Choosing My Campers

This past spring Peace Corps informed all the volunteers in country that there is funding for us to host summer camps in each region!  We all teamed up in our respective regions and began throwing around ideas for fun and creative summer camps.  Fast forward a few months later… the camp is next week!  While most people were on top of their camper recruitment, I was not so organized.  Each volunteer is able to bring two campers, which we decided could be either one girl and one boy, or two girls.  The camp is about gender equality and leadership (among other things) so we wanted to ensure at least an equal-gender ratio, if not slightly skewed toward girls.

With school final exams taking up most of June, the Dangila school directors asked if I could host my essay competition to choose my campers on June 26 after exams had finished.  That left just one week between the essay competition and the day we leave for camp! Time crunch! Last Saturday I arrived an hour early for the essay competition, which 140 students had signed up for (from grades 9 and 11), and was pleasantly surprised to find a group of eager students had already arrived.  The vice-director of the high school was kind enough to help me organize the 100 students that showed up into four classrooms, each with a teacher to proctor the exam.

One hour later I had a stack of essays to grade.  The exam had gone surprisingly smoothly and I really enjoyed the students’ enthusiasm about this opportunity.  I had given each student a half-sheet of paper to write on to limit the over-achievers and they were told to choose between the following four topics:
1.    Who is your role model? Why? What have they taught you?
2.    What will you do to change Ethiopia for the better?
3.    Are condoms a good choice to protect against HIV? Why or why not?
4.    How have you shown leadership skills? How can a leader combat gender inequality?

The camp is going to be in English mainly, so one of the major things I was looking for was their confidence in writing and comprehension.  Thanks to a PC neighbor who helped me narrow down the field of competition, we were able to choose the top seven essays within a couple hours.  Four boys and three girls all seemed to rank equally well, so I decided to call them back for an interview to decide who my campers would be.

Tuesday I had three girls and two boys show up for the interview, and after a short five-minute discussion with each, I chose my campers! What a relief to have the selection process finished!  I did run into the other two boys later on the street confused about where the interview was held, but seeing as I’d already announced the winners and everyone else didn’t seem to have a problem finding my office, I took it as a sign they weren’t suppose to be the chosen ones. I will also add that I was very happy to find out that all three girl finalists were my students from the English Girls’ Club I teach at the high school and prep school.  And just to ensure you that I am not biased, I’ll admit that I’m so bad with names that I didn’t know who any of them were before they arrived for the interview.  Can’t claim causation with that one, but it was nice to see familiar faces!

Read the soon-to-be-posted blog “Meet My Campers” to read their winning essays!

This afternoon I arranged a meeting with my two campers and their parents.  I had permission slips from Peace Corps for them to sign, I informed them of the basic camp logistics, and we arranged a meeting time to leave on Saturday.  And then it hit me: These parents are sending their teenagers away with me for a week.  Who am I to answer their pressing questions about safety?  Who I am to claim responsibility for their children? It feels like just yesterday that I was on the opposite side of those parent permission slips.  It was like I could hear those exact same worrisome questions coming out of my own father’s mouth.  I assured them with confidence that we would watch over their children for the week.  Strong words coming from this white girl they just met, especially when she still feels like a child herself most days.

It made me realize that I am responsible here, and I am a grown-up.  I have a real job and I am respected in the community.  Moreover, I will do everything in my power to keep those kids safe next week, and to have one hell of a good time!

World Cup Fever

June in Ethiopia is pretty slow, at least in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer.  I remember it being slow last year, but this year the days just seem to drag by.  I mentioned in a previous blog that June has turned into a waiting game.  Students are having exams, which means I can’t teach my English class, and I’m not permitted to be on campus most days, even to arrange future programs.  The money for my internet café project has yet to come in, so that is at a stand still at the moment.  This leaves a lot of time for drinking coffee, eating injera, and watching the World Cup!

Not the world’s biggest soccer… er… football fan, but I’ve come to really appreciate the camaraderie of watching the matches with energized strangers.  Cafes and restaurants with television begin to fill, together we watch the players take the field and arbitrarily we each choose the team we want to root for during the next two hours.  Later you return home and look on your map to figure out where that country you yelled so hard for is located.  Who doesn’t love it?

Ethiopians really love football.  They don’t have a team in the World Cup but they sure do care about each and every match! It’s become something to do each afternoon, and evening for that matter, and I really do love the atmosphere.  One fateful afternoon the local television cut out with just 30 minutes until America played!  When power goes off in the neighboring town it cuts our television. Bad timing! I quickly got in a bajaj taxi and asked the driver, who is one of my friends, if there was any place in town that has the games by satellite.

Success came at a price—the only place with sports satellite is the hotel I’ve successfully boycotted for the past nine months, ever since they were the only place in town to refuse to donate to my HIV testing lottery program last October.  I bit the bullet and found a cozy spot (not really, the chairs are plastic) next to some loud truckers and local sports fanatics.  The crowd continued to grow since it was the only place in a town of over 30,000 people showing the match.  Look at that, the World Cup bringing people back together—sorry HaHu Hotel for boycotting you for so long… (this is the part where they admit to being lame for not donating).

My favorite part (read: most awkward part) of that match was that with every exciting play (goal, yellow card, bad call, etc) everyone would turn around to catch my reaction.  Needless to say I haven’t returned for another game there, although I am grateful there is a place in town with the sports satellite.  Most games I watch either at my landlord’s house, a nearby restaurant that I go to all the time anyway, or recently in my compound with neighbor Yedelfree who just bought a TV!

I hope America is just as excited about the World Cup as Dangila is, even though I doubt that’s possible.  Maybe in four years I can bring some football hype your way!

A Few Life Changes

Life around Dangila has changed a lot in the past month.  All of the change was spurred by my landlord and his family moving across town.  Following that, I moved into their old house on my same compound, and a lot of my daily routines have now changed.  Living on my compound now is a woman about my age, whose younger sister (maybe 18 years old) is currently living with her.  Additionally, there is a guard my landlord hired, who is pretty old and whose mumbled Amharic I can barely recognize as the language I’ve been learning for 18 months.

My landlord built this shack in the front yard for the old guard... way to make me feel worse about my big house!

As one of the nearby missionaries said when first seeing him, “wow, he won’t be stopping any thieves quickly,” but he does help with the children who are up to no good.  There is also another worker hired by my landlord to take care of the mama and baby cows on the compound.  He now lives here too, although he is gone all day taking the mama cow somewhere (18 months later I and still don’t know where they go all day).

The guy who takes cares of the cow; Here he is helping me build a fence around my garden.

Word on the street is that 2 Japanese volunteers from the organization “jica” are moving into the compound late in the summer.  I’ll keep you updated about that—could be fun to have new foreign faces around to sympathize with me!

Having the big house is life changing, really.  Let’s start with the fact that the walls are cement! The amount of dust collecting on every little thing is now minimal as compared with my former mud house.  I have BIG windows! The house is so bright and partnered with the yellow walls and shiny white tile floors, it just makes me happy.  I have space for all that “stuff” I have collected.  It’s so nice not having to cram things under my bed.  Plus the extra space allows for fun activities, like yoga or cartwheels, right in my living room!

The tile floors are my favorite part though.  I can walk around barefoot.  I can sit down on the floor and play with Arbay.  I forgot how nice those things can be.  Life is all about the simple pleasures!  But while I love my floor, it isn’t always “shiny” as I described above, especially during muddy season (the rains have begun!).  Which leads me to my other favorite addition to this life of luxury I’m leading: Aragach.

Aragach is one of my students in my English Club.  She is 20 years old, grade 9 student, doesn’t have a father, and her mother has recently hurt her leg and cannot work to support them anymore.  At the beginning of May I started paying her to come once a week to wash my clothes, a chore I never looked forward to, but something I did find therapeutic.  It was also something I took pride in doing, but sometimes you have to take one for the team, so in order to help Aragach (without just giving her money) I decided to overpay her to help me.

Since I moved to the big house, every Saturday she also mops my floor to clean up all those muddy dog prints!  Aragach and I also moved all of my stuff to my new house by ourselves (sans one big piece of furniture we pulled two random guys off the street to help with).  I love having her around, and as much as I haven’t adapted fully to the cultural norm here of just dropping by and lingering uninvited in people’s houses, I really enjoy when she comes by.  She’s becoming like a sister, and she’s such a sweet motivated young woman.

Another big change in life is that when I go out of town, the landlord’s kids take care of Arbay allowing her to stay in their new compound.  It’s kinda fun, like dropping her off at Doggy Day Care!  Since Arbay loves roaming the neighborhood and going off on adventures, just about every day when I’m in town she will walk herself over to the landlord’s new house to hangout.  Once in their compound they don’t let her out (I think they’re afraid she’d get lost or something) so I go by to pick her up.  It works out that most afternoons now she’ll go over there, meaning I still get to see the kids every day.  I usually stay for a little while to play with the kids, which has led to way too many afternoon photo shoots.  

I am feeling more independent in my own compound now which I really like.  I also love having the kids to visit—I think we appreciate each other a lot more now.  I’m sure there will be more changes to come in the next 7 months; for now, I’m happy and adjusted.

Moving Three Meters To The East

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything.  Even now I’m at a lack of words, but while it seems I haven’t been doing much I know stories are abundant.  For 10 days at the end of May all of the volunteers in Ethiopia had a training to consolidate us during the election period.  It was the first time Group 2 and Group 3 volunteers had ever been all together (and also likely the last).  Having about 70 Americans together for over a week was a nice break, although a little overwhelming too.  It definitely could have been a social experiment—seclude 70 Americans in small Ethiopian towns for a year and then bring them all together for a week to see what happens! We’re all so used to being alone or being the only foreigner, that by the end I was definitely ready to go back to Dangila.

My group of volunteers at the consolidation.

We had the training in a small town south of Hawassa called Yirgalem (where my good friend Jordan lived before he left at Christmas time).  For the most part, we spent all of our time (sleeping, eating, training) on this compound, not going into town much.  One of the final days, a few of us decided to go on a hike where we were quickly bombarded with hoards of children.  Wow- reality hit! We were still in Ethiopia! I had been in that compound surrounded by Americans for so long that I almost let myself forget where I was.  Going for a walk in my town, by myself, in familiar territory, is a lot different from a walk in a new town with 4 foreigners!

By the end of the training I was happy to leave but also very aware that life outside that Americanized compound isn’t easy.  It amazed me how fast I forgot that!  I’ve been back in Dangila for a couple weeks now and I’m fully adjusted to life here.  After all, I’m used to the small town life here.  Being surrounded by 70 Americans is fun but it’s not why I’m here.

Speaking of reasons I’m here—one of the main principles of Peace Corps is for volunteers to live at a modest level.  We make a modest salary, live a modest lifestyle, and reside in modest houses.  Except that last one isn’t always true.  For safety reasons a lot of volunteers live in houses bigger than necessary.  While I’ve been living in a modest 18 square meters for a year and a half, an opportunity for improvement presented itself.  Since my landlord moved out, the big house on my compound was vacated.  I bargained a reasonable price for it, received permission from Peace Corps, and moved about 3 meters to the east, tripling my living space.  Best. Decision. Ever.

It’s been fun nesting again, getting all my furniture in order and finally having more space for all the stuff I’ve collected.  And the “stuff” is abundant—I think it’s an American thing because Ethiopians don’t have “stuff” like I do. It’s kind of ridiculous how it accumulates!  It’s nice knowing that for the most part all of it will be staying here and given away a few months down the road.

That doorway leads to the hall... that's right, I have a hall!

All students have exams for the entire month of June, meaning I won’t be teaching my English class until their summer break begins at the end of the month.  The grant I wrote, and which has been approved, is being processed, so I’m just waiting on that money to continue that project.  Both of those things have turned June into a waiting game.  I feel like I’m not being productive at all, but my patience has definitely grown over the past 18 months, so I’ll survive.  In the meantime I’ve been spending quality time with neighbors, turning my front yard into a garden, and getting excited about the start of the World Cup! I figure watching the upcoming matches will be a great way to spend time in my community for the next month!