Geez Youth

Tigrinian children at Mass

More bits of ceiling have collapsed in the rooms and corridor of the wing whose terrace is under renovation. And then on Friday night when I came home, there was no electricity in our entire wing. In the dark and receiving instructions over my handphone from our janitor, I had to grope through the main power box in our corridor to at least restore electricity to my room as I'm the only one staying in this bloc. I finally managed to do it after half an hour. Next morning our janitor came back to work and discovered one of the rooms had water (or asphalt) leaking down its roof and caused a short-circuit in the electric wires, thus resulting in the entire wing being blacked-out. The nightmare just gets worse.

Hymns with drum

Saturday morning was a consolation for me to celebrate Mass with the Geez Rite Catholics .... mainly Tigrinians who were celebrating the Feast of the Assumption. Every year on this feast, the youth group would offer Mass and sing in a lively liturgy. I loved it. This year they even had the huge drum which they played during the post-communion hymn. Unfortunately the feast was marred by riots in Tel Aviv when Eritrean and Tigrinians fought over political differences back in their hoe country ... killing one and injuring several. Because of the complicated political situation in their countries, our Catholics prefer to be called Geez Rite based on the ancient liturgical language. In fact our Catholics belong to Ethiopian, Eritrean and Tigrinian communities. 

Tensions in the north of the country flared last night when Lebanon and Israel exchanged missile attacks. Hopefully today there is calm and people can go to on in normal daily life. The disruptions from north and south is taking its toll even for some people here in the center ... psychologically. Nobody wins in a war; everyone and everyone absolutely suffers.