Link Ethiopia... an Unashamed Advertisement

To a boy who shines shoes, everyone’s feet look dull. When I asked Getenet, our guide in the Simians, what he thought was the most important aspect contributing to Ethiopia’s progress, he declared it was expanding tourism. When I asked Ben, a diplomat we met from the UK embassy, he suggested it was to liberalize market systems and open the country to free trade. Belayneh, the director of the charity I worked for in Gondar, and perhaps the local with which I formed the closest friendship, firmly believes that Ethiopia’s progress is married to its education system. 

Maybe it’s because I’m the son of a teacher, but I tend to lean towards education as perhaps being the most fundamental, and I’m truly grateful for the time I spent with Link Ethiopia and learning about the school system here. While I doubt that shiny shoes will contribute very much to this country’s undeniable direction towards progress and development, I believe that all of these angles hold some truth. The human potential in Ethiopia is its most valuable asset, in my opinion, and Link Ethiopia is providing a foundation for people to stand on and stretch their minds into the developing world.  

Link Ethiopia is a UK-based charity with offices in London and Gondar. The idea was forged 15 years ago when Chris, its founder, visited Ethiopia and decided to connect a local school in Gondar with a sponsoring school from his home in England. Today there are over 60 schools in Ethiopia linked to over 80 schools in the UK, and now the US as well. The anatomy of Link Ethiopia’s connections are composed in four parts. First, students at both schools are shepherded by their teachers into a relationship as pen-pals. Children exchange letters and photographs, providing an opportunity to practice writing skills in both schools, establishing a rich cultural exchange between dramatically different countries, and cultivating honest friendships between young people born into worlds divided by more than distance.

Once connected, the second aspect of the Link program comes in the form of development projects for the schools in Ethiopia. Again, teachers and Link Coordinators engage children from both schools in a discussion about what is most needed, and together they work towards that goal. Projects here start at the most basic of levels; providing clean water, adequate toilets, classrooms, chairs and desks. It’s humbling to realize that before books and pencils, these are the resources needed to provide an education. There is meaningful debate in our own country over how to run our schools, and how to keep our classrooms from becoming overcrowded, for example. We never choose between clean water and toilets. And I’ve always taken for granted from the outset of this discussion that the classroom itself existed.

Link Ethiopia offers two more connections to its schools that take on a form similar to many charitable organizations. Individual children can be sponsored for a rather modest monthly contribution that provides assistance with the very basic needs of food, clothing, and school materials. ‘Link‘ establishes the relationship to the child, and ensures that the money is finding its intention, most importantly, that the child remains in school. Finally, there is a conduit for contribution from people like me through a volunteer program. Most people signing up to work with Link Ethiopia do so for three to six months. People come from all over the world, mainly to teach English, although in some of the more developed schools, there are opportunities to teach computer skills and even to coach football (soccer to all you Americans).

The office in Gondar is anchored by Belayneh Shawaye, the director. He is assisted by two full-time staff members, Mulugeta and Elsa; both bright, charming, and dedicated professionals. The three of them work tirelessly to coordinate with local schools and their sponsors, oversee development projects, and support the revolving team of volunteers both in living and working in Ethiopia. They are kind and welcoming, true believers in the cause of the organization, and radiant with gratitude for the contributions by so many foreigners to their own country and its schools. 

When I arrived in late January, the cadre of volunteers consisted of seven other people: Caspar and Bridget, an enthusiastic middle-aged couple from Holland; a sharp and friendly Kiwi gal named Alex who is living in Gondar for a year with her husband, a pediatrician working at the hospital; a world-traveler named Jannhan from the US; Paula, a very keen and deeply caring woman from the UK teaching children how to sew; and another bright and cheery Brit named Alan who was passing through to teach for a few weeks on his fifth visit to Ethiopia. As I only had three weeks myself, Belayneh, the Ethiopian director of the charity, and I, decided that I could be most effective by taking a look at the computers in the office and at a couple of the schools.

There are clearly many challenges in Ethiopia. Most of us in the US and UK may continue to harbor images from the famine in the 80’s of a country on its knees. I personally remember helpless children with distended bellies wiping flies out of their eyes, and a UNICEF box showing up at the dinner table every holiday season gently asking for spare change. But this is not the country Heidi and I have come to know. There is a vivacious, friendly, and hopeful spirit here that is just beginning to find some traction, and famine is a distant, if painful, memory. 

While a more transparent democracy, free trade, expanded tourism, and even shinier shoes are all aspects of this country’s inevitable development, education remains the bedrock. Link Ethiopia is clearly an organization more interested in providing protein than sugar to a country that still needs sustenance. They are investing in Ethiopia at a generational scale through education, and I believe they are making progress. 

For more information on Link Ethiopia, its school sponsorship and volunteer programs, please visit their website: www.linkethiopia.org

Gondar Hospital

Caring for the health of strangers is a discussion most of us engage only from a perspective of public policy. The health care reform that was passed last year in the United States inflamed the passions of almost anyone who was paying attention. Working professionals in the field like Heidi and her friends in residency at OHSU, or the nurses and paramedics I am honored to fly with, know the question from a much more intimate place. They approach every ailing stranger with a determination to affect a positive outcome, and they must temper the feeling with a sense of what is possible.

Science and medical technology, and some might even say fate, draw the ultimate line of how positive the outcome can be. But along the gradient of what is possible, the resources available to a people, and the policies that systematically distribute those resources to a community, provide limits of medical possibility that fall well short of the ultimate line. Doctors like Heidi bare witness to this disparity every day of their professional lives, and must reconcile the feeling as human beings. And the rift becomes much larger in a developing economy like Ethiopia.

     

I only managed to visit Heidi once at the hospital over these past weeks. At lunch, I went to the piazza to hale a bajaj, a ubiquitous taxi-like pod built on a motorcycle chassis that travelers the world-over often refer to as a “tuk-tuk”. On this day I opted to simply hop in and declare my destination, armed with the rare knowledge of the unwritten market price for the trip to the hospital, and therefore able to avoid the negotiations that inevitably leave a foreigner paying more than what is fair. The ride took me five minutes out of town through winding, paved streets lined with leaning tin structures, eucalyptus trees, and streams of tangled people weaving random, individual lives into the same tough fabric.

I arrived at the front gate of the hospital campus, paid the bajaj driver the two birr ($0.12) for the 3km ride, and thanked him in Amharic with a grateful and reciprocated smile. The entrance to the hospital is a node of simultaneous stillness and turbulence. Crowds of people clot together outside waiting for perhaps a bus or bajaj, or maybe just to watch the time pass by in the heat of the day, while others pulse in and out of the small valve that is both entry and exit. They come and they leave with the same hope... that someone knows their pain, and that something can cure it.

Ethiopian medicine provides very limited answers to this question. The hospital in Gondar was built years ago with an intended service area of under 300,000 people. Today, it serves a catchment of over two million. Lab testing capabilities, a fundamental diagnostic tool to western doctors, are prohibitively expensive and often unavailable. And the pharmacy carries only a basic bench stock of medications of questionable quality. Doctors here rely heavily on the physical exam to learn what ails their patients, knowing intimately the shape and texture of a pulse and the sound of the heart. To touch the patient like this rather than subject her to a sterile series of lab tests and technical analysis is perhaps a positive on a deeply human level, but as medical science goes, doctors here are dealing with a very limited data set. 

Heidi met me inside the gate on the main street of the sprawling hospital campus. The street was lined with single-story, cinderblock enclosures that served as the various departments of the hospital. There was the emergency room, windows agape, allowing an easy view of the patients from the outside. Some lay on crowded beds, while many more spilled into other pockets of the open bay, laying on the floor or sitting against a wall. Heidi walked me through the campus pointing out similar scenes in identical buildings labeled by different names; in-patient wards, surgery, pediatrics, and the rather ominous multi-drug resistant tuberculosis ward.

It’s difficult to avoid sounding melodramatic when describing this scene. Infectious disease, no doubt, is well incubated and easily spread by the hygienic conditions of not only the hospital, but the country as a whole. As a doctor, Heidi says it has been an excellent learning experience to work in Gondar over these past weeks. Simply put, she has seen diseases and ailments come into this hospital that either don’t exist in Portland, or have been well managed in the population with preventative medicine and vaccination. On a scientific level, it has been good to expand her knowledge in this way. 

This journey, however, has not been exclusively about the pursuit of science. Living here for almost a month now, and knowing people that we will count as friends after we leave, Ethiopia has become an extension of our own, global community. The line of medical possibility here has been drawn well short of what we’ve known in our own country by circumstances that extend far beyond the gates of the hospital. To know the depths of such a rift inspires a deeper struggle with human empathy than we knew before embracing this larger community. It also inspires respect and humility for the amazing good fortune of our own circumstances, and instills a desire to continue to close these rifts.    

Cairo... A Moving Title

When I was younger, history seemed like an ocean of meaning whose
waves had already reached the shore. I would read about Lewis and
Clarke charting a new world, the Wrights taking flight for the first
time at Kitty Hawk, or Martin Luther King standing standing on the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial singing truth, and I'd wonder if maybe I
had been born into a time that had already been settled. The apparent
stillness made me restless, so I put my own small self in motion,
hoping to one day feel another wave of history swell with meaning, and
move me beyond the shores of my limited imagination. I feel that
motion today.


Two weeks ago, Heidi and I, along with our friend Zak, were invited to
the home of Belayneh Shewaye, the wise and esteemed director of the
charity for which I have been working, 'Link Ethiopia'. Belayneh is in
his sixties, and has dedicated his entire professional life to
education in Ethiopia. Hallie Selassie himself, the famed emperor of
the country, handed Belayneh his teaching certificate personally when
he became a teacher in the early sixties. He served for five years as
an educator in Eritrea before returning to teach in his home town of
Gondar, and rising to become the head administrator of the region's
school system before his retirement. A buoyant man with a strong keel
and a steady rudder, he has known many waves in history, and always
charted a course towards the noble progress of educating the next
generation.

The meal was intimate and satisfiying, the kind of thing you hope for
when traveling. We began with glasses of tej, a traditional Ethiopian
wine made from honey. Conversation was stirred early by the many
beautiful photographs, almost exclusively of a proud family, that
adorned the living room in which we gathered. We shared a large common
plate of injera, the thin Ethiopian bread that serves as the palate
for most meals. Belayneh's two daughters graciously served us one
rich and colorful dish after another, and Belayneh affectionately
hand-fed them with delicate fingers as they moved in and out of the
room, another cultural nuance, because they wouldn't dream of sitting
before the guests were satisfied. The meal was finished with more
tej, some tele, a local dark and malty beer, and a traditional coffee
ceremony, whereupon fresh beans are roasted over hot coals in the
room, steeping guests in a delicious olfactory patina before three
rounds of the hot and fresh beverage are served.


After dinner, Belayneh turned on the TV to watch the evening news.
When I asked how we were able to catch the BBC, he grinned with
satisfaction and bragged about the satellite dish that they had
recently purchased. My impression is that information architecture in
Africa is spreading faster than clean water and electricity. Perhaps
this is part of the alchemy that has lead to the dismantling of the
old guard in Tunisia, and now Egypt.


The BBC anchor glowed on the screen with familiar cordiality, but
noticable excitment. There was gravity in his voice when he handed
off to a correspondent in Tahrir Square. It was the first time we had
seen that the streets of Cairo had become saturated with people who
felt the motion of history lifting them up to be heard. The three of
us Americans, half a world removed from our own relatively still
waters at home, huddled closely together around the pulsing news, and
shared a fascination with events that felt very close. There was an
exciting uncertainty for us held in a bold and hopeful progress. We
wondered what our president would say about it, and earnestly
exchanged our own nacent, and rather under-educated opinions.
Belayneh watched soberly, almost with apathy, as another African
neighbor was stirred by a familiar wave of change.


This morning, the people of Egypt woke into a new world. A wave of
democracy, of history, has again reached its destination, carrying
with it the lives of so many individuals who, like me, have yearned to
be moved by history. Heidi and I woke with them as neighbors and
allies, today finding ourselves serendipitously in a similar time and
place... such a gentle joy to feel their motion!

Living in Gondar

Ethiopia stands out on the African continent for having never been successfully colonized by Europe, save for a brief period of occupation from 1936 to 1941 by the Italians. Dozens of cafes around Gondar’s central ‘piazza‘ sing notes of Italian culture through espresso drinks, pasta, and pizza. The urban fabric is woven from mud-huts and thatched roofs, colorful Italianate stucco, and modern glass and steel structures blossoming under gnarled wood scaffolding. Amharic is the primary spoken language, while ‘Ciao!‘ remains the single word to tell a friend goodbye, and ‘Hello’ is becoming a universal greeting as a gathering tide of tourism begins to rise in this ancient land. The residue of the brief Italian occupation seems sapped of any cynicism it may have once had, and "ferangie" (foreigner) is a friendly word to Ethiopians. 

The sun rises and sets very close to six o’clock every day because we are so close to the equator. Ethiopians employ a strikingly logical time system, completely different from our own. The 'zero hour' occurs near sunrise at our 6am, and counts forward from then. 7am becomes one o'clock, noon becomes six o'clock, and so on. Most locals do us the courtesy of conversion, but more than once, clarification has been required over friendly chuckles. In keeping with the theme, the calendar diverges as well. Their's is a version of the Coptic calendar, encompassing 12 months of 30 days, a shorter 13th month, and a leap year in every four. Today in Ethiopia, therefore, is February 2nd, 2003. Heidi and I are certainly feeling younger!

For almost two weeks now, we have been rising with the light, moving through our work days under endless blue skies, and settling in for gentle and cool evenings of food and drink with new friends. We have been living in a small room at a charming hotel called ‘The Belegez Pension’ for only $10/night. There is a bathroom with a curtainless shower that manages to also soak the sink and toilet while we wash, and even boasts to have hot water on most days! Our room opens onto a small, protected courtyard that serves as a nexus of fellow travelers and joyful intersections. As we stand still here in Gondar, it seems, the world has come to us, and the ‘Belegez’ has become a familial neighborhood of ever-changing faces, accents, and communion.

A few of our neighbors: 

Zak is a third-year resident at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was finishing his final week at the hospital when Heidi was starting her first. Bright, friendly, and clearly passionate about medicine, he was an almost constant companion to us both from the beginning of our stay, and a wonderful ambassador to Gondar, the ‘Belegez’, and the hospital. We hope to see him again in the Pacific Northwest, and wish him the best of luck as he becomes one of the chief residents at UW next year.

Robin and Suzanne are an affable and adventurous couple from Bristol, England who were traveling through Gondar on their way to the Simiens. Suzanne most recently spent six months volunteering in India working on educational projects, and Robin sneaks away from his job at Microsoft whenever possible to see even more of the world than they both already have. Fascinating minds and fantastic conversationalists, they were wonderful companions for a handful of days, and we look forward to knowing them again in other ports.

By chance, their arrival was timed with that of Russ, another Brit from Dorset. Russ is a “semi-retired” electrical engineer who radiates warmth and kindness, and possesses a seemingly unquenched thirst to know the world on a personal level. On his last adventure, he worked as a volunteer with a charity in Zambia that provides bicycles to locals and teaches them how to maintain them. We met him when he arrived in our pleasant court yard after a long day of traveling by himself on a bus from Addis Ababa. He has since been making short trips out of Gondar, and he and I have formed an unofficial “ferangie breakfast club” that I look forward to on most days. 

And there are so many more... We have met dozens of other travelers, and formed growing bonds with a handful of locals outside the permeable walls of the small, eclectic, and ever-changing neighborhood that is the ‘Belegez’. Every evening, wherever we come from, a group of us; tourists, volunteers, and locals, gather around a common table to eat, drink, and to truly be merry. There is a vibrant exchange of ideas and experiences formed in the shape of the many places we have all seen at times before this one. And always, there is the joy of sharing a new moment together, a story freshly composed that will possibly be told at another table in another time and place. This is why I love to travel. 

Tourism here is more than a promising stream of revenue to an expanding, but still rather anemic, economy. Ethiopia is a place carved almost entirely by her own hand. Today, she opens her arms to welcome others to know her beauty. We, as travelers, accept the invitation and enter into a peaceful exchange of not only money for goods and services, but of language, kinship, and shared, smiling experience.  

‘Loaves and Fish’, A Walk Through The Simien Mountains

“If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day... If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” 

This Chinese proverb is commonly used in our culture today. The Ethiopian corollary replaces fishing with 'baking a loaf of bread', a version that seems natural for a landlocked countryside sewn in wheat and barley, I suppose. Regardless of its origins, finding ways to “teach” rather than to simply “give” has been challenging me since we arrived in Ethiopia a week ago. 

We woke early on Friday morning to make the three-hour drive across 100km of winding dirt roads from Gondar to Debark, a town of over 50,000 people that serves as the gateway to the Simien Mountains (for those keeping score on my spelling, all Amharic words are offered phonetically, and I have seen both ‘Simian’ and ‘Simien’ in various presentations, as well as ‘Gondar’ and ‘Gonder’). The Ethiopian government not only requires a permit to enter the park, but to hire an armed scout as well. On the advice of our ‘Lonely Planet’ guidebook and previous trekkers, we opted to hire a mountain guide, a cook, and a mule to carry most of the provisions. All told, there were five locals indulging our endeavor to explore this spectacular national park and UNESCO world heritage site over a period of four days and three nights... a luxury that, at first, seemed reminiscent of colonials from a previous era, and made us feel a little uncomfortable.

Next to the road at the trailhead, there was a small group of children from the nearby village who were selling hand-made crafts. Their marketing skills were well-honed to “ferangies”, the word for foreigners in Amharic, and we were introduced to a theme of charming salesmanship and outright begging that would weave through the entire trip. Although we were not interested in buying anything, I asked Getenet Akalu, our veteran guide of over 30 years, if it was okay to offer the children a small fee to take their picture, a suggestion from our guidebook. His answer was kind and gentle, but emphatically ‘no’.

Getenet led Heidi and I down the trail with Fente, our scout, walking close behind; an old, bolt-action rifle slung casually over his shoulder. The three-hour hike rambled and twisted along the rim of a 1000m drop opening onto a beautiful, yawning expanse that reminded us of the Grand Canyon. We snapped countless pictures, including an impromptu shoot with a troop of “Geladas”, endemic baboons to the Simien highlands seemingly designed by the Ministry of Tourism for anthropomorphic cuteness... the ‘Geico Gecco’ has nothing on these guys!

That evening we were treated to the first culinary delights of our cook, Abi, at a camp called ‘Sankaber’ near 3200m. A warm, hearty vegetable soup was followed by a platter of traditional Ethiopian vegetable dishes and an excellent Italian penne. Our new friends from Spain, Rosa and Daniel, had also hired a guide and cook and had intimated a similar discomfort with the decadence of it all. But we were all consoled somewhat when we saw how the camp cooks formed a harmonious common kitchen and seemed to take honest joy in their craft. Plus, the food was as good, if not better, than anything we had eaten in a restaurant!

Getenet ate with us, as he would every meal, sharing stories and answering my endlessly curious questions about the language and the region with grace. He is a humble man with deep inner strength and transparent sincerity. A father of seven children of his own, and four orphans whose parents have died of AIDS, Getenet has dedicated himself to sending every one of them through school past the secondary level, and has succeeded thus far in doing so. If that wasn’t enough, he also runs a kindergarten in Debark, and I almost never saw him miss a chance to talk to a child along the trail, investing even the smallest moments to educate the next generation of his beloved country. His optimism about Ethiopia was contagious, and he helped us to see that we as tourists were in fact participating in its promise by introducing a relatively new and expanding revenue stream that touches many people’s lives. 

On the second day we hiked up to a camp at 3600m just above a village called Gich (pronounced “geech”). Getenet led us through over 20km of what is best described as scraped earth; terraced fields of recently harvested barley and wheat claiming every arable inch of the mountain landscape, and untouched by a serious rain since September. The dust was actually choking at times. 

We stopped for lunch at a river crossing in the audience of another small group of children who were herding a flock of sheep through the valley. After we politely refused their begging requests for food and money, one of them started saying, “Photo? Photo?” to us in earnest. I snapped a few pictures and gathered them around to show them the LCD screen which was received with excitement and giggles. But when we went to leave, their disappointment was weightier than previous encounters with begging children, and Getenet explained that they had thought we’d agreed to pay them before we took the picture, and therefore felt cheated. 

Perplexed, I opened the conversation again about what was the right thing to do in this situation. He explained in his calm and wise way that while it is important to teach them not to expect money for the common kinsmanship of taking a photo, it is also not fair to take a photo if being paid is what they expect. Feeling like Luke Skywalker training with Yoda in the Dagobah System now, I continued to press him for clarity. This is when I learned that the Ethiopian version of the saying is to “teach a man to bake a loaf”. To say Getenet lives by this notion is an understatement. It is more than a belief to him... it is who he is. 

By the time we reached Gich, a mud-hut village of some 300 households more than 30km from the closest road and 3km from the only water source, I was ready to try a new approach. When an adorable child approached us carrying a lamb in his arms, I motioned a request to take a picture. He replied promptly in excitement, “One bihr?” (roughly $0.06). I replied sadly, “No, thank you.” And we continued our walk through the dust to our camp ground. 

First Pics

Hello!

Heidi and I have returned from the Simians and are settling in for
three weeks of work in Gondar. While gmail and facebook seem well
connected over the trickle of Internet available to us, I have been
unable to access the blog directly. I hope that emailing these posts
is working. Cheers!

Frankfurt... ehem... Gondar

I started my last blog post in Frankfurt airport over 48-hours ago. It has been truly a thrill to experience a connected world by airplane, online ticketing systems, and even the occasional facebook update through our tiny phones. These massive distances; oceans, desserts, and mountains once represented the very edge of people's imaginations. Today, we are limited only by our circumstances... and I feel humbled by the amazing good fortune of being able to physically connect with this new place. Ethiopia... Africa!!

Heidi and I are sitting in a cafe in downtown Gondar after a long sleep that feels as though it has aligned us with the rhythm of a place that lives eleven hours ahead. Sleep and food; the first, the basic waves that we capture as we move into this new place. The human connections, of course, have started to touch us... people are kind and open and gentle... smiles are sincere and present at every encounter. But it will take more time to feel in human rhythm, I suspect. We are still so foreign and new, something we display beyond the image of our Keen sandals and iPhone cameras. We are learning to return the sincerity... a smile without awe or curiosity. Such joy to learn these rhythms... the traveler's dance!

We are trickling out these communiques over what seems an almost miraculous wi-fi connection in the center of town... the roads are shared by cars, trucks, 'tuk-tuks', people, and livestock. The electrical grid seems hopeful at best. We are off to the Simian Mountains in the morning on a four-day trek. Then back to Gondar to start working: Heidi at the hospital, and me at a charity called 'Link Ethiopia'. I hope to offer another update before leaving, and perhaps a photo or two. But again, this connection feels a bit like a message in a bottle right now... hopeful. Perhaps I will establish a better rhythm with the internet when we get back in town.

Cheers!

Start

Portland International Airport KPDX

We've arrived at the beginning...

Dirty, Different, Spicy, and Green

Heidi and I headed up to OHSU yesterday to meet with Robin, one of the chief residents of internal medicine. Robin had traveled to Gondar almost two years ago to work at the hospital, and Heidi and I wanted to sit down with her to try to get a sense of what to expect.

She was very enthusiastic, animated, and generous with her time. It was truly a joy to experience a kind of 'real-world trailer' to the adventure upon which we are about to embark through Robin's memories and impressions!

She was also cool with me taking my first video for the blog... and for that I will always be grateful. Cheers to you, Robin! I hope to buy you at least a yard of beer when we get back...

At Robin's suggestion, we rounded out the evening perfectly with a traditional Ethiopian meal at 'Bete-Luka's' on 50th and Division to prime ourselves for the culinary dimension of our journey... a graceful shift from your traditional fare, both in flavor and technique. 

No silverware... One large plate... and a beautiful pinwheel palette of colorful dishes that you scoop with your right hand in pieces of bread called 'Injera', and deliver to your eager taste buds with glee and enthusiasm. The flavors are classic and new at the same time... onions, garlic, ginger, and chiles dancing together in bold rhythm! This cuisine is already a new love.

Thanks so much to Peter, the owner... Your warmth and kindness were received with equal satisfaction to your wonderful food!