9/15
Well back in Ethiopia! It was a long trip but I got to see a bit of
Miami before I left, and just watched movies and slept the whole trip
back. The flight from Doha to Addis was
rough unfortunately, and the Addis Ababa airport is just terrible. I am convinced that the single best thing
that Ethiopia could do to promote tourism right now is to fix that terrible
place.
It was awesome being back, I am so
glad I got to see all of my family, and I feel like I didn’t get to spend
enough time with any of you. Thank you
all so much for everything you did for me.
And to my friends I am sorry I didn’t get to see half of you but such is
life. I can’t wait to get back and have
a whole round of visiting and partying!
Thanks especially to Jess for letting me crash with you in Miami and
dealing with my even worst indecisive issues.
I am sure I drove you plenty crazy.
So before I left I had camp GLOW
(Girls Leading Our World) to promote gender equality and sexual health in my
community. For those of you who can
actually get through my blog posts you should have seen me preparing and
setting things up. Now I guess I should
tell you how it went. As I have come to
expect things went slowly in the start.
The students I had signed up did not come and only one kid showed up
anywhere near on time. So instead of
starting at 8:30am like it was scheduled around ten we sent out translators out
into the community to bring in whatever kids they could find. So around 10:30am we finally got started with
about thirty kids. Surprisingly we were
able to back on schedule and had a great first day doing lessons and games to
promote understanding of gender roles in Ethiopia, and promoting gender
equality. The second day we started out
discussing anatomy and puberty. From there
we went on to talking about HIV myths and facts as well as sexual health. We finished up by doing sexual health
Jeopardy for the young students, and condom Olympics for the older
participants. All in all it went well
with only a few minor hiccups along the way.
I am thankful for all the help from Ali my site mate, Summer a G11 who
came to teach the female students about sensitive topics, Etsegenet a
translator and facilitator from the Center for Creative Leadership, and
especially to Kedir one of my old club students who both translated and
facilitated. Without him I have no doubt
we could not have succeeded.
Now that I am back I have eight
months to get stuff done. I am hoping
that I will be able to get some work done with my bees still, as well as with
the new cooperative group in my town. We
have a training coming up to promote home gardening and we may build onto that
later. And the students will be coming
back to school soon which means I can get back into clubs and things. I have no doubt though that these last eight
months are going to fly by so I have to make the most of them while I can.
While I was in America I was
hearing a lot about how there is potential for a drought to be starting
here. While in some areas it is still
raining a small amount, in most areas there is not enough rain even to grow the
crops. Since Ethiopia is based mainly on
subsistence farming the government is worried for mass food and water
shortages. Hopefully the rains will
start up for real soon, but if not we may be facing serious problems soon. Keep Ethiopia in your thought and for all of
you Floridians, how about sharing a little of that rain with us?
