We drove to the embassy on Wednesday &

drove to the care center on Thursday (Hailu and taxi driver drove us in 2 vans, yes the taxi van Paul had to hold the front passenger door closed as we drove so it wouldn't fly open). Driving across Addis Ababa was overwhelming. The poverty...families living in tin shacks, that we most likely would not keep our animals in. A horse, who looked like a living stick figure, how it was even living, standing in the middle of the highway. Children mobbing the van as it stopped, hands reaching in any open window asking for money or food. It took me a minute to comprehend they didn't just want money, reached into our bag & gave snacks away. The minute those kids left, there were more. How do they exist?

We saw a trench being dug, miles long, with shovels. Donkeys carried goods as often as heavy equipment. Scaffolding for new construction, for big buildings, made out of dried bamboo, lashed together. Yes, you read that right, dried bamboo, lashed together with twine. Men walking, stories above the ground, on this bamboo scaffolding.

Roads are a hodgepodge of nicer roads, where all of a sudden a pothole that could swallow the van would appear. Hailu, the driver, was amazing at averting obstacles. He warned us to keep hands & heads in the vehicle & we quickly learned, with no traffic controls, if it was sticking out, it might get whacked off passing another vehicle. It is completely legal to swerve into oncoming traffic, stop on the edges to unload, etc. It's crazy. (We did notice it is possible to get a parking ticket.)

I think I mentioned earlier, when Paul went to buy water, he was told to 'duck & run' past a particular group of beggars, for lack of a better word. They seemed to be more of an organized family group, who would essentially mob anyone who walked by their stretch of sidewalk, hoping for a handout, or something they could grab hard enough you were willing to leave it behind.

We were advised to NOT walk past the church, which was a few blocks down, as that is where the truly desparate were. Is it not ironic, the church was not a safe place for us? And truly desperate, what would that look like, in comparison to what we had seen??? We were also told, to stay in at night. What happens out there at night?

When returned from the care center, I could not even sleep, even though I was tired. It was as if my brain could not accept the reality of what I had just seen. Locked inside the safe gates of the guest house, I could have believed it 'wasn't so bad' out there. But, once I'd seen it, what to do with it now?