Friday, April 16, 2010

Our Return to the U.S. was Like Night and Day

This morning we woke up, after a nice and well needed sleep, knowing that we could afford to take a day without doing any work and still have food to eat later. We unpacked our clothes while Linda put the dirty clothes in the washing machine. I walked out to start one of my three cars, while the majority of people in Ethiopia do not even own one car. As we drove to the grocery store, we felt safe on the road knowing that most people obey the signal lights and are defensive drivers. We have fresh, clean drinking water at the turn of a handle and electricity at the flip of a switch. My computers are wirelessly connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As I lay on my couch watching my flat screen television to get the latest news updates from CNN, BBC, and a variety of other news networks, I can not forget how difficult it was to get continuous information of world events during the past 25 days. Unfortunately, for many people living in Ethiopia, these things seem to be a distant dream. While living in Ethiopia, we “struggled” with on and off again "cold" water for bathing and with having to drink bottled water every day. We had days when electricity was powered by a generator and in many cases no generator at all, while the rest of the country had power cuts as the hydroelectric power supply was shut off for whatever reason. Although we enjoyed our short-term mission, it's a blessing to have the conveniences that we have in the United States. Many people don't realize how blessed they really are to have these conveniences until they have spent some time in a country where they are not available to the average person.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

What's for Dinner....Raw Meat!

The Ethiopian people are very friendly and hospitable. In fact, during our time in Ethiopia, every time that we went to a person's home, we were asked to eat--injera. In an effort to turn the tables around, we decided to take two orphaned children that we know and their social worker out to dinner. We thought the two young girls would ask for pizza, chicken, or something other than Ethiopian food, since we were paying the bill. To our surprise, they wanted something even more traditional than injera--Kitfo. What is Kitfo? Raw meat! Yes, Ethiopians are notoriously passionate about raw meat. Kitfo comes minced, like steak, with spiced butter, curd cheese and wedges of false banana. Oh, don't forget the injera; no meal is complete without injera! The two children showed their affection by feeding us some of their injera. Generally, Ethiopians of all ages show their affection for each other by gathering a handful of injera with Kitfo, in this particular case, and putting it in your mouth. This is typical for many Ethiopians to do and is a a display of friendship and being a part of the family.