More Day 3

We left the Addis orphanage at 1, which is about 3 hours later than what was originally planned, but in Ethiopia the clock is just something that hangs on the wall and sometimes they pay attention to it. The real clock is the sun- “Are there not 12 hours in a day?”.

I taught the kids the song that goes, "Holy, You are Holy, King of kings Lord of lord..." and so they sang that on the bus for a while. It was very nice.
We left the compound, on the very bumpy road, but only the main roads are paved, even in Addis. One of the reasons for moving away from that compound is that it is very expensive and the road in front of it is so bad, and often people can’t find it. There are no road signs anywhere, that I saw, and so finding anything is very difficult. After leaving and driving about an hour we had to stop and get a pass to drive on the road to Sodo. About a half hour after we left there Michelle realized that we were still very close to the original starting point. We had just driving an hour and a half with 25 kids, ranging from 11 months to 12 years, and had barely gotten anywhere. We also found out that since it was now getting close to 3 that we had to take a different route to Sodo, because the short route- 4 hours drive- is filled with thieves at night, and so we took the longer one. We had no idea how much longer it would really be.

The kids ate lunch, which we were seriously considering NOT given to them. For some, this would be a very trying trip. We have one HIV positive child and he was the one most affected by eating lunch. In fact, he threw up about 10 times. We had him in the front of the bus and he used the “bucket” often. In all there were about 5 kids who threw up and 10 we pretty sick. They were so good. We could not stop to go to the bathroom more than once and in all the trip took 10 hours. We gave a few of them a cracker, but other than that they ate nothing on the way. The adults were talking about how American kids would do in this situation. There was almost no fussing, even from those who were really sick and no one complaining about being hungry or having to go potty. Imagine not eating for 10 hours and not going to the bathroom. The littlest one- 11 months- was dry when we arrived in Sodo.

There were more than a few serious wrecks on the way, but God protected our small “vessel” as we journeyed. One of bus helpers was amazing. He held the HIV+ kid for most of the trip and cleaned him up after every event.

We had so many serious road challenges. Even as we were within a mile of the new place were had to carefully navigate so the bus didn’t get stuck. It is the tail of the rainy season and the locals are ready for it to quit. The roads take a beating when the rains are so heavy, which makes life even more difficult than is normal.

The truck with all the beds and everything else arrived previous to us and we were really hoping that the guys would have everything set up, but nothing was done. So when we got here we threw the mattresses on the floor and everyone crashed, including us. When you’re this tired the bed does not matter.