Live Fire with Chuck Holton

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
It’s common when people travel outside the United States for them to return with a new appreciation for things like clean streets and potable water. Add another one to that list – broadband. Here in Ethiopia, there is only one satellite uplink for the entire country to share – and that means the speed ranges from molasses on the high end to simply “unavailable.” And for someone who has gotten used to twittering, updating facebook, and actually working online, this can be a severely painful experience on the order of a heroin addict suddenly deprived of his drug.
But it’s not entirely a bad thing. One thing I appreciate here is that in the absence of facebook and gmail and twitter, people actually spend time talking face to face. It’s refreshing. On Wednesday I spent the day on a boat crossing Lake Tana – and had six hours of uninterrupted conversation with a group of very interesting people. It’s been a long time since I was able to do that.

Axum, Ethiopia, 19 January 2009

In Ethiopia, the Christian holiday of Epiphany is like Christmas, Easter and the fourth of July all rolled into one. Here in the ancient town of Axum, throw in the New Year?s eve party of 1999. That?s because this otherwise-unassuming place is the center of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity. And for some reason, Epiphany, or ?Timkat? as it?s known here, is the holiest day of their year.

The Ethiopians claim (with great certainty) that the Ark of the Covenant (yes, the one Indiana Jones was looking for) currently resides here in Axum, in a small church that has only one congregant – a monk whose entire life is spent within its small enclosure. That church was supposedly built to house the Ark when it arrived in Axum, via a long and circuitous set of circumstances, over two thousand years ago.

I’m currently investigating this claim, and in the near future will be reporting about it on CBN news. For now, after spending the day surrounded by a sea of dancing, chanting revelers, its clear to me that whether or not this living legend is true, there is no doubt in the minds of these wonderful people.

It is springtime here, and the air is incredibly fragrant with the scent of flowers, trees and shrubs.  The Ethiopians seem to have a great affinity for musak, especially here at the hotel.  They are working from a master list of the kind of songs that make me want to plug my ears and run lest one of them worm its way into my brain and stay there for a few weeks, slowly driving me insane.  Classical renditions of “raindrops keep falling on my head,” and “don’t cry for me Argentina” have had me almost in tears myself both in the airport and the hotel lobby.  Tonight when I was eating supper, I did my best to tune it out until the pianist broke into a lively syncopated rendition of “Winnie the pooh” and I just about snorted macchiato through my nose.  Not a pretty sight.

Another thing is that the Ethiopians are real sticklers for procedure.  They are  obsessive about following the letter of the law at all times, whether you’re talking about government bureaucracy, hotel policy or anything else.  I had to pay for a permit to even be able to take video at all while I’m here.  The government hack that filled out the forms did so with a precision and attention to detail that bordered on psychosis.  I went out to get some panoramic shots today from a hilltop, and my taxi driver just about broke out in hives when he found out that the aforementioned permit, for which I had paid handsomely, didn’t specifically name that actual hilltop as an authorized shooting location (it only mentioned provinces) and made me pack up and go home.  Everyone is quite friendly about it; nobody has been the least bit rude or even brusque.  I imagine it’s like what you’d get if the USSR had been run by Canadians.

The Sheraton in Addis is luxurious, no doubt, but it reminded me again why I hate luxury hotels.  EVERYTHING costs money.  Want an extra bottle of water?  Six bucks.  An hour of (hideously slow) internet?  One hundred and twenty birr -  twelve dollars.  The breakfast buffet was nice, but it set me back thirty smackers - which effectively curbed my appetite. 

The most perverse thing about it is, I would have rather eaten a three-dollar bowl of porridge and then given the other twenty-seven among the thousands of single mothers who troll the streets outside the gated compound of the Sheraton.  Doubtless one of them could live for a week on that much - or longer.  I wouldn’t have stayed here at all, but it was sort of unavoidable at 3AM when I arrived. though that’s a more complicated story.  Suffice it to say, this hotel is the rent-a-bed equivalent of my mother-in-law’s carmel-coated popcorn puffs.  They are, hands down, the best tasting thing I never want to eat again, because their effect on my midsection is as disastrous as this hotel’s has been on my wallet.

I can tell already this trip is going to be more difficult emotionally than physically.   I’ve seen plenty of suffering around the world, but I find myself lying in bed at night and begging God that I won’t become jaded, indifferent.  There is just so much need - and aside from giving sacrificially from whatever I’m entrusted with, I guess the best thing I can do is tell you about it, and hope that the stories you read here over the coming weeks will stir your heart  to giving as well.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading out on a three-week trip to Africa. First, it’ll be to Ethiopia, where I’ll be joining Bob Cornuke of the BASE institute, following the trail of the Lost Ark of the Covenant to one of its many possible resting places. The people of Ethiopia claim to have the Ark safely hidden away in a church in AXUM. We’ll be making a feature about it.

After that, things aren’t set in stone, but I’ll either be traveling to the Democratic Republic of Congo or getting on a ship in the Gulf of Aden. Either way, that’ll be an adventurous week.

Lastly, I’ll be embedding with US troops on the horn of Africa as they do some humanitarian work.

As usual, I’ll be blogging about the trip whenever I can. One new feature you’ll like: Look at the top of this page – there’s a new “FindMe” page linked there. You should be able to visit that page anytime and see my location on a map. A great way to track my whereabouts around the world!

This is probably the best telling of the Christmas story from Luke that I’ve ever seen. Basically, this kid’s parents just read the story to him every night for a month, and he memorized it by accident.

There’s an encouraging lesson here: we become what we repeatedly focus on. This year, I’m going to focus on becoming more generous, praying for my kids, and becoming a faster writer. (not a faster typist…I want to be able to crank out articles, scripts and even books in record time. Focus will be the key.)