Wednesday the 1st of Mai, we went in the morning to Yabello, to do some shopping and we hurried, because we were afraid of the rain, but we were too late. As we left the asphalt road and came to the first galley, passing was not possible anymore, because the rain was already too heavy. So we went back to the Asphalt Street and drove on to Haro Bake. There we left the car in the church compound and walked for about an hour 40 or 1 hour 45 minutes back to Dhadim. Luckily it was not raining on our way, but the shopping we had to left in the car. Boniface went the next day with the motorbike from one of the catechists to get the car. By the way, two outstations from the Dhadim Parish, one in Jijidu (that's the village where Jillo Elema, the girl my Family and I are supporting for going to school, comes from.) and the other church is in Cucubcatebu are not reachable by car anymore, so Boniface has sometimes problems to find the time to walk there.
Raining in Borana is funny. Sometimes it rains in the village Dhadim, but just on the hill it doesn't rain. Then you pass the next hill where it rains again and the following village Jolcasa is dry. Then the rest of the road to the asphalt is also dry. But the whole way from Dhadim village to the Asphalt Street is only about 11.5 Kilometers long, thus not really long.
Anyway, as we walked into the village, some kids came running towards us and accompanied us to the Mission. So I started playing with them and suddenly, I was not tired anymore.

On Holy Thursday, Sr. Ancia and I prepared twelve different colored waters, because on Thursday, we celebrated Mass and Jesus washed the feet of his twelve Disciples on that day. So Boniface washed the feet of twelve people during Mass. Just directly after Mass, there was adoration. We started in the church with the people and then brought the bred into the Chapel of the compound with all the people attending. The local people went, but the sisters prayed for the whole night and also Boniface joined them for quite a while.

The next day was the day on which Jesus died, so the Sisters were again praying the whole morning and in the church we tock every kind of decoration away. There were no flowers and no candles at all. At exactly 3 o'clock in the afternoon of that Good Friday we started with the ceremony. In the beginning, Boniface lay on the ground in front of the altar on a red towel. After that normal Mass was started.

It was already the 4th of April as Boniface and I went to Yabello again. Luckily, there was no rain, so we didn't have to walk. Back in Dhadim, I helped Sr. Ancia with the preparation for the Easter Virgil Mass in the Evening. We decorated the Church with a lot of flowers and a lot of candles and balloons. Until 8 o'clock in the evening I played with the kids and helped with further preparations in the church. Somewhere in between I even found little time to eat something.
The Mass was started outside with a fire. There we lightened the Easter Candle and processed inside the church. Everyone had to bring a candle and light it from the Easter Candle, but there were not much besides the people from the mission which really brought a Candle. Inside was normal Mass, only there were more readings than normal and after finishing Mass, the youth had prepared some drama, that means theater. But I didn't understand that much, because it was everything in Borana Language. Everything went up to past midnight, so there were several small kids which fell asleep. There were also two kids, two girls who got baptized that evening.

Just after a few hours sleep I got up again because I went with Sister Ancia and Abba Boniface early in the morning to Haro Bake for Mass. That morning, 14 children were baptized in that church. Also in Dhadim were another 2 baptisms, but Sr. Ancia and I went to eat breakfast and to cook. After Lunch I finished watching a movie and did a lot of washing. Meanwhile, Abba Iede and Sebastian came for Dinner. We started outside, but just after prayer, it started raining heavily. So we took our Dinner on that Easter Sunday inside

Monday was a resting day. At least for me and Boniface. The Sisters went to Mojo and Fulassa for a Jubilee and were gone for the next 3 days. So I didn't do much, I washed a bit but the Sisters took the key of the laundry room with them, so I had only half of the material.

Also the next day was still a resting day. I played a bit with the children; I read quite a lot and watched some documentaries.

In the morning of the 8th of May, we went to Yabello. Boniface and Warqe, our cook, went to the town and purchased some things, I stayed in the Mission of Yabello to make use of the slow internet. In the afternoon, the Sisters came back, only Sister Annie procedure to Addis Ababa for some meetings. In the evening they brought a man into the clinic, which drunk some poison. He had some fighting with his wife they said and wanted to kill him, so he drunk a good amount of poison and ran into the bush as the others wanted to bring him to the clinic. Only as he got weak, other people were able to bring him to the clinic, where Sr. Shirley and some of the clinic workers tried their best to save the man's life and pumped out his stomach. It looked quite ugly and the smell was also not so pleasant. Boniface would say, the smell was another thing all together. They worked for a few hours and by the end, the man was even again by conscious and talked, but he still died in the early morning hours.

And finally, on Thursday, the Kindergarten opened again. We showed the kids a BBC documentary about birds. They really liked it, but a lot of children were not there because either they didn't know that Kindergarten started again or some were sick.

So Boniface and I went on Friday, the 10th of May to the funeral of that man. They said it would start after 9, but as we arrived almost exactly at 9, they were already halfway, but Boniface explained me how it goes. First, they cut some stones, but they did that already on the day before. Then, on that day, they dig a hole. They put some sticks and mad in the middle on the hole and run to the house of the dead person. There, they take the body and run with it back to the grave and lay the body on that platform and close the hole again. They start throwing a lot of quite big stones on it and after finishing that, arrange them nicely into a circle. The top of the grave they smash to flatten it. Because there was an anthill just next to the grave, they destroyed it and put the pieces on the grave before the stones. People say that the anthill is a mark for the grave and they don't want to be remembered of the grave. With every step, the oldest son has to begin. The oldest son of this man was a boy, which was not really old, just about 7 years old. Women were not allowed to attend the burial ceremony, because the men say that they only cry and not work. After that, everyone went to the house of the dead man and went to eat.
The man was only about 40 years old and has 5 children; one of the girls is in the kindergarten where I'm teaching.
Boniface and I went straight after the burial ceremony back to the compound because he had to check in school and I went to the kindergarten. While I was not there, the children watched another BBC documentary, this time with the title Hunters and Hunted. After break, I taught some of the smartest children the numbers above 100.

On Saturday morning, Boniface went to Yabello for a meeting, but I stayed in Dhadim and read most of the day. I ate with the Sisters and did some of my washing.

The next day, right after Mass we went to Yabello again. We went with two cars because a lot of youth came with us for a choir practice for Kilimpe's ordination. That was quite boring for me. There was a man, who was really weird and I think not totally sober. But sometime during the choir practice, I went from the church to the compound, that's about 2 minutes walking to drink something and to go to the toilet. That man followed me and started speaking in quite a well English. I just said I have no time and rushed on, but he followed me until in front of the compound. As I came out again, he waited there, but I rushed back to the church again, being followed again. But luckily, because I stayed the whole time with Sr. Ancia, he didn't follow me anymore. He just wanted something like money, I guess.
After finished the choir practice, we went to the prison to visit the boy which is accused of raping a girl but is innocent. We collected money for him to buy some nice food and clothes in the prison and to get him out for Kilimpe's ordination beginning of June. It is possible to get him out of prison for one day, if someone signs that he doesn't run away.

On Monday we wanted to drive to Awassa, but because the generator had a problem and Boniface was sick and slept more or less the whole day, I had a normal day program. Kindergarten in the morning, again we watched again another BBC documentary about Primates and in the afternoon reading and watching that no one disturbs Boniface.

Finally on the 14th of May, the day that Abba Anthony should arrive in the evening, we started our journey to Addis Ababa. We started at 2 o'clock in the morning and reached at about 8 in Awassa. From Dhadim to Awassa, Abraham, the driver of the Sister, drove, because Boniface was still sick and didn't want to drive too long. After Awassa, Boniface drove. We arrived between 3 and 4 in the afternoon. It was quite heavy that day, because in the evening at 8 we started to the airport to pick up Abba Anthony arriving from his two month holidays in his home country Nigeria. But the airplane delayed and he only landed at 10 o'clock, so we were way to early in the airport and at the end of the day as I went to bed, I was already awake for about 22 hours and really tired with strong headache.

Wednesday was a lot sleeping for me and some shopping in Addis in the afternoon. But most of the time I was in the mission house of Addis Ababa, because I was somehow not really well. My stomach was paining a lot the last week and also a bit of headache and tiredness.

The following day looked quite similar. Jillo Elema came to Addis from her university to the city to meet us again, most probably for the last time before I'm going home.