Greetings from Addis! :)

Greetings from Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia! Or, as I might say with a feeble attempt at Amharic, tenast’ell’n ! 

I haven’t had the chance to see tons of the city, but tidbits here and there as I’ve been meeting with HOPE International Development Agency’s staff, hearing a bit more from them about our work here in Ethiopia, and visiting some of our programs in Addis. It’s been great – getting the staffs’ perspectives of HOPE’s projects in the South with clean water, agriculture, and microfinance and income generation that we’ll get to see as a UNION team soon. My team’s not here yet, they are arriving on Monday – I’ve got a few days here for meetings, project visits, etc. 

Hmm... apparently I haven't taken very many pictures in Addis... I guess between the hotel and the office and the luxury of being chauffeured from A to B,  I haven't actually been out and about much! I'll be out today doing some shopping for HOPE's Film Premiere & Dinner event today, and meeting some friends tomorrow, so I'll have some more pictures soon!  I'm also doing a 5K run with one of the HOPE staff on Sunday morning, which will be fun. It's such high altitude here that I'm winded already just walking up to my 6th floor hotel room though, so we'll see how that goes! 

Anyways,  here's one picture with Bereket and Meriem, two of the HOPE staff in Addis, having a nice hand-on Ethiopian dinner with injera (a big, light pancake-like bread) and a chickpea saucy stew and roasted lamb. 

Bereket's had 25 years+ experience of working with clean water projects in the country, with a number of international / local organizations through the years. He's been with HOPE since 2004 or 2005, and talking about some of the differences, his take was that HOPE’s approach to community-led, community-“done”, and therefore, essentially community-owned development has been the most successful and sustainable. Not that it’s a contest, but effective development has to be sustainable and its great to know that HOPE’s work is working and working well!

xo

Rainbow