feeling very well when we sat down so he decided not to order anything. Fanosie and Dianne have two young children, a boy named Zach who is 5 and a girl named Lydia who is nearly 3, so they were playing out in the yard in front of the restaurant with Sol. All of a sudden we look and Sol is down on his hands and knees throwing up on the lawn. After a few minutes he felt a lot better, so that was good. The other highlight was Zach falling down and hurting himself in a pond that had just been cleaned out. Other than those two events, we had a good time.

At around 9 p.m. this evening Carl came down and told us that the president of the college had just called and would like our family to present the program for the chapel tomorrow morning at 8:30. This should include an introduction of the family and a devotional. Okay, I guess this is how things work in Ethiopia. I decided to check my email before going to bed while Karen was already in the bedroom. I thought I heard Karen pouring something into the shower or sink a couple of times before I realized that, no that wasn’t coming from our bedroom, that was coming from the boy’s bedroom. I opened the door to see Sol, from the top bunk, spewing all over the floor. Nice. That was a joy to clean up. I guess we’ll work on the chapel tomorrow morning.