So… I had this plan to write a blog post every week. Since this is my 3^rd post ever and this my 5^th month here, obviously I’m doing a great job.

But I’m still alive. In fact, now that I think about it, I haven’t been able to keep up with this blog because I was so busy being alive. So much has happened since the last post. Let me try to fill you in…

 

Work has been the usual. The research project is keeping me busy and there have been a couple of weeks when I’m sure I worked over 50 hours. Usually 2 days out of the week I do my data collection rounds, which involve going to the two different health centers and Black Lion Hospital to collect data, replenish supplies, and troubleshoot issues. Most issues are internet related. Some include having to buy women’s underwear, or having to buy construction supplies to build a partition wall. The possibilities are endless!

When I’m not collecting data, I’m entering data. When I’m not entering data, I’m analyzing data. In between all the data related activities, I’m trying to figure out why one (or all) of the devices isn’t working like it should. And when I’m not doing any of the above, I’m in the car with Yonas, trying to get from one place to another, completely at the mercy of the unpredictable beast known as Addis Ababa traffic. And don’t even get me started about all the accounting I have to do… Really, what I’m trying to say is, my work is super exciting.

The truth is… my work isn’t super exciting. And really, that doesn’t have to be the case, unless you work 24/7, in which case that would suck. I think work just has to be challenging enough such that it continues to enrich your life, but simply just a part of it, complemented by all the other experiences you should be getting in areas outside of work. And for the past couple of months since my last blog post, I have been truly blessed with an incredible variety of experiences that have been enriching my life nonstop.

First let me tell you about Shehab and Jake. For the past two months or so, these two guys have been living with me as residents of Morning Coffee Guest House. Shehab (or Shibo), a biomedical engineering student at Georgia Tech, arrived first, joining me as an “intern” on the maternal health project. His trip’s purpose was to help me out with data management and more technically challenging issues with his awesome coding skillz. About a week later, Jake, a UT student from St. Louis, joined Shibo and me. His trip’s purpose was to gain international missions experience by helping out with BoK’s summer ministry activities. Two guys with two completely different reasons for coming, and I’m supposed to be the middle part of the Venn Diagram. How could these two guys ever get along? So I prayed.

Looking back, I guess a better question would be how could these guys not get along? Not saying we all became BFF’s, but with all the time spent arguing about faith and religion, talking about beer and girls, spending a few late nights playing Age of Empires II, camping under the stars and hiking up mountains… I say we came pretty close.

While certainly having Jake and Shibo around made life at Morning Coffee Guest House much more colorful, the several adoptive families, missionaries, and random guests who came and went certainly added some vibrancy to the scene. Though it was brief as most only stayed for one to two weeks at a time, I learned a great deal from the adoptive parents as I hopped on board with them on the logistical and emotional roller coaster that is the adoption process. One time there was a huge group of 30 20-somethings from Athletes in Action, and every breakfast in the jam-packed room I managed to find a seat and hear a different testimony. A few times Mary and Jim, a long-time missionary couple who rented an apartment on the 4^th floor, invited us for dinner, Pictionary, and fellowship with their mixed bag of friends whom they have accumulated throughout the years. More recently, a large team of South Korean volunteers employed at a nutrition company stayed for a weekend and left me with a few Korean words and 2 packs of good quality ramen.

Despite coming from all over the world, the guests of Morning Coffee Guest House have their faith as the common denominator. Everyone came to Ethiopia essentially for the same thing, albeit through different roads. It was indeed very cool to see how God has touched such a wide variety of people, and humbly reassuring that I, too, belonged to this “wide variety of people.” Speaking of God…

 

With Jake and Shibo as social and spiritual support, I was much more encouraged to pursue a church community. In fact, after Jake had only spent a few hours in Ethiopia, I dragged both of them to a small group for young adults at one of the English-speaking churches, the International Evangelical Church (IEC). There were a few farenjis (foreigners) like us, but most of the group can speak English. They also love Jesus, so that’s great. Next thing you know, we’re doing service projects together, attending graduation parties, hiking/getting lost in forests… I’ll never forget the day when we all met as strangers and… met again as friends? I feel like there’s a more eloquent way to end this paragraph. But sometimes, life isn’t always eloquent. Sometimes, you get writer’s block. You get my point!

 

As I enter into new environments and communities with my brotatoes Jake and Shibo, I also sought to integrate them into what I had already known. So, I took them to Amora Gedel, one of my favorite places in the world. Along with Moria, one of my climbing buddies, two other guests (whose name I don’t remember…), we hiked to Amora Gedel, set up our tents and ate dinner while we waited for the moon. Then we did some moonlight climbing, which was pretty epic (and also kind of dangerous… haha).

 

OMG. How long is this blog post??? Anyway…

In my five or so months here, I have been fortunate enough to return to the US twice. I return mainly to renew my 3-month long tourist visa, but I have also been able to time my visits so that I could attend a few weddings and catch up with family and a few old friends. Oddly enough, I think being able to return so frequently has been vital to my acclimatization to Ethiopia – every trip back to the US seems more like a vacation rather than a homecoming, making me miss Ethiopia more.

Maybe it’s because I never do any work when I’m stateside. All I do is socialize and spend all the money I’ve saved on Amazon and REI. But in all seriousness, I am grateful to have been able to attend so many weddings. Number one, I got to see one of my best friends, Cameron, get married and be there as one of his groomsmen; number two, weddings bring so many people together from different parts and stages of life, so I was able to catch up with so many people; and number three, all the free food.

My visits also enabled me to spend some quality time with the family, including kayaking with my dad on the Chattahoochee and riding down the Silver Comet with my sister and some friends. During these moments I began to realize how deeply I missed these two things – there is a certain kind of calm, one which can only be found with every stroke of the paddle and push of the pedal. It’s a calm that’s kinda hard to get here in Ethiopia.

 

Undoubtedly one of the biggest highlights of my US visits was during the second visit in late July, during which I travelled to Washington. Planning and executing a vacation-ception, while awesome and worth it in the end, was a logistical and physical challenge – to cram my Washington State trip in the middle of my US visit, I had to spend a cumulative of almost 24 hours travelling and adjust to three different time zones within a span of 5 days. Also, somewhere in that 5-day span was a wedding (of which I have no photos… sorry Allison!).

But ever since I seriously started considering a career in public health a few years ago, visiting the Evergreen State had been on the bucket list. Not only does it have University of Washington, one of the top ranking public health schools in the world, but it also has the largest percentage of land area covered by national parks than any other state. Okay, I just made that second statistic up (it’s probably Alaska or something), but Washington’s got a few national parks, including ones that have some pretty kickass mountains. And if you know me, you know I love me some mountains.

The main objective of my excursion to the Northwest was to explore the area surrounding the university and assess what living conditions would be like while I would theoretically be in graduate school for two years. So naturally the first thing in my itinerary was to backpack for three days. I wanted to answer a serious question: Could a graduate school really be a good school if it didn’t have kickass mountains nearby?

Since backpacking permits to the nicer places like Mt. Rainier or the Enchantments evaporate into thin air during the summer months, I found and chose a less popular trail called Gothic Basin. This trail, located in the North Cascades and about two and half hours away from downtown Seattle, featured a difficult ascent through forest and rock leading to a basin with alpine lakes and exposed peaks. The solo backpacking trip, though brutally exhausting, was extremely refreshing. Being alone for three days, surrounded by nothing else but creation, allowed my mind to wander and reflect. I felt both a sense of belonging and a feeling of foreignness in this beautiful place. Can humanity be in harmony with nature, if it continues to pursue its own nature?

I want to write about how much awesome this trip was, but this post is already too long. So, I must be concise – and what better way to be concise than with pictures, because, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or how about a gallery?

Once the mountains answered my questions (yes, they were close enough and they were pretty kickass), I journeyed back into civilization towards Seattle. There, I went on an informal tour of the UW campus and its surrounding areas, and even snuck in the School of Public Health administration offices. Being in this environment spurred some thoughts of not only about the future, but also the past – my first time on US soil was actually in this very city, almost two decades ago, when we visited my dad who was at the time doing an informatics fellowship at UW. Finally, the last couple of hours prior to my 11am flight was spent with some local friends who graciously accepted to eat dinner, house me for the night, and have breakfast with me – all on incredibly short notice. I guess I could live here.

After my Washington trip, I wrapped up my second US visit with yet another wedding followed by a North Georgia camping trip with a few of my best bros. Not as visually spectacular as the Cascades, but the company more than made up for it!

 

Now I am back in Addis Ababa. I will be on this side of the pond until I return for the holidays. At some point, I’m supposed to leave the country for visa renewal and people are saying Kenya or Europe are some great short trip options that won’t break the bank.

More adventures here, unfortunately, means less adventures back in the US. I am sad that I will miss a few major events, including a dear friend’s wedding in September, my second niece being born in October, a few birthdays here and there, and probably a couple of REI garage sales.

I continue with my maternal health project and we are just over halfway through the study, with recruitment of our participants scheduled to finish by October. I’ve hopped on a few more projects, however, that should keep me busy most likely until next March. In between now and then, I hope to learn more Amharic, deepen my relationships, and travel outside the city more. Hopefully I will go into more detail on all those things by writing a few more blog posts, but we’ll see how that goes…

 

Wow. This post was long. Thanks for reading!