SaLE

Not getting much sleep. Keep waking up because there is some weird sound that I think is coming from the elevator room of the hotel. Loud enough to wake me up. Irregular enough to keep me from adjusting to it.

The Ethiopian coffee is good though. Strong and smooth. I’m now starting to do the Ethiopian thing of having several of these a day. Helps keep me going until I can adjust to the time zone.

Headed to SaLE and spent the day there being introduced to people that work there. Nick, a grad student from Duke, helps with the introductions. He’s there doing some research regarding the sex trade workers and AIDs/HIV in Ethiopia. I might go out with him to the area the sex trade workers are and shoot some training/educational events he might have next week. Very interesting.

Steve and I meet with Freihwot again and explain the vision of Broken Wing. Being a pilot project, there are equal amounts of anticipation and trepediation. We don’t know where the kids are at with computers, there are language and culture barriers, etc. But we forge ahead.

Ben, Lindi and Steve’s son, is along as well and he brings a football (soccer) ball. This is great as football is always played, but the “ball” that is played with… let’s just say that “ball” is a very generous term. Ben also had this great idea of providing lots of footballs to them and raised some money before the trip. Going with Lindi and a SaLE person they go get about 8 of them. The kids there are seriously going to be surprised.


Anyway, first day of Broken Wing goes pretty good. Kids seem pretty interested. But, it seems to me, that as with all high-school age kids, the laissez-faire look and the shyness always masks their enthusiasm. It’s almost when they catch themselves inadvertently having fun with something, they actually allow themselves to go forward.