2019.01.24 Morning cacophony

Whoever blesses a neighbor with a loud voice,
rising early in the morning,
will be counted as cursing.  Proverbs 27.14 (ESV)

I can manage the rustic guest house (though it does have hot water for warm showers);
I can manage boiling or filtering all drinking water;
I can manage doing dishes by hand in a dim corner of a not-Beth-clean kitchen;
but I can’t manage the calls to prayer at the wee hours of the morning!

My morning haiku are:

Roused by calls to prayer
Praying for power outage
5:20 a.m.

The problem of prayer
How to be still before God
When loudspeakers blare

A few more glimses of life in Addis:

At the local grocery store, we can’t find white or brown sugar! Johanna even asked. There is powdered sugar, but my few small sugar packets—that I picked up from airline food trays, fast food joints, and who knows where else—have been tiding us over. As we realized we were running low, we figured it was time to have a dinner at the Coffee Garden restaurant close to EGST. We each nabbed a few sugar packets from the table’s container. We’ll make it to the end of our stay.

Johanna is a wife and mother of 3 girls ranging from 3 to 7. This is the longest she’s been away from them. To help the girls process their mother’s absence, they have a special calendar that numbers the days until Johanna’s return. Each night, they cross off one day for a countdown until mamma comes home. Fortunately, Johanna can call home over the Internet every evening when we are at EGST, which has a reasonable WIFI connection most of the time. Last night, Johanna’s husband relayed that their 5-year-old crossed off a couple extra days—thinking that it would mean that mamma would be home sooner!

Johanna has been a wonderful travel partner. We figured that we’d be OK traveling together on this trip after she joined Anya and me last August for the SBL conference in Helsinki, Finland. (Well, Anya came along to explore Helsinki’s vintage shopping and not to join in on the adult nerd conference.) Johanna is a great conversationalist. We have numerous bouts of laughter, including the doubling-over-wheezing-breath kind. Amazingly, in our untold hours of biblical and theological discussions, we haven’t found an issue where we fundamentally disagree! We’ve even started trying to search for issues to debate. We have found some, but not with regard to biblical and theological topics—yet! Our contentious points are the Eurovision song contest, coffee, and chocolate. At least this means that I don’t have to share my Toblerone chocolate—though I still offer—just to be hospitable.

 At the time of this writing (7:51), the Orthodox prayers have continued non-stop since I woke up (note 5:20 am above). At times, the mosque added their voice, which clearly was not a harmony. The morning traffic noise floats down the lane, with horn honks punctuating the prayers.

This is not a city for light sleepers! I will need a nap later!