Project Ethiopia Benevolence: 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...