My first impressions when I stepped out of Addis Ababa airport on a Sunday morning, 6th of April, were very positive. It was early morning but it was WARM outside. Many types of bushes were blooming around the airport and some kind of stork-like birds were walking about. I later found out that those were ibis.

Soon Annika arrived and we took a route taxi to the city centre to eat and to wait for our bus. After a couple of hours in the city I realized there was nothing pretty there. There were no bushes, flowerbeds, hedges, not even nice buildings. This realization totally overwhelmed me. By that time I had seen the first beggars but the multi-coloured African dresses that I had imagined in my mind were nowhere to be seen. Instead of beautiful colourful African dresses people were wearing ragged Chinese produce.

Soon the journey towards South to Hawassa started. This was the first and the last time I rode with a pre bought ticket and on a bus that left at a fixed time. On all my other trips afterwards the bus left when there were enough people. Usually it meant that the bus was really packed. It usually took about an hour before the bus was filled, but on my last trip to Addiss it took even three hours.

Looking out the window during this first trip I noticed that Ethiopians were much more sociable than Estonians. Nobody was walking alone, always in numbers, and all the major chores were also carried out together.

Already on the first night we needed the torches we had brought along. There are constant power cuts in Ethiopia. It is pitch black outside by seven o’clock but the streets are still busy. We also went out for dinner at that time and thanks to the torch we managed to evade all the rainwater gutters and other obscure trenches and iron bars and loose rocks. Homeless kids use to sleep in those deep gutters when it is not a rainy season.

The streets are lined with small kiosks and diners. Most of these diners look pretty dirty to keep people with western cleanliness standards from stepping inside. If it hadnt been for Annika who knew how to find the right food in the right place, I wouldn’t have set a foot inside any of them.

In Soddo I witnessed the poverty in Ethiopia in full “glory”. For the whole first week there was only word one drumming in my head – DEPRESSING! I kept asking myself, “What is the point in educating those 105 children if there are about 95 million poor, starving and uneducated people in this country?” As an answer to my question I remembered a story about a man who walked on a beach where thousands and thousands of starfish have washed ashore. The man picked up one starfish after another and tossed them gently back into the sea. He was told that his work was pointless as there were so many of those starfish that even if worked all day, his efforts wouldn’t make any difference at all. The man picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea and said, “It made a difference to that one.” My question didn’t seem to have a more fitting answer. At least the children we do support get a good education.

Generally the Ethiopians are good-willed people, but they always try to get a much higher price from white people. When walking on the street you can constantly hear shouts, “How are you?”, “Where are you go?” and “Faranje!” (read: foreigner – white) and “Money” or “Birr”. White person is just a walking wallet for them.

During the two weeks I spent there we walked many times to the school and back, we measured our kids, took their photos for the sponsors, accompanied two girls to the local hospital, handed out buttons for the uniforms, gave some children some extra clothes, asked the tailor to mend some very ragged clothes and asked him even to make a new skirt to one girl. Every child that got a new piece of clothing was extremely happy. I recall one small boy, Amanuel, happened to be too big for the pants we brought along for him. They wouldn’t even button up but despite that the boy was repeating “Is good! Is good!” with the happiest smile on his face. In the end we managed to explain him that he was not going to get these pants and that we would bring him another pair the next day.

In addition to school visits we also visited several homes. One girl lived in a hut of about 3 by 3 meters which seemed to have only one room. The hut had a small hallway in the front where the girl’s mother was having a bric-a-brac shop and served coffee. We couldn’t see anything that could look like a toilet, not to mention a normal place for washing. We also had a chance to take a glimpse of a bit more fancy suburban household which was still quite packed – three teenage brothers slept in one small room, the oldest one on a bed and two younger ones on the floor on mats. On the other side of the fence the three cows of that family were looking for food on the street side. They did have a kitchen and a toilet. We also visited a home of a teacher who lived in a newer block of flats. It was interesting to see that even when living in a flat they still made coffee in the traditional way on a small coal oven right in the living-room. We also visited the homes of two pastors from the Apostolic Church. One of them lived in Soddo and his house is comparable to a mid-class house in Estonia. The house was quite big and had many rooms. Their household also had servants – relatives from the countryside who would do the chores in exchange for food and accommodation. Pastor’s family also covered the school expenses of the son of these relatives. The other pastor whom we visited lived in Addis and his house was humbler, though they also had servants.

LII

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