Let me give you a little glimpse of my life here in the middle of nowhere Ethiopia…
36 of us live on this 5 acre compound that looks a lot like the midwest plus some rolling hills and a bunch of random huts spread about.
Even though we’re in the middle of nowhere, our compound is super nice! We each have our own bed, running water (sometimes it’s even hot on a good day!!!), a big kitchen, and electricity (except for one week when we only had electricity 3 hours a day).
In this village, people walk everywhere. If you’ve ever read Lord of the Rings, there’s a main Road outside our compound that reminds me of the Road that Frodo took to Mordor. No cars, no motos, no bikes, just people, donkeys, and horses.
Some things we don’t have out here: wifi, local grocery stores, restaurants of any kind, coffee shops, other foreigners.
If you want any of those things, you have to take a 3 hour van ride to the capital for $100—aka we try to buy most of our food at the local “market”.
Every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday is “market day.” People come from all over to go to this market. For us, the market is only about a 15 minute walk away, but I can’t even imagine how far some of these people travel to get to the market…probably a whole day’s journey for a lot of peeps!
And when I say market, I’m not talking local, trendy, American farmers market. No, I’m talking a bunch of tarps laid on the ground with some assortment of veggies, spices, lentils, and plastic shoes in no particular order.
NORMS FOR MARKET DAY:
- Women must be fully covered—head wraps are also encouraged (the more you cover up, the less attention you’ll draw to yourself)
- Men wear whatever they want
- Be prepared to make a few children cry because they haven’t seen a white person before
- BYOB (bring your own bag) unless you want to carry 50 pounds of groceries in your hands
- Also helpful to BYOD (bring your own donkey) — basically the only way to lug your heavy groceries around
- But if you can’t bring your own donkey, you can always pay someone 50 cents to carry your groceries home for you (God bless those two bros who helped me the other day!!)
- We bought the entire village out of their coke supply in the first week here, so if you want some, you’re probably out of luck
- Be prepared for hundreds of stares, people touching your hair, surrounding you and laughing, and maybe even throwing rocks at you for “fun & games”
- Don’t expect much—they will most likely be out of something or just decide they don’t want to sell it to you
- Pray that your bag doesn’t break as you make the 15 minute walk back to the compound
Once you have all of those things, you’re good to go!! It’s truly quite the adventure, but it makes me v thankful for America on some days.
Let me just say though that we made some BOMB meals this month even though we had limited supplies–pizza, burgers, lots of rice & beans, and banana bread almost every night… God is good.
