Blog 2 of the 5 days of blogs: “What Living in Africa is Like”
It’s kind of funny because Ethiopia is nothing that I expected Africa to be like. I thought there wasn’t going to be grass or trees and it was going to be all dirt and flat ground. I also thought it would be warm and I’d be wearing shorts and tank tops everyday, but that’s also not the case. I definitely thought I’d have to be careful of lions and I’d see elephants and giraffes everywhere and all the other typical “Africa” things that everyone always pictures, but nope. We call Ethiopia the Ohio of Africa. Saying that all of Africa is the same is like saying that you’ll see snow if Florida just like it is in Minnesota or that all the snakes that you’d see in Texas are the same snakes that you’d see in New York. You get my point? I don’t get how I ever thought that my picture of Africa would be the same wherever I went.
Turns out, there’s grass all over and there’s even a reforestation place a little bit away from the base where tons of trees grow. Different mountains and even a volcano surround the area here. It is warm, but in the mornings when I work out it’s freezing cold. Throughout the day you can still wear sweatshirts and be comfortable because it gets windy. Yes, there are monkeys and hyena’s here, but nothing that I expected and definitely not like “The Lion King”.
I love Africa. It’s so beautiful and very peaceful even though it’s nothing that I thought or imagined it would be. We have cold showers, but I’ve learned to enjoy them. The food is spicy, but I have been wanting to work my way into the world of spice for a while now. We can’t get WiFi anywhere close, but its been a journey to learn to fully give up my comforts of home to God. It’s different from Guatemala and a new type of change, but I’ve learned to be thankful for what I do have.
Ministry also looks a little different here. We don’t have ministry hosts and going out into the village isn’t as safe as it would be in Guatemala, so we stay on the orphanage for ministry. My team starts out ministry in the morning by varnishing the main building from 10-12. Lately, we haven’t had the supplies to continue on with that, so we cut grass by hand or ask the Lord what He wants us to do in those two hours. After lunch (around 1:30) I go to a track that I chose to be a part of at the beginning, kids!! All of us on kids track have split the days to be in charge of one of them a week. My teammate and I are in charge of education on Thursdays, I love it.
Friday’s are a little different. It’s all squad ministry all day, so in the morning we cleaned garbage from around base and in the afternoon our focus is the children and whatever other ministry-type things we want to do. I sometimes go into the kids’ house and hang out with them and their house moms, which I absolutely love. Weekends are our adventure/sabbath days and they are pretty relax and we are able to fuel up for the coming week.
Ministry is different. I mean, Africa in general is different, but I’ve fallen in love with it. It’s more relaxed and I have much more time than I did in Guatemala, but I’m honestly not ever really bored. I find things to do. I love having children living here because they love us so well and I am able to form stronger relationships than I was able to before. Working at an orphanage was always my biggest dream about coming to Africa and now I get three months of it nonstop. God really knew what to do to make me feel blessed about finally coming to my dream continent.
