Kate
It is amazing how the smallest things are enough to motivate me in the midst of a busy schedule with seemingly endless obstacles and frustrations. For me it is the friends that I make along the way, who despite language barriers and cultural differences, become the angels that keep me excited about the work that I do day after day and bring me enough joy in 5 minutes to last for an entire day. Whether I only have the privilege of knowing these people for an hour or for a few weeks, their faces will remain implanted in my mind long after I leave them. Here are just a few of these people I have encountered during my time in Ethiopia:
Eret: the 10-year old boy who always chased down our landcruiser to greet me during distributions in Lare. When many other children just wanted to stare at us for hours and write in the dust on the car with their fingers, Eret took the time to get to know me and frequently helped me carry supplies without expectation. As he seemed to be a leader for the pack of children that would always gather around the car, being his friend meant I would always be protected. Just having the chance to hold a 1 minute conversation with him in Amharic and see how he was doing was enough motivation to keep me going back and forth 2 hours each way to the field every day.
The little girl displaced by flooding in Lare who was living in the building we used as a training center. When many other children were afraid and would run away when offered a hand, she would run up to me and let me carry her around for hours, always grinning at the other children from her elevated place in my arms.
Seunai: the health worker in Lare who was always available to help us with distributions when few others were, and actually went out of her way to buy me a gift of earrings to make me feel more at home.
The man at the Djibouti airport upon arrival who willingly gave us 2,000 francs (about 10$) to pay for a taxi to the hotel that forgot to pick us up, just to welcome us to his country and make sure we were safe.
The taxi driver on the way back to the airport in Djibouti, who for the first time in my experience actually bargained me down to drive us- (Me: Pour aller à l’aeroport, 1,000 francs c’est possible? Him: No no, 800 francs c’est bon). I was so shocked and thankful for his honesty that I gave him 1,000 anyway.
The Somali children living in the same building as us in Djibouti, who after only knowing us for 3 days, gave us hugs and kisses and told us not to leave as we were heading to the airport.
Chala, Zenebe, Tesfaye, Alemseuhai, Almaez, and Habtamu: all the staff that was with me at the Gambella field office, all of whom never tired of speaking Amharic slowly to me with patient explanations. Despite the lack of things to do in Gambella, I was never bored because I could spend hours just sitting outside in the shaded grass hut talking to one or all of them about everything from Jesus to the cultural differences between Ethiopia and America.
When you feel like an outsider caught in unfamiliar territory, the smallest gestures of kindness are incredibly precious. There are dozens of other people who have selflessly gone out of their way to make me feel at home while abroad, and I know that God has placed each of them in my path to connect our worlds for however brief a moment. Despite each painful goodbye and my own worry about where life will take each of them when I am not there to witness it, I have been changed by each of these encounters and can only hope that such blessing will come back to them in return.
