Johannesburg, SA

A wealth of information coming at you real quick from South Africa and an eighteen hour layover. Spent the last week and a bit in Ethiopia, and here is all that in a day-by-day run down. My apologies to whoever looked at this and wondered whether or not I was even interested in communicating - Madagascar should be more successful in terms of internet access.

Oh, another thing - I have a bunch of pics, but this cafe doesn't allow USB access, so that will have to wait until Tulear.

November 14: Met my HOPE group and we bonded in the Frankfurt airport after a 9 1/2 hour flight. I sat beside Joline, a teacher from Calgary who raised over $25,000 for HOPE. She has two kids with her husband Rod, and teaches Grade 6 at Calgary Christian. I sat beside her on the flight, though we met before when she picked me out as I was reading "The Irresistible Revolution" - good book by the way, I recommend it. The other two guys were from Abbotsford - Ken and Randall (nickname: Peg) - and they have been the driving force behind the Run for Water there that raised $100,000 in its inaugral year. Ken is working for CLAC as BC's Provincial Director and Peg hosts and co-produces a television show and pastors a church called Nexus. These three are in their thirties, so I felt like the young'un. We became good friends over the week and a bit - that's what happens when you spend hours on end in a Land Cruiser.

Okay, so same day we get into Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and check into Hotel Ethiopia - the premier place to be in the 60s, and still high society in Addis.

November 15: Ethiopia is different from the rest of the world in a couple of interesting ways. It is the only country never to be colonized in Africa - the Italians gave it a shot in the 1800s but failed - and it runs on a different clock compared to the rest of the world. They count the birth of Christ as seven years later than everyone else, so they just celebrated their millenium recently (seven years behind us). As well, they count time differently - The day starts at 6 AM, and they count forward from there. For example, if you want to meet someone at 3 PM, that would be 9 Ethiopian time.

We were planning on heading south before noon, but Peg had to wade through reams of red tape to get his video camera into the country. In the interim, Yonas, one of our drivers, took Joline, Ken and me throught the Mercado, the largest market in Africa. Understandable as Addis has a population of 5 million people. There are people all over the street, parting approximately twenty feet in front of your bumper as you travel at about 30 clicks through the congested streets. The pollution in Addis is thick at times, with the majority of vehicles belching black smoke to the extent that what they save in maintenance is probably lost in oil. The majority of the vehicles are little four-cyliner sedans - Russian made Ladas - and Toyota mini-buses, painted white on the top half and blue on the bottom half. These taxis are everywhere. The mini-buses are crewed by a driver and an operator, usually a younger boy, who leans out the window of the sliding door and yells out the destination.

Peg eventually got his camera - he is planning on doing a series of interviews for his television show - and we hit the road, getting into H'Owassa after night fall.

November 16: Having breakfast at the hotel, and who should show up but Haile Gabreselassie. We took pictures with him, and Peg got an interview. The group was excited to see the world-record marathoner, even more so given that all of them are all pretty serious runners - hence the Great Ethiopian Run on Sunday - but I'm getting to that. He is a national hero, and it was pretty neat how he took the time to come over and shake our hands and chat for a couple of minutes.

Left after that and headed down to Arba Minch, our base for the next three nights. A gorgeous hotel, sitting on the edge of the Rift Valley. Pictures are forthcoming, but try to imagine an acre of grass with detached groups of about eight rooms scattered around the compound. The restaurant looks east over the valley, with baboons running by the thirty foot stretch of eight foot windows.

Note: Roads in southern Ethiopia are completely different then a North American roadway. Really Justin? I know, I know, but let me lay it out: The roads are used by everybody and everything - herds of goats and cattle, for drying out crops, walking to the next village, donkey carts and little jeepneys - woefully under-powered scooters with covered tops carrying a half-a-dozen people - plus SUVs hell-bent on getting to their destination. Every decent vehicle is a Land Cruiser, either filled with tourists (usually retired Germans) or NGO workers. And, once we got into the mountains, the "road" was a rocky track, cut by erosion and impassable by all but a Land Cruiser. We did get stuck twice, and got ourselves out once, and the second time about twenty villages pulled us up and out.

We had to two Land Cruisers for our use, transporting eight of us including the drivers. The four non-Ethiopians, as well as Aklilu, a Canadian-Ethiopian from Langley, Berekat, Hope's southern director and a Hydro-engineer and our drivers who traded back and forth - Yonas, Philemon and Yonatan.

Novemver 17: Got up early - still hadn't adjusted to the time change - and caught the sunrise at about 6:30 as it came up over the other side of the Rift Valley. We headed out at 8 and it took 5 hours to cover the 40 kms to one of the villages that HOPE is working in. Our Land Cruiser had a few miles on it - 450,000 kms before the speedometer and odometer stopped working - and these roads are rough enough that tires are changed every three months.

We saw a capped well - different than a bore-hole - and the village that water was piped to. The pipe is 50 cm deep, 5 km long, and the villagers dig this in a week. A length of galvanized pipe is 18 ft and costs $50, and with projects ranging in scale up to 17 1/2 kilometers, that is where the majority of the cost is. The capping is also a cost, but not even comparable to a bore-hole. As well, HOPE's projects are all gravity fed, which eliminates the needs for pumps. The simple technology is maintained by the community, which looks after the water points (taps) and cleans out the aquifer ever 3 months.

Clean water in these communities accomplishes a number of things. Firstly, clean water creates healthier living conditions, as people are not drinking from rivers and standing water that is polluted by livestock and various bacteria. Secondly, it frees women. It is the responsibility for the young girls to collect water, and this keeps them from school. It also puts them in danger of rape, having to walk many hours away from their village. These underlying social benefits were new to me, but make sense when the water as well as all the saved hours of labour are taken into account.