from the moment we decided to visit ethiopia, we wanted to visit mikedes, a girl ann has sponsored through world vision. she lives in mersa, a little town in the amhara region about eight hours from the nearest airport. we figured we would arrange our transport there once in lalibela, and as things have a tendency to do in africa, that turned into a saga. we talked to a few travel fixer types in lalibela about our desires, and they all had many fanciful brochures and promises of luxury transport options. each of them basically had people following us around lalibela, asking us about our most recent plans for getting to the next town, and offering us different prices for jeeps, vans, etc. also comments about how the other guys wouldn’t come through. but when the time came to actually go, no one could come through. our guide addis in lalibela promised he could get us there by bus if he could come with, so we took the 5:30 am local bus with him from lalibela to weldia. it was an austere african journey, fjording streams and picking folks up every five minutes.
the folks from world vision met us at a hotel in weldia, about two hours after the agreed meeting time, but its all good. they had a van, and now things were official, so a guy from the government had to join us to keep an eye on us. so now we had three cooks in the kitchen – the world vision area director, the government minder, and our guide addis from lalibela. and as such, always three different views on what should happen next. we just sat back to see the turf war unfold!
before visiting our sponsor child, they insisted we see some world vision water projects in the area. then they took us to the local world vision office for a tour. apparently we were the only sponsors to ever have come to this place, and, they said, the first white people to visit the town in as long as they could remember. when they found out i was a physician they also brought us to a world vision-run local health clinic. then finally, we went to the mikedes’ house and met her and her father. her mother passed away so she cooks and keeps the house up for her and her father, who is a farmer. world vision allows her to attend school and pays for supplies, etc as well as food at school, which is great, as without that support she probably wouldn’t be able to attend school. they live in a mud hut with their ox outside, and we sat on their floor and drank some impeccably prepared ethiopian coffee and it was a really special time.
now that world vision could trust us, they offered to give us a ride all the way back to lalibela the next day. on the way we stopped for some kitfo, raw goat hamburger sprinkled with cayenne pepper. mmmmm!
