Videos from Ethiopia Smile 2011

Thank you so much Kurt - I NEVER could have expressed it all as well as you have!

Ethiopiasmile2: This Trip Is . . from Kurt Neale on Vimeo.

Ethiopiasmile2: Wheelchairs & Eyes from Kurt Neale on Vimeo.

Ethiopiasmile2: Korah, Efforts Of Hope from Kurt Neale on Vimeo.

My Favorite Pictures From Ethiopia Smile 2011

Song by Sara Groves, "I Saw What I Saw"
Photos by Heidi & Matt Daileader & Drew Plotkin

A long week processing

Wow, what a week.  In some ways it seems like I've been home for a week, and in others, it seems like it was yesterday.  I have never had such a hard time processing anything - either mentally or physically.  After 26 hours of traveling, we arrived home at 3pm our time on Sunday.  I was flying high from just being home and seeing our family.  Matt was too, but only for about an hour.  He crashed on the deck at 4pm.  I woke him at 7 for a very fast dinner and shower and he went right to bed until the next morning.  I knew I'd have a hard time getting him to sleep on the plane.  When else do you get to watch dozens of free movies, back-to-back and your mom can't tell you to "go outside and play"?  

It was great to be back, but overwhelming too.  I felt great Sunday, but I deteriorated on Monday.  My stomach was killing when I woke up.  Thankfully, Tanisha had given me two Cipro tablets on Saturday - one for the plane ride and one just in case.  I took it and I am convinced that I would have been in bed for two days without it.  I was in such a fog all day Monday and Tuesday.  My stomach was killing me, I ate nothing and I could barely reconcile what day/time/country I was in!  If you are local and saw me those two days, sorry if I was rude.  I was definitely having an out-f-body experience!  I finally felt a little better Wednesday.  I never felt hungry, just knew when to eat because my blood sugar would drop and I'd start to get shaky.  The hard part is that I knew Thursday morning I was leaving at 8am for a quick get-away with John, so I had to unpack, do laundry, repack and put the house back together quickly.

It was not ideal timing to go away again, but John was in Kiawah for business anyway, so we had planned months ago that I'd join him when he was done with the work part.  Looking back, it was perfect timing - we needed the time alone, and it allowed me lots of time to watch the waves roll in and process all that I had seen, done and learned.  Again, I had a hard time reconciling being in a fancy resort after the week I had (especially because there was not one black guest and not one white hotel staff member - it was really bothering me more than usual).  We had dinner with friends one night.  The wife happens to be African American.  She made me feel better telling me that she is so used to it that she doesn't even see it anymore and that Sophie's personality will help her succeed in life, but it still sits there on my mind.  The first night I was having dreams where I was sleeping in Korah and trying to find my way around, Ethiopians were with us at the resort, some were relaxing at the pool with us and Matt was trying to drag me back into Korah.  All so weird, but made sense with my two colliding worlds!

Anyway, I have been late in posting pictures to FB, sending pictures to those waiting and thanking those that were with us on the trip.  I promise that is all coming this week.  People keep asking if it was a life-changing trip.  Of course.  I knew it would be for the Ethiopian aspect of it, but I can honestly say that I never expected the team to affect me the way that it did.  That was a group of 40 people that have all touched my and Matt's lives in ways that we didn't even know was possible.  Despite everyone's busy lives, we will keep in touch and we will serve with them again (John's already talking about maybe the two of us going next time with Matt and Katie - yay!)  Y'all know who you are and we love you dearly. Thanks for making this adventure so spiritual and fun, and yes, life-changing for us both!  

Day 8 - Saturday

Gladney Baby House / Soccer / Dinner / Home!

Today was a great final day.  We started out by going to the Gladney baby homes.  For those of you who don’t know, Gladney is the US adoption agency that we used for Sophie’s adoption.  It was so strange (and wonderful) to pull up to the baby house where we met her for the first time four years ago.  I could distinctly remember my heart racing a million miles a minute the last time and although I was much calmer this time, I was also excited and nervous.  The houses themselves are in a suburb of Addis.  I think the area seemed much more built up to me since 2007, when we were here last.  The baby house itself looked the same, but many of the caregivers are no longer there.  I had brought pictures that I had taken in 2007 of each caregiver with Sophie, so I was able to leave about half of them there along with a recent picture of Sophie.  It does always feel good to see how well taken care of these babies are.  They have a pediatrician on staff and everything is so clean.  The babies were ADORABLE!!  Again, I can’t post any pictures of the babies since many have already been matched with or referred to families in the US and that could hinder the process.  Of course, if any of you have babies waiting, comment here with your email address and I’m happy to send them to you!

I was lucky enough to meet the newly referred daughter of the Winters of Oklahoma.  She is a DOLL!  I was pulling out the old Sherlock Daileader and asking Belay about them to see if I could get any info for them.  Little did I know it wasn’t needed because they had just received their referral!

After the baby house, we visited the two toddler houses and the older child house.  There were lots of kids in the house for older children and none of them had been matched.  They have several sibling groups there, and apparently they are less likely to be referred because fewer people request older sibling groups.  Hopefully, that will start to change as the process becomes longer for infants and toddlers!

After a final coffee ceremony at the baby house (we all agreed that this was the best coffee we had had by far), we headed back to the hotel for a quick lunch.  That is actually impossible in Ethiopia, so 45 minutes later Matt scarfed down his fries before we headed out to meet Soccer Ephrem and his soccer players. 

I was excited to be able to see him and see the jerseys in action, but it wasn’t quite what we expected.  We had two drivers with two vans that brought us to Meskal Square where everyone was meeting.  Apparently, this was the safest place to meet where a soccer game could occur, but it wasn’t all that comfortable.  We were fine with Ephrem and the drivers, but we made it pretty short and sweet.  Whenever there’s a big crowd of ferengi (foreigners), the beggars will come out and see all the “rich” people.  They are relatively harmless, but it does get old to be constantly asked for money, gum, candy, etc.  Mostly because you want to give a little to everyone, but then that everyone becomes a mob and it’s really just not worth creating the chaos.  Matt did have a great time playing soccer with the big boys.  He couldn’t believe how good a group of homeless kids could be just playing a pick-up game on the cement with rocks for goal posts!  It was also great to see all of the Darien and other uniforms being worn in Africa.  Ephrem had set these quick pick-up games up for our picture-taking purposes, but he is going to send me pictures of the actual tournament that he hosts with all of his sponsored children, which will be much more organized, and will include many more kids.  After the meeting, he met us back at the hotel and I gave him some Birr to treat his kids to a big pizza party that night.  About $30 was going to feed a lot of kids pizza!

Here is Matt and I posing with "Soccer Ephrem" at Meskal Square with a bunch of street kids in King shirts (as in King Low in Stamford!! - thanks to them for the great uniforms)

Here is a sweet, athletic Ethiopian boy in a Darien soccer uniform with a sweet, athletic Darien boy in an Ethiopian soccer uniform!

We're leaving for dinner in a half an hour and then head straight to the airport for the LONG ride home!

After the game we came back to the hotel and gathered our things.  We used up the small amount of Birr we had left over on the jewelry being sold on the street to support a local college student.  The Ethiopian government will no longer allow more than 200 Birr (~$12) per person to leave the country and since you can’t really exchange that small amount, might as well spend it on necklaces, right?  Anyway, we all had one last meal together at Makush (the art gallery restaurant) and then we headed straight to the airport.  The checking in process was relatively uneventful for most of us, however, the news never got better about the dentist equipment.  The team ended up paying a $1,000 “tax” to retrieve the bags, but because Moody was afraid that it wouldn’t be able to pass back through US customs and because most of the team had already checked in and couldn’t take any of the bags, he ended up taking only two of the 14 crates back home.  He is going to have a local Ethiopian go retrieve the rest of it.  Hopefully it will all be there when he gets there and at least the baby formula will reach its final destination of the orphanages, and maybe even the dental equipment will reach one of the 74 dentists in the country.  Only time will tell. 

Well, as I type this, we are 25 minutes from landing at JFK.  We had a life-changing trip for sure.  We made many new friends that I know we will have forever and learned so much about ourselves in the process.  Thanks so much for sharing and supporting this wonderful experience!!

Day 7 - Friday

Today there was a small group of people that headed about six hours south to check on a project that the Alexander family has spearheaded with the help of Glimmer of Hope.  They traveled to Dube Bute, which is the village where their second Ethiopian son is from.  They have raised nearly $500,000 to help build a road, bridge, medical facility, several water points, etc.  It is an incredible sum of money and the progress they have made in such a short time is unfathomable.  The group will stay over night in Awassa and return to Addis tomorrow afternoon.

Matt and I got up early and joined the wheelchair team (David Richard, the head of Wheels for Humanity, Drew Plotkin, the guy who introduced me to the project and who is recording (via video & stills) the distribution of the wheelchairs to make fundraising materials, and Doug and Melissa, two therapists who help fit the patients in the wheelchairs).  We headed out of Addis to the countryside (only about 45 minutes out) to a place called Cheshires, which is a large medical facility primarily for surgery and rehabilitation.  It was an action packed morning.  Matt helped David fixing and rebuilding wheelchairs while the patients started to get fitted.  Matt know knows all the tools needed and how to adjust, tighten, loosen, oil pistons, etc.  He was once again praised for his patience and hard work.  I basically watched and entertained the kids and parents – which is a little hard to do when pretty much all I can say is hi (selam), beautiful (konjo) and thank you (amasege’nallo’)!  Things are always made a little easier when you come bearing stickers, hair bows, tic tacs and nail polish, though!  There were several men and a few women there when we arrived.  Most had severely disfigured legs and basically “walked” on their knees and hands.  Others soon started arriving via taxi or were carried up a very steep hill by friends or relatives. 

After we fitted many of the men, we were fed coffee, tea and bread.  So many people on our trip have gotten very sick, so I basically had some bread and pretended to drink the very strong, very thick coffee.  Most of the time the coffee is WAY more delicious than at home, but I just couldn’t stomach it today, though it was probably more in my head than anything.  Shortly after that, a van arrived with six children and their caregivers or mothers from a nearby home for mentally and physically disabled children.  Every child I have helped so far with the wheelchairs has a mother whose husband left her specifically because of the child’s disability.  Two of the kids had spina bifida and were both four years old.  They could communicate and express their happiness with their new chairs.  Two of the kids had severe cerebral palsy.  One of those was the third child in her family that had CP - her two older siblings had both lost their lives due to complications from CP at around 8 or 9.  She was eight years old and most likely blind, though it was hard to tell due to her lack of responsiveness.   I don’t think any of us could even comprehend the amount of pain her mother has endured throughout her young life. 

After half of the kids were fitted (these fittings take much longer since the kids need to be as comfortable as possible and in positions that will enable them to see, eat, etc), there was a situation with an older boy that had no legs and basically crawled up the hill to get to the site.  He was covered in scarves, etc, around his head.  After fitting him, the medical staff and assistants soon discovered that he had already come on Monday and was given a wheelchair.  Cheshires is very diligent about doing their homework and compiling their list of who needs the wheelchairs.  They visit the patients’ homes and make sure that certain chairs are needed, or can be used in the homes.   This boy did qualify for a wheelchair, but in order to get a new one (maybe a few years down the road), you need to bring your old one back.  Apparently, beggars can bring in a lot more money begging from the ground and therefore often get a wheelchair only to sell it.  There is no way to know whether this boy sold his wheelchair or simply left it at home to get another one to sell, but each recipient has a picture taken with a specific number, etc, in order to keep track of who got what.  He was yelling that he wouldn’t leave until he got a wheelchair, but they finally showed him the picture of himself from Monday and he finally settled down.  It is hard enough to watch this all when people are smiling from ear to ear about their new mode of transportation, but then to have any sort of conflict breaks your heart – intentioned or not.  You know that these people are simply desperate, and sometimes it’s hard to separate all of the different feelings and motivations.

At about 1pm, we returned to the hotel for a little rest time before a final dinner with half the group (many of them are returning home tonight).  We went to a great Italian restaurant right by the airport called Aventi.  I literally felt like I was in New York, which can be dangerous, because you still need to be careful about the food and definitely the water.  I keep praying that I won’t get too sick – a lot of people have been completely out of commission for an entire day – even after being incredibly careful!  At the end of dinner we had to say goodbye to about a third of the group.  The connections we made with the team on this trip were incredible.  Matt was really sad to say goodbye to Sallie in particular.  Sallie started out as Emily Alexander’s barista at Starbucks every morning when Emily was starting the adoption process.  Over the years, she has become part of the family and this is her second trip to Ethiopia with Ethiopia Smile.  She is such a spiritual, intuitive, crazy fun lady with a huge Texas accent!  She is a mechanic on racecars, still a Starbucks barista, a wife and mom to two kids and now, a very special person in Matt’s (and my) life!  We also said goodbye to a few of the dentists, Moody’s mom, and some other women that I really connected with and can’t wait to keep in touch with – people came from as far from us as California, Texas, England and France, and a few stops in between. 

I had connected with “Soccer Ephrem” earlier in the week and he returned this afternoon to pick up the 200 pounds of soccer uniforms that we brought.  We are going to go play soccer with him and all of his kids tomorrow afternoon and then host a pizza party for them.  I can’t wait to get all of those pictures and see those shirts and happy kids running around the field!

Tomorrow morning, Matt and I are going to head over to the Gladney baby house to see all of Sophie’s caregivers and deliver pictures of them with her from four years ago.  I’m still holding out hope that they will be able to find her birthmother before then.  They have found her grandmother with whom she supposedly lives, so any prayers would be welcome.  Even if she doesn’t want to see me, I hope that I can deliver the photo album that I made of Sophie starting from before we met her (a few even with her birthmother) and through this summer. 

Mr. Fix-It helps the Head of UCP Wheels for Humanity

Mission accomplished!

A new, happy patient

This smile is a far cry from this before pic.....

Note the hard plastic knee pads sewn into his pants.  That was to protect his knees while crawling before the wheelchair came 

Matt's new 4-year-old friend - a spinal bifida patient 

Everyone loved Matt

The road out of Cheshires - filled with new rides!

An abandoned chair - traded for a new one

Heading back to Addis

A typical street in Addis

I will have to update the rest of this after I am able to type it all up on the plane.  I still haven’t been able to process all that we saw and did during the three dental days at Korah, but I promise I will!

Day 6 - Thursday

Korah / Alert Leprosy Hospital / KVI / 2000 Habesha for Emily’s Birthday

Today was again pretty similar than the last two days.  For some reason we all agreed that there was far more screaming today.  I don’t know if it was because there were more children or what, but it was another tough day.  I was helping a 25-year-old guy today who happened to be right next to the window for both his shots and extraction.  His friends were all right outside the window.  As much as I think I was helping him by holding his hand (he was squeezing mine SO hard!), I think that added to the laughter of his friends.  These guys are supposed to be so macho, but they are in extreme pain and they have these girls guiding them through the procedures.  He was sweating profusely, and I’m sure he got an earful from his friends after they saw me wipe his brow while he recovered from getting his tooth pulled out.  Oh well, I’m sure they all had a good laugh together once his pain subsided!

Luckily Mike and Pam Mycoskie joined us today.  He is a physician and they are the parents of the man who started Toms shoes.  We had two different incidences that we may not have gotten through without them.  There was another 25-year-old guy that came in.  After he got his shots, he was sitting next to Mike in the waiting area and just passed out on the floor.  I saw it happening, but the part that was most noticeable was how hard his head hit the cement floor.  Some people said he was having a seizure, but I’m still not sure exactly what happened.  He was in rough shape for a little while, but we got some fresh water and some snacks in him and he ended up just fine.  It turns out that he hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours because he had no food to eat.  I’m not sure if he was more grateful for the two bananas and peanut butter crackers or the dentistry. 

Later another mother and baby had come in to check the mother’s teeth.  It turns out that the baby (only months old) had fallen into the fire (I’m guessing cooking fire?) and had severely burned her hand.  We unwrapped the extremely dirty cloths wrapped around the baby’s hand and that’s when most of the people had to turn away.  It was literally black and infected.  Unfortunately, we had absolutely nothing to help her clean it (or no knowledge of how to do it).  Pam was able to grab a taxi and bring the mother and child to a local clinic, and paid to get the wounds properly cleaned and dressed.  The difference in how the hand was obviously striking and I can only imagine the long-term effects of that one small gesture.

We finished up the day at about 2 pm and headed to Alert Hospital, which is the main medical facility for Leprosy in Addis.  The reason it is always a stop in the itinerary (we had come here when we came four years ago) is because these men and women with severely deformed hands make the most beautiful linens and crafts and sell it in a gift shop on the hospital grounds.  Last time I came we bought tablecloths and napkins, etc, and this time I got a very cool wooden necklace and some Christmas ornaments.  The women are SO happy to have visitors and to just hold your hand and have you help spin the yarn.  One woman pointed to her friend sitting next to her and motioned that she was blind.  She kept gesturing to me to kiss her blind friend’s cheeks.  I think these people have little to no human contact.  Just grabbing her head and kissing her two cheeks may have produced the biggest smile that I have encountered on this entire trip!

Glenda learning how to spin the yarn

After our quick stop at Alert Hospital we headed to Kingdom Vision International, which is the orphanage where the Alexander’s first Ethiopian son had been three years ago.  Given that there aren’t really addresses like we have at home, we did get pretty lost, but finally found someone who knew where it was.  A man literally ran ahead of us through the streets of the neighborhood to guide us right to the door!  The kids were very excited to have us visit - sorry again that I can’t post pictures, but it is for the good of the kids.  There were babies up to tweens living in the house and they were all happy to receive all the typical trinkets – headscarves, t-shirts, candy, stickers, etc.  As with each orphanage we have visited, a few of the team members became attached very quickly to particular children.  It is such a comfort to know that most of these children have already been matched with a family or will be soon.  We had another coffee ceremony and did a lot of dancing – from worship songs to “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” - everyone had fun!

After our busy day we all prepared for Emily’s 40^th birthday celebration at 2000 Habesha, a traditional Ethiopian restaurant.  For some reason I haven’t had Ethiopian food for a long time (we don’t have many good options near us) and I was thinking that I didn’t like it.  I was wrong – it was delicious!  I had the benefit of going through the buffet line next to a native Ethiopian, so I managed to skip over the raw lamb and other things that didn’t really appeal to me, so that might have saved me. Normally I find the injera (the spongy, sour, pancake-like bread that also serves as your utensils) to taste too much of vinegar, but this was so good.  Luckily, it is totally acceptable (and expected) for you to sop up every last drop of your meal with the bread because it would have been hard not to!

We were entertained by traditional Ethiopian dancing, which involves moves that don’t seem physically possible (especially for the neck) and the attempt at traditional Ethiopian dancing by many of our teammates.  All kidding aside, anyone who got up in front of everyone did a great job and I’m just glad they took one for the team (Matt included!).  We all got to sing to Emily as her birthday cake arrived with candles that seemed more like full-on bottle rockets!  Many of the men (ok, and women) were awed by the presence of Liya Kebede, a supermodel in the US that is originally from Ethiopia, who joined us for dinner.  It was kind of funny to see everyone wanting pictures with her – she was so gracious and a great sport!

Tamara, Holli, Glenda and I on our way to the birthday feast

Liya

Carys & Matt

Happy Birthday Em!

Our incredibly gracious hosts - Emily & Moody

Anyway, after lots of fun, we all went home to crash and prepare for the last few days.

Day 5 - Wednesday

Korah / Shopping by Post Office / Cloud 9

Today was very similar to yesterday in that we were in the same location and saw many in the community of Korah.  Today was different in that there were benches worth of patients waiting upon our arrival!

Here is Matt helping feed a select group of kids from Korah.  They come to the community center for one meal a day right near where we had the dental clinic set up.  There are also five or six mothers with infants in the back to whom we were providing formula.  One of the mothers had a child 22 months old that could not have weighed more than 10 pounds.  It was heartbreaking.  But even seeing them the next day after some formula, his face seemed brighter.  We left a ton of formula that will be rationed out to them over several months.

We ended a little early today so that we could preserve the remaining dental equipment and medications for the third day.  We all headed to a group of little bodegas to do some shopping.  Supposedly, they like to bargain, but I find it so hard because everything is so incredibly cheap to begin with, and then when you realize how much more important 30 birr (~$2) is to them, I just can’t bring myself to care about a further bargain!

We ended the day with a big group feast at a restaurant called Cloud 9.  It was a lot of Chinese food, which was delicious.  They’ve done such a good job with all the meals – so much variety, and our stomachs have handled it all really well so far.  The restaurant was in a big mall, which was the cleanest, newest building I’ve seen in all of Ethiopia.   It’s always so weird to see more wealth in the rare pockets that I’ve seen it in such a destitute city.  I was so exhausted after staying up so late, so I was happy to crash early!