For a week in late May, a group of three Kentucky football players — Bud Dupree, Landon Foster and Braylon Heard — went one of two service trips to Ethiopia sponsored each summer by the UK Athletics Department accompanied by Senior Associate Athletics Director for External Affairs Jason Schlafer and Senior Athletic Trainer Gabe Amponsah. Foster, a junior punter, described his experience in a series of diary entries for Cat Scratches that will be published this week. Please note that these posts are Foster’s personal reactions and the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Kentucky and UK Athletics.To start, Foster writes about a day spent visiting local jails and playing soccer with locals.Today was expected to be a very long day, and that expectation was proven to be true. Our day started earlier than usual as we had around two hours of traveling to Debre Zeit, a city south of Addis. After breakfast and a long drive that many of us spent sleeping, we arrived at Sammy and Ruth’s house. Sammy and Ruth are a husband and wife originally from India who moved here to serve young Ethiopians. Our first task of the day was to create goodie bags of personal soap, laundry detergent and a few other things. Once that was finished, we headed to the backyard to make to-go boxes filled with a hot meal consisting of injera (sour, spongy, traditional Ethiopian food) and a red, spicy sauce made with sheep meat. The sheep was bought, slaughtered and cooked all within 24 hours! We prepared over 30 hot meals for the prisoners and police officers we were about to visit. We then had about 30 minutes of free time after all of the goodies were packed up on the bus, so we played with their two daughters, who are both absolute joys, for the remainder of the time. During that time, we played soccer, introduced them to a football, and then the ultimate winner was when I threw them up in the air to let them “fly.” Also, during this time, I asked the older daughter if she wanted gum, and I believe I created an addiction, because she asked me for gum at least 15 different times during the remainder of today. When the time came, we boarded the bus and set out for several different jails. Once we arrived at the first one, I was very surprised to see how small this prison was. It had three main holding cells, each with about five or six inmates. The security seemed very, very relaxed and the walls to the prison area were about four or five feet tall, just asking to be jumped. We then served lunch — the sheep stew, injera and a banana — along with giving each prisoner and police officer a t-shirt and a personal care goodie bag.After visiting with the prisoners and policemen of two different prisons, we headed back to Sammy’s to have a traditional lunch. Sammy and his family were very hospitable and welcomed us into their house with open hearts. Sammy had prepared some traditional Indian cuisine of curry with pita bread, some traditional Ethiopian cuisine of sheep and injera, and fresh mangoes and bananas. It became obvious how talented of a cook Sammy is after the first bite of the traditional Indian cuisine. After introducing ourselves and receiving a rose as a welcoming gift, we helped clean up the room of our plates and packed up some more items onto the bus to take to some widows’ houses.We packed up the bus and headed out to visit some widows and bless them with some essential foods and necessities. The desperation and need for help was obvious at each of the five widows’ houses that we stopped at. Many of their houses were smaller than a typical bedroom in the United States — roughly 10 feet by 10 feet with concrete or dirt floors. We also had the privilege of praying over them and praying for their future well-being and thanking God for allowing us the ability and resources to travel to them and provide a few items for each of them. It was truly a blessing, as it has been this whole trip, to be able to provide for people and seeing their reaction of gratitude is beyond satisfying.

Grateful to to serve alongside these guys this week in Ethiopia #BBN pic.twitter.com/O7N8iByB2O

— Brett Johnson (@Brett_2013) May 24, 2014

By the time we finished visiting the last of the five widows we planned to see, it was already 3:45. I say, “already,” because there had apparently been a small soccer tournament scheduled around our visit at around 4. We drove to the area that we were about to play at, and I can’t say that I had ever played on a field like that. This “field” was all dirt; not a single blade of grass had grown on it. The goals were made out of timber found around the village, and as no surprise, had no net. On one side of the field was a stone-lined gutter/ditch, while the other side had a small hill, and the field seemed to be located in the center of several housing villages. Upon arriving at the field, there were around ten younger children who were quick to greet us after getting off of the bus, and about five or six young adults about the same age as us warming up on one of the goals. We brought out both a soccer ball and a football to play with and teach the kids about American football. After 20 minutes or so of just kicking the soccer ball around and throwing the football, many locals must have heard about our arrival and had made their way to this field. We started to seriously get ready for the games we were about to play. We got the teams set, our group and our three translators vs. their group, and then we kicked off. We played three games in a row, winning the first two and losing the last one. We, without a doubt, shocked many people, me included, with how well we played. Catching your breath during exercise here in Ethiopia is much more difficult, because it is around 9,000 or 10,000 feet above sea level. The important thing about these soccer games was just being able to show the kids in the village that we cared about them. And when there is such a language barrier, the best way to communicate is through sports.We then headed out after coffee at Sammy and Ruth’s and had the long drive back to the guest house in Addis. I don’t know what it is, but the bus rides rock us to sleep like babies, because within 10 minutes or so, we were all knocked out for the two-hour ride or so back to the guest house. We then had dinner and then headed upstairs to get some more sleep. That is after watching the Champion’s League Final, of course, in true soccer watching style – an iffy, static picture with no sound. It was by far the worst quality picture I’ve watched any sporting event on in a long time, but I’m glad I did, so I can truly get a grasp on every aspect of the culture. The game ended in a disappointing fashion, in my personal opinion, as Real Madrid beat Atletico Madrid in extra time 4-1 after tying it up at one each only two minutes before the time had expired. Today ended up being the most fun day of the trip up to this point. Growing up surrounded by soccer, I felt at home playing the three games today and then watching the game tonight. The important parts of the day were also rewarding, though. Helping the prisoners is something I have never done before, and honestly probably will not ever do again, but it was definitely a great experience doing it. Along with this fun day comes great exhaustion…therefore, goodnight! Tomorrow should be a much lighter day of rest, and it could not have been scheduled at a more perfect time.