We're here!

We got in around 9:30 pm on Saturday (11:30 am Oregon time) and were picked up at the airport by Fikre, who runs the guest house we're staying at, and his wife. They took us through the city to the house, which was an interesting experience! It was fairly late so it wasn't as busy as it is during the day but there was plenty of crazy driving and a random flock of goats in the grassy space between lanes, in one of the busier areas. The poverty is heartbreaking - we drove through block after block of areas that would be the poorest of the poor in the US. We know that this is much better than many of the places we will see when we go to the more rural areas, so we are preparing ourselves for that.

 

The power is out right now in this part of the city because this is the "dry season" and they don't have enough water to supply electricity for the city so they rotate power outages. Fikre, however, doesn't let that keep him down and has rigged up his car battery to the computer via a "stablizer" so we have internet!

 

We're thankful to be here and to have a clean room and bed to sleep in, hot water for showers, and breakfast cooked for us. We're taking the day to relax and recover from the trip, as well as see the area a little bit. The Holt Care Center is about a 15 minute walk away and we walked by there today. It hit both of us hard that our little boy is right behind those walls! It's very difficult to be so close and walk away, but we understand the need to respect the schedule that the care center runs on and we'll wait until Friday to see him when the other families in our travel group get here. It's a good thing we're going to travel though, so we don't have to think about it too much!

 

It's a really interesting walk between the guest house and the care center. Lots of people, crazy traffic and smog, stands and shops everywhere you look selling anything you could think of. We went to Kaldi's Coffee, which is pretty much Starbucks (and definitely a western style) and to a local grocery store before heading back to the guest house for lunch.

 

Tomorrow we will go to Bahir Dar, on Lake Tana, and spend the night. We'll spend the next morning there and then drive back that evening. We will try to email when we get back and give an update. It looks like internet won't be too much of a problem here at the guest house, so whenever we're here we'll try to get online. We're off to Durame on Wednesday and Thursday, and then on Thursday night we'll move to the Union hotel and meet the other families in our group.

 

Thank you all for your prayers! We have felt very blessed and protected so far and are really excited to be here!