Day 7: Monday (11/18): Selam Children's Village

Monday (11/18). Today, the Manager of SLTSSA was going to be gone for the day, so I decided to go with Amy to Selam Children's Village. It was quite a sight and a learning experience. Selam is a school for orphans and other kids in the community from Kindergarten up to prepatory school (high school) or vocational training. About 120 orphans live on the compound. What is so amazing about this organization is their vocational training programs, which produce services or products that cover 45% of their expenses. It is a true social enterprise. Some example of vocational trainings including food prep, auto electricity, auto mechanics, metalwork, human resources, etc. They also have a lot of income generating activities including flower/plant growing and selling and a diary farm (cows). They actually have enough cows to supply milk for the entire school as well as sell the extra.

It's pretty amazing. And not just for Ethiopia but for any country. Selam employs over 200 people. They have A LOT going on! It is pretty incredible that they can be in the business of doing so many different things. However, at the heart of everything they do (incoming generation and vocational training) are the orphans and how they can help them.

Amy and I got to meet the General Manager (the one in charge) and the Director over all of the education programs. We also met some volunteers from Switzerland and London at lunch. We had lunch at Selam's restaurant, where many of the servers and cooks are part of the food prep vocational training. After lunch we got a tour of the compound that holds the children's village (which is the school). The youngest kids were SO EXCITED for us to be there. They would run up to us and shake our hands and say "hello!" It was like we were celebrities or something. Of course the middle schoolers didn't bother to say hello to us, but the younger kids were so excited!

Children at Selam

We also discovered that they make all of the uniforms for the kids in house. Selam was quite an incredible place, although they definitely still have needs. They need funding for infrastructure like roads, buildings and fields. They have been looking for a dean for over a year. They said that often on paper the person looks qualified, but once they are working they lack the capacity that the school was expecting. They also need help with English training.

I'm glad that I got the opportunity to see another (and one of the largest) organizations in Addis. It gave me great perspective and inspiration for SLTSSA. Since they are 100% funded from outside sources, I think SLTSSA could think about being more financially sustainable by becoming more like a social enterprise. Just a thought? Tomorrow I will be back at SLTSSA and Makanisa, so I will be able to find out more and ask more questions.

Other observations/great things about today:

Seatbelts/Driving: I know that I've already talked about driving and traffic, but I have a few more observations. First, there are crosswalks all over Addis, but I'm not sure why, because the cars NEVER give people the right away. So it's not like the crosswalks do anything! Also, I can't stress enough how many people are out walking the streets... like the most I've ever seen. I don't know where people are always going or what they are doing on the streets, but they are always out. Second, there are usually no seatbelts in cars or autobuses. Maybe just for the driver and the passenger seats. At first this made me really nervous because driving here is crazy, but so far, this hasn't been any issue because even though the driving seems reckless to the naked eye, there are definitely unspoken rules that somehow make it all work.

For example, if you want to cross a busy intersection (and of course there are no lights or stop signs), then you just have to drive the car out in the intersection, BUT you don't have to really "worry" if the ongoing cars are going to stop, because they just do. In LA, you could never do this because drivers are never paying attention and would probably crash right into you, plus they would get mad. But here, it's just the reality that if you had to cross you would go. Not sure if this is making sense, but it works here. Also, I did notice that our driver would buckle and unbuckle his seat constantly. He would keep the seatbelt on his leg so it would look like it was on, but it was unbuckled. Not sure if he would buckle it when there was police around or what? And I don't know if there is a law or not (or if it's enforced) but I did notice that he did it about 6 times on our drive.

Injera: Tonight for dinner we had this amazing Ethiopia meal at our house. Injera! Injera is this very traditionally Ethiopian food. It's kinda like a large crepe, but made out of this grain called Teff (a grain high in iron! Perfect for the vegans out there) and a little bit sour. It's fermented. You put in on your plate and then you put different sauces/dishes on top of it. My favorite was the red lentils. YUM. You use the injera to pick up your food. No utensils. Just injera. It was so delcious. :)

Injera! (Just look at all those dishes!)

Today was a good day. A long one, but good. Tomorrow I'm back to SLTSSA. Hopefully it won’t be awkward for me and I'll have things to do and people to meet. It's always kinda weird to be alone in a new place, but I know God will be with me!