It was a very Bad Day!

First, let me apologize to everyone for not having posted in alomost three weeks.  I know everyone likes to know what is happening here on the other side of the world, but I have been a little sick and cranky and just plain feeling ornery.  Morgan's probably thinking, "Good thing she's far away in Africa."  I have had only one bad day, and it just happened to be Monday, the 23.  Yesterday  (23 of August) was the worst day here on the farm.  I don't know how to describe what happened except from my point of view.  About 11:30 in the morning I was standing out on my porch when Alan came running into the yard and quietly but urgently said, "Where's the satellite phone, I need it now, Wes has been shot!"  I immediately shouted to him as he ran by, "Where's Alyssa, does she know?" and he said, "Yes, she's with him in the clinic."  I ran over to find the first aid kit at Wes's house and told Nate and Kate.  We grabbed the first-aid kit and toted it over as fast as we could.  Alan was busy calling the office in Addis telling them what had happened and they quickly arranged a flight to get him back to Addis.  Alan and others started interrogating everyone to find out who was with him when it happened.  As far as we can tell, Wes was outside the farm with a land clearing crew opening up some new land.  Some villagers were there and were trying to stop the land clearing because they "claimed" they had not had compensation and felt that we were trespassing.  Barouk, a GPS guy, was ahead of Wes and the dozer trying to figure out where to strike a line.  Some people from a nearby small farm were there, as well as some villagers and they  warned Barouk and Kadir telling them to stop and go back to the farm.  He told Wes that they were in danger and needed to leave, and that they were threatening to kill him.  One man came and tried to throw a rock at the dozer or Wes, I'm not clear about that, and Wes grabbed the man's arm and made him lose the rock.  That man ran to one of the guards and tried to get the gun from him.  He said he was going to shoot Wes.  Wes being unaffected took the GPS from Baruk and was looking at it when he he was struck on the head from behind.  Not realizing exactly what happened after receiving a blow to the head he asked Baruk if he had been shot.  In the commotion he didn't get a clear answer.  Baruk and Kadir quickly got him to the land cruiser and they came into the farm with Baruk steering and Wes shifting since Baruk doesn't know how to drive.  When they came roaring into the camp, Alan says the land cruiser was going as fast as it could in first or second gear and he went to see what was happening.  Wes, with a shirt wrapped around his head , was helped out of the Land Cruiser by two guys and told Alan he had been shot as he was rushed into the clinic; and Alan could see the blood covering his shirt.  That's when Alan came running over for the satellite phone.  Alyssa and Abdul were there immediately and everyone jumped into action at the clinic and did very well to take care of him and see what part of him had been hurt.  It then became clear form witnesses that he had received a blow to the head from an ax.  Nate and Alyssa tried to staunch the blood flow, but we all know about head wounds - they bleed a lot. Alan was on the satellite phone talking with Marty telling him what had happened and informing him of Wes's condition.  They soon realized that Wes would have to be flown out of here, if he were going to be saved.  An emergency flight was arranged with Abyssinian Airlines, who got permission to fly through the no-fly zone covering a large area between the farm and Addis cutting down the flight time 20 minutes.  When Nate could get a good look at the wound he could tell that his skull was fractured from the blow to the right back of his head. There was a three to four inch gash and there was a lot of bone fragments. His blood pressure and heartbeat were slowly dropping and they strongly urged that the plane get here as soon as possible. The plane arrived after a couple of hours and Wes was carefully taken in the back of a pickup truck over to the runway and loaded onto the plane.  The plane was only here a total of about 15 minutes before it took off to Addis with Wes and Alyssa and family. Wally Odd, the executive vice-president of Morrell Agro came to the farm on the same plane that took Wes to Addis. He was going to come the next day anyway, so he just came a day early to manage the situation and put fears to rest. During the flight back to Addis, the US embassy was contacted  to insure that there would be blood available for a transfusion if needed, which it was.  At the airport in Addis they were met with an ambulance and doctors who took him directly to the Korean hospital where he underwent a CAT scan. They did think about sending him for surgery to Cairo or Nairobi, which have larger hospitals, but decided against that and kept him in Addis where he underwent brain surgery for 6 1/2 hours. If I heard right, it was a Pakistani doctor and a Norwegian doctor who performed the surgery.  It was fortunate that Wes was kept here in Ethiopia; because something about swelling and pressure and other stuff which I don't totally understand and it would take too long to fly him to another country. We heard the next morning that his skull was indeed fractured and there was damage to a sinus on the right back of his head. He lost a lot of blood here on the farm as well as in surgery and there was some talk about flying Bracken up to Addis to donate because he and Wes have the same rare type of blood. As it turned out, they decided against that and Bracken is still here with us at the farm. We have been kept informed here on the farm of Wes's status and doctor decisions through our trusty satellite phones and we heard that he is sedated and will be in the hospital there for as long as he needs. There is an American doctor there who was helping in some advisory capacity - so apparently he is being well looked after. That's as good as you can ask for here - an international group.
Meanwhile, back on the farm, after much interrogating of the witnesses, we found out that he had not been shot but another young man, about 20 years old, ran up behind him and cleaved his head open with a ground clearing axe.  When I say cleaved, I mean that the man really meant to kill Wes, but somehow the aim was not the best, thank goodness.  The axe wielder took off running with the villagers chasing him and then some security guards after them.  Wes and Alyssa did find out here that it wasn't a bullet wound but an axe wound before they left for Addis.  The police from Beltu were fetched down to the farm in the afternoon and they promised they would find the perpetrator. They did arrest the young man's relatives, brothers and sisters, father, and were in the process of arresting the whole village when we found out what they were up to.  Wally had to go up to Beltu and prevent anymore random arrestings.  I guess they think that will placate everyone until they can find the axer.  A policeman came here to the farm today asking Alan if he could get some fuel for his vehicle so he could go after the guy. They heard that the guy's mother took him to Jara to escape the police.  So if we said "no" does that mean they won't try to go after him?  Alan said yes, but he made the guy sign a paper saying how much we gave him.  As I have said before, the police here are a joke.  When they came down from Beltu yesterday, they had a Rambo type gun with a tripod mounted onto our Toyota pickup.  Alan was impressed with the gun, but not so much with the police work.  Our prayers are with Wes and his family - we're able to keep up to date on his condition which sounds positive. 

I didn't take any pictures of all the commotion yesterday - and it really was commotion.  The whole farm shut down,, even Bracken was hurried in from the field. Alan and Bracken later decided that they wouldn't be intimidated and so between them they decided that it would be a good time, with all the villagers running scared, to get some disking done, so Bracken went back to work (with a gun).  Many of the people here on the farm were scared and took off running to their huts, if they lived nearby.  Ashreka hid in my house when she saw all the police.  She was very scared but she bravely undertook the washing of the bloody pans that had been used at the clinic. She just looked at me a little funny when I asked her to wash it and asked, "Ees Wes's blood?"  'Yes, it is," I said, and then she said "I wash." 

 Wally will stay with us for a little while, until he needs to get back to Addis.  He will work with the government to suggest and advise them on how to manage this hot situation out here.  The farm has suddenly become a target for dishonest people who see an opportunity to get money.  They come and claim they have land here and should be paid a compensation when they have never been here before.  There are all kinds of rumors surrounding the incident. I don't know what to believe.  I'm either crazy or brave, but I don't feel threatened here.  I believe this was an isolated incident. 

OK - so I'll tell you other news.  The disking of the stubble fields was completed on the 19th of August.  One day before they finished, Alan and I drove up to the Wenjisa place and we kicked Bracken out of the tractor and Alan took a turn with me taking pictures.  It was pretty nice to get off the compound for a few hours.  There were little children from the Wenjisa village who were out in the field chasing the tractor and disk up and down the field.

 They would run and wave at us and we waved back every time to every child.  There were two little guys who looked no older than my little grand daughter Leah who kept tripping and falling and losing their pants, but they didn't quit.   Only one little girl had shoes and she kept losing them.  Now I know why the Ethiopians are such good long distance runners. They train early.  It was beautiful going along watching the camels in the distance and the stubble field slowly turned to a darker color.  I took some pictures of the Kello-Bilt disk in the sunset and the field.  I guess only a farmer or farmer's wife would think that farming equipment in the sunset is beautiful. They are now working disking the newly cleared ground that measure about 1000 hectares (2,500 acres) altogether.  We hope to start the planting in early September when we have enough rain to sprout the seed.

The tractor drivers are being trained on the new John Deere 8320R.  They are taking shifts so that all the tractor drivers can learn. BTW, here in Ethiopia, tractor driving is an occupation and they are required to go to tractor-driving school.  To get into the school they have to be at least 16 years old and have completed the 6th grade.  That explains the early incompetence of the tractor drivers  It is taking Bracken and Alan a lot to retrain these guys.  They're getting there.  Speaking of tractors, one of my favorite people out here is Seid, the manager of the tractor drivers.

 Oddly enough, when Alan was looking for Seid after Wes's incident, he was missing.  We later found out that Seid had hopped on the plane and went up to Addis with Alyssa.  What?  How does a tractor driver make his way onto an emergency flight and not tell his boss he's leaving?  Needless to say, Alan was a little surprised and will be talking to Seid when he comes back from Addis.  I think I know what was going on, but I'm not going to say until I talk to Seid myself and ask him. He is a university graduate majoring in world history, so Alan and I get lots of lectures on Ethiopian political science and history.  He can go on and on about Ethiopian subjects.

Another of my favorite people out here is Haile, the assistant farm manager - not to be confused with the junior assistant, Zakir.  Haile is one of the handsomest guys I have ever seen.  Have you seen "The Blind Side"?  You know that part where the mom says about one of the coaches from a university," I find him to be extremely attractive."  That's how I feel about Haile, it's no big deal, I just appreciate his manly comliness.

 He is married and his wife and family live in Ginir, a town 3-4 hours from here.  I made Alan take these pictures of Haile, so he started posing.  I think he was halfway embarrassed because Alan was taking so many pictures.   Haile could be a male model.

Another person that I'm getting to know and really like is my little next door neighbor Nia.  She is soooo cute.  I told her that her skin was beautiful and she said, "It's golden."

 And her eyes are so beautiful and her hair is such a pretty color too.  She has such a sweet little personality and we have cute converstions about her favorite color (pink), her books, her favorite food to eat, and her friend at home named William.  She got a bad case of bed bug bites and she's just barely starting to recover. She has a purple fairy doll (missing wings) that she totes around and she likes to help me water my plants.  She told her mother, July, that I was her new friend.

 Here she is with her doll showing me that it can do all kinds of splits and straddles.
I have to tell a story about a farm meeting that involved a her purple fairy doll and the monkey. It was a farm supervisor meeting so Alan, Wes, Mark, and all the supervisors over the different departments were there, at least 10 or 11 guys . As they were sitting in Wes's house, Martk was conducting the meeting and he was sitting down talking about the project and all the time the monkey was climbing all over Mark being a pest, pulling on his beard, climbing on his shoulders and around his neck, and Mark just let it climb, which made Alan laugh. Then, one of them saw Nia's purple fairy doll on the coffee table and started messing with it's hair and petting it. Then he put it down, and the next one picked it up and started getting preoccupied with the doll. Then another and another until it had made the round of the whole group of supervisors. Alan was quietly amused by this behavior and imagining the same thing at home in the United States. Can you picture it, a group of farmer/construction type guys sitting around in a meeting caressing a Barbie doll and a monkey on the loose?

One night as I was sitting in my house alone, Bracken came in to check his emails and he saw a huge spider on the floor.

 Bracken's favorite thing to say around me is "Holy Crap!" So that's what he said, because Bracken is afraid of spiders.  According to Bracken, his fear of spiders stems from cat face spiders in the elevator and around his house up in Squirrel when he was young.  Bracken was yelling, "Kill it, kill it!" but I wanted to take a picture of it first, which scared it and caused it to run under my couch.  I was laughing at Bracken because he was such a scaredy cat.  He lifted up the couch and I was going to hit it with my shoe.  Bracken jokingly said, "Watch out , it's probably pregnant and a million babies will come out of that thing."  You have to realize that Bracken was really nervous this whole time.  I hit it with my shoe and it popped like a little ballon and sure enough, immediately hundreds of tiny little spiders came running out, spreading in all directions.  Bracken almost screamed like a girl.  He was swearing and telling me to get the bug spray, which I did and I sprayed and killed some, but I didn't get them all.

 It was the ugliest, scariest spider I had ever seen until the next day when Alyssa showed me the spider she caught out in her flower bed. 

I had the idea to show Bracken just to get his reaction, so we decided to play a trick on him.  The spider was in a tupperware container and I told Alyssa to hand it to Bracken who had just driven up in one of the gators.  She asked him to close his eyes and hold out his hands because she had an early birthday present for him.  He was a little suspicious, but he did it.  He was so excited when he opened his eyes because he thought he was getting tupperware for sandwiches and food. 

When he looked closer and saw the spider he screamed again and threw the tupperware into the air and it landed in the back of the gator.  We all laughed alot, but Bracken just got surly.  It gives me a good feeling to see Bracken be a woos.  Is that how you spell that?  A day or two later Alan found another spider just like the one Alyssa found - just a little smaller.  He had it by the leg with his pliers.  He showed Bracken, and Bracken was really calm - too calm it seemed.

 Then the spider moved and he jumped away, getting mad at Alan.  He had thought the spider was dead.  And that's how we entertain ourselves around here - showing Bracken spiders and watching him get upset at us..
And here's a picture of a very large grasshopper.  It was huge - at least 4 inches long. 

Two weeks ago, Alan and I went to Beltu with Ashreka to see a new baby, meet some of her family; and go to the market.  This is a picture of the hill we drive up to get to Beltu at the top.

 I knew from how Ashreka was acting that she was very excited to have orchestrated this get together.  We stopped at her aunt's house first and took a picture of them outside in the road.

Then we went to her cousin's home to see the baby.  I found out that this is also the place where Ashreka sleeps.  We  met several people outside - all Ashreka's relatives and were escorted into the house.  The houses in Beltu are all made of dung, straw, and mud and surprisingly are very sturdy.  They have tin roofs and are rectangular homes.  They have no electricity and so most cooking is outside.  We went in and sat on the floor on the mat where Ashreka sleeps.  They had set out stuff for an Ethiopian coffee ceremony, even though Ashreka knows we don't drink coffee.

 I think it was to show as a decoration more than anything.  There were silk flowers and wallpaper and decorations on the wall and they were so excited for us to come and visit, we could tell they had really prepared.  Everything was spotlessly clean. 

We talked for a little while and then they brought out the baby - oh so petite and all sweetness and her head was beautifully buttered. They put butter or some kind of grease on the babies' heads to keep them from drying out. So she smelled very buttery. We took pictures with the little butter baby.

I love the one of Alan and Ashreka and the baby. It looks like Alan has a brand new little family doesn't it? It was funny because they handed Alan the baby and wanted me to take a picture of them and Ashreka was so excited she jumped right in to the picture. Then they served us some pasta.  It really was so kind and they were so generous.  The pasta came on a big tray with two spoons.  Alan and I looked at each other wondering how we could eat spaghetti with spoons and so we just dug in with our fingers.  They also gave us each a warm Coke.  We wanted everyone to share with us, and pretty soon everyone was eating from the big tray of spaghetti winding it onto our fingers and stuffing it in our mouths. 

Then we went to the Beltu Market.  Market day is every Saturday.  The people come from far and wide to sell and buy.  There is a big cow and goat section and chickens everywhere.  Then there is the main market which is mostly fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, sugar, etc., Most of these vendors are women who just throw down an old raggedy scrap of fabric or a piece of plastic and then they spread out their goods on more dirty plastic, or baskets or gourds. You have to be careful walking amongst them because they are so close and you don't want to tread on any fruits and veggies.  One time I stepped on a lady's scarf and she turned around and gave me a real wallop.  Then she saw who she had hit and she was mortified.  Then there are other stall like places where you can buy dry goods like dishes, shoes, scarves, soap, baskets, etc.  You know - just your average everyday Ethiopian market.  I like to go up to Beltu to shop because I can find things for so cheap: limes are 20 for about 7 cents, mangos are each 21 cents, bananas are three for 14 cents, dried beans are 14 cents for one cup.  The dry goods are more expensive, but I like the thrill of shoppingup there.  There are two things that I don't like about the market: first, I don't like the constant pushing, poking and pinching they seem to think they should do to me, and second, I dislike that they jack-up the price when they see a forenjee coming.  One lady tried to sell me 8 limes for 7 cents.  I knew I was being taken, so Ashreka went to another vendor and got the 20 limes.  Some things I don't know, but I do know the price of limes in Beltu. 

Last week on Monday, I think, was a Christian holiday here in Ethiopia to celebrate the end of the rainy season and the beginning of better weather..  Young men and boys go from house to house chanting  really loud, clapping and singing.  They surround the master of the house and while chanting really loudly they compliment him and say really good things about him.  They keep it up until he pulls out some money and gives it to the group.  If you want, you can give bread instead on money.  So on Monday night, such a loud chanting and laughing started up down by the apartments where the majority of the Ethiopian workers live, that I wanted to know what was going on.  Nadi explained to me what was happening.  They were surrounding each other and carrying on until they would contribute to a kitty they had going on.  I got really curious, so I walked down and saw that they were all having such fun.  Before I knew it, they had surrounded me and were chanting, but I had to tell them I had no money with me.  I ran back to the house, and told Alan, who was having a meeting with Haile and Seid at our house, that he should go down and see what was happening.  I tucked 100 birr (about $7.00) into his pocket and told him he might need it.  He was slowly walking toward the apartments when the group saw him and they rushed to surround him.  They carried on, singing, and clapping, and circling around him.  The noise they were making was so loud he couldn't hear anything else. 

He finally pulled out the money and gave it to them and they all shouted and really cheered hard for him.  I had my camera and I took pictures and then I steered them up  to my house to get Haile and Seid.  What a rowdy bunch and what noise they made.

 It was really fun - kind of like a Halloween thing going on.  Then when they gather all the money they had all given, the tally was somewhere over $100.00.  Because they were all Christians, they decided to donate it to the Christian church up in Beltu.  I didn't know there was a church up in Beltu, so that was a surprise to me, but I was glad they had done it.
I want to show a picture of the bread I made last week.  I make bread a couple of times a week and I have become so good at it, I just had to show you.

 I'm not a slouch at baking, but the bread I make over here is truly amazing.  I have been given the gift of making bread and I feel accomplished and Alan rejoices. 

We are both well and we stay very busy.  We're looking forward to getting the rest of the field work done and the grain planted within the next month.  There are many people here that are becoming some very close friends.  We hope that you're all well at home also.  Til next time.