Dinner with Jennifer was refreshing, as she has Zambia thoughts rolling around in her head. I am just now frusterated with mail merge- seems so non-logical, and it is just getting hot up here.

Sort of feel like I have nothing in my life. What in the world am I doing here? How long until I will feel settled? Enjoyed John Piper's message from Hebrews 12 this morning- God's discipline is not punishment, rather it is refining, purifying, training. Well, I just feel uncomfortable and awkward, and like I just don't fit. I still think I am in the right place, though... And I am moving towards a job.

Finishing up my letter today made me think again about how Ethiopia has changed me, sort of aged me.

Abba Diga told me one day about the training he went to in Dimtu during the communist regime (about the 70's to the 90's in Ethiopia). He said a few people from each kebele (town) were selected to go and learn, and he was one of them. There were hundreds of people in Dimtu, and they all slept on the floor of some building, I forgot which he said. They were given instructions on teaching they were supposed to give to the rest of their respective communities. The parts he told me about were the distance in meters between each house, between a house and its outhouse, the width of the roads, the way to make plot divisions, field divisions, etc. We laughed because he said now the roads have gotten so much smaller because people just keep moving their fields out more and more.

So many people remember the famine. They describe the helicopter coming and landing in each kebele- Awanno market area, Decha Gibe market area, etc., and delivering a farasila (17 kg.) of grain (maybe wheat, not teft), and a kilo of oil. Depending on family size, they would get more or less. At the time, there was a difficult kebele chairman in Awanno. He reported to the aid people (“wheat people” is what Abba Sanbe called them, “jeerrii camadee”) that Awanno didn’t need any more food and people weren’t starving. The community was so unhappy with that (false) report, and complained so much, that they pressured him in going back and requesting more aid and telling the truth. But in the end, while aid came monthly to all the other kebeles, it only came twice to Awanno. It only came twice to Decha Gibe, but I don’t know why. Among others, Abba Jihad Abba Ware’s first wife died in the famine. (The night guard).

I still can't believe all the crazy things I did in the clinic.

Kids sometimes drank water from the river and thereby got leeches in their throats. Their parents would bring them in with the complaint of, usually, throat bleeding. With a flashlight, you could often see a stream of blood down the back of their throat, and sometimes you could see the leech. The only one I ever pulled out was visible, and we tried and tried with forceps (pickups), but ultimately had better luck with a Kelley clamp (pulled it out that way). Claire has had children drink hot oil, drink salt water, she’s put down an NG tube with lido and lubricant on the end, all with success, usually. It is really hard when the kids are young, because they won’t let you, they just scream and try to push you away. The little girl I helped must have been cooperative, because it is almost impossible if they aren’t.