March Newsletter

March 2011

Update - Vol#3

The Rieders Have Arrived at Their New Home!

As is typical of the Rieders, we always seem to get these ‘fixer uppers’, but once we get it finished, it will be home sweet home! The Kale Heywet Church is letting us stay in this house while we are working in Ethiopia. (It used to be the old SIM HeliMission station.) We have agreed to fix this house up so we have a place to refresh ourselves from the harsh conditions in Turmi- the village approx. 150 miles south where we will be doing most of the water well rehabilitations. It is our intent that after we are gone, the KHC will have a nice house for future missionaries that may come to work in the area. 

 

 

 

 

View of the mountains from our bedroom window

Front view of our 2 bedroom house

Tigalu, the head builder, patches the huge cracks in the wall with hand-cut pieces of ‘rebar’ and small rocks and concrete. The cracks are from the foundation settling due to sandy soil underneath.  Some were wide enough that you could see through them into the next room! However, the workers are very resourceful with what they have and exhibit an incredible work ethic!

After patching the cracks with a coarse cement, they follow it up with a very fine smooth cement that they finish filling the cracks with. Then they hand rub it with ‘sanders’ that they make out of brown paper.

The walls are completely smooth now and you would never know there was once cracks and crevasses in our walls!

Side view of our concrete house

Holding the cracks together with rebar

Work begins on Rieder KHC mission house

Well, we have finally arrived in Arba Minch; the town where we will station ourselves while working in southern Ethiopia. Arba Minch is a medium size town. It has a few roads, a bank, one ‘tourist type’ motel and restaurant, many souks and a market. Souks are tiny little shops that are usually jammed packed full of you-name-it. But talk about knowing their inventory! They know exactly what they have behind a box way up on the top shelf; it may be dusty, but they wipe it off and proudly hand it to you, happy that they did not disappoint you!

Tom has been very creative in trying to describe the parts he needs to the souk owners.They don’t speak much English (if at all) and Tom has less Amharic than I do (which isn’t much!) But he amazes me with how well he is able to communicate.Today he was trying to describe the difference between a ball valve and a gate valve-blowing into a pipe with great gusto and exclamations! They all seem to really enjoy Tom, and he clowns around with them and they all laugh together. I know it is frustrating for him in trying to obtain plumbing parts, but he is getting very good at inventing ‘get arounds’ when certain parts are not available. Where is Home Depot when you need one?

We have been so impressed with how hard the Ethiopians work. A young man, Afram, single-handedly dug a trench almost down to China with a pick made from wood and bone. He never stopped all day! We had to make him sit down for a few minutes and rest. He started at 9:30am and went until he was done at 5:30pm. I kept bringing him water all day and he would always bow and thank me with the biggest smile...

How could anyone not love these people?

The highlight of our day is our morning walk out to the main road.The road from the KHC compound is so extremely rocky that no bajaj can get there. (A bajaj is kind of a 3-wheel motorcycle-also called a tuk-tuk.)

So we trek the impassable road every morning and evening. In the mornings, the school children are passing us going in the opposite direction. They all want to shake our hands or try out their English with a shy “Good morning” or “Hello”.

There are hundreds of them and they are all just so adorable! They wear uniforms of blue and purple with such pride.Their parents have scraped together hard earned money to send them to school and they know it.

They are all anxious to learn and make a better way of life. Of course, boys will still be boys, no matter where they are-and there have been a few that we have already  recognized as little rascals!! Along the walk we are also accompanied by goats and cows as well. Since we still have no truck, we hire a bajaj to take us to the

outskirts of town where our house is. You should see the creative packing involved in tying on a ladder, mattress, pipes and other tools on top of a little bajaj!!! But we finally make it to our house.

And there the work begins...

This poor little donkey pulled heavy sacks of concrete 5 miles up a hill to our house

Teresa crawling out of our new water tank

Mene, our zebanna (guard). The compound is completely fenced in by barbed wire and thorn bushes

Have Suture - Will Travel

One of the things that I have been concerned about is the lack of medical care in the area where we are going. There are no hospitals or clinics. So I got a book entitled Where There is No Doctor (edited for Africa). It is full of illustrations and helpful instructions like how to cut worms out that are growing inside a persons leg, or how to make a splint using a tree branch, etc...

But in spite of having this helpful knowledge, I still felt inadequate in assisting Tom if he gets hurt during all this building and drilling that will be taking place.

So I enlisted the aid of a very nice Canadian doctor who happened to be staying here at SIM for a couple of weeks. He was giving the regular doctor a brief vacation.

His wife, who is a public health nurse, showed me how to give a shot. Her name was Twyla, and she was so patient with me- allowing me to practice several times! She assembled all the proper equipment; vials of water, syringes...and of course my first ‘patient’ Mr. Orange! I was soon shooting that orange up with lots of water and feeling very confident.

The next step was learning to suture. This time I went to the head man - the doc himself.

Dr. Glen was a very good instructor and diagramed how to suture as well as showing me how to do it. Then it was my turn. I approached my subject with confidence (again, Mr. Orange) and proceeded to sew him up with no problem. I don’t know what the big deal is! Of course, perhaps with a living, bleeding YELLING human being it will be a different story. But as for now I can suture up oranges with the best of them!

We took a day trip down to a clinic run by SIM in a place called Langano. It is about three hours south of Addis. After three hours we came to the turn off road where we proceeded 15 km down a bumpy, BUMPY road before we finally got to the clinic. There is a couple who lives there, Dan and Kim, and she is a Nurse Practitioner. When we finally pulled up to the clinic, we saw around 75 people patiently sitting outside in the shade of an old, gnarled tree. They were waiting to see the doctor. No TVs in the waiting room, no coffee, no magazines to read...just sitting on the ground, waiting their turn.

Patients patiently waiting to see the doctor at Langano

Some people were carried on crude stretchers by family or friends many miles to get medical help. Some came by mule or horse, but most just walked. The NP has a very busy practice. She sees about 145 pregnant women for prenatal care, delivers babies, treats for malaria and malnutrition, and a host of other ailments and diseases. She also helps run an adjoining building called “House of Hope”. This is for the babies who mothers die in childbirth. They must be fed and taken care of until a home can be found for them. Most babies are severely under nourished anyway- sometimes they need some supplemental formula or baby food. There is a drought and food shortage happening in Ethiopia and most people barely have enough food to survive-let alone thrive. Many times she rides by horseback out into the bush to make house calls; checking on patients that can’t get out. Now that's a good doctor!

The gratitude on these people's faces is striking. She is their only hope. They recognize that her medicine is good even though it competes with the influence of the local witch doctors and traditional superstitions and home remedies. It must be very frustrating for her to not have enough medicines for the people, knowing that with the proper medications she could cure most diseases. But she does the best that she can and knows that while she can’t save everyone she can save some. And so she keeps on..... If any of you would want to help out by sending prenatal vitamins, etc..I know she would appreciate it! For a doctor, I can only imagine what satisfaction it must be to help these people and what a fulfilling career this must be. It certainly doesn’t pay much now, but the heavenly rewards she and others like her will receive are far better than driving a new BMW or living in a big house (with an even bigger mortgage payment!)

This is Dr. Kim. Her smile is as sunny as her personality! I want to go back and get a picture of her in her white coat riding by horseback out into the bush making ‘hut calls’ (instead of house calls-get it?? )

This is a container bridge-a clever use of overseas metal shipping containers (we thought!) Sometimes they stack two on top of each other and make a house. Ethiopians are so resourceful!

Tom & Teresa update

***This is an update from Tom and Teresa. They were able to upload it successfully from Ethiopia. They were unable to do this for many weeks because the government blocks access to blogger. However, they have found a way to update without having someone to do it for them.***
Without further ado:


We have been in Addis for a month now. It has been a wonderful time and opportunity to meet all kinds of missionaries from all over the world. What an incredibly diverse group of people! They come from all walks of life, ages, countries-and it is so encouraging to see so many good people who are trying to make a difference in this world. But we are anxious to be off and headed south to Arba Minch. We are planning on leaving now around March 2 or 3rd. Our friend, Ben, has offered to drive us down there (since we still do not have a truck) We have purchased some supplies that we will need to start up a house-pots, pans, dishes, a table and chairs, screens to repair the windows, fans to circulate the air, a ladder, an axe, hammer and nails, shovel, etc....We have very carefully gone to many different shops to find the best quality-unfortunately, quality is not as easily found here as in the USA. And since it is all imported, the cost is much higher than in the states. It kind of grates on our nerves to have to pay so much for these things when the quality is so poor-but what can you do-you need them.....However, the things that are made here in Ethiopia-like beautiful textiles, rugs, wooden carved furniture and decorative items- these can be bought very cheaply here, so that takes some of the 'sting' off of paying such high prices on imports.

Today, I went to a crafts bazaar at the local church where we have been attending. There were so many wonderful handcrafted items there- I had a great time!

One of my purchases was some artwork from a young man with dreadlocks (He was a Rastafarian) He had beautiful acrylic paintings and also he had some unusual black and white sketches. Upon a closer look, I realized that it was black ink and wax. The wax is applied, then scratched off-ink is rubbed over it. Then some more wax is scratched off. It is very unique! I asked the artist what this particular art form/technique was called. He said, " I call it Scratch", or sometimes "Scratch wax" Hmmmm....I guess I should have thought of that!! haha

Well, it is 5pm now, and I was thinking about taking a quick nap before dinner. However, the Muslim chanting has started up on the loudspeakers all over the city. So much for a quick nap.......sigh......They also chant over loudspeakers at 5am. But the Orthodox church wants THEIR time too-so THEY start chanting at 4am.

A real 'Battle of the Soundsystems!!' (not to mention the disco that revs up from 8-1am every night right behind the SIM Missionary Guesthouse.) I guess that is the devils' way of getting back at all the missionaries that are here doing God's work. But- we just bring earplugs, so there!!!!!

Tom & Teresa Rieder