From Jessica #2 (rec'd 9/6/08 3:30 AM)

5:30 AM

It’s a little later, and we’ve gotten so bored that we figured Melat will nap later anyhow, we’ll turn on lights so we don’t die of boredom. There’s a nice living room downstairs, but I think she would be frightened if she woke and she wasn’t here. T and I have got jet lag pretty bad and were wide awake with the dogs at 1’ish. She tells me that you can tell the Ethiopian “Time of Night” by the noises. The dogs at 1 and 2, and the birds at 3:30 and the roosters around 5. True to her word, all happened, right on schedule. WOW.

I’ve been doing some thinking about how the hazards of life are different here—especially for children.

Yesterday at the coffee ceremony, we had about 16 people in a smallish room (like a family room in a home) Everyone sat in plastic lawn chairs, or on plastic wrapped foam mattresses on the floor. (The African definition of mattress is different… think furniture pad). The strew grasses all over the ground we’d walk in on (I think this is a sign of hospitality—not of bad housekeeping like I first thought). The thing is, it was these loose dry grasses like something between hay and those long California pine needles strewn all over slick parquet floors. (Everything here is slippery—masonry walks, clay, tile, marble, and parquet—even the grass since there’s a layer of mud under it).

OK, so you’ve got the visual of the grassy stuff all over the slick floor and a room full of crying Americans holding their babies, but we haven’t gotten to the coffee part yet. They roast the green coffee beans in a small pan over a charcoal fire that’s made in a little metal barbeque-hibachi type thing right in the middle of the room on that grass. Indoors—no chimney, no vent.

Then for the smoke, they put an additional cup of burning charcoal in front of the barbeque—I wasn’t able to determine if it was old hot coals or fresh ones warming up.

These coffee ceremonies can go on for hours, but the babies were getting fussy and there was quite a posse of us there, so they cut it short. Usually a person should plan on three hours for a coffee ceremony.

Anyhow, they took Melat for a “break” in the middle of the ceremony so she could go eat her lunch (even though she’d just eaten a bunch of shortbread cookies and packed her pockets with more), and she just scrambled in and out of the room---dashing across the grass right in front of the coals. I thought I was going to fall out of my chair. Nobody seemed bothered by it. Kids must really know their way around these things.

The guest house provided a basket of oranges in the room, They’re African Oranges, not Florida Oranges—they’re hard and yellow-green and bitter and dry, but T. and I liked them. Melat picked up the basket and said “Oh, I hate.” And put it down. Again, surprising us with her English.

She’s switching up her Amharic and English on us—using both in sentences (she talks fairly non-stop—at least she did yesterday, she’s still sleeping). The guesthouse yard has a bit of a slope with a high point in one corner and a bigger flat space at the bottom for a small game of soccer (very small—2-3 player). J Melat picked up a beach ball and said “Up the mountain and all around!!” And wanted me to carry her, so I carried her to the highest place, and all along the guesthouse wall—which has really pretty flowers in the space between the top of the wall and the electric concertina wire.

Oh, she sings in her sleep. A pop song that was on some music videos that the Nannies put on during the coffee ceremony—I’ll bet she hears it a lot. Asheba, asheaba something about being proud of being Ethiopian.

It’s 5:41 now, and the call to prayer has just begun. It sounds like I can hear it from two or three mosques. It’s really lovely. Calm, and reverent. People here pray all the time. I thought the nannies and cooks here at the guesthouse were gossiping and talking between themselves, nope, they were praying out loud as they work T tells me.

There is much to pray about here. To be thankful for, to ask for. What I cannot understand is why life is so hard for people who pray so much. I’m going to have to do some serious thinking on that. It bothers me.

During the night there was a fight across the street. A man and woman fighting terribly and scaring the small child. There was a lot of screaming and arguing, and finally the woman decided to go sleep on the street, so she and her small son went to sleep on the street. I don’t know what it is about sleeping on the street (perhaps fewer bugs/snakes?) That seems to be the place to go if you don’t have a place to go. She slept on the street for a while and neighbors asked her and her son to come in out of the street but she said no, she’ll stay there. A few hours later, they reconciled and she went back to her house.

Good thing too because just shortly after that the shepherds started coming through. You would never believe the number of sheep there are here. It’s amazing. They look more like goats—they’re meat sheep with scraggly hair not fluffy wool. (The dogs here have far nicer coats!) I asked our driver yesterday if the sheep live in the city, or if they just come to market. He said they come to market though the city and will only be in the city a day or so before being food.

Another funny thing—the area where we are is kind of suburban, between the mountains and the downtown. The homes are all little walled in compounds, but there’s these sheds that look like school bus stops along the road. Maybe 8 feet x8 feet made of corrugated tin roofing material (obviously in its second or third application). I asked T what are these buildings? Are they for busses, or for garbage cans to go? She said no, they are homes. The people here will build the shed-homes for people to live in, in exchange for guarding their gate, or sometimes they will just build them so street people have a place to sleep out of the rain.

On the way here, I read a book of Mother Theresa’s writings—her passion was service to the poor and dying. Filling very simple needs like a bed to die on, or a soothing touch, or a bit of food to eat, and I see people offering that to others around—every where I look.

The prayer call has just gotten louder, and the dogs have started in. It’s now beginning to remind me of the volunteer fire fighter siren that we used to hear at the house in Roy that would set the dogs to howling.

Oh! Funny thing—we watched Ice age last night and there’s that cute little saber-toothed squirrel? Melat loves him. She says w w w w w wh wh WOOF!! (It’s true, dogs here don’t bark like they do at home—no howling or growling, but more sociable noises).

Melat, like her sister in America can sure fill up a mattress. Goodness gracious. She wiggles and moves around on the full-size bed. I decided to have her sleep with me, not knowing if she’d be scared or what. She wiggled around and stretched, most of the night keeping her hands around her doll, and her foot in my side. She fell off the bed once during the night, but she went right back to sleep.

People are probably wondering about her health. She’s got Molluscum (Orphan warts—a fairly common viral skin thing, I understand they go away after a while. They’re on her face, neck and bottom. She’s also got Mongolian spots I think—they look like bruises all up her back. (Destiny had this too, and it went away as she got older—Mongolian Spots are common in dark-skinned children).

She’s got a potbelly. I don’t know yet if it’s from parasites of being well-fed. Maybe a combination. She has a round little face. Her eyes look clear. Many friends and family know I was concerned about what looked like a possible facial palsy—she’s got a little bit of extra skin on one eyelid which makes her eyes look asymmetrical, but only when she’s really tired (that’s why I didn’t recognize her when she came to the van at WACAP house—I was looking for her eyes).
She has very wide feet!

Well, I’m going to close for now. It’s about 6am and the guesthouse and neighborhood are getting moving, so I know Melat will be up and hungry soon. I’m sure hungry! My stomach isn’t quite right, but I think that’s just the jet lag. The only thing I’ve noticed about the altitude is that I get out of breath really fast.