Purified Water?
18 April 2006
Well folks, I've been swamped. Tomorrow may be a relative free day for me, what will be the first in some time - including the weekends. Last week I taught Doctrine of Holiness from Monday to Friday for some students pursuing ordination, and on Saturday I taught the second of four seminars on Science and Religion. I enjoyed the process, but teaching from 8am to 5pm six days strait was tiring to say the least. As soon as I finished teaching on Saturday I jumped on a local bus to meet the rest of the team at a conference center about an hour and half away. As the bus was pulling out of the station, I remembered I promised someone to pick up several newspapers on my way out of town. I noticed a vendor walking along the bus windows selling papers and waived him over.
Now I've never purchased a newspaper in Addis, for the obvious reason that I can't read the language. Sure, you can find papers written in english, but in this case I was looking for Amharic papers and didn't have any other options anyway. Because I've never purchased an Amharic paper, I had no idea how much they should cost. I asked through the window, "Cint eh noew?" and received an answer that I somehow interpreted as "15." Given that I was asking for three papers, I calculated that they must be 5 birr - $.55 - each and began to rummage for the birr. I only found 13, but because the bus was pulling away I stuck the money out the window and tried to grab two papers so I wouldn't be stealing from my newsy. He insisted I take three with a quite confused look on his face. Had I been standing next to him with a bit of time on my hands, I am certain that I would have realized 5 birr is an outrageous fee for a newspaper in Ethiopia. A combination of my exhaustion and the fact that the bus was pulling away from the vendor as I was talking to him threw me, however, and I missed out on the correct price. I am fairly confident the price should have been 1.5 birr per paper, or a total of 4.5 birr. 1.5 to 15... so my Amharic is off by a factor of ten, big deal.
Because of my teaching schedule, I slept in a hotel next to the field office all of last week. I've stayed at this hotel a half dozen times now, often for extended stays. When I arrive I'm greeted with shouts of "Mikiel!" and various greetings asking me how I'm doing. I've taken to ordering room service for dinner, since the price is the same and it keeps me from being stared at in the restaurant. Friday night I ordered a 1.5L bottle of water with my dinner, as I often do, so that I can keep the bottle the next day as I teach or do whatever it is that I'm want to do. By mid-Saturday morning (Saturday mid-morning?) I had gone through about half the bottle when I began to fidget with the cap as I taught. I noticed that the little perforated band at the bottom of the white cap had come off with the cap instead of staying on the bottle. Thinking this odd, I glanced down at the bottle and saw that another band - a blue one - remained on the bottle. I stopped teaching in mid-sentence and began to laugh. When I explained the situation to the class their eyes got big. "You got a refill!" I've heard of this practice going around Ethiopia but have had no experience with it before this. Whoever did the forgery took their time; I distinctly remembered pulling off the clear outer seal the night before. So, did the hotel sell me tap water? I'm confident they didn't mean to. I described my relationship with them above to highlight that I'm a reliable customer, well known, and tip - something Ethiopians generally don't do. All told, they wouldn't risk my business with something like this. I suspect some kid is making money on the side by putting forgeries in his delivery shipments. Oh well. So far I'm not sick... maybe I'll just start drinking the tap water anyway.
After the busyness of last week, I started working on a food and seed distribution program to areas of the Horn hit by the current drought and famine. I'm exhausted, but as of today the proposal is submitted and we have a guaranteed approval for the first phase of the proposal despite that the proposal itself won't be fully processed for nearly a month. This is the kind of proposal that makes me excited to be a part of the church. In the areas that we will be working, there truly is no other response, and from all reports there is no other organization capable of making a response due to security issues. If the full proposal goes through I'll be doing another round of traveling to make sure reports get written and submitted, although unfortunately I'm not allowed to enter the areas themselves for safety reasons...
The next two months are going to be non-stop, but I'll try to give updates as I can. In the first week of May I'm hosting an exploratory team to investigate sites for drilling deep water wells. This will be one of the biggest projects NCM - HoA has ever participated in and I'm excited about the possibilities. Access to potable water is a major concern in southern Ethiopia and we are on the verge of a significant contribution in this area.
Tell your sister I prefer nutmeg to cinnamon,
Michael
Well folks, I've been swamped. Tomorrow may be a relative free day for me, what will be the first in some time - including the weekends. Last week I taught Doctrine of Holiness from Monday to Friday for some students pursuing ordination, and on Saturday I taught the second of four seminars on Science and Religion. I enjoyed the process, but teaching from 8am to 5pm six days strait was tiring to say the least. As soon as I finished teaching on Saturday I jumped on a local bus to meet the rest of the team at a conference center about an hour and half away. As the bus was pulling out of the station, I remembered I promised someone to pick up several newspapers on my way out of town. I noticed a vendor walking along the bus windows selling papers and waived him over.
Now I've never purchased a newspaper in Addis, for the obvious reason that I can't read the language. Sure, you can find papers written in english, but in this case I was looking for Amharic papers and didn't have any other options anyway. Because I've never purchased an Amharic paper, I had no idea how much they should cost. I asked through the window, "Cint eh noew?" and received an answer that I somehow interpreted as "15." Given that I was asking for three papers, I calculated that they must be 5 birr - $.55 - each and began to rummage for the birr. I only found 13, but because the bus was pulling away I stuck the money out the window and tried to grab two papers so I wouldn't be stealing from my newsy. He insisted I take three with a quite confused look on his face. Had I been standing next to him with a bit of time on my hands, I am certain that I would have realized 5 birr is an outrageous fee for a newspaper in Ethiopia. A combination of my exhaustion and the fact that the bus was pulling away from the vendor as I was talking to him threw me, however, and I missed out on the correct price. I am fairly confident the price should have been 1.5 birr per paper, or a total of 4.5 birr. 1.5 to 15... so my Amharic is off by a factor of ten, big deal.
Because of my teaching schedule, I slept in a hotel next to the field office all of last week. I've stayed at this hotel a half dozen times now, often for extended stays. When I arrive I'm greeted with shouts of "Mikiel!" and various greetings asking me how I'm doing. I've taken to ordering room service for dinner, since the price is the same and it keeps me from being stared at in the restaurant. Friday night I ordered a 1.5L bottle of water with my dinner, as I often do, so that I can keep the bottle the next day as I teach or do whatever it is that I'm want to do. By mid-Saturday morning (Saturday mid-morning?) I had gone through about half the bottle when I began to fidget with the cap as I taught. I noticed that the little perforated band at the bottom of the white cap had come off with the cap instead of staying on the bottle. Thinking this odd, I glanced down at the bottle and saw that another band - a blue one - remained on the bottle. I stopped teaching in mid-sentence and began to laugh. When I explained the situation to the class their eyes got big. "You got a refill!" I've heard of this practice going around Ethiopia but have had no experience with it before this. Whoever did the forgery took their time; I distinctly remembered pulling off the clear outer seal the night before. So, did the hotel sell me tap water? I'm confident they didn't mean to. I described my relationship with them above to highlight that I'm a reliable customer, well known, and tip - something Ethiopians generally don't do. All told, they wouldn't risk my business with something like this. I suspect some kid is making money on the side by putting forgeries in his delivery shipments. Oh well. So far I'm not sick... maybe I'll just start drinking the tap water anyway.
After the busyness of last week, I started working on a food and seed distribution program to areas of the Horn hit by the current drought and famine. I'm exhausted, but as of today the proposal is submitted and we have a guaranteed approval for the first phase of the proposal despite that the proposal itself won't be fully processed for nearly a month. This is the kind of proposal that makes me excited to be a part of the church. In the areas that we will be working, there truly is no other response, and from all reports there is no other organization capable of making a response due to security issues. If the full proposal goes through I'll be doing another round of traveling to make sure reports get written and submitted, although unfortunately I'm not allowed to enter the areas themselves for safety reasons...
The next two months are going to be non-stop, but I'll try to give updates as I can. In the first week of May I'm hosting an exploratory team to investigate sites for drilling deep water wells. This will be one of the biggest projects NCM - HoA has ever participated in and I'm excited about the possibilities. Access to potable water is a major concern in southern Ethiopia and we are on the verge of a significant contribution in this area.
Tell your sister I prefer nutmeg to cinnamon,
Michael
posted by Michael Rodgers at 11:08 PM
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