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FINAL REPORT FROM ETHIOPIA
Janice and Andrew Proud
21st March 2011

Life is counted off in decades – childhood, youth, young adulthood, etc. Janice and I both feel it has been a real joy and a privilege to have spent the best part of a decade in Ethiopia, serving the Diocese of Egypt as USPG Mission Companions. Of course, those nine years have had their difficult, painful moments, too. We have both learnt a great deal about human nature, about ourselves and about what is really important, from this amazing, beautiful country, from our friends and colleagues here,from this Diocese and this region of Africa. We have also grown in our faith.

It is good to look back over the past, to count the ways in which you have been blessed and the ways in which, by God’s grace, you were able to be a blessing.

We loved being at St. Matthew’s, Addis Ababa, right here in the political and academic heart of the city, yet still surrounded by crushing poverty. From refugees to ambassadors, St. Matthew’s is not only vibrantly multi-cultural, it gathers together Christians of every shade and opinion you can imagine. Of course, we faced many challenges there, too. The constant flux of people as, every year, as much as 40% of the congregation left at the end of their contracts, and others arrived, new, excited, or troubled by being away from home or the poverty they saw all around them. We coped with that by bringing people together as often as possible, to build community, to share concerns, to encourage and support one another and to grow in faith. At that time, there were also huge numbers of refugees in town, up from the camps on the Sudanese border, waiting for the remittances that had been promised by family who’d been lucky enough to get a green card to the States. Often, they waited for weeks before they had any news and, when the money did come, they were so in debt, or flush and elated, that they got into trouble. We coped with that by gathering volunteers from church to help us run a huge refugee programme twice a week on the church compound – around 250 men on Wednesdays, gathered for Bible study, psycho-social support and for basic practical things, like cooking themselves rice, meat and vegetables. Within months, we were able to start a Tuesday programme, providing food, baby bathing facilities, basic health monitoring, measles vaccination and structured and unstructured play to 200 women and children. But this came at a cost. Not only did we have to find money for these programmes, we soon realised that our neighbours, squeezed into the corrugated iron, one-roomed shacks crammed against the walls of the church compound, were becoming resentful. They didn’t have access to remittances from overseas, they couldn’t afford to eat meat even once a month and their children received no one’s help. When we realised how deep the resentment ran, we opened a community library on the church compound. What started as four shelves of national curriculum text books and forty students under one librarian soon became a library with two staff, offering the whole range of Ethiopian school text books, now serving over 1,200 students.

Meanwhile, in the far west of Ethiopia, we were becoming increasingly concerned for the fledgling churches, planted by refugees from south Sudan. During 2002, we managed to make several visits to Gambella, but by early 2003, the region had become unstable. The only way of getting to know who was leading our churches and the few other churches in the area, was to bring as many people as we had contact out from Gambella, to Jimma, for a two week conference looking at peace and reconciliation. Funded by ZOA Refugee Care, we were able to bring in a Kenyan expert in peace and reconciliation for this conference. We were also joined by Andy Wheeler (twenty years in south Sudan with CMS) and two ordinands from Cairo. This conference proved to be a tipping point – in terms of meeting the people, spending quality time with them and beginning to understand the issues. The main issues were: lack of any proper selection or training of clergy, lack of mission focus, tribalism, disease and poverty, dependency, violent cattle raiding and regional instability. Over the years, we have tried to address these issues at every opportunity.

Clustered our growing churches into Mission Centres, on the Minster model (from 5 churches in 2002, there are now 53 in 10 mission centres).
Commissioned a full organisational review, to identify precisely what we can do, with our limited capacity, to meet the many needs of this country.
Focussed on education (libraries and literacy) and mainstreaming peace in all our activities.
Written many policies and put many procedures in place, to give structure and form to our mission.
Produced a staff handbook (HR manual) and Parish Handbook, to ensure best pastoral practice.
Began the annual Local Assembly(synod), which gathers together 170 clergy and laity, men and women, from our churches.
Began to pay clergy a living wage and provide school support for their children.
Began to train clergy at every opportunity, through retreats, seminars and by exposing them as often as possible to Anglican clergy visiting from overseas.
Established a Gambella Regional Advisory Council, to help me resolve disputes between clergy and church members before they escalate into major issues.
Began the hugely successful TEE programme, with the help of Mary Witts.
18 graduated with the full TEE certificate; 245 people did at least one module.
Had the TEE programme evaluated externally.
Set up selection procedure and held as full selection conference.
Ordained clergy and licensed them.
Built and equipped local, grass churches.
Built the Gambella Anglican Centre, comprising library, offices, priest’s house, guest accommodation, training rooms and canteen.
Networked with bishops in South Sudan and elsewhere.
Established an Episcopal Area office in Addis Ababa.
Established a second community library in Addis Ababa.
Established an Episcopal Area Executive Committee, to share oversight of the work with the Area Bishop.

And now we are leaving. We are very sad, in lots of ways, because Ethiopia itself and the Diocese of Egypt have both been so significant for us. We have made so many good friends and we shall especially miss Bishop Mouneer, who has been a huge support and encouragement. I thank him, wholeheartedly, for giving us this opportunity to serve. We would also like to thank USPG – without you, we would never have had this chance to serve God’s people in this beautiful country and region. And we would like to thank you, our supporting parishes, for your considerable support, prayers and encouragement over the years.

What have we learnt? Well, we have learnt to appreciate a radically different world view to the one we grew up with – this is a deeply religious, respectful culture. We have learnt about our own vulnerability and the limits of who we are and what we can achieve; we have learnt patience and the need to trust God in absolutely everything, because the needs are so great and so much is unpredictable.

As we leave, in an unprecedented attack, 53 churches have been burnt in Jimma, one day drive from Addis, on the Gambella road, by Moslem extremists. This has shaken everybody here.

As we leave, we are comforted by the knowledge that we have outstanding, committed local staff in both Addis and Gambella; we have a retired English priest and his wife running the Gambella Anglican Centre, which is now up and running, who will also support the clergy; there is a very strong, experienced Episcopal Area Executive Committee in Addis, which will meet once a month during the vacancy; and Bishop Mouneer and others will visit during the year. New initiatives will wait for the next Bishop, but the Church and its outreach activities will continue to flourish, by God’s grace and in God’s name.

Please pray for
Bishop Mouneer as he searches for a new Area Bishop
The Diocese of Egypt at this troubled time in north Africa
The Gambella clergy, working in remote places, often under great pressure
The Gambella Anglican Centre and the Revd. Colin and Julia Hodgetts
Funding to re-start the TEE programme, when the new Bishop arrives

 

 

“Window” onto Ethiopia
Janice and Andrew Proud
Addis Ababa
May 2010

Weddings in Addis Ababa
The wedding season has well and truly begun. Every Saturday and Sunday, long processions of cars, taxis and minibuses, all garlanded in ribbons, crawl along the lanes of the ring-road in Addis, horns blaring and bridesmaids leaning out of windows waving flowers for the benefit of the camera crew in the lead vehicle. During the long Orthodox Lent, no weddings can take place – and once the rains come, no one wants to get married, so everyone who does want to marry is doing so right now. No one minds when the convoy occupies the roundabout by the Sheraton for ten minutes or so, circling long enough to get the best shots of the newly-weds against the background of the most opulent hotel in Ethiopia. Sadly, many families put themselves into huge debt to afford the wedding of their dreams – white dress, white cars and white ribbons and flowers decking the aderash, the wedding hall. But clear evidence, if evidence were needed, of an emerging middle class in Addis Ababa. In the countryside, of course, it’s a very different story…..
 
Burning the midnight oil
The annual exams are nearly upon us and the students, conscientious as ever, want to do well. But many of them live in a single room, with parents and many siblings, which means that it is difficult (impossible, even) to get the peace and quiet they need to study. Many of them resort to sitting up all night, burning the midnight oil, at home – and going into School the next day. Something we could never have done – and hardly the greatest revision-plan. So, imagine how amazed we were when 66 students petitioned us to keep the Community Library at St. Matthew’s open all night, three days a week, so they can study? They’d thought it out – the gates should be locked at 8:00pm, to stop people going out or coming in; they’d take out any books they need before the gates are closed and only study in the long room reading room; and they’d willingly sign a paper promising to act responsibly and to maintain quiet in the compound. We’ve given them the benefit of our doubt - and agreed. Let’s hope they do as well in their exams as they need to if they are escape the crushing poverty so many live in.
 
The new Library in the evening

Irish Aid
They’ve come up trumps. Irish Aid, who have funded the development of the Gambella Anglican Centre, were worried that they would be unable to follow through on their three year commitment to our huge and exciting project, because of the Global Financial Crisis. But last month and after five months of fairly tough negotiation, the writing of endless additional reports and the sometimes tortuously slow exchange of information over our dial-up internet connection, the mandarins in Limmerick gave the go-ahead for our funding to continue, with a generous six months extension, to make up for the five months lost. We are delighted, because we can now complete the Community Library, engage staff and begin to roll-out the education and literacy programmes. Whilst that is going on, we shall build the dormitories and dining room, designed to serve our training events in the future. So, thank you Irish Aid and CMS Ireland, and God bless you!

Trees, land and a new church.
We got it. A large piece of land in Itang, in a place where the Nuer and Annuak peoples’ traditional lands meet. Their synergy is so powerful that the church is growing fast, so on that land, we have started to build a “proper” church – stone foundations; strong wooden walls, mudded, plastered and painted; topped by a corrugated iron roof – and a huge wooden cross mounted to the east wall, outside. When we visited, the walls were erected and the task of fencing the land was about to begin. To me, one of the most beautiful features of the land is the shade provided by the twenty or thirty mature trees east of the church – already, we can imagine meetings, feasts, TEE classes and literacy training taking place under their shade. But all this comes at a cost – land, church and fence are costing us £12,626. Not much by UK standards – but a huge amount for us. And there are at least five other places waiting for us to do the same for them.
 
The new church at Itang, under construction

Confirmed in the rain!
We set off in beautiful light. Orange/gold hues reflected on tree and leaf and turned the red-dust road into a golden thread stretching to the horizon, where iron-grey and ink-blue rain clouds were building up. The first rain came two hours into the journey, turning the now black cotton soil of the road into a slippery, sticky quagmire. So it took us three and a half hours, all-told, to reach Nininyang for the confirmation service that Sunday. Nininyang – the place evokes images of suffering for me. Three years ago, many of our people had been displaced there without warning; and for the last six months, armed Murle tribesmen, crossing the border from South Sudan have raided cattle, burned homes and taken children to sell in the slave market in Khartoum. On a regular basis. Niniyang – I had never been before and we were both excited and slightly anxious. But the town was beautifully set-out. Newly-built tukuls (grass houses) lined either side of the dusty road and the church, our Anglican church, crested a small hillock, protected by a grass fence enclosing a modest compound. The church itself is tiny – it probably only seats 40 people, but outside stands a beautiful tree, with long branches that sweep the ground, forming a natural shelter. It was there that Peter, newly ordained deacon, had prepared for the service. 150 of us sat in a huge circle under the tree, as the wind began to stir the dust in the compound and lift the cloth on the altar. The rain started, part-way through my sermon. Nothing more than a gentle spray at first, but soon so heavy that we all abandoned the tree, to squeeze into the tiny grass church. As all 150 wet bodies stood shoulder-to-shoulder, by the light of two candles, I finished my sermon as the rain eased outside. We decided to brave it and stepped outside for the actual confirmation. Fortunately, the soil there is very sandy so it has begun to drain, leaving only small puddles. But there, one-by-one, 68 people knelt to be confirmed – and as they did so, the heavens opened again. So, imagine the scene – candidates either crammed inside the church, or pressed close to the fence, waiting for their name to be called – and then dashing out to kneel before their bishop, rain-drenched hair and mud-splashed robes hanging limp as, one hand on my pastoral staff and the other resting on each head and drawing the cope around each one in an attempt at shelter for us both, I prayed those beautiful words, “Confirm, O Lord, your servant N., with your holy Spirit.” 
 

The road on the way back to Gambella, after the confirmations in Nininyang

Food distribution
The first rain of the year has come and, already, the newly sprouted grass, a brilliant, almost luminous lime green, had clothed the ground under the twisted, blackened trees either side of the road, as we drove to Illea to distribute food aid. It seemed incongruous. The soil looks so fertile, but last year, it had hardly rained at all and, even if it had, the people of Illea do not have even the basic agricultural tools needed to till it. Ironically, a large foreign company has recently moved there to cultivate this same land to grow palm oil and rice for their own market – but doing nothing to alleviate the desperate need all around them. But we came to Illea, with a huge truck loaded with maize, bought with your money, to distribute to the community. It was hot and humid already, by the time we had counted the maze sacks onto the truck, been to the Disaster Prevention and Food Security office to collect our permission papers, found the Annuak woman appointed by them to come with us and filled up with diesel. An hour and a half later, we pulled up by the grass-clad Anglican church in Illea. The young church leader there began to help our team set-up. It took another hour and a half to unload the 100kg sacks of maize from the truck and pile them neatly against a grass fence. A small crowd gathered – the very old and the very young. Images seen a thousand times on TV - children with flies sitting in the corner of their eyes and mouth – but in the incongruous setting of damp black soil shooting brilliant green blades of grass, not far from the banks of the Baro river, glistening silver under the sun as it begins to swell with the rains. The whole thing was wonderfully organised. And all the while, young children gathered every last yellow/white maize seed that had spilled on the ground. Next time, we really must provide basic farming tools, so they can cultivate this beautiful land for themselves.

Grain unloaded, ready for distribution    Waiting to hear his name called in Illea

Waiting to hear her name called in Illea    Mother and children dividing a sack of maize

Helping his mother sign her name on the register in Illea

 

Chicken farmers
We’ve just bought nineteen chickens and a cockerel, all Rhode Island Reds, because “ferenj” (foreign) chickens lay larger eggs than the local hens. We built a chicken house at the back of the house, against the corrugated iron fence separating us from our neighbours’ wattle and daub houses.

Visiting Emma
Janice and I decided that we really wanted to see where Emma is living and working, so we took the weekend off and flew down to Jijigga, deep in the southeast of the country. We expected to find a hot, dry dust-bowl. Instead, because of the rains (the first in three years), we found a delightful town, nestling in a huge depression in vast, flat grasslands, right under a beautiful mountain range. Emma is enjoying her work enormously and has some good friends around – there are many NGOs working in the area.

Janice and Andrew Proud
16th May 2010.  

 

Christmas with the Opo 2009.

The drive down.
Tuesday 22nd December. The drives are always an adventure, so they are worth recording. Our Chinese pickup had just been serviced by an experienced engineer, so we set off later than usual, confident, to enjoy a smooth drive through to Jimma. We had never been so loaded – sacks of clothing for the Opo, stationery for the new Mission Centres and all our supplies were crammed into every available space, inside and outside the car. The road to Jimma was smooth and fast – asphalt all the way – although it still takes seven hours. On the way, Alex and I spent a good two hours evaluating all our staff. The Central Jimma Hotel was full, so we stayed in a new Hotel, the Honeyland, opened by a private investor, on the edge of town as you drive in. It was (too?) smart, comfortable and already becoming popular with the growing number of NGO consultants, road engineers and others who have appeared in the last few years. The weather was unusually cloudy.

Wednesday 23rd December. We set off before first light for Bedele, for breakfast – two and a half hours away over the mist blanketed mountain road. Even at this hour, the roadside is coming alive: men in pairs push trolleys of wood, old men swathed in white gabis stretch their legs, plantation workers wait to be picked up, children walk to school, men stand cleaning their teeth with twigs of wood, young girls fetch water, women tend newly lit cooking fires. After Bedele, the road disintegrates. The rutted, holed 80 year old asphalt gives way to rock and dried mud, baked hard by the sun. Just before Metu, the brakes jammed and Alemayehu began to complain of terrible tooth pain. Careful nudging backwards and forwards eased the brakes, but Alex’s tooth was getting worse. By Metu, the sun came through and car brakes were continuously rattling, but we managed to buy Diclofenac for Alex’s pain and I was able to give him some of the Metronidazole I was taking for Giardia. We reached Gambella by 3:45 in the afternoon, about the same time as Janice arrived by air from Addis. We took the car to the mechanic we know in Gambella, who told us the back brakes were completely shot. He kept the car overnight and we were really not sure we would reach the Opo at all. Supper that night with Sam Moody (our Project Director), in the Mekane Yesus Guest house was a mixture of relief at having arrived safely and uncertainty about how much we would need to change our plans for Christmas.     

Christmas Eve.
The journey. At 7:30am, the mechanic had dismantled the back brakes completely and told us he would try to replace the brake pads in the front of the car, but would need power and there hadn’t been any all night. Within half an hour, we had spoken to Sisay, who drove round to show us the old Landcruiser he had found which was available for hire at 2,000 birr (£100) a day. The car looked strong, we liked Abraham, the driver and we took it.

Alex, though, was still not well. His tooth had given him pain most of the night and so, although he was still keen to come with us, Janice persuaded him to rest up, to give a chance for the antibiotic to work. By ten, we were on the road to Lare, having picked up David Onuk (our church leader in the Opo) and Joshua (an Opo student in Gambella). Because we did not have the pick up, we were unable to take the generator to show the “Jesus” film. David’s obvious disappointment soon gave way to excitement that we were heading for his people. At Lare, we managed to find a small local hotel (think wild west style wooden building, raised off the road and accessed over a deep wooden veranda) for soft drinks and something to eat. The whole town exists either side of a road they are in process of improving, so there were mounds of earth, earth movers and trucks everywhere. Well, you can never be anywhere for long without being spotted and soon, Simon Ker (our priest in Lare) was sitting with us, together with the five men he had brought from the Church Council. Simon was radiant because we had just helped them connect the church compound to the newly installed town water supply.

Within the hour, we turned down past the Catholic church compound, on a dusty track heading north from Lare, to find the Opo road. Well, it wasn’t a road at all, really. Fifteen minutes along the dusty track, David signalled frantically that we should turn into the scrub on the right – the best of the two roads that lead into the Opo. The road is little more than a track that weaves its way between thorn scrub, acacias and beautiful (name?) short trees whose bark flakes off after a brush fire to reveal a new layer of bright, ginger-orange bark.
 
Our track twists left and right, through low-hanging trees that snag the bags of clothing strapped to the roof. Fortunately, Abraham quickly notices the T-shirts and trousers hanging in the trees behind us and we stop to gather them. Only a week before, a polio vaccination team had come this way by car and we were able to follow such tracks as they had left. Without David, who knows this track well, we would have been totally lot. Only last week, he had walked it with his people, to clear as much as they could with pangas (machetes), to make a way for our car to get through.

After having nudged our way through trees, we came across a deep ditch crowned with long grasses, marking the border between the Nuer lands we had come through and the Opo. At this point, the car ground to a halt and we discovered that, when the engine gets hot, the starter motor struggles to re-start the engine. Abraham, patient and professional throughout, was completely unphased by this and, after some gentle rocking to and fro by the rest of us, he had the engine gunned and ready to go. It can’t have been more than half an hour when we spotted three strong young Opo who’d been waiting for us, to bring us in, having spent the entire morning with pangas to complete the job David had begun a week before. Having scrambled up onto the roof, they sang vigorously to announce our imminent arrival as we continued to trace deep furrows through grass and thorn. And suddenly, there we were. The choir had come out to meet us, Sam had got out to walk with them and we were drawing up to the beautiful clearing of Bonga Opo.

The arrival. It was just after three in the afternoon and we were all hot and dusty, so it was lovely to be greeted by three mothers Union members who washed our feet with river water. After we had unloaded the car, we sat to rest for a while in the shade of a short tree, in which some of the newly arrived Opo from other villages had begun to hang their possessions, to keep them off the ground.

The first thing was a big meeting with the community elders, who were sat in the shade at the far end of the beautifully swept, marked compound. Unlike some meetings, where everyone wants to have their say, this one had been carefully prepared. A man called Matu Paytut spoke on behalf of everyone:

we Opo are still working by hand; we’re still very undeveloped. We would love a grinding mill. The government came and built a school and clinic, but we have no teachers or doctor. There is no electricity anywhere nearby. If we had power, everyone would gather here, live and share together. We all want to work to feed ourselves. There is only one water pump for all of us. We haven’t been given mosquito nets, either. We need jerry cans and pottery, agricultural tools, blankets, soap and clothes. Please, can you take two people to America, so they can send  money back to help us? Luke said that no one like us had ever been here before. They would like a mud church, electric power (light) and grain. We need sorghum, simsim (sesame), maize, groundnuts, eucalyptus, cassava and sweet potato.

Everyone agreed that if they had a generator, they could have a grinding mill and if they had both, they would benefit from real development. Janice offered to go with two or three of them tomorrow, by car, to visit their agricultural area and advise them on which crops might do well. Everyone was very pleased.

Christmas begins. Soon after this meeting broke up, a Nuer choir approached through the forest, singing and swirling in the air huge flags on long bamboo poles. This local Mekane Yesus (Lutheran) choir were out visiting nearby settlements to share something of Christmas with anyone they found. A crowd of some three hundred gathered around what turned out to be a preaching mound close by the church. Flag wavers and pastors crowded the top of the mound and I was invited to preach. As it was early Christmas Eve, I chose Isaiah 40, “Comfort, comfort my people” and “in the desert, prepare a way for the Lord.” David translated into Opo and someone else translated into Nuer.

The earth mounds and meandering tracks through to the Opo were images everyone could relate to. After the Mekane Yesus pastor had improved on my address, the choir set off into the bush for – well, where? No one seemed bothered, either by their presence or their absence.
As the sun began to set, David’s wife Sarah produced Mappo in a calabash, with a small enamelled bowl of cooked meat in oil. Mappo is a maize bread, formed into a perfect orb and baked somehow. It is heavier than genfo (ugali in Kenya and Uganda) and broken off, is dipped into the meat sauce by hand. When we were satisfied, David showed us the neat grass fence they’d built for us to wash in and took us to the river, to see where the baptisms would take place next morning. The narrow river ran strong from Dembidolo, in the highlands and the sunset was beautiful.
 

As we trace our way back, past the school (with highlander teachers!), the sun is below the horizon and the light is failing. David shows us his small, circular, grass tukul, where he has prepared a mattress for us for the night. We settle our things and lie down to rest before the evening programme begins. The sounds of family groups laughing and chattering as they erected their mosquito net “tents” all around us filled the dark. Someone arrived to offer us a net, which we refused, worried about the clawing heat of the hut. Half an hour later, they returned to ask why we wouldn’t take a net – we did and were grateful. These people had thought of everything. Just having us with them must have felt like a huge burden of responsibility.

The evening programme. At 8:20, David came and invited us to join them for the evening programme. Just by the grass church, they had prepared a circle of school desks, brought from the nearby school, now crammed with the whole community. Two candles and the LED light we had brought from Addis provided the only light. Overhead, a watery half moon lay on its back shedding its dim light on the few remaining patches of high evening cloud, making them appear ink-black. I read Luke’s account of the birth of Christ (David read in Amharic – there is no bible in Opo) and then re-told the story of salvation history, from the Creation and Fall to the Incarnation as David translated. Everyone listened: people leaning forward on their desks, women sitting on the floor nursing babies and the young people who would be acting out the same Christmas story later.

After I’d finished, they asked me if I would take questions which, of course, I did. I answered as fully and honestly as I could and each response seemed to increase their confidence to ask more. “Aren’t we all Christians – why different denominations?” led to “Why do the Seventh Day Adventists worship on Saturday and not keep Christmas?” which led to “When some of our people go to Gambella, they see Mosques – what do they believe?” to “Are some foods unclean?” and lastly to, “Who made Satan?” We finished at 10:30 and sat under the clearing sky for the Christmas drama to begin at 11:30pm. Around us, small groups of youths rehearsed their parts, women sat on the floor and talked, children slept and we listened to the noises of the night. And then at 11:30 promptly, the drama began. David Onuk took the part of Gabriel, wrapped in a sheet, in the style of a gabi. All the familiar elements of the narrative were presented, but with some delightful twists: Joseph, having been told Mary was pregnant, hit the bottle; Mary and her midwife covered themselves with a sheet for the birth and Mary panted a high pitched  “uh” at regular intervals for ten minutes or more as the children, pretending to be recalcitrant sheep, arrived, scattered, dodged and avoided the shepherds who chased them around the space marked out by our desks.

A very tall man with clothing stuffed up his T-shirt represented Herod, who strutted around, leering at us and pointing to us each in turn. Whoops of delight from everyone as he approached us and then left, to usher in the three kings, who hovered indecisively over the manger – but we never saw the baby. As all this was going on, everyone began to twist nervously to the dark forest, where we heard the shouts and songs of what we took to be drunken revellers getting closer. But this was simply the final scene building up and soon, the fat, strutting, shouting Herod and his henchmen all burst into the clearing with huge branches in their hair, to act out the slaughter of the innocents. But this time, of course Mary, Joseph and the child had long gone – slipped away in the commotion of Herod’s arrival. The grand finale was Herod inexplicably collapsing (in a fit of rage?) and being bodily carried off stage by his soldiers to hoots of laughter from everyone there. It was now past 12 o’clock – Christmas Day. All went quiet; we prayed and set off for our beds. As we settled, we listened to the sounds of laughter all around us as, like us, everyone talked excitedly about what we had just seen. But very soon, the darkness curled around us as the firelight dimmed and the community settled into deep sleep.
     
 Christmas Day.
In the early hours, we became aware that a watch had been set on the slumbering camp, as the voice of a man, singing gently to himself, broke the deep silence around us. At first light, everyone began to wake. Here, children stirred excitedly, there a man coughed, there someone began to beat a drum and then stopped, and there someone was stirring the cooking fires. By seven, a soft grey light filled the sky and we emerged from our tukul to find even more mosquito nets around us, gently disgorging their sleepy occupants. Very soon, I joined six of the young men who had brought the cow they’d bought three months ago and fattened for today’s feast.

The cow, tied to a fallen tree, was gently grazing the grass around it as the men began a soft but urgent discussion about who would actually kill it. No one, it seems, really wanted to. But first, they had to find a knife. Ten minutes later, a knife is found and the work begins. As soon as everyone is sure it is dead, the poor beast is dismembered as the others look on. A small fire is lit among the fallen leaves, presumably to clear the ground for later on.

Over by the church, four women are grinding fresh maize between stones and, as she watches, Janice is invited to join in. Perhaps expecting her to say “no”, there is a shriek of delight and laughter as she gets down on her knees and begins to follow what the others are doing. Her fellow-grinders call out encouragement and others gather around to watch. We both felt very much part of what was going on around us – no one bothered us with requests for anything (so unlike other places) and everyone seemed as happy to have us around as we were to be there.

         

So Andrew, in sandaled feet and dressed in an old alb and stole, wearing mitre (it was already getting hot) and carrying his pastoral staff, was led into church to start the liturgy. Except there were so many people we could not fit into the tiny grass church so, after the first two or three songs, David decided we should all move out under the trees. Desks were passed over people’s heads and soon, all the desks from the previous night were rearranged, classroom-style, under the trees for the readings and the sermon. The old men who had met us the previous afternoon all sat to one side, right at the front, to keep a close eye on everything that was to transpire. They didn’t really join in all morning.
 

As soon as the sermon was over, all those who would receive baptism or confirmation stood make their vows and we were led through the fields of grass, between the small, shaggily roofed tukuls, down to the river for the baptisms, which Janice and the others got back in time to join us for. The river in full spate must fill the space between the far bank, cut deep into the grassland rising high above it, all the way up the steep rocky bank we descended to reach it. At this time of year, it is no more fifteen feet wide and just where it rounds a sharp bend, the strong, green current makes the surface swirl and bubble. Everyone gathered at the water’s edge as I waded out, surprised at the strength of the current that caught the alb, pulling me, rather as an eighteenth century sea anchor must have done to a ship in a storm. One by one, adults were helped into the fast running water; they crouched forwards, some with their faces right in the water, as I baptised them by pouring water over their heads.
 
I was delighted when Matu Paytut, the man who spoke for the elders yesterday, stood before me to be baptised. The last of 32 adults. The children were baptised on the bank, in water scooped up into a large aluminium saucepan. I waded from the river, my alb and sandaled feet muddy, to walk back with everyone to the church for the confirmations. 43 adults were confirmed, after which I blessed and named eight babies, one no more than two weeks old, whom we called Samuel, much to Sam Moody’s delight. The liturgy was our new translation, just printed off in Addis. The Opo language has never been written down before so this is the first ever written material in Opo. David, who works for the government, tells me it is now being used as the baseline for the translation work he is doing in the education department. For communion, we used Mappo and wine brought from Addis.
 
By 12:30, we were finished; four very varied hours in intensifying heat. We had all hoped that we would be able to stay to share in the Christmas feast, but the prospect of the five hour drive back, over difficult terrain and without David (as leader, he had to stay) began to make us anxious. We set off just after 1:00, with two live chickens in the back of the car and four Opo students who needed to get back to Gambella that day. Joshua, who had come with us and sat in the front, is still at school and, although he has walked this many times, was not as good as David was at helping us navigate through trees and over thorn scrub to find the faint tracks of the Polio expedition’s Landcruiser. The result was that we had some wonderful brief detours around Nuer kraals (several small tukuls in a clearing). We were regularly chased by three or four dogs who, amazingly, could keep up with the car as it sped across flat land grazed clean by cattle. Everywhere was dry; only drought resistant trees showed any green and the earth was parched and cracked. We reached Lare after two hours and stopped for soft drinks again. It is only when you reach somewhere like Lare – still a remote town, once a huge cattle camp, served by a main road, now all earthworks – that you realise just how deep you have been into the bush. On the way back, we had a puncture on the rear, nearside wheel. As the Landcruiser is so high off the ground, Abraham had to raise the car on the jack, then wedge a huge stone underneath, so he could re-site the jack under the springs, to get the car high enough to change the tyre.
 
We arrived in Gambella, exhausted and sun burned, just after six, as the light was fading. Alemayehu, we discovered, when we met up with him shortly afterwards, had become so desperate about his tooth pain that he’d pleaded with the local doctor to extract his tooth. The seven injection process began, he tells us, with one in the backside (sic). He soon discovered that the tooth he did have removed was masking the pain in another, broken tooth in his top jaw and the doctor told him to have that done in Addis. The car, it seemed, wasn’t much better. The front brakes were fixed, but everything, brake pads, shoes, plates, springs had been removed from the back wheels and the handbrake dismantled completely – simply because it was beyond the mechanic’s ability to fix them in the field. We were just grateful he’d managed to do enough to get the car home again. Christmas dinner at the Baro Hotel, then back to sleep.          

Boxing Day
The plan had been that we would go to Nininyang today - a new Mission Centre being established by Peter Kuel – but Nininyang is more than three hours away, each way, over rough roads. With Alemayehu still in pain, the car perhaps only just fit enough to get back to Addis and my utter exhaustion, we decided it was too much and took a much needed rest day in Gambella – walking by the river, watching the hundreds of people washing, bathing and fishing, as we sat on plastic mats under a large tree, drinking sugared, spiced tea. We bought mangoes there and went to the market to buy salad vegetables to sterilise for lunch. Around five, when the sun begins to set and it is cooler, Janice and I went to the Anglican Centre by ourselves, to walk around, look at buildings and discuss our vision of what we might do if Irish Aid cut our Year 2 and Year 3 funding completely. Just as it was getting dark, the power was cut in our section of the town and so I cooked Spanish omelette for the four of us by candlelight, on two gas rings. 

Sunday 27th
Here was the plan – Alex would go to the Full Gospel Church and we’d pick him up later; Sam would go to St. Barnabas, our Annuak Church; Janice would stay to pray and then work; and I would go to St. Luke’s for eight thirty. I found St. Luke’s disappointing.  Stephen Kuany was newly in post and I was hoping to see great things, but the church held barely more than forty people and a layman I recognised but didn’t know led the service. Moses Chuol translated for me, but I was encouraged to visit the Sunday School rather than sit through the notices. The Sunday School of around 30 children was great fun – enthusiastic, engaging and well led. When I got back into church, they were just about to read the Gospel and I had to leave, to pick up Alex, drive to the Mekane Yesus compound to collect Janice and our bags, so we could check-in at the airlines office by 10:30am. When we got to the airlines office, no one was there and were told that they had already left – so we set off to cover the hard rocky, dusty 17 kilometres to the airport, expecting to catch up with the convoy on its way. When we pulled up, a Federal Policeman in blue fatigues, leaning against a tree, with an automatic slung across his back, told us no one had come yet and that he thought the flight might be delayed. We pulled up under the trees and opened the Ritz crackers that Janice had been saving for just such a moment for days. We shared them with the policeman, whom Alex had begun to engage in conversation. Another car pulled up and three people got out: Dave, a Maths teacher in Denver,Colorado, and his sister Migs, a physician trying to set up a Fistula half-way house between Bure and Metu; and Teferi, an Ethiopian in charge of development for the Bethel Synod of the Mekane Yesus Church. Dave and I had a great chat sitting on top of the discarded rocket launcher that had fallen off some long-forgotten military ‘plane. Janice and Teferi were talking agriculture – and our Federal Police friend brought us all coffee. After an hour and a half, we gave up hope of seeing anyone else and decided to drive back into town, where Teferi found out that check-in had been changed to 1:30. Dave and Migs invited us for lunch at the Baro Hotel and we chatted until it was time to head out for the airport again, this time in the full heat of the day, for the process of checking-in, bag-checks, body-checks and waiting. We got back to Addis just as the sun was setting, having flown via Assosa in the next regional state. It was wonderful to have Emma with us for supper before she flew back early next morning to Dire Dawa.

Thank you, David and the Opo people, for a wonderful, memorable Christmas!

Janice and Andrew Proud
Addis Ababa
29th December 2009.