Small, wonderful things

There are a lot of small, wonderful things I like about Ethiopia that don’t need much explaining, so I though I would make a list! It sounds kind of strange, but these are the things I might remember the most. And I am leaving in less than one week!

1.     I will miss the absolutely delicious mango juice that I drink at Africa Coffee every day after work. I hated mangoes (mangos??) until this trip.

2.     I will miss saying hello with my eyebrows. It’s really much more convenient.

3.     I will miss being known for my beastly injera- eating skills. I love injera so much that I eat more than the 30 year-old male teachers at my school haha.

4.     I will miss beautiful moments like when the sponsor parents of Limya, a five year old boy with gigantic eyes, came to visit him. And they were adopting two babies too!

5.     I will miss when I yawn, because people then always ask me if I’m hungry.

6.     Speaking of hungry, I will miss popcorn with sugar on it! Sooooo good. Ethiopian people eat this with coffee when they have guests over.

7.     I will miss playing games with random kids I meet, including a dodgeball game with fruit! (One day while playing soccer, I was really excited because I realized I was left-footed. No wonder I have been so bad at soccer all my life!)

8.     I will miss being cared for so much by the students and teachers at Kechene. I think they would do anything if I needed help. In fact one day when I was walking through the neighborhood, a group of teenage boys started bothering me. Some kids from school saw and ran to tell the teachers, who called to make sure I was ok. I love them.

9.     I will miss the random rastafarians who always talk to me on my way home from work. They are funny.

10. I will miss walking to work dodging donkeys. Ethiopia has the second largest number of donkeys in the world. They are everywhere.

11. I will miss playing hand- clapping games with Yeru Salem, a girl at school, who has the cutest dimples and who looks like she’s been scared by a ghost whenever she messes up.

12. I will miss going outside and thinking I am in Alaska because it’s so cold. Sometimes you can see your breath! (I mean what the heck, I am in Africa, and it’s summer!).

13. I will miss riding the bus to work (which takes 1.5 hours to get across the city) and observing people going about their daily lives. Sometimes they do funny things, and we laugh together. One time we got in a small mini-bus fender bender and the police arrived after like 2 minutes! I was very impressed. Then they looked at the busses and were like “whatever” and walked away, hahahhahaha.

14. I will miss playing fruit ninja with the teachers at recess. I love that game! One teacher has a high score of 600 though, which I will never beat.

15. I will miss when my cute little students offer me their lunch, even though they probably don’t eat anything at home.

16. But most of all, I will miss the joy of everyone at school. These kids have really hard lives and almost no material possessions, but their time at school is filled with so much love, community, and happiness. I am lucky to be a part of it.