April 10, 2009

Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, could be any big city in Africa. Crazy driving and chaos. Not much green here. It’s dry. Dusty. Poor. The first night, my teammates dropped me off at the guesthouse and told me – You’re in the Mexico district. I’m in Mexico, in Ethiopia. I find this sort of funny. My first morning, I awoke at 5 a.m. to a two-hour call to prayer blasting outside my window. It sounded something like this: Aahhhh baaaa daaahhhh, dob-a-duh, hmmmmmmm….. (and then repeat, maybe faster or slower) Abada-dobada-hmmmmm…..Abada-dobada-hmmm… you get the point. You want to laugh, but you also want to sledge hammer their megaphone.

The whole of Addis appears to be one large slum; although all of the roads in, out, around, and through it, are freshly paved by the Chinese. Apparently, China and Ethiopia have made some kind of deal – paved roads for oil. I’ve never seen a better paved African city. The Ethiopians say “the Chinese” with a certain amount of disdain. So far, I’m not very fond of Ethiopia. It makes me miss Kenya.

OCD
What’s life been like here? Shaking hands with lepers, bugs crawling in my shirt while trying to eat slum water injera and wot, hugging lice-infested children, standing near piles of feces inside this woman’s compound, babies with no diapers on peeing and pooping wherever – listening to my teammate, Summer, telling a story about God to the little children – I am totally distracted by what I am sure is an impending Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for which I will have to be professionally treated. I came home and took a thorough shower and quarantined all my clothes in plastic until they could be washed.

oxygen bar
If I had wanted a Michael Jackson mask in Kenya, then I’d like an oxygen bar in Ethiopia. Would love a “shot” of pure O2 in these lungs right about now.

death by coffee
Ethiopians serve tiny cups of thick, dark brown syrup and call it coffee. If they follow tradition, they’ll serve you one delicate tea cup at a time. One cup equivalent of a triple espresso. Once you’ve downed the first cup, they’ll serve you a second. This cup a little less strong. At that point, your hands and forehead are beginning to sweat. Is it the heat? The caffeine? You may begin to feel a bit shaky, like an addict. Once you’ve downed the second cup, the third and final cup arrive and you’re on your way to a quick coronary. For the remainder of the day, the smell of coffee will seep from your pores, reminding you that you are in the birthplace of the coffee bean, lest you forget it.

beggars
Sitting in a taxi – a tiny blue and white tin can fit for Fred Flintstone – the seat folds in on me if I lean too far forward. No seatbelts. No door handles. The smell of gasoline permeating the seats producing nausea. An old beggar beats on my closed window pointing to his blind eyes with his stubby hand. This is constant and continuous – beggars. They see me and come hobbling or wobbling over. Some have no voices, some have no fingers, some have no hope. None have much money.

i feel bad for the beggars, but
i must confess: i have begun to ignore
them now or to just say no to their
“Miss, hello, miss, miss…”
my internal eyes rolling to
the other calls, too –
“I love you, I love you, I love you…”
“Marry me, marry me, marry me…”
“You, you, fernje (foreigner)… ”

beggars beg
and have in mind
the hand out they want:
beggars are chooser here.

beggars refuse meal
tickets to salvation
preferring an Ethiopian
birr for a bottle of
booze to hide inside –
puppies in trash bins
old men sidewalk sleeping
clubbed feet turning green
and he doesn’t look real -
is that a person? is that
a person? is that – ?

i want to kick
him – to kick something –
to awaken from this
nightmare – it isn’t fair –
and i’m not even living
it, just passing through, not stuck
here like they are, stuck.

Daily, beggars gather outside the golden, pristine gates of the orthodox church, waiting for mercy. It makes me think of the beggar at the Temple Gate called Beautiful in the first century A.D. He cried out to Jesus’ friends for money and they told him:

“‘Silver or gold I don’t have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ Taking the beggar by the right hand, Peter helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk…

When all the people saw the beggar walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.” (Acts 3: 6-10)

I serve a God who doesn’t roll His internal eyes (like me), but instead, looks beggars in the eye and takes them by the hand and heals them. I love this.

by His wounds we are healed

“Jesus was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him,
and by His wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

‘Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.’” Revelation 7:9-10