Ethiopia Journal

The Ethiopia Connection: WAHS Freshmen athlete gets unique world view. When Lynn and Sarah Connette returned from their trip to Ethiopia in April, a Charlottesville newspaper, the Daily Progress, ran an article about Sarah, who is also an athlete at her high school. With permission from the Daily Progress, that article is available here.

The Ethiopian Connection  WAHS freshman athlete gets unique world view  By Jessica Garrison  Daily Progress correspondent  Tuesday, May 18, 2004  Reprint Used by permission. Sarah Connette is not the girl you would expect to do something radically different. The soft-spoken Western Albemarle freshman is pleasant, polite and praised by everyone from her track coaches to her teachers for her dutiful hard work and sportsmanship. Those very qualities, however, are what prepared Connette for an international experience most of her classmates could only imagine. Connette took two weeks off from school, choir and track practice in early April to join her mother on a trip to Addis Ababa and Mettu, Ethiopia. Connette’s mother, who has traveled to Africa several times to teach theology as a part of the Presbyterian Hunger Program, enticed her daughter with stories of her previous visits, photographs and pieces of the local culture that she managed to bring back to the U.S. When “she asked me if I wanted to go, of course I said yes,” Connette remembered. “That was a happy day. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited.” Armed with a camera, several vaccinations and soon-to-be missing luggage, Connette and her mother left Dulles airport on March 29 on the four-leg, 20-hour flight to Addis Ababa. The Connettes arrived in Addis Ababa almost on schedule. Their luggage, however, arrived a week late, and so they remained in the capital city for an unexpected week, living in a small hotel. “Addis was really crowded,” Connette said. “I’m glad I can’t drive yet - I would hate to drive there. But it was beautiful. There were people everywhere, some walking around with bundles on their head. I really liked that people were walking around arm-in-arm everywhere, looking happy. You don’t see that here at all.” Connette, who runs cross country, outdoor track and plays basketball for Western, found plenty of ways to spend time in the city. A friend took her to the Addis Ababa University basketball courts, where she got into pickup game with several college students. The little faranji (the Ethiopian word for foreigner) gave the grown men a run for their money. “I can’t say the guys were too good,” Connette said, smiling from underneath an attempt at modesty. “Actually, we whipped up on them. But they were really good-natured about it.” When it came to staying in shape for outdoor track, Connette waited until she and her mother left the city on the two-day drive to Mettu. While her mother taught, Connette did make-up school work and then often went to run on the fields around an elementary school, where the children playfully followed her around the makeshift track. While the sporting moments were fun, Connette speaks with gravity about what her trip meant to her in larger sense. “The trip really strengthened my faith,” Connette said. “Seeing how different and blessed our lives are here [was one element], but also seeing how much faith played a part in people’s lives over there made me stronger, too.” The same friend who took Connette to the courts in Addis talked with her about her faith. “He was interested to hear how seriously I took it,” she said, with a shrug, seemingly oblivious to how strikingly different her faith makes her from many high schoolers. She is different from most of peers in her career aspirations as well, for which she has her Ethiopian trip to thank. Connette, who had previously thought about genetic science as a career field, met with an AIDS worker in Jimma, Ethiopia. The worker was part of a program that took in orphans of parents who had died of AIDS and took care of their housing, school and church needs. “After coming back, I’m interested in involving people with AIDS work here or becoming a missionary and doing that sort of work in Africa and South America,” Connette said. “I wanted to get involved with the kids there in Jimma.” Connette “cares so much about other people,” Western track coach Carin Ward said. She “is willing to take a risk for what she thinks is the best thing she can do.” “When I told my friends I was going, most people said, ‘Ethiopia! Why Ethiopia?’ and I had to explain the long story,” Connette said. “But they were all very supportive, all of my friends, my coaches, my teachers, my track team.” As much as Connette plays down her trip as an opportunity any of her peers would have taken, she admits, “I feel different. I see how people react to situations here, like if there’s a bug on the floor, and I see how I took things for granted before I left. Knowing what life is like there, I can always go back and keep that feeling.” That feeling alone is enough to make Sarah Connette someone strikingly different.