Five Days In

Hey everyone! Internet access has been much more difficult than I had anticipated before being here.  Forgive the delay in this update. 

Travel and Arrival
We arrived in Ethiopia on Friday evening around 10 p.m. (Addis time)  The trip over was uneventful, except to say that it was long.  The folks on the ground here have learned to give teams a day or so to rest before sending them to work, so we spent Saturday at a retreat center on a lake near a place called Baba Gaiyu (sp?).  We hiked to the top of a volcanic cinder cone, sucking wind because of the altitude (or maybe just because I'm in pathetic condition).  Village children crowded around my camera whenever I lifted it, and then insisted on holding my hands while we walked back to the compound.  They laughed at me making faces at them, or walking funny.  Then came the awkward reality of going back inside the walls of the compound, leaving all the children on the other side of the steel gate.  The truth is, most everyone here, whatever their means, lives behind some sort of wall; whether it's cinder block topped with broken glass, corrugated metal, or eucalyptus poles.  Sunday we went to the international church, ate lunch, then headed to an open house at the home of Andy Warren, leader of the HIV/AIDS project here. 

Driving through Addis to get to the mission guest house where we're staying, one is immediately bombarded with all things present in a developing country:  dirt, choking diesel fumes, thousands of people, animals and vehicles held together by who-knows-what, all sharing the same travel lanes.  It is obvious that the city is poor, the city is crowded, the city is a complete and total mess.  That assessment sounds like an impersonal comment on the department of public works, or the need for Addis to have such a department.  It is the assessment that can be done from the window of a car by a guy who has been in the city for all of two days.

Monday-Tuesday
Nothing from my life experience could have possibly prepared me for what I've seen these past two days.  We left the Addis that can be seen by car, and walked into the communities (kebele's) that comprise 80% of the city.  I don't feel qualified to write about it yet, but I will tell you that I have no category for the level of poverty and suffering that I've seen.  We've been visiting in homes with residents who are beneficiaries of the HIV/AIDS program here.  And what has been so emotionally potent for me beyond the stench and the squalor, is the faith of those who are surviving.  The program beneficiaries, for the most part, are amazing survivors, badges of humanity, clinging to hope.  I've also met some amazing Christian workers, Ethiopians and internationals working together, pushing forward for the difference they can make to a few, while there seems little hope for the many.

The thought came to me while I was walking, going in and out of tiny dwellings:  this is not a refugee camp – this is not because of a war, or a hurricane.  This is permanent.  Dr. Paul Farmer makes mention of a Haitian proverb, which says, in essence, "God gives, but does not share," meaning: God gives enough abundance to humanity for everyone, but he does not force the distribution of it.  It is the responsibility of people to share.  I don't claim to understand anything about this place, or the "why" of it all, but this idea makes some sense theologically, because it is true of our salvation.

God created a perfectly balanced earth, which men promptly threw into disorder.  God provided a solution (the redeemer), but leaves it to us to make it (him) known.  "How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" (Rom. 10:14)

I don't know all the history of this place.  There is probably plenty of blame to go around from previous generations in both hemispheres.  But where there is adequate sharing of salvific wealth, places like this cannot continue to exist.  That leaves us to sort out our responsibility in all of it.