After a bout with a lousy cold Sandy and I are up and blogging again. We were finally able to have a house warming/ Christmas dinner for a few of our new friends. So you might ask what do to American missionaries serve to their Ethiopian/German landlord and all their Ethiopian friends? Spaghetti of course! With a lot of garlic bread and apple pie for dessert.
We wanted to serve a classic American meal and after much deliberation agreed on spaghetti [I know its Italian] but it was really all we could find all the ingredients for. The apples were a big splurge and I’m not going to tell you what we payed for them. The next big challenge was finding a pie plate. OK. We asked a few in the know folks and decided the Mercado District was our primary hunting ground.
Now all we had to do was explain to our trusty driver, Dawitt, what a pie plate was so that he could interpret to potential merchants just what we had in mind. Well it would help if people here ate pie; but then it wouldn’t be something new for them and that would take all the fun out of our quest. We finally settled on a skillet. BTW I ended up using a broiler tray because the skillet was to small for a pie for 12.
On the way home from shopping we encountered a few minor technical difficulties with the car and after being pushed a few blocks by some very kind gentlemen we were off to Burayu. Not so fast , Dawitt explains that we need fuel. Gas station crowded , people filling up all sorts of unsafe containers with fuel, we get through all the crowd, get our fuel and are about to pull onto the street when a big truck tries to pull into the station, needless to say there is no way that truck ,our car and a half dozen other cars are going to navigate this space all at once. Well Dawitt being the kind soul he is backs up to let the truck in from the street. That was good until the truck driver turns to short and binds the rear quarter panel of our car up in his wheel well. I thought Dawit was about to cry, or worse, all he wanted was to safely get Sandy and I home to Burayu . He was able to flag down a contract taxi and give him directions and we were on our way. We did finally make it home with our packages intact.
OK what was this blog going to be about ? Oh yeah, Christmas with friends. Sandy and I and Shaweye set about cleaning the house and making decorations. An old newspaper, some glue, a little string, a treasured piece of tin foil,some paint and of course good ol’ fashioned American ingenuity and soon the house was festooned with paper chain garlands , snow flakes and a sparkling silver star over the table. Shaweye proved to be superior paper chain maker under Sandy’s diligent instruction. Sandy set a beautiful table complete with fresh flowers from Kifley’s garden. Oh by the way this is a day after the shopping trip.
Right on schedule our guests arrived , Pastor Emanuel and wife Marge [pronounced mar gay] Samson and Enat husband and wife owner /directors of Bereket school, Balacho from church and our dear friend Getachew also from church and of course Kifley and Sumbutta from upstairs. It took a little convincing to get Shaweye to come join the conversation but in the end all our guests were engaged in a delightful mix of English and Oromifa. Enat enjoyed reading the blog, and her husband Samson and Kifley were deep in a conversation that I’m certain solved all our worlds troubles.
I think everyone liked the meal. Marge seemed especially fond of the toffees on the coffee table and that's perfectly acceptable for a woman who is 6 months pregnant. It was great fun to share our home and meal with the people we are working with, to build rapport and strengthen the bonds of fellowship. There is a lot of work to do here and I hope that this will help to lay the foundation for our future cooperation.
All of you faithful blog readers be sure to blog in next week when we celebrate The Ethiopian traditional Christmas Holiday. Merry Christmas and a Happy Birthday to our Lord and Saviour , Jesus Christ. CW
