Watching The Rains Come

Since arriving back in Dangila after traveling in mid-June there has yet to be a day without rain.  Some days the rain comes in the form of simple afternoon showers and others it pours hard enough to flood nearby fields.  Every town seems to have its own pattern and therefore each PC volunteer has his or her own stories about how to deal with the rainy season.  It is fun to get together and hear about each person’s schedule for dodging the rain.

Dangila rainstorms have a tendency to arrive in the afternoon for about an hour and then they show up again right after dinnertime and into the night.  I personally think the rainy season is a great change and I love the cool air at night.  When I wake up each morning, the sky is already hazy and black clouds can be seen in the distance.  Around lunchtime, there are usually a few spots of blue sky peaking out from behind the clouds on one side of town, but in the opposite direction, the dark rain clouds are waiting in the distance.  Sometime around 1:30pm the first rain storm usually hits.  I know this is the average time because two days a week I meet my tutor at 1:30pm, meaning I always take a gamble leaving my house at 1:15pm to walk over to the preparatory school, where we meet.  When the lingering black clouds roll closer to town people start to close up shop windows and hurry to get where they are going, in order to avoid being stuck in the middle of the storm.  I usually hesitate walking to tutoring as I watch the rains move closer to town, but I also usually take the risk and head out to join the people hustling around the streets.

Almost like clockwork, I will arrive at the school and get inside within minutes of the heavy rains arriving.  One unfortunate day Mother Nature’s timing was a little off.  As I walked the last long stretch of road to the school, with the entrance barely in sight, I watched people walking in the distance begin to scatter.  I felt the heavy drops beginning to fall as I pulled the hood of my raincoat over my head. I could see the sheet of rain coming down the road toward me.  I could hear the noise of rain pounding on metal roofs along the road picking up rhythm. Taking in my surroundings, I realized there were no
shops or restaurants on this final stretch to take cover.  Knowing that once the rains start, they continue for about an hour, and I didn’t want to be stuck beneath a random tree, so I took off running!

I arrived soaked from head-to-toe, mud splattered to my knees, hair matted to my head even beneath the hood of my rain jacket.  My tutor arrived a few minutes after me in a similar fashion, saying he was waiting it out nearby and saw me running.  A couple hours later, I was semi-dry and slightly more enlightened about Amharic.  I am slowly learning to watch the clouds and I am becoming more accurate with my predictions of the beginning of the storm, but every now and then I still get stuck in random cafes or shops, which have proven to be little adventures of their own.  I also must add that I love falling
asleep to the storm pounding on my metal roof.  Rainy season certainly has some negative aspects, like the dirt roads becoming mudslides, or clothes, which take days to dry on the line, but the rains also bring lots of reading/hot cocoa afternoons, and plenty of adventures.

Lidetay. My Birthday.

Balloons were hung, banners were printed, and food was prepared. 5:30pm finally rolled around and I was finally ready for my cross-cultural birthday celebration.  I was very excited to entertain Ethiopians in my house for the first time, although it took me a while to finally decide to host this celebration.  About a week before my 23rd birthday I was still debating whether I should stress over having a party or if I should simply open the presents I received in the mail and sing the birthday song to myself.  The day before my birthday I finally made the decision to have the party, a sign that this was no American gathering.  I simply walked around town visiting my best friends to verbally invite them with just a 24-hour notice.

There are so many cultural things that need to be explained in order to even begin to understand the events that unfolded on the evening of July 7th in my tiny little house.  First, Ethiopians only celebrate children’s birthdays until about the age of seven.  Birthday celebrations then consist of having a coffee ceremony, serving a massive bread, sometimes there is an attempt at cake, and a big candle in the shape of the age is lit.  My tutor, Binium, had been helping me prepare my event, and in his mind I should wear Ethiopian traditional clothes, and have a coffee ceremony for my guests.  Well, my thinking is that I wanted to share an American birthday celebration with Ethiopians, not simply replicate their traditions. I finally compromised and decided to have my neighbor help me prepare a coffee ceremony, I would wear American clothes, and serve American snacks.

All nine other people in my compound were invited, along with about eight of my close friends from Dangila, making me cringe as I started thinking about where everyone would sit, or even stand, in my small house.  Ethiopians tend to cycle in and out during coffee ceremonies, so I figured things would just work themselves out.  5:30 comes and goes as I await my guests.  The children from my compound made themselves at home on my sofa and began snacking on the food, but other guests had yet to make an appearance.  Finally, Binium shows up around 6pm, and by 6:30pm the guests started overflowing off my three-person sofa and one additional chair.  Everyone made themselves at home, and began drinking the kool-aid I mixed up; along with a small variety of American food I had recently received in the mail (THANK YOU CINDY + FRIENDS!).

The one problem was that the guests started asking if there was going to be a coffee ceremony, and the neighbor, Billie, who told me she would help, had not shown up.  After a while Binium took the initiative to go to my neighbor’s house to borrow the coffee ceremony supplies, and he started preparing the coffee himself.  By this time the guests were getting antsy and we did not want to start roasting beans from scratch, and instead opted to use the already roasted and ground beans I had prepared several weeks ago.  I use a coffee grinder to grind my coffee though, making the coffee powder rather coarse, as opposed to the fine powder that comes from grinding it by hand.  This is not a problem when I prepare coffee for myself with a small tealeaf filter, but in the traditional jabena used for the ceremony it created a problem in getting the beans inside, and also added big chunks of coffee grinds to each cup.  After the first round of coffee (there are usually three) it was mutually decided to end the coffee ceremony.  I would boil it down to just about the worst coffee ceremony ever.  I served delicious cupcakes though which I think made up for it, and I lit mine with candles to show that American tradition.  Overall, it was a fun party and because I am a ferengi, all mistakes are overlooked.

As soon as the first eight guests file out of my compound, my house quickly fills again for round two!  I had overlooked the fact that Ethiopians cycle in and out, so my compound-mates were awaiting sofa space it seems.  Billie apologized for not performing the coffee ceremony as promised, because her helper girl that takes care of the baby suddenly went back to her family that afternoon without warning.  I guess it is the American equivalent of having your babysitter cancel at the last minute, topped with the Ethiopian cultural norm of indirect communication, which resulted in me not knowing what the problem was until hours after the coffee ceremony had been planned to begin.

I still opened presents alone and ate way too many cupcakes by myself, but I am glad I decided to host a party.  I think in order to teach anyone about American culture here I have to be willing to make a fool of myself, which is easily accomplished.  I am happy that I stepped outside of my comfortable zone and opened my house to an overwhelming amount of Ethiopians. I think I learned more about Ethiopian hospitality and was able to share American traditions too!

Playing In the Rain

I wrote a couple months ago about the water problems in town, and the consequential battles I have had on my compound.  I am happy to report that the “helper girl” with whom I did not see eye-to-eye has since left and the water collection process is much less of a battle.  While water problems still persist in my area of town, I would now equate my water issues to playing with bath toys; let me explain.

Since I have been living in Dangila for about five months now, I have never had water during the day.  The one tap on my compound only ever flows with water sometime around 10pm to 2am.  I have learned to live with this, in fact this past week I almost didn’t notice that we hadn’t had water in six days!  I have become very good at conserving water and making do with my 20 liter bucket, accompanied by my collection of water bottles that I fill up as well.  The chore that takes the most amount of water by far is washing clothes, and I tend to do laundry on the day after the water comes, filling up my wash basins to get the job done without having to touch my core water stash.

It is frustrating that every day it pours buckets of rain, and yet we still have no water coming out of the pipe.  Day six of no water and I became desperate for a few liters to wash dishes, not wanting to use my remaining two liters on anything but an emergency cooking/drinking stash.  Don’t call the authorities or anything, I could always buy bottled water in town to drink if I needed to, but I try not to.  The rain began to pour in the late afternoon and I went outside to witness Billie (formerly Muluwark, but I now call her by her nickname) filling up big containers with rainwater gushing from one the gutter spouts that lie on either side of my doorway.  I noticed one of her empty washbasins lying around and picked it up to help her collect water from the opposite spout.  Maritu, the helper girl of my landlord, soon came to join us with her own big containers.  One spout ends about six inches from the ground, perfect for collecting in a washbasin, while the other spout ends just an inch from the ground.  Billie quickly grabbed a plastic bag to fill from the latter spout, which she would then pour into her bucket.

The buckets I fill as often as I can!

After a while of helping out I decided that I really needed to wash dishes, so I grabbed my washbasin and was given a turn to fill it up at the spout that was still pouring out water, which was now mostly clear, as opposed to the first few loads which were a bit mucky.  An hour later, I was as happy as could be with a bucket full of clean dishes, retaining those last couple of liters of pipe water for drinking.  I think this was the beginning of a daily routine, which will allow me to wash clothes whenever I wish! Plus, it is fun being resourceful and playing in the rain, filling up buckets like they were bath toys!

Home Improvements

Each month Peace Corps pays me a living allowance through my Ethiopian bank account. It is a nice wage for an Ethiopian life style, I have never run out, even with my regional travels, but converted to US Dollars you could not get far in America. On top of my allowance, I am given monthly rent money. Each volunteer’s rent is different depending on the city, and I would say mine is just about average at USD $60 a month. I think my rent is pretty high actually for my small town, considering I have just two small rooms, but I don’t complain, especially since I don’t actually pay it! Peace Corps found our houses and they also negotiated our rents, so I really had no say in the matter. A few volunteers have switched houses for various reasons since arriving at site four months ago, so I could always move if there was a problem, but I really love my compound and neighbors. I have noticed lately the abundant amount of home-improvement projects happening on my compound. In fact, it seems that my landlord takes my rent every month and puts it right back into the compound. I have a feeling he’s not short on cash, and I’m not complaining as I get to reap the benefits of these projects! As I was moving in, four months ago, the new double bathroom with showers was just finishing being installed. Since that time, we have gotten a new water tank, a new fence was built in the backyard, and recently gutters were put in! I didn’t know Ethiopians even knew what gutters were. A man actually pounded and welded the gutters together from sheet metal, so it may have been a pioneer project. I’m not sure if I inspired these improvements or if this is an on-going trend, but I definitely appreciate the new additions! I should add that water problems are continuing even with daily rains, and the water tank hasn’t been filled in over a month now (for reasons that are lost in translation), which also means the showers aren’t working either (although I prefer a heated bucket bath anyways).

Most recently, after arriving back home from traveling last month, I came home to find the electricity out in town. All of Ethiopia has been having major electrical problems, for reasons I’m not exactly sure of, although rumors are abundant. Electricity here is all from hydro-electric power plants, so I’m hoping it is going to improve as the rainy season progresses. Dangila right now has electricity every other day, and talking to other volunteers I think that is pretty typical. Well, I came home that day and my landlord’s son, Yenebeb, tells me in Amharic that they now have a generator. I was confused at first, as a generator is something only one hotel in town has, but I didn’t think much of it. Right around 7:30pm, I heard a motor running and the lights popped on in my house! Not only did the landlord get a generator, but it runs electricity to the whole compound, not just the landlord’s house like I assumed! I am surely the only volunteer in the country with access to a generator, and it is probably the only residential generator in my entire zone. Like I said, I have no complaints about my relatively high rent. As I was writing this on my computer in my dark house, the generator popped on to recharge my dwindling computer battery!