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