Dusty Season

Ethiopian spring has sprung! The only big differences here are that pollen is replaced by dust, green grass is replaced with dirt, and colorful flowers are replaced by, well, the lack of anything colorful at all.  Having moved to Dangila last February this was the first season I experienced here, and since then apparently I blocked that memory from my mind.  I completely forgot how hot it can get here, and how dusty everything becomes.  My supervisor even brought up my joke last spring about “which road is not dusty?” (see blogs from last spring) and we laughed about it in the office for a good hour this morning.

Even though the “air condition” right now is not exactly favorable (air condition here literally means the condition of the air, having nothing to do with machines that alter temperatures) I still find myself in one of the happiest states that I think I’ve been in since I arrived.  Friends are always surrounding me (Ethiopian and foreign), work is good (meaning it is existent), and I am loving Dangila.  Last fall I made a deal with myself to stay in site for an entire month without leaving, and let’s just say it didn’t happen.  I always like spending weekends with friends and taking advantage of every opportunity that arises.  But this month I’m just completely happy and content here is Dangila, and I will easily spend a month here without leaving.

The other day I was working the HIV testing event at the high school and happen to leave the compound to walk home for lunch at the shift change between 9th and 10th grade.  The shift change is basically my worst nightmare; a sea of turquoise uniforms, 5,000 teenagers, all without somewhere to be for the next 15 minutes, and I found myself in the middle.  A year ago, the event would have brought me to tears; I would have drowned in the sea of the harassment, feeling like an outsider.  This year I swam through that sea with confidence.  Not a single person yelled “ferengi,” but instead the students called my name, chatted with me as I walked, and greeted me with friendly handshakes.  I’m finally starting to feel like I belong here, and I’m a part of this community.

 

I just finished week 4 of English/Life Skills classes with my two classes of high school girls, I have meetings set up to start a business project with those 10 boys I helped out with last fall, and there is less than a week until the big Easter celebration (and the end of fasting!).  Yesterday I had a sudden urge to clean my house (a rarity) and found myself mopping my floors a few minutes later.  Yenebeb (the 9-year-old son of my landlord) walked by my door and asked with a smile, “are you cleaning for the holiday?”  A common Ethiopian habit is to clean everything before big holidays (I suppose Americans do this too) because they always host the neighbors and want their house to look nice.  I smiled and said “yes” figuring it was easier than admitting I hadn’t mopped my house in probably 8 months.  No time like the present for a little spring cleaning!

Time is starting to fly by during year 2 in Ethiopia.  The countdown is at 9.5 months, which doesn’t seem like enough to finish all I want to do here.  Before I know it dusty season will become muddy season, muddy season will fade, and my departure will be imminent.

Hitting the Ground Running

I arrived back in Dangila just one week ago and have already logged more hours in the classroom than in the entire prior year.  Before I left for Mid-Service Conference my counterpart from the Anti-Malaria Association, Yebeletal, and I decided we wanted to co-teach a group of girls grade 9-12.  We decided upon a basic curriculum, English and Life skills, and approached the high school and preparatory school in town about our “English Club” idea.  They were immediately receptive, but I still doubted the amount of work that would be done to arrange the classes while I was out of town.

To my surprise when I visited Yebeletal’s office the day after arriving back in Dangila he said we had class that night, and two classes the next day! Moreover, one session of the class had already been conducted without me!  I immediately jumped onboard and began preparing my Life skills (empowerment tools) lessons.  Now I am teaching a two-hour class four days a week! The schools were instructed to choose 15 female students from each grade that wanted to attend an extracurricular class, and we divided them into two groups to keep the classes under 30 students each.

In addition to teaching, HAPCO (my counterpart organization) has finally received funding for their normal activities such as VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing, for HIV).  These events I have mentioned in the past, where the health workers go out into the community and set up a testing station for a few days at a time to allow residents to get tested without having to go to the health center.  This week I’ve attended two all-day VCT events at the high school, where my job includes running around trying to recruit the 9th and 10th graders to get tested, along with trying to speed up the line of people waiting by taking student’s age and distributing identification numbers.  In just two days 600 students were tested!  I feel like the past week has been a complete whirlwind of events and work; In fact, I haven’t even had time to unpack my backpack from the trip.

I’ve been talking to my HAPCO supervisor about starting a project with those 10 orphaned boys I helped out late last year, and I have a couple other big project ideas swirling around in my head that should keep me just as busy for the next six months.  The craziest part of all this chaos is that the months I have left here definitely feel numbered. I’m down to less than 10 months until my group can begin to COS (close service).  As exhausted as I am from this week filled with long workdays, I would love to spend the next 10 months doing just that.  I really want to make the most of every day I have left here, because I know it will all be over with before I know it.

Once again, I want to thank everyone for supporting me in this journey of mine.  I am truly having the time of my life and slowly but surely discovering what I want to do in this world. Thank you.

My Disappearing Act

Arriving back from site after over 3 weeks away I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  I know I was ready to come back home to Dangila, and it was way before the 3-week mark that I felt that urge to return.  But just because I wanted to go back didn’t mean that nothing would have changed while I was away, and as I rode the 10-hour bus back to Dangila from Addis I contemplated all the possible scenarios.  I recently discovered another transport option to get back to site: The Postal Bus.  I have known there is a postal bus that makes a trip from Addis to Bahir Dar every morning that also carries passengers, not just mail, so I decided to check it out.  With the help of an Ethiopian friend I secured a ticket and began a new journey back to Dangila!  While the trip wasn’t as exciting as alone in the truck full of mail covered to my shoulders with letters to sort through (ok, maybe that’s just a fantasy only Peace Corps volunteers have) it was still a new experience, and one I will definitely repeat for future Addis trips.  

Crossing the gorge on the way back to Dangila.

One of my favorite parts of taking the postal bus was when we stopped in Dangila my good friend, and postal worker Fanta was there awaiting me! Ok, she was awaiting the mail, but I still had someone to walk back towards my house with as I nervously entered town for the first time in such a long time.  I was nervous-- guilty I suppose for being gone so long, like a child creeping back into her house after running away.  One of the most commonly said phrase here is “Tafash,” literally meaning, “You disappeared!” as a way of telling you they haven’t seen you in a while.  Sometimes the phrase is alluding to the fact that they haven’t seen you since breakfast that same day, but others it is justified, and this time I knew it would be the latter case.

To my surprise I didn’t get bombarded with “Tafash” as much as I suspected, but rather a big warm greeting by the society as a whole.  Normally the neighborhood kids near where I live greet me as I walk by, but this time even the mothers stepped out of the house to smile and give me a cheerful greeting.  And I must say, after a few days in site, it seems as if the community had an intervention—as if someone went around with a loud speaker yelling, “The foreigner, her name is not ferengi nor you, you, you.  She is Jennifer!”  Everyone knows my name.  I was on a street I’ve never been on before just yesterday and they knew my name! I suppose the effects of living here for a year are finally starting to kick in, and I love it.

Adventures in Addis

Since arriving in Addis Ababa in mid-February for my group’s Mid-Service Conference, I have yet to go back to Dangila.  A week for the training, a week of traveling in the south (see previous entry) and then I had a few days to kill before some medical appointments and my visit to Group 3’s In-Service Training.  This time spent mainly around Addis has been filled with fun times with friends and delicious food, but more than anything it has made me miss the comforts of my small town.  Spending so much time in Addis though has afforded me the opportunity to know where I’m going, and walk like a local.  I know where all the local minibuses around town are heading, I know the best ferengi restaurants, but I also know some Ethiopian dives to get good injera and wat for less than $1 (which for Addis is quite a claim).  I don’t feel like I have a whole lot to talk about, especially concerning the “Peace Corps experience” since I’ve been attending trainings and traveling so much, but I did realize that I’ve had some fun adventures in Addis that are worth sharing, so here are a few short stories:

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Ethiopian Dentist
Since we’ve now been at-site for over a year, everyone in my group is required to have a dental cleaning appointment.  I’m not one to fret about going to the dentist, in fact, I usually look forward to the experience, so when I was waiting for my Peace Corps taxi to take me to my appointment, I hadn’t even thought about it all that much.  When I finally arrived, I climbed the stairs to the third floor of a run-down building in the suburbs of Addis and told the front desk that I was there for a cleaning.  After thirty minutes of sitting in a waiting room with Ethiopians who were intently staring at the television playing an Arab Sat soap opera in Arabic (which no one understood, clearly) I was called to come back to see the dentist.

An older Ethiopia man motioned for me to sit down in the dental chair and we chatted for a minute about the other Peace Corps volunteers he had met.  He briefly poked around in my mouth and then said, “we used to be very proud of our teeth,” in a very beat-down voice; He blames the sugar and soda.  He then ushered me to another room, which seemed identical to me, and powered up what appeared to be a metal pick.  The assistant entered the room, handed me a few pieces of toilet paper and tied a dental bib around my neck.  Before the dentist began the cleaning he looked at me questionably, motioned for me to remove my glasses and simply said, “for safety.” I chuckled to myself, followed his instructions, and he began to poke around with this metal water pick.  Every time the pick touched my tooth it made the most horrible sound, and better yet, the pick must have had a leak because water sprayed all over my face.  A-ha! That must be what the toilet paper is for, and the glasses removal!  I sat there choking back my laughter as I realized this is by far the oddest dentist appointment I’ve had to date.


Amharic for Foreigners
My next story occurred on the taxi ride back from the dentist, while I was already in a laughing mood.  The taxi driver, who is used to having Peace Corps volunteers in the car, happily had a conversation with me in half English, half Amharic.  While stopped at one traffic light a man walked between the cars carrying three very random items in his hands which he attempted to sell to the passengers in each car.  He got very excited when he saw me because one of the three items he had was a book titled Amharic for Foreigners.  In English he told me that I must buy this book from him; In Amharic I told him I didn’t want it.  Not fazed by my Amharic response, he continued with his case of trying to make a sale.  I kept answering in Amharic and eventually said, while laughing, “I’m speaking Amharic, so I really don’t need the book!” The driver, also laughing at this point repeats my argument, “Dude! She’s telling you all of this in Amharic, she doesn’t need the book!” Ok, so there isn’t an Amharic word for “dude!” but I imagine that he would have said that if there was a word.  Finally, the hawker said in Amharic, “You speak it completely?” I responded, “Yes, completely!” (a small fib) and he finally walked away. 

In Other News
In a couple days now I have the privilege of returning to Sodere to help for one night with Group 3’s In-Service Training.  I suspect it will be a fun visit, especially after spending today in Addis with Group 3 helping them learn their way around this city.  I’m really fortunate to be surrounded by so many neighboring volunteers, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know their entire group since they arrived in October.

Fasting is still going well.  I’ve only cheated once with an opportunity for some real ice cream, brought to our Mid-Service training.  Otherwise, I’m handling the lack of animal products well.  Recently too I’ve realized the true meaning of fasting, and enjoyed the benefits of sacrificing something physical (food) to move closer to God during this lent period.