Busier Than Ever

 I need to meet with Tilahun in the morning, and we must get the final prices from garages for construction material, oh, and I told Yebeletal I’d meet him at 10am, AND I said I would have lunch with him and his wife! Oh Jennifer, you still haven’t asked Peace Corps for a sample project proposal, and you should also send an email to potential donors too…

I continue to toss and turn, not being able to fall asleep or calm my mind from all that is running through it.

About a year ago I think on any average day my mind had to race to think of just something to do, and now the work is abundant.  I no longer title my lists, “To Do” but, “Must Do!”  I’m not sure when this change occurred, which is usually a sign that it happened gradually, but in this case I feel like my workload quadrupled overnight.  I’m teaching the class of girls still, but we’ve combined the classes so it is just twice a week.  Thankfully, it is no longer four evenings a week because I now have time to tutor a few primary school boys one day a week.  I’m working with HAPCO to start an internet café/photocopy center to benefit 15 orphans.  I am trying to help the Anti-Malaria Association with creating an association for the commercial sex workers in town, which I will eventually help write a grant proposal to assist them with changing their work.  Finally, I’ve been starting to talk to Health Extension Workers and Traditional Birthing Assistants about having an official training so they can work together in the future.

No wonder my mind is running non-stop.

I am a good bit into “Year 2” now and I finally understand why Peace Corps is a 2-year commitment (27 months to be exact).  I remember reading that stipulation and thinking, “wow, that is quite a long time!”  Daunting, in fact.  The thought of committing to 2 years of anything right out of college is a little much, yet alone saying, “yes, I want to spend the next 2 years in a developing country of your choice, Peace Corps.” And with the roll of a dice, here I am, in Ethiopia.

But I understand now.  It could be that I now see each month as a number; the end is in sight and I feel like I have so much left to do, so my jog has turned into a sprint.  Except I don’t think that is why I have so much to do right now.  I think it truly takes a year to finally settle into your community, to even begin to understand some of the problems here, and finally start to realize how I can help.  It takes a year to find counterparts that understand what you’re here to do and who are willing to help you with projects.  It takes a year for even a portion of the 36,000 people in urban Dangila to even know that I live here. And apparently it takes a year to finally receive a semi-accurate sounding population statistic for your town!

Arbay is happy here too!

I get it.  It’s the Year 2 thing.  Twelve months ago I wouldn’t have considered extending my contract here.  I didn’t understand how someone could consider extending, just because I missed home so much that it was painful.  It would be like starting a marathon and in the first mile saying, “why don’t I make it an even 30 miles today?”  But once you get towards the end you can consider maintaining that pace a bit longer.  That being said, I’m not going to extend my service.  However, I would consider it, and even that is a huge change in my frame-of-mind from a year ago.

There are so many differences in Year 1 and Year 2.  I don’t think I ever realized there would be before right now.  I started thinking of Dangila as home a long time ago, so I never considered it could be more than that.  I recently finished the book The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner and in the book he ponders the quote from his friend, “I mean, in the end, you come home because this is where you live.”  Last year I called Dangila home because it was where I lived.  Now I call it home because there are countless families who consider me part of their family, restaurants remember I don’t like sugar in my tea, the kids know my name… but definitely not just because it is where I live.

The Culture of Hospitality

Every time I come back from being out of town I receive the warmest “welcome back!” from the society as a whole.  Almost every day now I receive some sort of invitation for lunch or coffee at a friend or neighbor’s house.  Ethiopians are truly the kindest people who embody the idea of a culture of hospitality.  But there was one thing I didn’t experience until just now, how this culture treats you when you’re sick.

I have to say that I am very blessed not to have been really ill at all during the past 17 months, in fact this past weekend was the first time I’ve ever even had a fever.  I felt achy enough to call in sick for the day, knowing I wouldn’t want to get anyone else sick in case it turned into something worse.  The phone call went something like this:
“I know I mentioned I felt like I was getting sick, and today I feel worse, so I’m going to stay home today.”

“Oh, Jennifer! I will come to visit.”

The notion that when you’re sick you’d rather be alone, sleeping, is completely foreign here (literally).  Ethiopian culture is that when you get sick, everyone visits.  I understand that sometimes it is nice to have a friend stop by to see if she could bring you something, but here it is cultural for everyone to stop by, just to make you feel better!  I kindly refused most self-invitations, insisting that I would be fine to just sleep, but politely not mentioning that having my entire office and other co-workers come to my home while I’m under-the-weather wouldn’t exactly help.  Imagine in America your boss showing up at your house 20 minutes after you’ve called in sick!

On top of my co-workers’ sympathy, word of my sickness spread like wildfire around my compound and neighbors all stemming from the 8-year-old daughter of my landlord.  She’s the only person I told I was sick when she knocked on my door wanting to play, and from then on every person on my compound (there are 8 others) needed to hear it for themselves.  I also realized that I don’t know the Amharic vocabulary for things such as fever, tonsils, and congestion.  Always an opportunity to learn!

Happy to report that 48-hours later I’m back to normal.  Luckily it was just a minor bug because I think the neighbors would have gone crazy in anticipation of me feeling better! I do love this culture though; everyone is always looking out for you!

The Fourth Invitation

To continue my story of Fasika, Easter in Dangila, at 4pm I returned to the house of my fourth invitation of the day.  Earlier in the day I was only able to drop in for a brief serving of duro wat, so of course I was expected to come back later to machewat, play.  More than that, I wanted to go back; I find myself visiting their house just about every day now to hangout with this wonderful family.

Invitation 4: my “house of 5 girls” I call them.  I may have mentioned them before, but I adore this family.  The littlest girl from the family is in my little “street gang” of children that chants my name as I walk to the post office.  I should mention that by “gang” I mean group of toddlers, most of whom don’t wear pants or shoes, but play in the street around my house, and with whom I have a mutual adoration.  One day a while back, I accepted a coffee invitation from this family (meaning they yelled from their house “drink coffee!” as I walked past) and have been an honorary family member ever since.  The mother is very traditional and comes from the rural area while her four daughters are rather modern in comparison.  The eldest of the four moved to Addis a few months back, but left her daughter to be cared for by the family, who is Meskerem, the little girl in my “gang.”  The youngest of the four daughters is mentally handicapped and blind.  The two middle daughters are around my age and know a decent vocabulary of English, so often, when composing sentences will throw in an English noun of two for me.  The second oldest is exactly my age actually, and she will often offer to paint my nails while I’m sitting in their house, which I always kindly accept.  The roughly painted coat of polish typically lasts 3 days and serves as a wonderful reminder of how much I am loved in Dangila for those few days.  I doubt any manicurist in America will ever quite suffice.

Most of all, I love and admire the mother of this family.  How strong would you have to be to not only support four daughters by yourself (ok, husband is around, but let’s just say he doesn’t really do much for the family) but also take in your granddaughter, not to mention the fact that one daughter is handicapped.  This whole family lives in a house the size of my house: a mere 20-square meters.  Ethiopian mothers do everything, especially those not fortunate enough to have a helper like my landlord’s family has.  You prepare injera and wat from scratch, clean the clothes by hand, and sweep the dirt floors until they are spotless.  The work is never ending.  Every time I come by, they insist on feeding me, finding it insulting when I refuse.  On Easter, as a treat, I brought them a half-kilo of coffee beans (worth 30 Birr = $2.50) and the mother, Fantanesh, was beside herself, almost refusing to take it.  I justified the gift by saying that I cannot perform coffee ceremonies, so this is simply all the coffee I drink at their house.  She then wouldn’t let me leave until she prepared a special ceremony just for me.

I always want to give them something; I want to give them everything.  Yet they are so humble, not wanting anything.  Some people don’t know anything about me other than the color of my skin yet boldly ask for money while the people who I know and love won’t even accept the smallest gifts.  It’s hard.

More stories from the “house of 5 girls” to come.  For now, I should end my Easter stories so I can finally digest all the food I ate.

Final Count:
Plates of duro wat eaten: 3
Plates of tebs eaten: 2
Cups of coffee drunken: 9
Number of times I had to remove a sheep’s head from Arbay’s mouth: 3
Piece of raw meat Arbay hid in the sofa cushions: 2

Fasika, Take Two

‘This is wonderful duro wat!’ I complimented my landlord’s wife, as is cultural here in Ethiopia.

‘If it is wonderful duro wat that means it will be a wonderful Easter!’ she replied.

A great omen I thought for the day ahead.  Good thing too, since it was bound to be a long one—that first helping of duro wat was served to me at 6am this morning.

As I prepared my new group 3 neighbors for the biggest Ethiopian holiday celebration, I had one piece of advice for them: don’t over-commit yourself!  I have been anticipating Easter for a month now, and knew that while I was going to thoroughly enjoy the holiday here in Dangila, this year would be different; I wasn’t going to tell more than two families I would come to their houses on Easter.  Somehow, that plan went awry.

Last year I think I accepted any invitation that came my way, an "I’ll-take-what-I-can-get" kind of attitude.  As you can read from my blog last April, I had far too many commitments for one day, and had no idea what I’d gotten myself into.  This year it was a completely different situation; I have so many wonderful and close friends that I simply couldn’t refuse people’s offer for me to spend the holiday with them and their families.  And I knew exactly what I was getting myself into, but I just couldn’t say ‘no.’  Moreover, because I have such close friends it was less an invitation and more a statement of what time I was going to be at their houses on Easter Sunday.  Three such invitations presented themselves throughout the past week and I obliged them all with a grateful acceptance, but I will admit the fourth invitation was not exactly unsolicited.

Knowing Easter was approaching, I couldn’t have imaged not spending part of my day with Tizita’s family, who I spent Easter morning with last year.  Something about having a constant between the two celebrations was appealing, so I planned on having lunch at Tizita’s family’s café on Thursday before Easter, hoping to secure an invitation.  Worked like a charm; I hadn’t even placed my order for lunch before Tizita’s mom asked if I was going to be in Dangila for Easter.

So with all the invitations in place I anticipated a long day with way too much food, but I was looking forward to the festivities as if it were Christmas day! Easter is such a huge holiday here that I suppose I really did get wrapped up in all the preparations and I was also looking forward to finally breaking the fast!  I woke up at 6am and hopped right out of bed, knowing my compound family would already be awake and enjoying the first course of meat for the day.  As soon as they realized I was awake they summoned me inside for a tasty platter of duro wat (chicken stew—the holiday specialty).  For all you injera-lovers out there, well, anyone who actually knows good Ethiopian food, it was more than just good wat, but tequs injera, freshly made within the hour—yum! 

And so the day had begun, the fast had been broken, and my only obligation for the day was to eat! I brought the children some Easter candy and unwrapped a few myself before I witnessed the first sheep slaughtering of the day by my landlord.  Then I was off to Tizita’s family around 9am (I received 3 different times from 3 different family members about what time I should arrive, so I decided on a 9am average).  I was promptly served another platter of duro wat—a whole tequs injera all to myself. As the day began I savored every bit, eating to fill my stomach with the delicious food.  Next came a coffee ceremony with a snack (as is required for the ceremony) followed with a platter of homemade “cheese” (old milk), and I began to realize that fasting has its perks in Ethiopia.  In fact, I realized all of my favorite Ethiopian foods are fasting foods, but I politely ate my fair share of all the holiday goodies.  I knew Tizita and her family would never let me leave before having some of the first platter of tebs from the second sheep of the day I just witnessed slaughtered.  So I waited for the food and finally left after tebs right around noon. 

I loved being invited back to Tizita’s family’s celebration.  It was such a treat for me to be in a familiar place with familiar people and to have an idea of what to expect.  Year 1 here I may have been comfortable with the people, but the traditions surrounding each holiday were still a mystery—moreover, it is like Christmas in America, where every family celebrates in a different way, so it isn’t something you can simply be taught.  Those three hours spent at my favorite little café, with a family who loves me and knows me was relaxed and easy.  And although it had differences from the year before, the major constant, which I expected, was that for those three hours I continually had a plate of food in front of me, and was continually told, “Be!” eat!

I should have known that appointment would have lasted until noon, but I guess I was optimistic about the amount of time it takes to slaughter a sheep, so now I found myself with my third invitation starting at noon and had just received a phone call from the fourth telling me to come now!  I swung by number four, ate a quick plate of duro wat, ran home to grab some candy for the kids at the next house, and luckily caught a bajaj to the other side of town for invitation number three: Yebeletal and his family.  He is my co-teacher for the English Club and a wonderful friend; his house had recently become a place I have frequented, especially since his wife just had a baby girl whom I adore!

Arriving 30 minutes late for the appointment, I was surprised to see that I was the last to arrive—surprised because Ethiopians are never on time.  However, I was greeted with warm smiles, holiday wishes, and not a mention of my lack of punctuality.  I was served several cups of coffee right away, we had a blessing from the elder in the house (Yebeletal’s father-in-law), and my third sheep slaughtering of the day commenced.  There came a point in the day where the meals became less of a treat and more of an obligation, and the instruction, “Be!” was less a friendly reminder and more a dreaded command.  I really enjoyed socializing with Yebeletal and his family for the two hours I was at his house, and one of my favorite things about him is his great English.  And we often chat about cultural differences, so he knows that I don’t like certain Ethiopian foods, namely, qeybay, butter with spices.  So while I was absolutely full, I really did look forward to the tebs made exactly the way I like them.  And you really can’t complain about meat that fresh, so I slowly but surely ate the food placed in front of me.

At 2:30pm I bid farewell to Yebeletal and family, waddled out to catch a bajaj wishing my skirt had a button to unfasten, and made my way home thinking I had until 4pm to rest up.  I let the kids come inside and watch a DVD on my laptop (Enchanted was the pick of the day) and I happily lounged on the sofa for about 30 minutes until my landlord’s wife called me in for “coffee”… but it’s never just coffee.  I sat around with my landlord, his wife, and one remaining guest while they fed me dulet and a beer and told me how I’d disappeared for their coffee ceremony—oops!  I actually preferred the calmness of just being with them though instead of the chaos of the ceremony where all the neighbors cycle in and out, despite their disappointment (in my defense they never told me what time their coffee ceremony would be).  I then watched a bit more of the movie with the kids and at 4pm went back to the house of invitation four, with whom I’d only briefly eaten duro wat before.

For now, I’m going to leave you waiting—I’ve decided to write about the rest of the day tomorrow.  The story about my “fourth invitation” family is extended, so I’ll make this a two-part entry.

to-be-continued…

Easter Eggs

There is one telltale sign of an approaching Ethiopian holiday: the loud cry of sheep being led down the road by their new owner. This week the sheep are in full force.  You cannot walk down a single street these days without seeing at least two.  My landlord has already purchased two and is keeping them in a small room in the back of the compound, which has been piquing my dog’s interest for the past week as she smells their scent from under the door and cries like a child being kept from her best friend.  Well, Arbay just likes to make things run, doubtful that the sheep would consider that a friendship, but either way it is better she doesn’t get too attached (if you know what I mean).  

Another sign of the beginning of a holiday here is a clothesline filled with neon-colored crocheted doilies.  “What?” you ask. Well, amongst other house-cleaning routines Ethiopians wash these brightly colored doilies used to decorate the backs of the sofas.  I doubt we’ll ever get to the bottom of how they became popular in Ethiopia! Note the decorations in this photo of Yenebeb taken by his sister in their house.

In my own preparation for Easter I have preemptively purchased half a dozen eggs and decided to store them in my landlord’s refrigerator for freshness.  Knowing that eggs sell out around holidays (they are used in the fabulous holiday dish duro wat), and knowing that Easter is the end the fast, I wanted to make sure I could make myself a fabulous Easter breakfast.  A whole new meaning of Easter eggs!

Easter here is the biggest holiday of the year, and I briefly forgot just how big it is until I was asked by several people in one day, “Are you going to your home for the holiday?” At first I thought it was a funny question—traveling halfway around the world for what I think of as a one-day celebration.  But then I equated it to asking someone in America if they were going home for Christmas, and well, I would travel the globe to be home for that holiday season.  And that is exactly what Easter becomes here, a season which lasts a lot longer than one Sunday.  I would say the season begins with the purchasing of livestock for the Easter meal (and don’t forget washing those doilies!), and lasts for some time after Sunday also.  I asked if Monday was a national holiday, like Good Friday is, and my co-workers shake their heads, “No, Jennifer, Monday is a work day, but we will not be here,” they replied.  School technically is in session, and offices are supposed to be open, but everyone knows that work won’t get done.  Most people travel to be with their family (sometimes hours off the beaten path into the rural areas) and they like to make a week out of being home.

I was told by a friend that the Easter holiday lasts until the meat is gone.  So depending on how many sheep you buy, or how fast you eat the supply of meat your family has, the holiday just keeps going and going! 

I also must add that the day after I wrote my last blog about “dirty season,” as if only to make me grateful for what I have, it started raining.  Just a couple-day reminder of what summer season brings, namely, mud. Let’s just say I’ll be careful about cursing the dirt and dust again.  Below you’ll find a picture of my neighbor preparing the Good Friday bread in the rain!