Movie Night at the Red House

Just because we live in Ethiopia doesn’t mean that we can’t have some good ole fashion American fun every now and then. By that I mean, dinner and a movie. Well, while going out to a nice restaurant and then a movie theater is possible here in Addis Ababa, it would be expensive to rent a vehicle for such an outing. So we do the home variety, and I must say that we do it quite well. It all started in early December when I (Travis) was having a REALLY bad day. You know, one of those days when your whole mind is clouded with so much crabby-ness that it just makes other people laugh! Desperately needing a break (or a nap) after morning language school, I got a call from someone requesting an afternoon meeting. Knowing the importance of this meeting, I agreed, hung up the phone and scowled at everybody in the room (who couldn’t help but smile having overheard my conversation). Knowing that my exhaustion and attitude would not benefit my motorcycle driving, I took public transportation to and from the meeting (your welcome, mom!).

 

Upon my arrival back at home, I was immediately greeted by our housemate, Grant. “Hey, Travis! Melissa (that’s his wife) gave us permission to watch “Fellowship of the Ring” tonight!” (Yes, we need our wives’ permission on such privileges). You see, Grant and I had been working for some time on our wives to watch the “Lord of the Rings” series with us. Andrea wasn’t difficult to convince because she actually likes that series, but Melissa was not enthusiastic. News of Grant’s success helped melt away my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day! After dinner, Grant popped his DVD into our computer and we edified ourselves with this classic film! Before the night was over, we vowed to continue the series the next Friday and finally finish it on the Friday two weeks out.

 

News spread of our “Lord of the Rings” viewing and so our group grew from four to eight. The next two Friday’s found Andrea and Melissa going all out in the kitchen to provide excellent pre-film dinners – homemade meatballs, quesadillas, fruit salad, etc. After finishing Lord of the Rings in mid-December, we watched “A Christmas Story” before taking a week off for Christmas. Early January had a showing of Ironman with an excellent Taco meal (you better believe the tortillas were homemade!). The French toast and scrambled eggs breakfast for dinner marked the beginning of the Star Wars series, which we hope to see in six consecutive weeks (tomorrow is the third). Andrea and I own just three movies (The Truman Show, Radio and A Christmas Story), so we don’t know if the “Friday Red House Dinner and a Movie Night” will continue much after Grant and Melissa take their movie collection back to the States with them in mid-April. Nevertheless, it is fun to have this down time as well as to play host to many of our co-workers and friends who live nearby. By the way, you’re invited! Dinner is at 6:30.

 

"So much has changed.yet so much the same."

I apologize for being reflective in two back-to-back blogs, so I promise a fun one next time, but this weekend has marked the beginning of our fourth decades in life (we both turned 30 years old this weekend). Birthdays, like New Year’s Day, can be a time when we look back on where we have come and with this being a milestone birthday, it’s strange to think that a decade ago we had just barely survived Y2K and had returned to Chicago for our Spring semester at Moody. Five years ago we were a crazy engaged couple wearing out our car tires to be together as much as possible as we eagerly anticipated the wedding that still seemed like an eternity away. One year ago, we were finalizing our family/friends/church visiting schedule for our last three months in the US. Thinking about our birthdays last year, we remembered the fancy steak restaurant that Travis’ parents treated us to. Then we smiled at the memory of one year ago today when we spent the whole day making an igloo out of snow and ice – and, of course, the surprisingly toasty night that we spent sleeping inside.

 

So much has changed in the past year. Snow is all but a distant memory, along with the feeling of owning a car, Dairy Queen Blizzards (or Wendy’s Frostys), Subway $5 footlongs, Walmarts, American commercials, and being able to blend in with society when out in public. Obviously a lot has changed this past year, but at the same time, both of us feel nothing new about being on this side of the 30-year-old threshold. We were comforted by some slightly more “mature” folks that we haven’t reached the proverbial “top of the hill” yet so I guess we are still on the way up (when is someone officially considered “over the hill?”). Anyway, despite the changes of this past year, we still have our families (with whom we are able to talk via skype on a regular basis), we still have the work that God has called us to, we still have healthy bodies with which to pursue our goals, we still have each other (which is a major blessing for me!), and we have the optimistic excitement of what God is going to do in our future. The packaging is very different, but the essentials are still the same, and for that we are grateful to God!

Three decades down…and the excitement is just beginning!

We're Created for Community

I don’t mean to get entirely sentimental or preachy in this blog, but I’ve just been reflecting on the importance of friendship. No matter where we are at, we have seen how having a community of trusted friends makes such a difference in our overall happiness. I don’t mean to say that God is not sufficient in meeting our needs, but rather that He meets our needs through the provision of friends.

 

One of our major prayer requests during our first 4-5 months was for God to provide at least one couple with whom we could really connect. We believe that that prayer was answered in October when we joined Grant and Melissa in the house we are currently living in. Like us, they are in their late twenties, have enjoyed a few years of childless marriage, and share with us the odd combination of introverted personalities yet the enjoyment of showing hospitality toward others. Unlike us, they are not with our organization. Rather, Grant is doing research for his PhD on one of the Ethiopian languages, with the hope of possibly coming back one day to do Scripture translation among that people group. Housemates, like roommates, have the tendency to become either really close friends or worst enemies…in this case, they have become the former. We give each other space, yet really enjoy each other’s company. We praise God for providing Grant and Melissa in answer to our prayers (and yours). Yet, when they finish their research and go back to the States in mid-April, we pray that they will not leave behind the social gap in us that we felt earlier in our time here. For now, we praise God for their fellowship.

 

Friendship is also on our mind today because we just returned from Tatek’s house. Tatek was the guard at the guesthouse that we used to live in. He is also the one we wrote about in our Ethiopian Christmas blog (we had brought food to him while he was working and then he delivered a nice card to us the next day). Well, he invited us to his house, which turns out to be only one room (maybe 10 feet by 8 feet) where both he and his sister live. Surely cooking all morning, his sister had prepared Ethiopia’s finest celebration dish – Doro Wot, along with many other types of food. In their culture, this was a great honor for us. Having genuine friendships with Ethiopians can be difficult because of the vast economic differences. It’s hard to really feel blessed by a friendship when there is the possibility of ulterior motives or requests for help. Tatek, thus far, has been a true friend, never once asking us for anything but time and conversation. As I sat on his bed eating a nice, spicy Doro Wot, I praised God for his friendship, which makes us feel a little bit more at home in this very different culture. Although, I could never measure it, I know that it is things like this that God is using to help us transition well and succeed in what we are doing (thus far, learning the Amharic language and Ethiopian culture(s)). Without a healthy social network (even for us introverts), it is hard to feel the inner joy that we should have as Christians. Why? Because I believe God created us for community.

David's Reflections in Psalm 139

Mile markers come up in our lives at various times, some expectedly, like when you turn a decade old (or 4), when you get your driver’s license, graduate, get married, retire and so on. I’m beginning to realize that some events that become mile markers grab you unexpectedly. This past Thanksgiving was one of those as it was the day we confirmed that we are going to become parents this year. A second unexpected milestone was erected in our hearts today as we saw our baby’s heart beating and saw it moving in our first ultrasound. “Your eyes saw my unformed body.” As we’ve begun to feel its tiny movements in this past week it’s become more real to us. “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.” But to see an image on the screen that looked like a baby already made my heart excited to think that in a few short months we’ll be holding that baby in our arms. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.” And changing its diapers and feeding it and hoping it will stop crying and let us get some sleep. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” This new person will change our lives completely and we marvel at what God is doing. “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!”

"Hark, We Bring the Good News"

Today, January 7^th, is Ethiopian Christmas so people all around the city are gathering with family, slaughtering animals for the celebratory doro wot or beg tibs (that is chicken sauce or fried lamb chunks). Not surprisingly, there was literally blood flowing down one of our side streets from the slaughtering up the hill. Although today does not feel like Christmas for us, we did decide to celebrate the Ethiopian Christmas in three ways.

 

First, we purchased a sheep for our houseworker and good friend, Aster (Esther). We had been talking with her about what her family would do for Christmas and what kind of food they would eat. She said that they would get a few chickens for the meal. When we asked why they wouldn’t get a sheep (which is more typical for Christmas), she simply said that they are too expensive. We agreed with our housemates that buying a sheep for Aster’s family would be a fun present to give her and so last week we shared our desire. Aster and her whole family got really excited about having a sheep given to them. Saturday, we met her and her husband at the sheep market (on the side of the road) and let her husband pick out a nice fat sheep! And from what I learned in a class field trip to the sheep market, he picked out a really nice one. We slapped down 700 birr (that’s about $55) and we loaded the bound sheep into a public transportation minibus. Her kids must have been watching for us because as soon as we came into sight, they came running to greet us and see their Christmas sheep. The joy on their faces was obvious.

 

Second, last night, we went to a local restaurant and ordered some food to-go. We brought our own Tupperware because we had never heard of someone ordering Ethiopian food to go. We then brought our food to another house to surprise an Ethiopian friend of ours who was working as a guard (he used to be our guard when we lived at the other guesthouse). He was so excited to see that we had come to visit him (and not the foreigners living in the house). He invited us into his tiny guard shack where we talked for about 45 minutes, all in Amharic, and then we ate the food together. After supper, he made us some really nice coffee, which we could not turn down even though it was too late in the evening to be drinking strong coffee. He walked us back to our house and very emphatically thanked us for visiting him. Then, much to our surprise, he showed up at our door with a wrapped present for us today. Inside we found a very fancy Ethiopian Christmas card with flowers, butterflies, glitter and it even played familiar Christmas music when it was opened. This was like the caviar of Ethiopian Christmas cards and it really meant a lot that he went through the effort to buy and deliver it to us.

 

Third, we collected a bunch of the small candies and toys that certain friends in Texas had sent us and we made goodie bags for the kids at the orphanage nearby our house. So, this afternoon, despite both of us feeling pretty nasty with colds, we went and delivered the goodies to 17 children. They were very excited to get the bead necklaces, whistles, play-doh, tootsie rolls, etc. It would have been nice to stay and play with them, but we definitely weren’t feeling up to it.

 

I can still here Linus quoting from Luke 2 (although we missed seeing that Christmas special this year). Angels came to the shepherds and brought Good News of a Special Child born in Bethlehem. Although we are not angels, and our news isn’t nearly as Good, we also have good news of a special baby. However, this baby hasn’t been born yet. He/she is still inside of Andrea’s tummy!

 

Finally Playing Catch Up

For those of you who receive our every-other-week prayer partner e-mails (if you don’t and want to, let us know at travis_williamson@sil.org), you know that in October and November, we were asking for prayer regarding a change with our housing situation, which we did not explain in detail. Well, the decision has been finalized in that we have taken over the rent of one of our agency’s former guesthouses. This meant that we paid a whole lot of money to cover the final 8 months of the lease, the salary of a house-worker, who was promised a job through April, as well as purchasing all of the furniture inside. Why in the world would we invest in a house in Addis Ababa? Because our agency has decided to cut its guesthouse program which not only stinks for short-term visitors, but also for those of us living and working outside of Addis (as we soon will be). It means that we would need to find other housing for the 4-6 times a year that we come back to Addis. Well, in taking over the rent of this house, we hope to partner with other outside-of-Addis teams to create a shared house that we can all come back to. If it works out as planned, 3 or 4 of us families/couples/singles not only enjoy the luxury of having a place to store our “city stuff” but we will actually save money by not paying the inflated guesthouse prices. If everything does not work out well (either by other teams not joining us or by the rent going up too much upon renewal), then we will have actually saved money on the rent we would have paid in guesthouse fees between now and when we move out of Addis. So it’s a win-win situation from our perspective.

So, now that we are starting to think a little more long term about this house, we have felt better about making some slight improvements. For example, we were noticing that our bathroom occasionally smelled really bad. Now hold on a minute, I know what you’re thinking: foul-smelling bathrooms have more to do with what meal was served the night before than home improvement, but in this case you’re wrong. The smell was clearly coming from the shower drain which had corroded so that air was seeping out directly from the sewer below. So for less than three dollars, we bought a new drain which when properly watered, blocks this unwelcome air flow. A hammer, screwdriver and about 2 hours of pounding removed the old drain and widened the hole enough for the new drain to fit. Putty along the edges finished the job to our satisfaction and it works beautifully. Now, as long as the drain has water in it, the bathroom does not wrinkle our noses anymore – well, at least not for that reason.

Part of breaking from the guesthouse meant being able to do our own laundry, so another project involved “hooking up” a new washing machine and making a clothes line for drying. The clothes line we made simply by buying some hooks, plastic anchors and 13 meters of nylon rope - all for 5-6 dollars. About 20 minutes of drilling and setup transformed our small balcony into a nice clothesline area (It is visible in the outside picture). The washing machine hook up required three things: water input, which ended up being a hose from the bathroom; electricity, which comes from the fridge power strip; and a drain, which is the floor drain in the tiled bathroom. The drain, pictured above, was the hardest part because like the shower, it had seen many years of corrosion and was filled with dirt. But, after more than an hour of pounding, screwing, and yanking we removed the cover, cleaned out the inside and tested the new flow rate. Perfect.

For years, I (Travis) have watched my parents and brothers do all kinds of home improvement projects – from little drain-like projects to full basement renovations. Jealous of the things they were learning, I looked forward to the day that I would have a house to work on. Although this is only a rental house and we don’t want to invest in major improvements, it has been fun to start to play catch up in learning about small home improvement projects.