The Kamikaze Rats

Sarah and I spent this past weekend at the Village of Hope, an orphanage and compound for another non profit organization since the three girls that usually run the compound were at the capital. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. We didn't leave the grounds for two full days because between the twin 18 month old girls, Balditu and Margitu, we had our hands in up to our elbows in dirty diapers and bottles and baby food. I promise all the clothing I brought is now covered in either pee, poop, or injera. Then all we ate were potatoes and injera, or some form of carb. I swear I've never eaten so many carbs in my life. The only thing we ate that was really healthy was this corn mush, which is still full of starch, and a scoop of this tomato salad. That was it for the whole weekend. Bread, pasta, injera. Seriously I can't even try to explain what it tastes like beside a very thick crepe soaked in vinegar. But besides the kamikaze rats running around trying to kill us in the middle of the night, it was a pretty uneventful weekend. Honestly though these rats were huge and for the first night I swore someone was in the house and so I didn't sleep because I was so terrified. I kept telling myself the only that mattered were the babies and Sarah. They could take everything else. These rats were climbing pipes and in the rafters above our heads, no fear let me tell you!! They are relatives of Mighty Mouse. I did get my first official braided hair do while I was there and I looked so sexy. I'll post some pictures of that too.

So Sarah and I talked to our supervisor in Salt Lake and we figured out a few things we could do. We are going to teach a mother's group women's health and try and get a female translator and just pray that they tell their friends and spread the word so we can start teaching the lessons to other women's groups. It is just hard to actually get the women alone without the men there. And despite my rantings about people begging for money, they really are a very shy and withdrawn people. And trying to get women to talk about their health issues has been impossible. Then we are also teaching the community workers general health twice a month. Besides that we're trying to work on this program where they give orphans a pregnant goat and they have to learn how to take care of the goat and then give us the offspring in return. But even getting that data has been near impossible. Ok, so here is an explanation of how slow things run here. I got here at 8am with Sarah and Mieso comes in a little after 8am and we tell him we want to have our Monday morning meetings that we are supposed to have every Monday. When he says ok we wait an hour for Dejene to get there and then they do things with the car and keep disappearing. Then around 10:30 we finally get all together and I say lets start the meeting and they say that they have lunch soon, and we should have it at 2pm instead. So we then go and have a cup of coffee....well they have their coffee and I have my warm milk. Which is actually very very good. So anyways, we finally had the meeting and then we went and had another coffee (this time I just sat and talked with them instead of another hot milk. It is really good, but it is hot here! And you can only drink so much hot milk in one day).

Sarah and I did go crazy trying to find some place to eat and we went to this shop where we were told they had hamburgers and french fries, but they didn't get us any and didn' t understand even after sitting there for 45 min. Then we went to another place and when we asked about fish they thought we meant juice. But all in all it worked out because they found someone who spoke English and got us an egg sandwich which was very good and even invited us back into the special rose garden. They really like white people I guess. We'll go back tomorrow when it isn't so cold!! Another thing, it is the rainy season here and it is stinking hot where your clothes stick to you in the day and then around 4 or 5 every single day it rains and gets absolutely freezing. And it just doesn't rain, it storms all night. And then the power goes out, which means you can't use the toilet or shower because the water is run through electricity somehow. I swear I don't get it sometimes, but we cope.

Sarah did hurt her ankle and we are pretty sure it is a stress fracture and so the poor girl has been limping everywhere, which is hard because we literally walk everywhere. It is three miles just to the Village of Hope and we go there all the time. Anyways, she was limping this weekend and so we figured out why guys do that ghetto strut of theirs. They saw a Farenjii walking who had a hurt ankle and thought it was cool because that is what people do in America and it just spread from there. We saw it this weekend. By the time we left the kids were limping like Sarah thinking they were cool. It was too funny!