Things are looking up...

It is funny how my feelings can change so quickly in Ethiopia. Only a few days ago I wrote about feeling uninspired and then yesterday I had one of the most invigorating days on record in the collective 4 months I have spent here in three years.

View from dirt road at the top of mountain.

We departed early for Alaje, a district in the Southern Zone of Tigray. I was immediately taken aback by how lush and green this area was, given the rocky and dry landscape to which I had become accustomed. We climbed up one side of the mountain to only come straight down the other side. I always think how I would never survive in my line of work if I was prone to motion sickness. Our final destination was a village nestled in between two mountain ranges. We were in search of a community health worker and were informed that her home was up on the top of one mountain, with no road access. The only way to reach her was on foot and it would take over 2.5 hours of uphill hiking. Of course, I was not informed of the distance until we were halfway through our forward march and I inquired, ‘how much further?’ The laughter that followed gave me the response I needed and cued my own nervous giggles.

Guide for journey up the mountain.


Young girl fetching water and climbing to top of mountain as well.

We began the hike at 7000 feet and though I have no clue at what elevation we finished, my pounding heart and burning lungs suggested we were breathing very thin air. Additionally, while I am used to meandering switchbacks when hiking, Ethiopians seem to despise such signs of weakness and our route could not have been more direct, or vertical for that matter. At times I wanted to get on all four on the way up and I had no choice on the way down because I felt like I was skiing on dirt and loose stones without the proper equipment. 

Home along the way.

The other challenge was that I had not set out that day with the intention of completing a major hike. I had water, because I always do, but not tons and I had two Luna bars. However, we were four and when they were divided, it was barely enough to keep me going since breakfast 6 hours earlier. Perhaps my colleagues or the guide noticed my waning energy because I was handed a pile of leaves to dig through and find soybeans to shell and eat raw. They were not terrible, but they were also not very good or filling. In fact it was more effort than it was worth because I was supposed to find and shell the beans while continuing the hike. Needless to say, I was not very successful since I needed both hands to keep my balance and finally gave up, throwing the entire lot over the edge, yelling ‘finished’ to my colleagues several steps ahead of me.

Lunch.

Steepness, dehydration and hunger aside – it was the most beautiful hike that I have ever completed. Though breaks seemed to be prohibited, I was able to snap several photos and get my colleagues to stop at a few lookouts. 

We finally reached the top and then made our way another 30 minutes along the ridge to the home of the community health worker. My first greeting after surmounting this feat was the hysterical cries of her daughter who never saw anyone who looked like me before in her life. She eventually warmed up to my blonde hair and white skin (the sparkly pen I gave her might have helped). Recognizing our fatigue from the hike, our hosts decided we must have nourishment….in the form of milk from their cow warmed up over an open flame. As I watched the milk bubbling on the fire, unpasteurized and as far from refrigeration as possible, I tried to figure out an escape from having to drink. But alas, as always, I chickened out in fear of hurting someone’s feelings and chugged down the milk to the dismay of my own stomach.

Fresh, warm milk. Mmmm.

The meeting with community health worker and her family was inspiring and well worth the effort. And fortunately, my improved outlook did not come at the expense of my sensitive stomach.

Top of the mountain

Back to the motherland

I haven’t felt much like writing about my travels so far like I usually do, which is a maybe a sign that I am ready to stop traveling so much….for work that is, as I have been daydreaming about my next vacation with Kent.  I am leaning towards Europe, since I am a bit exhausted by the developing world at the moment. 

Nonetheless, I created a list of things I must get done today (Sunday) and ‘write email home’ was on the list.  I love to cross things off my list, so I am obliged.  Since we are also very far behind on the blogging front, I decided to turn this email into a blog post. 

The first week of my trip was spent in Tanzania and went by relatively quickly.  I was staying a beautiful hotel on the Indian Ocean.  My personal goal for the week was to make it back from meetings/conference in time to sip a Kiliminjaro beer staring at the ocean before the sun went down.  This never happened.  Traffic in Dar-es-Salaam is the worst traffic I have ever experienced and that is saying a lot, considering Bay Area traffic.   The conference was the first national family planning conference in Tanzania, which was exciting.  I was able to present on our work in Ethiopia and meet really interesting people doing similar work in Tanzania.  My main concern during my own presentation was that I would speak too quickly – I am inherently a fast-talker and even speed up more when I am nervous.  Based on the questions – I think my presentation was slow and coherent, which is great since I was 1 of 2 non-Africans in a room of 70+ people for the panel.

Sunrise over Indian Ocean

New artwork for our house.  Artist is holding painting.

Performers at the conference.  He eventually put the snake in his mouth, but I was so startled I dropped my phone.

On final day of the conference, I had a 2am flight from Dar-es-Salaam to Addis Ababa.   I was able to grab dinner with a friend from grad school, who is living/working in Dar before the flight and arrived at the airport the required 1.5 hours before my departure.  At 2am we still had not boarded, and naturally, no one was providing any information as to whether or not be would be boarding soon.  I was exhausted, but was not confident anyone would wake me up if we did board and also did not want to leave my carry-ons unguarded.  We finally boarded at 3:30am, with no apology or explanation, and made our way to Addis. Typical.

 

So today marks the end of my first of five weeks in Ethiopia.  We trained 100 community-based reproductive health agents this week, and I will spend the next three weeks monitoring the women we trained in the past. The training went really well, aside from few logistical glitches that I had to resolve.  There were two young girls at this training… if they were in the US, you would have guessed they were 7 or 8 based on size, but they were both 11 years old.  Given poor nutrition and hard labor, many young rural women and men are stunted in growth in Ethiopia.  The two girls both positioned themselves for the entire four day training so that I was always in their sight.  We would exchange shy smiles and waves.  Most of the time, each was caring for a small child, carrying the baby on her back.  I found out later they were pulled from school to help take care of their younger siblings during the training.  This made me really sad and I mentioned it to Dr. Amanuel.  He agreed and talked to their guardians, emphasizing that they should never again be pulled from school.  Sadly, education for girls is not a priority for many families in rural Ethiopia and it is hard to say if his conversation had any real impact. 

11 yo girl at the training with sister on her back.

Street in Mekelle, Ethiopia

Dinner: fasting beyanetu

Little girl practicing her soccer skills with orange.

However, today as I sit in a café in Mekelle (the biggest town in the region of Ethiopia where I work); I have noticed that girls here are very much cherished by their families, especially fathers.  In fact, Sunday seems to be the day that little girls venture to the café for a piece of cake with their father.  I have been working in this café for close to four hours and there has been a steady stream of fathers and children, no mothers in sight.  There is glass cabinet with about 6 different types of delicious cake to choose from and I love watching them decide which piece they would like….as if their life depends on it.  I can sympathize, as it took me a good two hours to decide if I wanted the vanilla with strawberry or vanilla with chocolate.

Ethiopia has made great strides, but clearly has a ways to go improving the lives of girls in the rural communities.  However, I know that such development doesn’t happen overnight, so for now…another piece of cake.  

Jeg har vaeret til Solvang! Tillykke med foedelsdag America!

Ever since living in Denmark over 15 years ago, I've wanted to visit Solvang. This Disneyland-esque village was a common topic of conversation when I lived in Denmark. Danes had no idea where Colorado was, so they just assumed I must live close to Solvang ... probably because Colorado and California both sound similar. Danes also thought I must live close to Canada because Colorado has mountains and they thought Canada did too.

Truth be told, the only research I completed in preparation for our 4th of July road trip to Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Santa Monica was to look up the most famous roads to climb in Santa Barbara. Evening planning conversations on the couch with Karen went something like this: I find a ride route on Strava, I show route to Karen, Karen asks if I would prefer to ride alone since she is not interested in climbing 8,000 ft. Karen, on the other hand, was doing valuable research like finding us a hotel that had a collection of 3,000 DVDs for guests to borrow (a real treat for the TV-less Newderts).

The public transportation strike in San Francisco made work from home on our first travel day easier and we set off South after lunch. By 4:00, we had hit Santa Barbara wine country and were ready to kick off the weekend right!

After a couple wineries and dinner in Solvang, we were off to Santa Barbara. In typical fashion, I got us lost on our bike ride, but we did a beautiful tour of Santa Barbara including Gibraltar road, UCSB campus, Marina Drive (where Ellen supposedly has a house although she didn't come out to greet us)

Notice the big bump at the beginning of the ride ... It's no wonder this was one of Lance's favorite places to train for the climbs of the Tour.

We followed the two days of biking with the beautiful wedding of my old roommate. I was trying to get some work done on Friday before the wedding but the call of the pool deck, sunshine and coors light was too strong and we ended up spending a nice afternoon catching up with some business school classmates of mine.

(Moms: you can stop reading here and just know that the wedding was fun). The pre-wedding festivities officially kicked off with a detailed explanation of the 'MIG' betting odds. Now, MIG stands for Most Inappropriate Guest, which is a term neither Karen nor I had ever heard of. Bascially, all wedding guests (or at least those most likely to bring the party) are given odds of becoming the most inappropriate guest and a variety of bets are placed between friends. The unintended consequence here (or maybe fully intentional) that I hadn't realized is that many people were disappointed with their odds and put in an extra effort to make sure they were fully prepared to compete for the prize. The wedding ended with guitar sing along and tequila shots in the Marriott lobby. A grand finale for Dan and Jacqueline!

The fish 'n chips triathlon, eh?

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As Karen’s and my first triathlon adventure out of California, our recent race in Victoria was filled with driving, ferries, and fish ‘n chips.  

Let’s start with that fact that our understanding of the geography of the Seattle-area is a little off.  When we planned this race, we figured catching the ferry between Seattle and Victoria Island would be similar to catching the ferry to Bainbridge Island (never mind that neither of us had ever done the ferry to Bainbridge either). It turns out that Victoria Island is nowhere close to where we were going and that getting to the CITY of Victoria on Vancouver Island is more complicated than we thought since we had a car and bikes.  More on this later …

The adventure began with me frantically packing all of my triathlon gear early because I was traveling for work all week. Later in the week, Karen and one of our blogs most avid readers, Bonnie (aka Karen’s mom), left Berkeley with all of the triathlon gear and bikes (and lots of snacks) for the drive to Seattle where I would join them on Friday.

We spent Friday night catching up with our friends Anne and Dan and their new baby Spencer. I discovered that most conversations regarding a newborn revolve around poop so I had plenty to add to the conversation. Everyone, however, seemed less interested in my poop, but found it highly entertaining when I asked Ann, "So when did you know it was a guy?"  Anne answered, "The first time he farted".

On the day before the race, we packed up the car early in Seattle and drove the 1.5 hours to Anacortes to catch the ferry to Sidney on Vancouver Island. Note to folks considering a trip to this part of the world with a car: there are two ferry options from Seattle, one which is 3 hour ferry and 1.5 drive (Anacortes) or one that is a 3 hour drive and a 1 hour ferry (Port Angeles). Thank you Karen for doing all the research and figuring this out since we were a little slow on this ... and should have looked into this before signing up for the race and booking hotels! We chose the 3 hour ferry through the San Juan Islands, figuring a scenic ferry ride would be nicer than 3 hours in a cramped car (turns out that throwing all my triathlon gear together last minute meant I over-packed).

Upon arrival in Victoria, we checked into the hotel and headed to the race to check in our bikes and hear the ‘mandatory’ pre-race meeting.  We discovered that Canadians are indeed as obsessed with the latest-and-greatest triathlon goodies as we are.

Race day!

Everything went off without a hitch – a rarity in our triathlon history. In my typical triathlon fashion, I came out the water in a great place, got passed by a few people on the bike, and then got passed by a lot of people in the run. Karen had a much stronger performance and ended up 12^th overall (including 3 pros) and third in her age group.

SWIM:

Kent:  The swim was 1.2 miles out-and-back. I think I may have kicked Karen a few times, but thankfully she forgave me. Canadians appear to flail a little less in the water and people formed a fast pace line in the water. Neither of us swim very straight so it wasn’t our best swim, but I fared a little better than Karen.
Karen: This was my first triathlon where all competitors started at the same time.  Kent and I decided to start together and though I usually hang back at the start of the swim to avoid the battle that ensues when hundreds of people go from standing vertically to swimming horizontally, I followed Kent up to the front.  Within seconds of the gun going off, I was getting pummeled from all sides....but my left side in particular.  I finally retreated to a vertical doggy paddle position to get my bearings and spotted the left-side offender.

You might recognize him.  Turns out all's fair in love and triathlon :)  After getting tossed at the start of the race, I opted to swim on the far outside of the course, which kept the flailing arms away, but added distance to my route and kept me far from the pace line.  

BIKE:

Kent: The 56 mile bike course took us all around North Saanich for two loops. We had heard the course had ‘rolling hills’, but on the ferry a fellow cyclist told us, “oh no, it’s flat as pancake out that way, eh’ … hmmm, this either means a) Canadians have a much different perception of hills or b) we were severely under trained on the bike. We both felt the course was incredibly hilly. Thankfully, it was gorgeous and we both enjoyed the views of the water and mountains as we suffered up the hills. Here's the bike course on Kent's Strava.
Karen:  Besides the aforementioned suffering from unexpected hills, I only had one mishap.  This was my first  race on the new TT bike.  Kent had put a fancy aerodynamic water bottle on the front that I could refill at the aid stations by emptying a full water bottle into it.  After a successful water bottle hand off and fill up at the first aid station, I got confident.  I sucked my bottle dry as I rolled into the second water station, grabbed the water bottle from the volunteer as I kept peddling, squeezed out the water with one hand and kept cruising.  Smiling smugly to myself, I got into my aerodynamic position and went for my first sip....nothing came out.  I tried again, but it was clear, there was no water in my bottle and would not be until the next aid station. I am still not clear on what I did wrong, but Kent's nickname for me, 'Waterless Weidert', was painfully fitting over the next 20 miles.

Transition 1 -- Team photographer (Bonnie) could not find Kent.

RUN:

Kent: The best part of the run for me was that it was a 20km (12.4 miles) and not a half marathon (13.1 miles). We ran around the lake where we swam twice and I struggled with stomach cramps for most it. Every time I’d hit an aid station, I’d grab some water, swish it in my mouth with the intention of spitting it out. Inevitably, I would swallow some and it would remind me how delicious it was and how thirsty I was … so I would drink more and my cramps got worse. A less-than-desirable cycle of events every kilometer, but I got through it. Here's the run course on Kent's Strava. Note the extreme slow-down post mile 6.
Karen:  Throughout the bike, I battled back and forth with female competitors.  I kept myself calm by telling myself that I would get them on the run, since this is typically my dominant sport of the three.  I kept looking at my Garmin for the first few miles and knew I was running fast...probably too fast.  But at mile 5, I was still running 7:45min/mi pace and felt strong.  I had a rude awakening at mile 7.  I ran by a man and uttered a few words of encouragement.  He replied, "yup, just around this bend and another bend and another bend...".  I replied, "I know -- these mile by mile markers are really killing me."  He said, "I wish they were mile markers".  Arghhhhhhh....we are in Canada!  They were kilometers and I was in more trouble than I thought.  I had based my nutrition intake on the run thinking they were miles.  I had based my pace thinking they were miles.  'Well at least I can't be more idiotic than I already am', I thought to myself.  If only that were true. As Kent mentioned, the run was two loops....two IDENTICAL loops.  Yet somehow, I got confused.  As I was cruising through the only area of the course with spectators, I saw a sign that said finishers stay right.  A normal person would realize this meant non-finishers should stay straight.  A blonde competitor would see the sign, get confused, run in circles for a minute, till she finally stops dead in her tracks, then turns to spectators and yells, "Where do I go? I have one more loop!".  They looked as confused by my question as I was with the course at the moment and yelled back, "JUST KEEP RUNNING".  I did just that and figured I couldn't feel more embarrassed than I already did...  That is until my mother yelled, "Don't worry Karen, nobody saw."  She was being genuine, but the entire crowd erupted into laughter.

Confusion ensues.

We celebrated post-race with fish ‘n chips (our third helping in as many days) and a Victoria Hippo Tour (the Canadian equivalent of a Duck Tour).

This is why we exercise.

Overall, it was a great trip and we hope to be back to the Washington/British Columbia islands soon … we (ie Karen) will do much more ferry research next time!