Audit & AIDS Day & Audit

29 January 2006

The last post was "Whirlwind Tour," and little seems to have changed. Since
last, I have traveled again to Bahir Dar, conducted an audit, traveled to Addis,
traveled to Jimma, traveled to Aggaro for an AIDS Day, traveled to Jimma,
traveled to Addis, traveled to Jimma, traveled to Mizan Teferi, conducted an
audit, and finally back to Jimma. I will be here all of a day and a half before
traveling to Addis for training on something or other from FHI.

The first audit in Bahir Dar was so extraordinarily bad that my job was easy.
During the past year the records were stolen twice by deserting District
Treasurer's, and the District Budget Allocation was stolen once by the second
AWOL treasurer. They records they did have were generally incomplete,
illegible, and rarely corresponded in any meaningful way with Field records.
This doesn't reflect poorly on anyone currently active in the District, since
none of them had anything to do with the record keeping, nor (hopefully) with
the theft. In any case the audit was fairly straightforward: "nothing
reconciles and no records are available to balance." Basically we hit the reset
button on the district balance and have (again, hopefully) taught them how to
keep records this year.

This trip was my second to Bahir Dar, following the trip with my parents the
week before. The first time around I couldn't enjoy the city for the general
level of attention and distraction afforded three white tourists walking around
the city without a local escort. During the latter trip I was with Ethiopians
and was for the most part ignored by the town's population of beggar's and "tour
guides." I also had the opportunity to visit one of the many island
monasteries. The monastery was built in 1313 and has been inhabited by monks to
date. I spent a considerable amount of time talking with one monk in particular
who moved to the island 30 some odd years ago. He speaks impeccable english and
is obviously well educated; he told me he worked for the government of Hailie
Selassie before suffering severe injuries in an automobile accident. While
incapacitated in the hospital, he told God that if he was to be healed, he would
move to a monastery and serve the rest of his life there. He has not left the
island since. This man has lived on a secluded island monastery through two
hostile regime changes, including the "marxist" regime of Mengistu Mariam and
the "democratic" regime governance of Meles Zenawi. Strikingly, he asked one of
the elderly churchmen of our party to pray for him when we were preparing to
leave. For my stay in Ethiopia, this has been a singular event of reciprocity
between evangelical and orthodox. By no means does his action reflect a policy
of either group, but it was a spectacular moment for me. I am continually
trying to encourage the Orthodox and Evangelicals to consider one another as
Christian brothers and sisters, but the overwhelming tendency on either side is
to consider the other a perversion of the "true" faith.

Other than having a friends laptop stolen from his hotel room while we were
having breakfast, the trip was basically a success, after which we woke up at
3:30am to travel back to Addis. A bridge midway closes for construction between
10am and 2pm, and to be there before 10am you must leave Bahir Dar by 4am.
After a brief nights sleep in Addis I drove to Jimma with several guests for the
upcoming AIDS Day. Some of you may know that the international AIDS Day was
sometime back in December. We originally scheduled our event to coincide with
the international day, but because of political instability we were forced to
reschedule. No one is sure how, but Anbessu (the Director of Fayyaa) convinced
both the Federal President of Ethiopia and the Regional President of Oromia to
attend the event. The event was magnificent, and a rough guess of attendance
would be in the vicinity of 30,000. I haven't seen it, but I am told I appeared
twice on Ethiopia Television (ETV - the only public TV station) news broadcast,
and my interview is scheduled to appear in a longer profile on Fayyaa and the
AIDS Day to be aired sometime this week. Dan thinks this is an excellent
example of the denominations encouragement for NIVS to keep a low profile. I'm
also fairly certain that the Director of the Oromia HIV/AIDS Prevention and
Control Organization (OHAPCO) whom I met at the event thinks that I am somehow
affiliated with a giant donor organization, as he seemed overly enthusiastic
about making my acquaintance and inviting me to visit his office next time I'm
in Addis. I didn't have the heart to tell him I'm a volunteer.

An interesting aside: on the morning of the AIDS Day I called Anbessu to ask him
if I needed to take anyone else with me from Jimma to Aggaro. He asked that I
stop at Central Hotel were the government officials were staying and just wait
for them to leave. If anyone needed a ride I'd be there with extra room.
Apparently Anbessu never mentioned this to any of the officials, and after
arriving at Central Hotel I sat with the guest from FHI for about an hour and
half while we waited on the President to finish breakfast. When they were ready
a caravan of maybe 12 new Toyota Land Cruisers followed by 3 flatbed trucks with
soldiers left for Aggaro. During this time no one ever spoke to me or asked for
a ride, so I fired up the truck and followed the convoy. Before we left,
several groups of soldiers went ahead to close and secure the road for the
President's safety. After following at the back of the group behind the
soldiers for 10km or so the soldiers began to wave us away. I ignored them,
knowing that I of course belonged with the group (I had, in fact, written the
letter of invitation to the President's office). After a km of waving, they
radioed to a group of elite soldiers (blue uniforms) who dropped back and drove
beside me with angry faces and AK-47's ready (I actually have no idea what kind
of guns they use). They swerved behind me and tailed me for a few km's, came
alongside again, waved me off, and finally sped off to rejoin the other
soldiers. During this time no gun was ever actually pointed at me, which I
took as a sign that they couldn't really want me to go away. At some point
one of the vehicles in the convoy had to stop to add water. I pulled up to
wait, and someone must have realized that I really was part of the assembly.
After that stop I drove in style, safely inside the perimeter of soldiers.

The day after AIDS Day I drove back to Addis, again slept briefly, and woke up
at 4:30am to drive back to Jimma. Typical for Ethiopia, we made the 7hr trip
with 7 people in a vehicle that is tolerable with 5. I was dropped off in Jimma
to spend the night in my own bed and to meet with the district treasurer to
complete the SW District audit. Unlike Bahir Dar, SW Ethiopia District had near
perfect records, and the treasurer seemed genuinely troubled when I discovered a
10 birr ($1) transcription error that didn't affect the overall records in any
way. The difference between the two audits was striking, and I am told by the
assistant field director that this was the most positive audit of any district
yet in the Horn of Africa. The morning after the audit we were scheduled to
drive to Mizan Teferi for the assembly, but due to legal proceedings we couldn't
leave until around 3pm. This put us in Mizan around 9pm.

We stumbled into our hotel and were guided to our rooms. Mine was the only room
on the top floor of the hotel, which basically amounted to the roof. Mizan
suffers from a general water shortage meaning none of the rooms had fully
functioning bathrooms, but my room didn't offer anything by way of toilet
accommodations. I couldn't even find a public bathroom in the hotel, leaving me
with an empty water bottle in the corner. The several layers of linoleum
flooring were cracked and peeling, often revealing the concrete floor underneath
and providing ample opportunities for the various species of insects and
arachnids to move in and out of their dark abodes. Three empty glass bottles
were tossed in a corner. Open plumbing dominated another corner, I can only
guess as the interrupted attempts to provide toiletries. The cracked, faded
blue paint crumbled from the wall, especially in the far corner from the bed
which is apparently a water runnel in the wet season. I sat on the foam
mattress with that disquieting feeling one gets when they've sat too hastily on
a couch long past its prime, sinking farther than they ever thought possible.
Not to worry of course, I still had firm support for my back; by the time I
stopped sinking I was rooted firmly on the plywood base (at least, in the parts
of the bed covered by the plywood). On top of this, Mizan is oppressively hot
and doesn't seem to cool much at night. I slept without a sheet and with the
window wide open, hoping to catch even the faint whisperings of a breeze. My
sweat would have kept me up if I had ever to fall asleep. It seems the best
time to grind coffee in Mizan is 1am. "Grinding" coffee in Ethiopia consists
not in the speedy whirring of a machine, but in the slow pounding of stone
against stone. A friend on the floor below (the one whose laptop was stolen in
Bahir Dar) told me he actually got up to answer his door after the first half
hour, ready to shout "WHAT?" to who-ever it was that just wouldn't give up
waking him. At 6am the next morning someone did bang on my door, raising me
from the first full hour of sleep I had all night. Of course who ever was
banging on the door didn't speak a word of english and clearly wasn't looking
for me - unless to rob - so I didn't answer the door. To summarize, had I been
to Mizan to see Mizan, the trip would have been an abysmal disappointment.

Nevertheless the trip was remarkable for the district assembly. This was my
first experience with a large, vibrant Nazarene (or any other) worship service
in Ethiopia. The Jimma church is the largest of any "urban" community we have
and can be quite interesting at times, but is tiny compared to the throngs of
people packed into an old qabele "town" hall, screaming praise choruses at the
top of their lungs. I am certain I will be deaf when I leave Ethiopia. During
the assembly we also incorporated a small indigenous denomination into the
Church of the Nazarene. Through an apparent hodge-podge of theology, these
loosely Lutheran affiliated churches joined a Wesleyan-Holiness denomination.
How ironic. If either spins in their grave I would assume it to be Luther.

In any event I'm now back in Jimma enjoying a few hours of down time lying on my
bed, writing emails and listening to Hank Williams (courtesy Nana Guillot). In
a few days I'll be back in a hotel somewhere in Addis so I'll enjoy my room
while I can.

Until next time, apologize to your sister for my negligence. I'll write her soon.

Michael