Ruta writing...It is always fun to see the joy that donations bring. Here are photos from the distribution of donations of shoes and socks from my colleagues in Accenture. Upon seeing some of our past pictures from Ethiopia, on their own initiative, Rob and Beth organized a shoe collection drive. They gathered sports shoes, cleats and baby shoes. These children live in tin shacks in our area or they basically live on the streets. Shoes are a tremendous gift to them, particularly now that the rainy season has started. The rain comes down in buckets and the weather can get quite [View Full Entry]

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Lukas writing...At home (America) when we went to Lithuanian school on Saturdays, we learned how to dance some Lithuanian folk dances. Here in Ethiopia people dance very different. Here people mostly dance alone, but sometimes they dance with two people, in pairs. When people dance in pairs, usually there is one man with one woman in front. They look at each other first over one shoulder, then over the other shoulder. When one person dances, a circle forms with people watching him/her. Here in Ethiopia, people do not really dance with lines and circles. When people dance, they usually move t [View Full Entry]

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Kovas writing… It was a tough day at my summer job teaching at the Somalian School. On my way home, my head hurt, and I was physically tired. As a taxi finally arrived, I got into the front seat and waited to get to my destination. Our taxi driver stopped at the side of the road to drop off a few people. Since there was a parked car in front of him, he had to veer into the left lane of traffic. This caused an argument with a big, yellow truck full of rocks that was behind. In retaliation, the driver [View Full Entry]

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Kovas writing… No, I didn’t feed a sibling to the hyenas at the city of Harar, but I did hand feed the wild hyenas meat. It was crazy! There is actually a man whose job it is to feed hyenas in the walled city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia. Every night he goes to a certain place and shouts a continuous call to attract the hyenas. He throws meat to them. Courageously, he also hangs the strips of meat on a stick and lets the wild hyena come very close to him gobble up the meat. Because we heard from friends [View Full Entry]

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Kovas writing… At fifteen years old my first job is not caddying or working at McDonalds, but it’s teaching Somali citizens displaced in Addis Ababa. I have been working for over a month. I like it, and I’m good at it. I am a teacher at the Shiloh International School, which has students from Saudi Arabaia, Egypt, Dubai, and many from Somalia. This is one of the few schools they are able to attend, because it is an inexpensive international school. Ethiopia does not allow non-Ethiopians to attend their public schools. Because it is a new school, they are happy with [View Full Entry]

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(Kovas writing…) In the dry rural parts of Ethiopia we have seen many different cacti. They are diverse and interesting plants! Some looked and grew as tall as trees because they had one main stem and many branches that grew up. Others had big thorns and were dark green in color. The ones that we mostly saw driving to the eastern city of Harar grew to waist height, were light green, and had groups of many small thorns. Unfortunately, I accidently touched these little groups of thorns. If this happens to you, you will find three or four small, yellowish thorns [View Full Entry]

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(Ruta writing) Tadas and I delivered baby toys that were given to us to pass onward to the 50-60 babies at the Arat Kilo Child Care Association. Of course the toys were a huge hit. At first when we displayed all of the toys on the ground, the babies (ages 1-3 years) simply stared in awe. Tadas sat down on the ground and started playing with the toys as if he is a little kid, to the great amusement of the children. They particularly liked the pop toy in which you press the top button and the bottom balls spin. There [View Full Entry]

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(Ruta writing) In the previous blog, I listed the numerous organizations who have received donations from our family and friends. In this entry I share pictures from one particular trip to rural areas outside Addis. The “dilemma” in distributing donations - do we parcel out and donate a few items to each of the 30 schools with which I interact, or do we make a bigger impact in one school? We decided to make small packets of office supplies to donate to about 30 organizations, and then give a larger amount of items to a rural primary school and rural secondary [View Full Entry]

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Living in Ethiopia for the year, we, the Kulbis family, have been awed and amazed by many things but among the most significant impressions has been the deep generosity of our friends and families in the US. We have been humbled by the packages sent to us from our family and friends to distribute to Ethiopia’s poor. We acknowledge and appreciate the significant time, expense, and efforts in collecting, packing, and sending the items to us for distribution. Thank you all! We have taken the role of distributing your generous donations very seriously and have tried our best to allocate [View Full Entry]

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(Vasara writing) For school I had a project of finding all the countries from which our school’s students come from. It was a good project. I got a list of the countries from school. I was surprised that some of the countries, like Bahrain, were hard to find. My brothers helped me. They would say, “Oh, my friend is from Zimbabwe; it’s south - right here.” I put thumbtacks into the capital city of each country. My brothers and I noticed that most of the capitals of the African students that attend our school follow the coast of Africa. My map [View Full Entry]

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