After a life-changing trip to Ethiopia, I find myself at a bit of a loss to explain to people the things I saw and the experiences I had. I laughed (a lot), I cried, I toiled (a little), and I learned. I hope I'm bringing back a permanent appreciation for the challenges and struggles many in the world deal with on a daily basis.
The trip was the doma Vision trip to Ethiopia, the second such trip. Doma is a faith based non-governmental organization attempting to bring medical care to approximately 8,000 people in a remote area of Southern Ethiopia. Currently, Vision trips overlap with a medical team trip, and the high point are the temporary medical clinics run in the village of Bora over a two day period. The Vision team supports the medical team, but that is only part of what we are there for. The rest is about cultural exchange, understanding the lives of the poor of east Africa, and about nourishing our own souls.
How to communicate the experience, however, is the challenge -- and I have an approach to try, which will either succeed in painting the broad picture of what happened out in the "bush", or will fail miserably. I will be using each of the next several posts to describe a theme and set of observations from each day of the trip. There's no way to adequately describe everything, so I'll just hit a highlight or two from each day -- the ones that gripped me the strongest. Hopefully, this will capture a tiny sliver of the experience of exploring this beautiful land, the birthplace of three of my children.
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