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This kind woman in Adama sells tef at cost to Faya.

Flying to Ethiopia the way we did, we were so afraid that 1. our kids would be dispersed to other orphanages and 2. that they would run out of food.

Well, if the Women’s Ministry hadn’t been in a training seminar for two weeks at that time, the transition home may well have been “reorganized” and the kids with it.  Thank goodness they were coincidentally in a 2 week retreat period.

Our fear of food was very real at the time.  When Mom and I left for ET, they had 3 days of food left.  When we arrived, the former Imagine director had been there and brought cash from her daughter, so they had 8 days of food.  Using imaginative budget stretching, M, the lady in charge on the Ethiopia side, managed to stretch that money even further (amalgamated two homes into one, laid off staff, etc.)

As a result of the bankruptcy, there were several awesome families who fund raised and sent money for Imagine / Kidslink in Ethiopia.  $1000 cash of this money arrived with a mom a few days after we did.  Fortunately, it was at the same time as the gold company decided to make the big corporate donation.  And Kidslink in ET did NOT feel comfortable taking any non-accountant-delivered donations.  So we emailed home with suggestions of organizations that could benefit from the $1000 already there.  They said we should donate the money to Faya Orphanage.

Following are photos of all the stuff we bought for $1000 (plus a little from us) - M, the lady in charge, made a list and we went shopping!  In Addis, we bought a bunkbed, 2 cribs, mattresses, and a huge dresser.  Then we roped it all on top of our van; we were going to Lake Langano south of Adama so we just brought it along and dropped it off at Faya Orphanage.

The storeroom full of formula, meds, and other stuff we brought from Canada.

A week later when we returned from Lake Langano and spent the rest of the money (within $2 – I kid you not!  We bought sheets for the beds/cribs, bags of tef (which cost about $120 each now and last Faya 1 month) a bag of flour, and misc. baby items.

A thousand bucks goes a LONG way in Ethiopia, let me tell you.  All this stuff, in addition to the million cans of formula that Jrock hauled over (from a generous BC family) were very very welcome gifts and helped them out a lot.  I will tell you more about Faya and the kids in general in a subsequent post, but let me say for now that they make everything stretch REALLY well at Faya, and the people running it are awesome, creative and determined.

If you are going to Ethiopia sometime soon, please consider making the short 2 hour daytrip down to Adama and visit Faya Orphanage.  After all, if you visit, you will see firsthand why you should donate.

What they need now: First off, money.  We didn’t feel comfortable that our instructions from the families allowed us to just hand over the cash; so we bought stuff on their wish list.  But above all, they need money to pay the rent, pay staff, and buy tef.  You can donate online here www.fayaorphanage.org  using paypal.

If you are visiting, they could use four kid backpacks full of school and art supplies for their school-aged kids.  And the other thing that is SO expensive there (seriously more expensive than Canada!) is baby products.  J & J baby shampoo, baby powder, diaper cream, etc.  And they have 3? (if memory serves me correctly) little babies there now.

Some pics of the donations!