Chaotic Success

This past week has been chaotic, frustrating, overwhelming but more than anything, it has been rewarding. My HIV testing raffle program began on Monday, and every day this week brought new challenges and surprise adventures. During an average week in Dangila right around 100 people get tested for HIV at the health center. When I first proposed this raffle system to my supervisor he predicted that with this incentive maybe 150 people would get tested during the week. And while I thought his prediction was low, I decided that I would be happy with any small increase in numbers to show that the project made a difference. Monday morning I was at the health center at 8:30am when it opened ready to usher the crowd to the testing rooms. When I arrived there were already people waiting to be tested and thus began my week of chaotic errands around town. It seemed like every moment was filled with one thing or another, but every time I would check back with the health center staff the number of people tested continued to put a childish grin on my face. The first day alone brought in 163 people to be tested! I prayed that it wasn’t a fluke, and that people continued to flood the health center. At the beginning of the week, I was continuing promotional activities with the anti-AIDS clubs, towards the middle of the week I started organizing the raffle drawing ceremony which was to take place on Friday afternoon, and throughout the whole week I was trying to arrange the health workers’ lunch. You see, each day there were two staff members working the HIV testing room: one lab technician and one counselor. They agreed to work through their hour lunch break for this week and we agreed to bring them lunch to the health center, which they would eat quickly when there was a gap between patients. I took it upon myself to arrange their lunch everyday, which turned into having friends help cook Ethiopian food at my house, meanwhile my propane tank ran out, adding to the chaos.

Last week I was able to visit the flag ceremony at the preparatory school (grades 11-12) for both the morning and afternoon shifts to announce the program, but I wasn’t able to work with the high school (grades 9-10) staff until Tuesday of this week. I met with the new teacher in charge of the anti-AIDS club and he agreed to announce about the program at the flag ceremony, but I knew that if I was to join him that the program would get a lot more attention. Therefore, Tuesday afternoon I showed up to the ceremony, which turned out semi-successful. You see, flag ceremony is all the students lined up in rows according to their homeroom class in a big field facing the flag; over 3,000 students in each grade! They sing the anthem, raise/lower the flag (morning session and afternoon session), and have daily announcements. Tuesday afternoon the loudspeaker used to allow the thousands of students standing in the field to hear us had already been locked up for the day. Some students were able to hear the announcement though and we hoped word would spread. The next morning at 7:30am I walked with Maritu, the helper girl on my compound, to the 9th-graders flag ceremony where we were going to announce it to the other half of the high school. As the students all line up and start gawking at my presence, my teacher-friend, who was going to help me announce, tells me that since it has been raining so heavy lately, after rainy season is suppose to be over, it is ruining the tef crop, so they are about to announce (after my program announcement) that there isn’t going to be school for a week so that the rural kids can help their families with harvesting. Ethiopian version of a snow day! I watched the students all dressed in teal uniforms pile out of the school compound, excited about their week of freedom, and I hoped some of them were heading to the health center. I waited a few hours and then stopped by to bring more raffle tickets and as I rounded the corner to the HIV testing room, the health center compound was overflowing with students! My supervisor was there taking names of people waiting, trying to organize the crowd, and I almost didn’t believe it when he told me he’d written down over 200 names before 10am.

Friday afternoon we planned to start to draw raffle tickets around 3:30pm, so we set up speakers and prepared for the crowd to gather. I would guess over 300 people showed up for the drawing ceremony, and we waited past 3:30pm so that everyone wanting to be tested could get a ticket. When all was said and done 825 people were tested during the five-day raffle program. It was a great drawing ceremony, with an energetic crowd and organized committee helping us record the 144 prize-winning numbers.

I stood up front helping with the drawing and kept finding myself in awe of the crowd of people around me. These people are my Ethiopian family; this place is my home. The prizes were donated, along with many hours of promotional efforts. Getting HIV tested at the health center is always free and although I had to deal with some unhappy workers, whose workload I increased eight-fold, it didn’t cost Dangila a dime. I did a lot of walking around and running errands, but this wasn’t me. It was my idea, but my town’s contributions made this idea come to fruition; My Dangila family members were helping themselves. And that made me so proud to call Dangila home.

My Raffle Project

The last two weeks since returning to Dangila from travels, have been filled with what seems like more work than the previous eight months combined. I leave my house early in the morning and come back late in the afternoon absolutely exhausted, and still not completely sure what I have accomplished. Is this what it is like to actually have a 9-5 job?

My latest project, actually, my first real project, is underway and I could not be more excited. The idea for it came straight from my year spent as Fundraising Chair in college. I thought, what if I could get hotels and restaurants in town to donate prizes, like food and soda, and we could have a town raffle… and the only way to get a ticket is to be tested for HIV! It is a project that requires no outside funding, it is a way for businesses in town to give back, many people can get HIV tested, and people win prizes!

My supervisor thought it sounded like a great idea, and was completely willing to help me organize this program, but I was also very aware that it was my project. This is the first project I’ve started in Dangila where it was my idea from the start and my initiative that is running the show, rather than my presence being an addition to an already existing program. At the same time, I am trying to teach my counterparts to create a sustainable concept that could be repeated in the future without my help. While I was out of town nobody was working on the project, so I knew it would be two weeks filled with frantic organizing.

We started by making a list of around 20 businesses in town, and visiting each one to ask the owner for a donation. As we walked around town, we also stopped to ask additional places for donations, and wound up with over 26 places in town willing to donate to the raffle program. We split those prizes up (i.e. a single donation of a case of soft drinks would be given to 24 different people) and our list of prizes tallied over 130! Only two places said they couldn’t donate, and overall I was so impressed with everyone’s generosity.

Work is hard though because I still feel somewhat helpless with communication. Even the simplest tasks are made difficult because for the most part I still need help translating my concepts into Amharic, especially to explain a program like a raffle, which is unheard of here. They do have a lottery here though, so we have been comparing this program to that concept. After securing the prizes, we moved on to promotional activities, which proved to be just as challenging. First, I created a flyer and poster in English and my counterpart helped me translate and type them in Amharic. Next, we came up with places we would start advertising, and my job became so much easier with the help of the Anti-AIDS club in town. With a borrowed speaker and microphone, the club members started announcing the program along the main road in town. A few of my friends were also willing to help me go to the market to distribute flyers. And another friend who teaches at the preparatory school allowed me to come to the flag ceremony one day to help encourage the students to go get tested!

Just yesterday, as the campaign was in full swing, we set up the speakers near the road that leads to the market, which is biggest on Saturdays, and attracted quite a crowd of on-lookers. From there, one of the club members and I walked over to the market and decided to pass out flyers, which turned into yet another ridiculous scene. We happened to arrive right as some truck with a loudspeaker began to promote a trachoma campaign, and so as everyone looked over to see what was going on, they saw me, and formed the biggest and most aggressive crowd I’ve had to deal with yet in Dangila. You would have thought we were passing out money, not HIV flyers. While I loved everyone’s curiosity, I fear that the point was lost during this promotional outing. With people yelling “give me paper!” hands grabbing the flyers out of my arms, and some flyers being ripped in half by the impatient crowd, we decided to walk back to promote via speaker with the other club members.

With a buffer created by my fellow-promoters, the speaker promotion was a hit. We even had all the little kids have a mini dance contest while we were waiting, which made for some great videos! Overall, I could not have even begun to promote by myself, or shooed away the massive crowds! I am so thankful for all the help I have received while trying to pull this project together in two weeks. And I am even more excited to begin the raffle program, which commences tomorrow!

One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure

I have been working on a big project for work recently that I will talk about soon, but for now I have two funny stories from Dangila that I just felt like I had to share.  I completely understand the concept of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” but I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it when it is referring to my actual trash.  In my compound we have a trash pit where all garbage is thrown.  When it was first dug, it was over the head of the man that was digging it, but over the past few months the trash has piled up to a level that is reachable from ground level, if you really wanted to reach it.  And apparently my neighbors really wanted to reach it.

I empty my bucket of trash every couple weeks, not really thinking about what I’m throwing away.  That is, until all the trash items I threw away one morning where displayed nicely in the back yard that afternoon.  My landlord’s eight-year-old daughter, and her friend, somehow dug out all my items that intrigued them from the trash pit.  Wrappers from cookies and pasta meals, and old cans of chicken even were set up in a shine-like fashion for all to see.  I’m sure they didn’t even consider it embarrassing to me, as a shine to my consumerism.  This happened right before I left for my trip to Tigray, three weeks ago, and still the items are displayed in the yard.

Just yesterday, I was walking down the street near my house, where most of the children know my name.  I was surprised to hear, “Ferengi! Ferengi!” yelled at me as these three little children eagerly ran up to me.  I looked at them shamefully and put my hands on my hips as I said in Amharic, “What is my name?”

They all looked at each other and almost simultaneously answered with three different responses:
“Ferengi?” one answered.
“Arbay?” another guessed (that is my dog’s name, haha).
“Jennifer!” the third exclaimed.

Arrival of Group 3

Last week I was invited to Assela to help with the Training of Trainers for Peace Corps’s third group of trainees.  Assela is located about 4 hours southeast of the capital, and it is where most of the Ethiopian runners train because of its elevation.  This was the third, and last week of the training to prepare the Ethiopian trainers.  You see, Amharic is not commonly taught as a second language to foreigners, and Ethiopian teaching methods consist of mainly writing lists of words on a chalkboard to be copied.  So, we had a lot of work to do to prepare the teachers!

Only 4 of the 14 teachers were returning from my group of training, but at least some of them had experience with Peace Corps previously.  One other volunteer and myself taught a few sessions on interactive teaching methods, and we listened to each teacher give a micro-lesson.  Overall it was a fun week getting to know the trainers, not to mention a week of hot showers and eating out!

The most exciting part of the week was actually my last hour and a half in Assela; it was what we had been preparing the teachers for all week: the arrival of group 3!  Since I was leaving early Sunday morning on a bus back to Dangila, I had to be in Addis, the capital, Saturday night, which means I had to leave Assela by around 3pm.  Since the volunteers didn’t arrive for the lunch program until 1:30pm, it was a very brief meeting, but exciting nonetheless.  It was so fun for me to be on the other side of things.  I have been there, I know the anxiety leading up to meeting your host family, I know the pressure of having to learn this difficult language, and I know the awkwardness of trying to understand this culture.  I have great memories of those events from last winter and I have grown so much in the past 10 months, but I don’t envy them.  I had a great experience, but I’m so glad that I’m past that.  Life if so vastly different at site than it is during training, and meeting the new group was a great reminder of how far I’ve come.

In November I will get to meet the volunteers placed near me when they visit for their site visit, and in December I get to spend another week in Assela helping with training, just before they are sworn-in as volunteers.  It is exciting to have 40 new Americans in-country!

Travels to Tigray

The twelve-year-old boy in charge of taking money on the mini-bus from Mekele to Wukro was very surprised when six foreigners hopped in.  He watched us carefully for a while, and eventually asked me a question in Amharic.  He curiously asked where we were going, and where we were from, and then I mentioned that we lived in Ethiopia.
“No you don’t,” he said.
“Yes we do,” I said, as I pointed at each person and said where he or she lives.
He continued to look at me with curious eyes as if he was calculating the possibility of what I had told him.  He still seemed very skeptical.
“Is it not possible?” I asked.
“It is possible,” he responded, “but it is not.”
 

That was one of my favorite conversations I encountered on my trip to visit Tigray.  I eventually convinced him that it was the truth, and then he continued to ramble on for the rest of the trip about his favorite movies. 

It is amazing how each part of the country is vastly different from the others.  I was so impressed by the number of stone buildings replacing the mud walls that I am surrounded by in Amhara.  The soil was much sandier, and coupled with the sandstone houses, and dry countryside, everything appeared beige.  Tigray is the northeastern Region in Ethiopia, bordering Eritrea.  The first language of the region is Tigrinia, making it feel like a completely different country, not knowing a single word.  Luckily, for the ease of getting around, if you started a conversation in Amharic, people would often respond accordingly.

I was able to spend two nights in Mekele, and two around Axum, visiting many historical sites in each of those cities and in-between.  The history of Ethiopia is so rich, and at each site, I kept trying to imagine what the atmosphere would have been like thousands of years ago.  Castles, churches, monoliths; each had their own ancient tales.

While my stories are abundant, only pictures can tell the bulk of what I saw.  From the camel market in Mekele, to the church chiseled out of a mountain outside Wukro, to St. Mary’s Church in Axum, where it is believed that the Ark of the Covenant is still kept.  This beautiful country continues to amaze me.

 

Meskel Square

Last weekend I was all packed up and ready to leave for about a week to visit the northern part of Ethiopia, Tigray Region.  We left on an 11-hour bus trip to the capital city, Addis Ababa, to begin our journey and we were planning on flying out Sunday morning to Mekele, the capital of the Tigray Region.  I knew Sunday was the Meskel holiday, but I didn’t know that it was celebrated in Addis with a mass gathering in Meskel Square!  Since we were coincidentally there on Saturday afternoon, we decided to brave the crowd and experience Meskel the right way.

Three of us met up with our Ethiopian friend and started walking towards Meskel Square.  The main streets were blocked off and masses of Ethiopians were starting to gather.  It looked like downtown right before a baseball game.  We joined the flow of people and along the walk there was a glimpse of the normally bare Meskel Square that was now overflowing with people.  The Square is about the length of a football field; enclosed on one side by a half-oval of steps where people were crammed into, and open on the other side to the main road which was closed to traffic.  The square (which is actually not square, but a half-oval) and out into the street formed a stage filled with hundreds of performers and priest all dressed in white traditional clothes.

As with most mass-gatherings, it was a bit chaotic, and the only way in was now packed with people.  The crowd around us became more dense as we were being pushed towards the small opening in front of us.  Once through a security check and around a corner we realized that the only way to get into the raised section above us was to scale a 6-foot wall.  It seemed like this was the only option, so while clutching our bags and forming a chain we made our way to the wall and followed the Ethiopians in helping each other over.  At last there was no pushing.

We then followed a natural aisle through the masses of people and found a spot where we could peak over people to see the festivities down below.  Luckily in a crowd of Ethiopians I can actually see over most people!  There was a presentation from the Orthodox Pope, and performers dressed in red, yellow and green formed the shape of the Ethiopian flag.  After about an hour, around dusk, waxed rope used as candles was passed out among the crowd of people and the highlight of the Meskel holiday was about to take place: the bonfire!  In the middle of the square a huge pile of wood was being prepared for burning as the people started to pass their flame from candle-to-candle throughout the mass crowd.  The sky turned dark blue just as the candle light filled the square while groups of Ethiopians continued chanting and dancing.  Just as the whole crowd had received the passing flame, the bonfire was lit and fireworks were shot into the air.  The sky filled with smoke and the thousands of twinkling candles formed a sea of lights.  It was a truly majestic scene.  Not long after the fireworks stopped the crowd disseminated in what seemed like a much easier fashion than the initial wall-climbing fiasco.  It was such a great evening; one of my favorite days in Ethiopia.  I retract my former comment about all Ethiopian holidays seeming the same, because Meskel was different in many ways.  I loved celebrating in Addis, feeling like I was a part of something big and truly experiencing the Ethiopian culture in a new way.