Signed, Stamped, Delivered

My big assignment during my first three months in Dangila is to assess the needs.  You can do this in several different ways, such as, random surveys, simply talking to various people, or by conducting an official meeting.  I have been talking to people for a couple months now and finally decided to have an actual needs assessment meeting to see what I could find out.

I began a few weeks ago talking to my supervisor about this meeting that I wanted to hold.  I explained briefly what I wanted to do during the meeting and he agreed to help me arrange it.  Fast forward to the day before the meeting; at this point, I am under the impression that the meeting is set and all is well.  “The mayor has finally approved your meeting!” my supervisor tells me.  “Now we must send out a notice to all the government offices to announce it.” Oh??

It turns out that hosting a meeting for the government employees means we must get official approval from the mayor and send out an official announcement.  I thought that it would be a word-of-mouth event, and I thought that invitation had been orally passed on a week ago!

“No problem,” he tells me, “we will just get our secretary to type up the announcement… oh, but she has not come back to work since Easter and we do not know where she is.”
“Is there something we can do about that? Can you type Amharic?”
”I will get a secretary from another government office to volunteer.” 


It is now two hours until our office closes on the day before my meeting.  Tilahun, my supervisor, finally writes up the announcement, gets that approved by the mayor and finds someone willing to type the half-page note.  Ok, no problem, we still have two hours to type up the note and distribute it.  Tilahun tells me that there is a messenger that can easily deliver the note to all 18 offices, clustered in a stretch of road no longer than half a kilometer.  I patiently wait as I watch Tilahun photocopy the paper one copy at a time because the machine we use only semi-works.  Then, I become slightly antsy as I watch him take the note to the mayor one more time; the mayor then hand signs and stamp two official markings on each note.  Stamping things is a big deal here. Each piece of paper that leaves our office must be stamped, with stamp and inkpad, for reasons beyond me.  Then I eagerly watch Tilahun handwrite an extremely long identification number, and date on each paper.  When I am about to burst he reaches for two more stamps to finally make the notice ready-to-go.  With just 15 minutes before offices close, I took a sigh of relief as I watch the letters pass into the messenger’s hands.

 
I arrive at my office when it opens at 8:30am the next morning to finish some final preparations for the meeting taking place at 9am.  Tilahun chuckles as he tells me “we” put the wrong date on the notice yesterday (note: the date was using the Amharic calendar, which I have no idea how to convert).  I am less-than-amused, but not a problem as Tilahun calls each of the 18 offices quickly to make sure they understand the meeting is today.  Why we couldn’t have made those 18 phone calls yesterday afternoon and avoid all that stamping nonsense, I am not sure.  Finally, we casually stroll over to the meeting hall at 9:05am and I snickered thinking about how early I would have arrived in America for a meeting I was hosting.  I also knew ahead of time that when we arrived, ten minutes late, no one would be there yet.  I was right.   What I had not anticipated was that 45 minutes later I would be sitting in the meeting space with my counterpart and one attendee.

I am not even sure why I waited that long.  I was just daydreaming I suppose and time passed without my knowledge.  Finally, three more people showed up, and then I walked out to the entrance of the recreational center where the meeting was located, and several more people were waiting to attend also, playing table tennis while they waited.  Then, by 10am, almost 15 people showed up! By the time the meeting started, and hour and fifteen minutes late, 21 people were ready to participate!

I had given up on the meeting, I really had.  I had already started to think about when we should reschedule; the possibility of enough people arriving an hour late was not an option in my mind.  Just when I think I’ve had enough, Ethiopia pulled through.  I had a very successful meeting that lasted over two hours! I will talk some about the results in weeks to come, but for now, I am just overwhelmed with joy that it actually happened!

Happy Easter and Melkom Fasika!

I don’t normally eat meat at 7am.  I’m not normally even awake at 7am.  However, this is just one difference between American Easter and Ethiopian Easter, which they call Fasika.  To start with, you should clear your mind of pastel colors, sugary candy, and bunnies carrying baskets of colorful eggs (by the way, thank you America for having the weirdest traditions ever, it makes explaining American Easter so simple).  As I have mentioned previously, Ethiopians have a completely different calendar system, so they celebrated Easter a week after the rest of the world.  Fasika is probably the biggest holiday celebrated here, comparable to the American Christmas celebration and hype (well, who am I kidding, nothing even compares to the Christmas hype in America).  Good Friday was a national holiday and even before Friday, people started traveling to their hometowns to be with their families.  In the Orthodox religion, they fast from all animal products for 55 days before Easter, so building up to the big celebration, the animal section of the market began to grow massively.  Walking down the streets on any Monday, Thursday or Saturday you were bound to see proud new owners of sheep and goats leading their purchase home on a rope leash.

Starting with that 7am knock on my door, I will walk you through my very fascinating Fasika experience.  It took a few minutes I am sure for me to realize the knock, knock, knock was on my door.  I rolled over, noticed the time, knew it was Sunday, and almost went back to sleep.  Then I remembered that it was Fasika, and knew it was time to start my culture-filled day.  I opened the door to find Eyerus, the 7-year-old daughter of my landlord, telling me in Amharic that is was time to come eat.  The night before I had seen my landlord kill a chicken, which his wife along with the two worker-girls began cooking.   Around midnight many Orthodox go to church service that lasts until 4am.  After the Easter service, the fast is over and it is time to eat meat!  I found out that I was lucky they waited until 7am to wake me, as they started eating at 5am!  I sat with my landlord and his family and ate a healthy serving of duro wat, chicken stew, with injera of course.  After I finished eating I had some time to rest, I thought, before I had to make my first appointment for the day.  Leading up to Easter most of the people I have befriended in Dangila insisted that I come to celebrate Easter with their family.  Everyone was so welcoming and I felt so blessed for the invitations.  I decided to celebrate with four different families, and everyone who asked after that, since they wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, made an appointment with me to join them for a meal later in the week.

Well, after I ate duro wat I headed back into my house to rest when I heard the sharpening of knives coming from the back yard.  It didn’t even faze me for a couple minutes, and then I realized that they must be preparing to slaughter the sheep! I’m not one for guts and gore, but I am one for new experiences, and seeing a sheep slaughtered on Fasika is like decorating a tree for Christmas, necessary.  Little did I know that this wouldn’t be the only sheep slaughtering I would witness for Fasika.  It was around 7:30am when the episode began, and I watched my landlord and his 12-year-old son as they dissected the animal that my dog had been chasing for a week before.  It was more of an anatomy lesson than I ever received in high school.  While I decided that pictures of such an event were not necessary, Eyerus begged me to use my camera until I gave in.

9:05am I began walking to my favorite restaurant across from my office where the owner, Tizda, invited me to celebrate with her family.  I arrived a little late, but punctuality is often overlooked in this country, so it was not a problem.  In fact, it was 9:45am before the first cup of bunna, coffee, from the ceremony was poured.  Bunna qurs, a snack food that goes along with the bunna ceremony, today was injera spread with a mixture of butter and berbery (spicy crushed peppers).  I learned that this was a traditional bunna qurs for Easter because butter is an animal product, which could not be eaten during fasting.  Sometime after arriving, they served me a plate full of duro wat and I happily ate as I observed the festivities of the family surrounding me.  It was 10am when one of the brothers led a sheep by a rope collar into the restaurant area where we were all seated.  I thought maybe they were showing off the sheep to the family before taking it around back to slaughter; I was wrong.  Ten minutes of wondering later, they began slaughtering the sheep in the room where we were all sitting.  Needless to say, I won’t feel awkward ever again about simply bringing my dog inside when I stop by to buy bread! After killing the sheep, they first cut out the tongue.  I realize this is gross, but I witnessed it, so you can read about it.  I watched the elderly mother of the family cut up the tongue meat and hand feed it to everyone in the room as a sign of respect.  When she offered it to me I politely declined, saying that I do not eat raw meat; about ten minutes later she came over to me with a piece cooked especially for me and I couldn’t turn down her thoughtful gesture.  After the final two rounds of the coffee ceremony, they insisted that I stay to eat some of the freshly prepared sheep meat, and it was around 11:45am when I returned to my house.

Just as I sat down to take a deep breath and literally digest my morning, my landlord knocked on my door and invited me inside.  Every household prepares coffee and a meat stew for Easter and then you invite neighbors over to celebrate and eat, so each house I went to there were also many other friends and family cycling in and out of the house.  It was noon when I took a seat in Ato Belacho’s house and was served bunna qurs, and for the next hour, I socialized, drank three cups of coffee, and ate sheep wat.

 I had just one hour to allow myself to rest before walking to my next appointment for the day at 2pm.  The Head of the Bank, whom I have gotten to know over the past two months, invites me over just about every weekend to socialize with his family, so I could not decline the Easter invitation.   I spent an hour there where I ate bunna qurs, duro wat, and drank two cups of coffee before excusing myself to head to their neighbor’s house.

3pm I met my friends Getameh and Manny where they fed me sheep wat and a couple rounds of coffee.  Ethiopians are very forceful when it comes to eating, and “no” is not really listened to when the ladles of food are being scooped onto your plate.  This was a fact I overlooked when booking the four appointments for the day.  It was 5pm when I waddled home, filled to the brim with meat and coffee.

6:30pm my landlord offered me some sheep, and I said that I was way too full.  He then corrected his statement, asking if I wanted some of the sheep meat to cook myself.  In broken Amharic, I still turned down the offer, not even able to imagine a time in the future where hunger would be an option.  A few minutes later, his middle son, 9-year-old Yenebeb, knocked on my door with a container of sheep meat. Like I said, “no” is often ignored.  I thanked him for the gift, re-packaged the meat into a Tupperware and took it to store in Ato Belacho’s fridge I use on occasion.  I am blessed to have such caring neighbors surrounding me!

All in all, I had the experience I wanted.  I have successfully experienced Fasika for all it’s worth!  Many people continue the celebration all week though, not returning to work.  Neighbors I have learned take turns hosting dinners and lunches throughout this week, and I have already set up two lunches and two dinners for various days. Many times in fact, it is not so much of an invitation to eat, as it is a knock on my door and the imperative statement, “eat!”

The Fabric of My Life

If you are what you eat, I am a weird mix between Ethiopian and American. If home is where the heart is, then my home is in Marietta, GA.  But, if you are what your home is, then I am currently a very unfashionable person.

I did not realize until just this week how peculiar the patterns and colors in my home would be to an outsider looking in; by outsider, I mean an American, because in Ethiopia, my home blends right in.  Now, I never thought I would say the words, “blends right in” about this harsh color of pink that adorns my walls, but it is true.  I believe there is some Ethiopian paint company out there who made about four shades of paint for the entire country and must have a monopoly because I have yet to see any competitors.  The colors I have seen are electric blue, bright yellow, a prominent teal, and a vivid pink.  These shades are used for just about every house, office, and store, inside and out.

You can ask my college roommates, I am not typically concerned with decorations or stylish trends, but I do admit that my house is pushing even my limit for clashing colors.  Against one of my wonderfully pink walls sits my disgracefully green sofa.  Even visiting PC staff made a comment about how Ethiopian the pattern of the sofa is.  I do not know if green is the right color to use, but I will upload a picture so you can name the floral pattern yourself.  The sofa was donated by my landlord though and since I do not care enough to have another slip cover made; I am going to let it be.  I must add that the literal translation of slipcover in Amharic is “sofa clothes,” haha.

Underneath my beautiful sofa lies my intriguingly geometric floor covering, also chosen by my landlord.  I am not sure that an attractive floor covering exists in this country anyway, but especially since it was free of cost for me, I will not be complaining!  It serves its purpose of covering my cement floors, and creating an easy-to-sweep surface, which is good enough for me.

Moving into the adjacent bedroom, prominently hanging from the middle of the ceiling is the bright blue mosquito net I was given by Peace Corps.  I did not know that mosquito nets came in this lovely color, and you can imagine my surprise when I opened the packaging since my net in training was a simple white.  I think it accents the pink walls appropriately and brings out the best in the plastic flooring beneath it though.

Finally, nestled beneath the radiant blue mosquito net rests my cozy Ethiopian bed sheets.  When you shop for sheets here, they present you with three options: floral blue, floral green or floral pink.  I, of course, opted for floral pink to highlight the pink walls.  Since that original purchase, I have added a second set of sheets that are floral blue, just to switch it up a little bit.  That second pair of sheets comes in handy when I do not feel like both hand washing sheets and changing my sheets on the same day!

I hope this little fabric tour of my home has given you a better idea of my living situation. I must admit that coming into the Peace Corps I thought my walls might be made of straw, and I never thought I would have a sofa, so all these amenities and the beautiful patterns that come with them are very much appreciated!

That Is Not My Name

Ferengi, You, Anchi, China, JLo. None of these is my name. Yet these are the things I am most likely to be called while I wander my town each day.  Part of my integration process here in Dangila is to teach people who am I, my purpose for living here, and my name.  It is amazing the level of physical and emotional exhaustion that can build up simply because children are trying to get your attention.

Nicknames I can live with.  In fact, the most commonly used nickname I receive is “JLo.”  Just about every person I have met over the past 4 months has associated me with Jennifer Lopez.
“My name is Jennifer,” I say in Amharic.
“Oh!! I know, I know. Jennifer Lopez!”

Many times this connection continues beyond the initial introduction, and has initiated the permanent nickname “JLo,” which I accept as an improvement from “you!”  I find it odd and amusing that Jennifer Lopez is the most globally recognized Jennifer.  While training in Ambo my extended host family simply called me “JLo” all the time, so I got accustomed to the name a while ago.  In addition, when the family acquired a new kitten, she was named JLo after me. If that isn’t a sustainable impact I don’t know what is.

Upon recommendation from a friend, I have started saying, “Albalem” which means that is not my name to all the children and adults who yell alternatives my way.  It has helped, in fact the children on my street that live between my house and the post office now yell, “Jennifer! Jennifer!” each time I approach. They even correct their friends who call me other names; it is adorable. Additionally, they all insist on shaking my hand and then they fight for position to hold my hand for the remainder of my walk home.  As I round the corner to my compound I turn around, wave, and say, “Ciao!” They then echo the farewell and wave me off to my house.  It is always such an uplifting time of my day and fills me with energy.  It is amazing how much a name can change my attitude and outlook… especially on days when I make the walk home sans envelopes (shameless plea for snail mail!  Please send me letters!!).

Many children first yell, “China!”  I have been told that Chinese construction workers came through town to build the roads and many children just think all non-African people are to be called, “China.”  It amazes me how race-oriented some things are here.  Every Thursday, with the caveat that there is electricity, I ask my landlord to watch television for about an hour as the Arab satellite channel airs the newest American Idol episode.  It airs the same week as back in America, a feat that still astounds me because most times I feel so very far away from all that pop culture.  I relish in that hour and try to pretend that I am back in America as I ignore the bad editing and addition of Arabic subtitles.  I attempt to explain to the children the concept of the show, and one of the major things that I have a hard time communicating is that the African Americans on the show are indeed Americans.  Enough for now, this topic could stem a whole other blog post, which I will get to in the future.

I should go make that walk to the post office now, but first I must mention my new favorite nickname.  Since hanging out at the high school, the latest name I am receiving is “Jenny Love.”  I laugh out loud every time the high school boys say it.  Maybe that is where they are getting “JLo” from!

Exploit Me, Please!

Today I headed into the HAPCO office around 9:30am as usual.  I wrote a letter and read a magazine while I waited for my supervisor, Tilahun, to come back from an appointment of some sort.  When he returned we chatted about the town and he informed he that once again, there is no work to do, because they are waiting on funding.  As I was walking out of the office a couple hours after I arrived I confirmed once more that there were no meetings today before heading out into the community for the afternoon.  Tilahun called after me, “Wait! There is one.  There is an HIV testing going on at the preparatory school that started yesterday and is finishing today.  I am going to visit this afternoon if you would like to come.”

After lunch, I came back to the office and three of us hopped into a bajaj, the three-wheeled taxis, and rode the five minutes to the school.  I had been to one VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) out in the rural areas a few weeks before, so I knew what to expect—a large group of people each given a number as an identification waiting to be called.  Each person is first called upon by the counselor, who privately gathers basic personal information such as age, and gender.  Next, the medical worker will call each person up to have his or her blood drawn.  Finally, after about 30 minutes, the same counselor will call each person back to give then a brief counseling session as they read the HIV results.  Because this is a “mobile VCT,” is it not held in a health center, but simply outside in a small area, in which the counselor secludes himself/herself in a wooded area for privacy.

As we walked into the compound of the preparatory school and I followed Tilahun we approached a group of three men sitting around chatting.  I waited for a moment, looking around for a cluster of high school-aged students nearby to find the testing site, when I saw a rack holding vials of blood beside one of the men.  “This is where they are doing the testing? Where are the students?” It was about 2pm on Tuesday, the second day of this two-day VCT.  They had sat outside for almost two full days and only had 40 students tested yesterday and just 28 today! The school has over 3,000 students!

A group of high school students in their blue uniforms.

I could not believe it. Tilahun was very disappointed, saying that he was expecting over 300 students to be tested in these two days.  We sat around for a little while and I zoned out of the Amharic conversation going on around me and started looking around the schoolyard for students dressed in blue uniforms.  As a few students walked in relatively close proximity to us, Tilahun noticed them too, called to them in Amharic asking them to come to the VCT.  I watched them wave and keep on walking, but Tilahun’s eagerness sparked motivation inside of me. “Come on!” I said standing up from the bench I was seated on and motioning for Tilahun to follow me.  “Let’s not just sit around, let’s go talk to these students that seem to just be lingering around the campus.”  Tilahun was more than willing to humor me but I could tell the tone of his response that he did not think it would do any good.

During training in Ambo, we split up into four groups of ten people and spend one day a week for four weeks in smaller towns surrounding Ambo.  We visited schools and anti-AIDS clubs, learning a lot about how to start getting involved with HIV activities.  If I learned nothing else from those visit (which is not the case), one statement made by a student there stuck in my mind: “Just your ferengi presence is power.”  I knew it was true because it is hard not to notice the heads turning everywhere I go.  Tilahun always talks about “incentives” for meetings, claiming we must supply people with per diem, or at least tea and coffee to get them to come.  I know that if I advertise that I am going to be pretty much anywhere, people show up, no free tea or coffee necessary.

We walked around the school’s campus and noticed several groups of students merely hanging out by the doors of their classrooms.  Tilahun took the initiative and told the students to get back in their seats, and they obeyed as we strolled in behind them, standing in front of the classroom.  He began speaking in Amharic about the VCT going on today, which they had all been informed about last week.  As he spoke, I looked out to a sea of eyes, all staring at me.  I heard him introduce me in his impromptu speech and a few students spoke out, wanting me to say something in English.  I am pretty sure I was already beaming at this point, realizing how much this was going to help promote the testing; I then greeted them in Amharic and spoke very briefly in English about the VCT going on, unsure of how much they were really comprehending.  I am still uncertain if they could detect a tone of begging across language and cultural barriers, but at the time, I did not care, knowing that this operation was already shamelessly using my presence as power.  We repeated this about five more times to classrooms of about thirty students, all of which happen to be missing a teacher today.  That problem I will address another day.

Students lining up to get tested for HIV.

By the time we finished talking to the last classroom and returned to the testing area there, gathered around the site, was a group of blue-uniform wearing students all waiting to be tested.  It was the exact site I expected when arriving an hour or so before.  Tilahun smiled back at me, happy in our accomplishment of recruiting so many students.  I think today he finally realized how much we can accomplish together.  We did not reach the original goal, but in the last two hours of the VCT we nearly doubled the amount of students tested.  I told Tilahun to please exploit the ferengi any time you want to help people learn about HIV.  I had one of the best days today at an event that was almost overlooked.  For the first time I did not get frustrated by the stares, instead I smiled and allowed myself to be the circus show, smiling and waving as students took pictures of me with their cell phones, knowing that being exploited for the betterment of Dangila is something I can endure any day.