Hello Friends! It’s been many days since I last posted anything, but many exciting things have happened since! The main one being that I left
Addis Ababa for about 10 days and went to Sherkole Refugee camp which is about 50 km from the Sudanese border. We drove down in a landcruiser and saw beautiful scenery along the way. The last day was very dusty. Warning this may not be for all readers…after that dusty day (you must know that the dust there is a red color) when I blew my nose it looked like I was bleeding because I had breathed in so much dust over the day’s journey. (A little gross I know, but it gives you an idea of how much dust was coming into the vehicle during our drive).
When we arrived in Sherkole on Good Friday, there was a group of people who were getting ready for repatriation. Here’s a picture of one family with their belongings.
All of the people’s things were put in trucks and then the people would ride on buses until the Sudan border. At the border, they would have to transfer into big trucks (look sort of like grain trucks on the prairies) and then continue into Sudan because the roads are so poor. It was amazing how little these families took with them (or had to begin with). The UN gave each family 1 tarp, 2 wool blankets, a new jerry can for carrying water and one pail to use in rebuilding their lives. There were about 250 people being taken back to Sudan that weekend. I also watched later in the week as a convoy of 13 buses drove through the camp with more people from a different refugee camp who were going back to Sudan.
Easter was definitely a different experience for me. My most unique Easter yet I think. I ate 3 Easter meals that Sunday-I was SOOOOO full. We started out at the Maaban church for a 3 hours service with lots of singing and dancing (I have video of that to share when I get home) and it was boiling hot. Probably close to 40 C within the church…it had a few tiny windows and two doors. A long rectangle shape with mud walls and a thatched grass roof. There were probably around 400 people in the building and another hundred or more outside the building because there was no more room. After the service, we went to one of the church leader’s homes for a big meal. We ate a variety of foods. Most I couldn’t really identify (and didn’t ask for clarification!) but it was okay tasting. I know that the sheep’s stomach was in one of the stews that we dipped the bread in. Another dish was really slimey from the okra that they put into it. Sudanese cooking is quite different from Ethiopian. IT is not spicey at all, but does have flavor most of the time. I think I prefer Ethiopian cooking to Sudanese. Sugar drinks are also a very important part of properly serving guests. We drank many glasses of something like tang (but with lots of sugar) and multiple cups of tea and ginger coffee (quite tasty) with ample servings of sugar within. I had my sugar quota for weeks by time I’d left that home! The women were the ones working so hard to prepare all the food. This picture is of the head cooking lady named Martine. She has a great sense of humor (hence the big smile on her face…I think she was laughing!) They made so much coffee to serve everyone that day.
Our next destination was an Ethiopian household who is friends with Sandra and Angela (two of the people on SIM team). She served us another meal with more cups of ginger coffee. We were getting quite full by this time!
Last meal of the day was in the Darfur zone of the camp. They served us some more Sudanese food and then invited us to a wedding. Yup, they’d just decided that day that they were getting married and the wedding was schedule for the same day. A little rushed by Western standards. There were only 4 women at the ceremony (all of us were SIM people who had come to visit and were invited to the wedding). I’m pretty sure that traditionally women are not part of the marriage ceremony. It was also different from the west because the groom and bride did not attend the ceremony. They stayed in their respective huts and knew they were married when people who were at the ceremony jumped up and started yelling. The father’s of the bride and groom are the ones who settle the details of the marriage. The chief of the Darfur people acted as their fathers because neither had their parents in the camp (either they had been killed in the war or had not come to the camp).
While on the SIM compound in Sherkole I mainly worked as a nanny/pre-school teacher/cook for the team. The long-term family working there has three young children under the age of 5. Here’s a picture of me and the oldest child (kalia) as we have a tea party one afternoon.
I really had a great time filling this supporting role within the team. The SIM compound is really quite rustic. Here’s a picture of a ‘tukul’ which is a grass hut with mud walls that one of the short-term people live in.
I really loved the rustic feel of being away from the city. There is no electricity at the camp, but the NGO’s do get power through a generator from around 7-11pm and 8-12am. All cooking is done with gas stoves.
The camp was much different than I had imagined. I had thought there would just be thousands of tents and people milling everywhere. In reality, it is like a small city. The camp is divided into 7 zones (different tribal groups in each zone) and there is a market, schools, clinics and the housing is quite permanent. They have mud walls and thatched grass for the roof. The people are quite friendly and there are so many languages spoken. The main ones are French, English, Arabic, Amharic and Swahili. There are people from Sudan and Congo and Burundi. There are also so many tribal languages for each group of people from different parts of Sudan and the Congolese as well as Burundi people also have tribal/mother tongues. I got to use my small amount of French while I was in the camp which was great!
Flying home at the end of my time away was just as much an adventure. The short story is that you need to be really flexible and don’t get too set on a specific departure time or date because you might just have to wait another day or two. I can share the full story some day when we see each other in person.
SO that’s a summary of my adventures away from the city in the last 2 weeks. I have only 3 weeks left in Addis so my time is quickly filling with the busyness of finishing up projects and saying good bye to all the friends I have made.
Bye for Now!
