adventures in bahir dar

What an adventure. We traveled via a contracted mini bus, leaving last Thursday SUPER early in the morning. The journey took about 13 hours, 3 of which were through a giant gravel rocky-roaded gorge. I took a few fun videos, which are much to large to send via the internet here, and I look forward to sharing them with you when I get back to the states.

kate and jruss at the gorgeous gorge...
part of the 13 our bus trip to bahir dar.

The countryside of Ethiopia VASTLY differs from Addis, and the beautiful greenery, less populated rural areas were a much appreciated change.

A man traveling through the countryside of Ethiopia. Taken in the bus.
Much different scenery from the overpopulation of Addis.

We arrived in Bahir Dar just after sunset, ate dinner then walked around town. Since the Moon rose over Mecca, Ramadan ended, thus there were fireworks and many Muslim¹s chanting in the street. The commemoration was enjoyable, and most everyone celebrated holiday the next morning.

Friday morning we explored the bahir dar mercado, meeting some of the sweetest street boys along the way -- Manyalet, Asmama, Tomishkin and Chumbay. Manyalet spoke English very well, and he is also learning Arabic, French and Spanish on top of being fluent in Amharic.  We walked with them for most of the morning, and they introduced us to two Cuban men who were professors at the university. It was exciting to practice Spanish for a few minutes and share a common passion for that special island.

Joy sharing the story of Zacchaeus (luke 19)
with some precious street kids in Bahir Dar.

Joy, my Bahir Dar roommate, had some connections in the town via the mission's group she is here with, so that afternoon we hiked to the Blue Nile Waterfalls with a wonderful tour guide, Yinebeb. The scenery was breathtaking. So calm and green and wonderful.

jruss next to the beautiful blue nile waterfalls.

Because crocs are not the best hiking shoes, I decided to not continue along the path with the rest of the group, so I walked back to town and waited with our bus driver, Tomana. He is a protestant believer and had many opinions on the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. We had a very delightful conversation about Jesus and his glorious creativeness, and then I had the sweetest time with some of the children in the town. They were curious about the color of my skin, and most of the girls were shy, but after a few minutes were having broken conversations in Amharic and enjoying each
other¹s company.

Many children at the blue nile falls.
These kids are full of energy and very fun to spend time with.

Friday evening Joy and I had a very powerful conversation about poverty. We talked about Luke 14 ­ where Jesus tells people to invite the poor, crippled, lame and blind to dinner, because, unlike friends and relatives, they cannot repay the favor. We shared about the difficult situations we are put in daily, and prayed for God to give us wisdom in these situations, help us to restore dignity to our poor friends and give us practical ways to share his love with his people.

The next morning Yinebeb took us to several different monasteries via a boat ride across Lake Tana. The experience was a bit different than we expected, as there are not many actual monks by the churches, but more of a cultural museum.

Paintings from the 15 century inside of a Ethiopian orthodox church
at one of the Montessori's we visited. You can see the veiling over Mary,
a few pictorial representations of bible stories and a few pictures
of orthodox traditional stories.

jruss and yinebeb (really fun tour guide).

monk at a monastery.
Although we expected there to be many monks at the
various monasteries we visited, this was the only one we saw all day.

On the boat ride back to shore Jessica Ditto spotted something poking out of the water. Turns out, it was a HIPPO!! Hippos are fascinating--they weigh a much as a school bus, do not eat meat and can travel 40 kilometers an hour in the water. They are also rather shy, or at least this one was. We played hide and seek with him for about 45 minutes, and FINALLY I was finally able to get a decent shot of him. Jessica Merriam was so excited, as it was her goal to see a hippo during our stay in Bahir Dar.

a hippo in lake tana! He played hide and seek with us for about 45 minutes.
One of the most exciting pieces of our journey to the North.

Saturday evening on the walk to dinner we ran into the boys we had met the day before. It was a sweet blessing from above, as God reminded us of the Luke 14 passage. Joy and I decided to skip the group dinner and treat these boys to coke, pizza and egg sandwiches. We are so thankful for the time we got to share with these boys. We talked about chewing gum, their families and school. We also got to share a few stories from the bible and told them they could pray to jesus at any time, not just when they were at church. These boy are so full of love and energy, and it was a true answer to prayer to dine with them.

our sweet friends, manyalet and chumbay, out to dinner on Saturday evening.

Later that night we went dancing, both to a traditional Ethiopian club and to a hiphop club, which was a lot of fun. Then, Sunday morning Yinebeb brought us donuts and we journeyed 13 hours back to Addis.

Good times!