Oceans Apart (and a little about fashion)

Today was our first day of training with the Yezelelam Minch and Bethany Staff. Jill and I were both very nervous, mostly about the cultural barrier. So on the way to our hotel, I brought my Ipod and played us some songs to get us pumped up. We sang and danced the entire way to the training… Jill and I felt a lot better, but Danny (our driver) was a little embarrassed  We had a lot of smiles from other drivers. On the way we experienced our first traffic jam. It was interesting because this is a very big city, but no one honks, no one is impatient, they just wait. We have now seen 3 traffic lights in the entire city, and we drive A LOT!

We were told to arrive at 8:30 and we were late, about 8:45. This made me quite anxious as we climbed our 5 flights of stairs to an empty room. Most people arrived at about 9:30. There are about 20 people total at our training. One of the men (boy really) is a nurse, he was wearing a bright green t-shirt that says “Irish Yoga” and had pictures of drunk and passed out Irish people… Interesting. I will take a minute here to talk about the fashion. People in Addis Ababa are VERY fashionable. They put us to shame. They like European clothes and they joke that everything is made in China and it is cheap. Although they are very fashionable, they wear the same clothes for a week. This puts me at ease, I wear less fashionable clothes, but change daily.

So now I will get to the point of this blog entry. Back to Jill and my fear about cultural barriers. Of course there are some, but what we realized today is that we live in different cultures, oceans apart, thousands of miles away, we share so many things. We share love of Christ. We share a passion for vulnerable children. We share the value of family. We share a love of learning. We all love to laugh, to be hospitable, to drink coffee.

No matter where I go in the world, no matter what I see, close to home, far away, there is nothing more exciting than meeting people in which you share passion. It is so important to learn from our differences, to learn from each other’s values, cultures, experience, but to also recognize our sameness.

So tonight I sign off after a wonderful Italian dinner, blogging by candlelight (no power tonight) and listening to Dar Williams and Indigo Girls on my ipod.

My heart is happy.