bright hope and cultures colliding

on my second day in ethiopia i was up and at em bright and early. i guess it would be safe to say that i was a bit excited. you see, today we were going to our first introduction to bright hope school (the school and students we had traveled all this way to serve).

on our drive there i was witness to the collision of cultures. young boys were shepherding their flock of sheep along the sidewalk. men were breaking apart asphalt with a sledgehammer all the while hammering away near their shoeless toes. some men were dressed in suits driving a mercedes. women were hauling pounds of sticks on their backs. young kids were polishing shoes on the street corner with a coca-cola sign as their backdrop. donkeys, cows, goats, and dogs stood mindlessly in the road. huts and shops made of tin and mud lined the roads. some places had yards. some places were developed. like i said, the cultures were colliding.

then we roll up to a gate that provides access to a leper community. we needed to drive through the community (in the district of addis known as korah, which i'll talk more about in a later post) in order to reach the gates of the school.

once we enter bright hope we're greeted by muzgabu, a bubbly, smiling, grateful, one-legged (he lost a leg years ago in a war) man. he tells that all we need to do is touch the wall and it will grow. all we need to do is touch they chicken coups and they will grow. all we need to do is touch the garden and it will grow. you could say he has the gift of encouragement! we tour the school grounds and get a small (very, very small) idea of what we'll be doing in a couple days when we begin working. it is all quite surreal.

bright hope is a public school in the middle of one of the most impoverished and forgotten districts of addis ababa yet it sits on this pristine hillside nestled up next to looming eucalyptus tree and lush, green acreage. it lives up to it's name, bright hope. bright hope smack dab in the middle of hopelessness. only God could have led us to such a destination. muzgabu says we are part of the hope and we tell him we're just thankful that God has allowed us to be a part of it.