Refugee Camps and Mayor's Office

This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip! Because of all the displaced people from the flood, we spent A LOT of time going through and organizing all the donated supplies VOH has in their supply dome. We wanted to give as much as we could to the people in need at the refugee camps. People lost their homes and all their belongings. The above picture is me and my mom in the supply dome.

We took MANY bins of supplies (mostly clothes, blankets, and hygiene kits) to Shashamene.
The people LOVE these knit hats! Americans make them and send them over and we gave a lot away. They love the bright colors especially.
Workers outside the refugee camp.

Inside the refugee camp. It was SO hot in this tent. People funneled through and we gave them clothes, blankets, etc.

These women were very happy to receive blankets for their babies. Most people were very grateful for any help...but there were always those few that tried to sneak in line twice or three times :) The whole process was kind of chaotic...but then again, what would you expect at a refugee camp?? People are in desperation!

Flood conditions and the inside of concrete shelters...makeshift homes for now...

DeAnna with some city officials. They were very thrilled to have any donations and assistance.

So thrilled in fact...we got to go meet the Mayor of Shashamene!

He wanted to personally thank us! Very nice gentleman!
(Side story...one of our drivers got a ticket a few days before...and the Mayor found out, so he made the policeman come over and apologize to him! He couldn't get rid of the ticket because he already paid it, but it was an interesting situation/converstation nonetheless. It's weird because you don't want to seem like we're above the law here, but the mayor doesn't want westerners being mistreated either.)

This coaster was on the coffee table in the Mayor's office. Very appropriate!

Some weird lion statue outside the Mayor's office. (me and Saeed...a VOH employee).

Helping out with the flood/refugee camps was one of those things we didn't plan on doing when we came to Ethiopia...we didn't know there would be flood, but that's the beauty of going on these types of trips...we just helped out with whatever came up and it was all good! Being flexible and patient is a MUST for Africa!