Hossana yet again

Our day continued with a tour of the new school in Hossana, a look at the bakery project that helps families make bread so they can sell it and then to a traditional hut style house.

The school was amazing. It isn’t completely done but it is getting there and they are hoping to have it open for the next school year. They are also building some more offices and things there as well.

All the while we were photographing and videotaping the whole thing. Ethiopia is such a beautiful country. The people are so friendly and the children love having their picture taken and now with digital cameras you can show them right away.

There is such an extreme level of poverty yet everyone we encountered was so friendly and wanted to wave or have their picture taken. It was very moving and heartbreaking. The children are so beautiful, you just want to scoop them all up and yet they seem so happy. It makes you think twice about complaining about no hot water or electricity when these children are hungry and have no clean drinking water and yet can still walk around with a smile.

Once we left the school, they drove us to a family’s home. The family was gracious enough to let us come in and take pictures and look around. In the one hut was a family with 6 children, 4 cows and 2 goats and there were a couple chickens and a rooster outside. Yes the family and the livestock all slept in the same hut.

The women allowed us to photograph her with some of her children and her one son just LOVED having his picture taken so I would take his picture and show it to him and then he would shake my hand. It was so sweet. His little sister was just a beautiful little girl with braids in her and she too liked having her picture taken.

All in all the Hossana experience was beautiful and emotionally draining. I am so glad we were able to go on this trip and will be able to share the more rural aspects of Ethiopia with Peanut. The drive back to Addis was long. We were all exhausted physically and mentally. I would be naïve to say that I am walking away from today the same person as when I started. I gained a tremendous amount of perspective and was able to enjoy and absorb so much of Ethiopia in such a short time.

To decompress after the emotional day we had, a bunch of us went to Metro pizza for pizza and beer. It was nice to get out of the guest house and just hang out for awhile.
Tomorrow we are able to bring Peanut to the guest house so we can finally take pictures. We will have her here with us until lunch time. After lunch we are going to a museum, to see the CHSFS hospital, and the we are going out to traditional Ethiopian dinner and dancing.