Kololo...The First Glance

Lt. Dan (Our trusty Guard Dog) and a mountain panoramic

My first day in Kololo was great. In short, I met the work crew: Cien's top 20 workers that he weeded from a pool of about 50 people who he began the project with. I met the kids. I got a tour of the school build site. I had some local food. I slept in a mud hut. I got to bathe in a pool just above a waterfall, after a 30 minute hike up a mountainside.

When we arrived, Cien let me know about a few things: 

1. There are hyenas in them there hills! The locals call them "jib" and they are massive beasts with one of the strongest jaws in the mammalian kingdom. They sleep in holes during the day near the top of the mountain, and come out after dark to feed. 
2. There are leopards in them there hills! They live in caves along the side and bottom of the mountain.
3. There is no shower. Or sink. Or running water for that matter. Or wired electricity. Or a stove. Or a non-dirt floor. Or meat to eat. Or other people fluent in English. Or candy. Or local store. Or people who have seen an African American. Or bathroom that doesnt consist of an assortment of heavy sticks strewn across a hole 10 feet deep that you have to balance on while hiding behind other sticks and leaves without falling through into a slippery and utterly disgusting demise. Or toilet paper. But we did have two solar batteries that could power our cell phones, and two lights. Not bad, eh?
4. People will stare. I am tall for this place. And Cien is white. Together we will be known as "TV" or "The Polar Bears"....TV since people have nothing else to watch, and "foringies" are curious creatures to watch, and The Polar Bears since people have nothing else to watch, and "foringies" are curious creatures. 
5. Don't give away money. And Cien no longer helps people publicly. Apparently he is known as "the magical white man" because he helped send a kid with a chronic illness to the hospital, and the kid was healed...."magically." He then was flooded with dozens of people walking hours to find him in search of a cure/treatment/Jesus or Midas touch. he advised them to spend the nickel on worm medicine and to wash their bodies regularly....to which many people laughed. He remains "the magical white man."
6. Tinish Tinish (slow slow, in Amharic): your body, your spirit, and your health will all suffer if you try to do too much too soon. Whether that is hauling rocks, eating avocados, or running up a hill....Africa will always win. 

Lieutenant Dan (Beige) and Flea Bite (Black Dog)
await our breakfast scraps!

After my pep talk, we began my first day of work. The villagers greeted me enthusiastically at the worksite. Everyone was all smiles and "Salomno!" (Hello! in Amharic) for hours, then Cien "da Boss" showed up. Cien don't take no guff, and he don't take no lazin' on the job neither! He runs a tight ship, and things get done efficiently when he oversees them. We found upon our arrival that some major decisions had been changed that he had explicitly requested not to change while he was gone, so he spent the first day asssessing the damage and fixing it. 

View of the waterfall where we
found our makeshift bathtub

The job he does here in Kololo, and other rural areas across Ethiopia, is tough. He builds schools. That's fine in America, but try getting raw materials, creating employment contracts, negotiating fair prices, and developing leadership in places where they have traditions and customs that have been ongoing for decades, if not centuries, do not speak English, and have very little in common with Americans in ....yea. Tough. Kololo reminds me so much of North Lawndale. Cien's first hill to climb was the design of the 3 buildings. he went around to various huts, homes, and businesses looking at their construction and taking notes. He then took the best of what he found and added in his own extensive experience in construction as a contractor in America. He designed what now looks to be the sturdiest building in the region. Nobody was on board. They all told him it was wrong, and his dimensions were off, etc. But he went on anyway. Well, by the time Iarrived, it was 4 months intot he project, and it was only about 6 weeks from completion. When people SAW the design off paper, and rising up along the mountainside, they all agreed it was a fine building. It will last for at least 15 years, as opposed to the traditional 5 for most buildings built there. He cuts no corners, and accepts nothing less than perfection. I was amazed at his aesthetic detail, as most people who build things that I have met just want the damn thing up...caring less about exact symmetry and "the look of it all." Function over form, as they say. Well this school not only is sturdy, it is also pretty! 

Lt. Dan and Flea Bite, looking Magestically vigilant
as he guards us from the....fleas....that he cant guard
from himself

It reminded me of the importance of visions in visionary people. Everyone cannot see what you see, but that doesn't mean you should stop pursuing your goal. Seeing is believing for most people. Odd how many parallels this has to my own life and struggles in low income community development, my faith, and my trust in people. In some ways, I guess I am a visionary leader, but in many others, I am the doubtful follower.

As the good book says, "Know thyself." This journey is an attempt at that, and it is coming along nicely.

Addis Ababa and the Jungle...Uhhh...This is Different

Cien and his Seratana in our new house in Jan Meda. That bag on the left is my Platypus Water Filter...an absolute necessity for visitors with persnickety stomachs. 

I'm a pretty particular guy. And by particular, I mean an admittedly fastidious and possibly overbearing taskmaster of all things organizational and/or system-related. Ethiopia....is not. You get in where you can here. First day in, and I learned that quickly. If you like steak cooked a certain way, this is not the place for you. If you like people to use turn signals...this is not the place for you. If you think that you should be able to order a cup of coffee without a hair in it, and report it to the manager and receive some sort of justice....yea........this may not be the place for you. In Ethiopia, you get what you're given...especially if you don't speak the language....and look like you can afford to buy more of what you've already bought once and expected to work.

Aside from this caveat emptor, feel free to visit! There are so many wonderful things about this city. From the fruit and veggie stands on EVERY CORNER, the uhmaaaazing coffee at nearly every restaurant, to the posh hotels that offer free wi-fi (where I conveniently go to update my blog!)...Addis has a little bit for everybody.

Cien eating a dessert we mooched on the rooftop deck we couldn't afford to swim in

Alas, I was only to be in Addis Ababa for 3 days. I arrived on a Saturday night, and left back out on Wednesday morning to catch several buses over the span of 14 hours. While I was in the city, I got to meet our Seratana, go to a few restaurants, get a verbal tour of the city, checked out the Tesfa Office and met some of the staff like Mena and Galilah, and even hung out on a rooftop pool at a swank hotel mooching off of the food at a private party Cien and I crashed our last day in the city. The food wasn't that great, but beggars cant be choosers!

Cien and Tananaya, our Seratana

Dinner, Day 1: Two bags of Ramen Noodles and a piece of bread :)

Cien and I left for Kololo, a small village in the Kambata region of Ethiopia just south of Addis, early Wednesday morning to get a set on the first bus. If you have never been to an African bus yard, you need not rush. It is quite an experience. Imagine 2000 people clamoring for several seats, hundreds of young boys or teens scurrying about trying to match up people with the buses headed to their destination (and earning a Birr or two in the process), random people just looking angrily at you, 50 large buses with 60 seats and 120 passengers in them, and several minibuses crammed with tired looking people and decked out with luggage on the roof of the vehicle. Yea.

Our journey was somehow miraculous, although unbeknownst to me. It apparently is customary to have significant lag times between buses, as well as to be on the bus with about 3 people per seat. We waited for VERY little time, and aside from being stranded in Hidero and having to pay a guy with a pickup truck 300 Birr to drive us the 15 minutes to Kololo, traveling was as smooth as eggs! Cien has often told me since that I am magic. Every trip we have taken has been extremely smooth and easy....apparently he has lived here for two years suffering things I have yet to see from Ethiopian transportation! Cien warned me to wear my shiny new raincoat on the bus and to bring headphones. A raincoat because people here in Ethiopia are not used to traveling in cars and get motion sickness...leading to massive amounts of vomit; and headphones to drown out the many sounds of Amharic radio music and people yelling to each other. No vomit, and the headphones kept me occupied for hours as I listened to Chris Tomlin's new album and Jack Johnson watching the countryside. I should have brought a small pillow for my butt. The roads here are in terrible condition and 14 hours of bump-bump-bump is tough on a skinny man. We went from Addis to Hosaena, to Hidero, to Kololo...a tiny little mountain village set up in a jungle area. It's a 30-45 min walk to any town with a market, and has quite a few hyenas, but it was to be my home for several weeks.

From Left: Ichigu, Andiso (Village Minister), Andiso's children, Sallomnesh, and Shoa

Several bus yards, and a few hundred miles later, we arrived in Kololo to meet Ichigu, Andiso and Sallomnesh. Ichigu is Cien's partner in crime and fellow Program staff for Tesfa (the NGO I came to Ethiopia to work with).  Andiso is the local minister, chicken wrangler, mud layer, wise words sayer, late night hyena fighter, and the man who gave us him own home to live in while Cien and Ichigu oversaw the building of the primary school in his village. Sallomnesh is our Seratana. A Seratana (pronounced like Sarah-Tahn-ya) is a general cook/handy person that most middle class+ households keep around to handle the day-to-day operations of the house. We have a Seratana back in our home in Addis as well, and she comes in at 7am each day to fix our food for the day. As we were in a mud hut on loan from the local village minister, this meant that she would be making sure we got our 3 meals of local fruits and veggies, as well as kinda kept the place clean.

As far as cleanliness goes...I'll get to that in a later post. It deserves its own post.

Cien's bed in Kololo

But as for this gent, he was happily settled in, nestled under his mosquito net in his little cot. It was simple, and I was happy to have a place to rest my head...even if the sheets did smell like puppies.

Tomorrow was to be my first full day of jungle living! The adventure begins!