10-29-2007

Dear Family and Friends,

So another few weeks have passed and a whole new batch of experiences. I saw my first African wildlife (1 ostrich on the side of the road and a bunch of flamingos about a half mile away), we went to a wedding, I have been able to hone my first aid skills, and a bunch of other stuff I’m sure.

We are having to travel quite a bit still in preparation for large scale project about 4 hours south west of where we live. We were down there a couple weeks ago and I learned some pretty important life lessons.

Lesson 1. Never forget your neck pillow when you will be spending 20+ hours in the back seat of a Toyota Tundra; within three days the kinks will stay for a long time.

Lesson 2. NEVER, NEVER ASK TO CHANGE HOTEL ROOMS IN ETHIOPIA! we got into town later than we thought and the nice hotel was full, the room we were able to find was filthy by American standards and not great by Ethiopian standards. I suggested to Nigatu that we should try and stay in the nicer Hotel the next night he went down and asked that we be given a new room. The staff was very accommodating and even upgraded us to what I would guess was a suite. It was great; the only problem was that someone else’s luggage was already unpacked in the room. We explained that to the front desk and they gave us another suite which we decided that there was no way we were staying in when Rachael checked the bed and found cockroaches on the headboard, we went downstairs and got the key to the first room and slept there. We slept fairly well until…

Lesson 3. When in Ethiopia, never rent a room within sight of a mosque. As I said above Rachael & I were sleeping pretty well until about 3 a.m. when all of a sudden I was disturbed from my slumber by the loudest praying I have ever heard! It was blasting from the loud speakers attached to the 50 foot tower. The praying continued for what seemed like half the day but was probably less than 10 minutes. Most people that know me know that I am a pretty sound sleeper but it took me a bit to realize what was happening and even longer to fall asleep after it was over.

Lesson 4. I have it pretty easy. The whole next day we traveled to some of the villages we will be implementing the water project in. We met with mothers groups in 4 villages; they meet under trees and sit on the ground. Many of the women had small children. One of the villages was so far from clean water that the mothers would have to leave the home for 10 hours to bring water back to the home. It was definitely a humbling experience.

We spent that night in the nice hotel and were grateful for a hot shower and really (American Standards) clean sheets. The next morning we had a “nice” meeting with a local government official.

Lesson 5.Corruption is alive and well in Ethiopia. That’s all I have to say about that.

So that was our visit to Arsi, we were excited to be home but two days later we traveled a little less than 2 hours to Addis Ababa to price out new and used cars for our organization. We learned a couple interesting things with this as well.

Lesson 6. Do not get sick in Africa. Since this is nearly impossible try and be sick in a clean place where you can use a toilet and get lots of rest. This is also nearly impossible but Rachael and I were very fortunate to be staying with our senior missionary friends who had both a clean house and a working toilet. I was very fortunate.

Lesson 7. I do not come close to understanding how things work here, sometimes the faucet’s suck water up instead of dispensing it and a used car can cost twice as much as a new car. Since we have duty free status we do not have to pay a duty on a new car (the duty can cost as much as twice the value of the vehicle) but even if we paid the duty we could still probably get a new car cheaper, go figure.

Lesson 8. In Ethiopia you can go to a wedding where a 17 year old girl marries a guy that she met when he was serving as a missionary in her town a few months earlier, and it is great. Those of you that are not a member of my church this may require some explanation why this is an unusual thing to be happy about. First of all, like most Americans I have a hard time being happy for a 17 year old getting married, I think things like “she is way too young”, or “what is wrong with a guy in his 20’s that he would even want to marry a 17 year old girl”. Next, Missionaries are not supposed to be meeting girls and especially not young ones. But this is Africa, she is Ethiopian and he is from South Africa. In Africa 17 is actually quite a sensible age to marry and he waited until he had finished his mission and returned home to pursue her.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marriages are ideally performed in Temples so there is not really a traditional wedding ceremony for a marriage outside of the temple, for this reason the only thing that matters is that they are married by someone with authority. There is no temple in Ethiopia so the wedding was in the yard outside the church. It was a beautiful day and a very nice ceremony. While the bride was getting ready the branch president had those in attendance sing hymns. The people here love to sing. There is a LDS hymn book published by the church with over 300 hymns in it but here they sing about 7 or 8 of them. The first hymn we sang as we were waiting for the bride is one of the few that the members of the church in Ethiopia know, and one of my personal favorites, “Come, Come Ye Saints”. This is a beautiful song written about the Mormon Pioneers crossing the plains, it is not however a song that you would usually associate with a wedding. Here is a line from the song : “and should we die before our journeys through, happy day all is well”. A little somber for a wedding but ah well. The wedding was really nice, Rachael made a book for guests to sign and the senior missionaries made cake and sandwiches for everyone. The cake was really nice; they do not have cake like that here.

Lesson 9. Candy is more valuable than coins. Saturday was the Halloween party that Rachael and I planed for the youth in the church. We were expecting about 50 kids between 12 and 20 years old, but we had well over 100 most of them were between 8 and 13 years old (Africa is rich in children). They do not celebrate Halloween here so the activity was basically a mini carnival with different stations like: “pin the nose on the pumpkin”, “limbo”, Bobbing for oranges”, “musical chairs” and a coin toss.

I thought that using real coins might case a problem but to my surprise it was just fine. We had popcorn, punch and a little candy for treats. The candy did cause a problem, we made sure that everyone got a piece but I looked over and saw Rachael being mobbed for the leftovers, I actually saw elbows start to fly as a she was engulfed in a wave of Ethiopian preteens clamoring for what was left of the small sweets. We decided to lock the rest in the car; I got a lot of sad faces asking for just one more candy. The activity was really fun but not unlike herding cats.

We are both happy and mostly healthy, stiff in the joints but healthy. I really appreciate the few emails I have gotten back because it is nice to know what you are up to as well.

Thanks & Love,

Gavin Goodwin

P.S. here are some more pictures, I hope you enjoy.

(Just hook up a horse and you got yourself one fine taxi.)

(A hairy little ass.)

(The men do a lot of standing around, the women pretty much work all day.)

(It really was a nice wedding, and the cake was REALLY GOOD!... I have been here too long.)

(This was just a small part of the kids… I am really glad I we do not have any children yet and I am REALLY glad that I don’t have 100 kids that do not speak the same language I do.)

(Bobbing for oranges, apples are really expensive here. This was going great until the kids started eating the oranges.)

(Rachael is the one on the right.)