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.

Becoming a Runner

I’m not a runner. Never have been.  I stick to sports that require less than five minutes of intense exertion at any given time: 100m dash, competition cheerleading, diving, but never long-distances.  Living in the home country of some of the world’s best marathon runners though has somehow inspired me to at least try the whole running thing.  Each November Addis Ababa hosts The Great Ethiopian Run, a 10k featuring some of the best runners, and well, anyone willing to try their best.  I decided last November that I would love to run in the 10k this year, giving myself a year to figure out how to run long distances.  

In February, during my group’s Mid-Service Conference, they announced a run in May being hosted by The Great Ethiopian Run, in collaboration with the NGO Save the Children to raise money to help with healthcare for pregnant women in Ethiopia.  An opportunity to help and a motivation to continue my training? I was sold.  This run was a 7k, and was going to be held in Hawassa, about 4 hours south of Addis.  I had 2 months to become a runner.

sunrise in the countryside

Running to me has resulted in pretty bad outcomes so far in this country.  The couple times I tried last year I wound up with kids chasing me and rocks thrown at me, bringing my confidence down a bit.  This time I decided it would be necessary to sacrifice my habit of sleeping in until 8am and additionally I would find out, shed a bit of pride.  6am has slowly become one of my favorite times in the day.  Not initially, but once I started getting the hang of jogging I found my sunrise jogs to be the most peaceful time of my day.  Not to mention the fact that my dog, Arbay, loves the run more than anything.

My regular route is a 4k, and sometimes I’ll increase it to almost 6k, but I’ve found my pace, which is admittedly slow, but I am happy to say I officially enjoy running.  The first morning the kids who live at my turn-around point started running with me I wasn’t sure what to think.  The last kids who ran with me threw rocks at my dog and me, but I started talking to them and now they’ve become a crucial part of my routine.  The kids are 6-8th graders who live on this farm about 2k away from my house and each morning they run with me back to my house, books in hand for school and shoes-optional.  It’s humbling having children without shoes run faster than you.  But I also remind myself that I live at 7,000ft, which makes for a challenge, an altitude they’ve lived at their whole lives.

May 1st, the day before the run, a bunch of volunteers arrived in Hawassa, ready to support Save the Children and run our best.  My goal: run the whole race.  The 7k was scheduled for 9:30am, not an ideal time considering how hot Hawassa gets, but the 21k run was appointed the early timeslot, understandably.  

The morning of the race was lots of fun, Peace Corps staff came to support us and even brought us Peace Corps hats to wear; swag, finally!  We were all pumped up, and that was before famous Ethiopian runners Haile Gebre Selassie and Turunesh aired the horn to start the run.

We were off! The first half being a run next to the lakeside, and although the path was narrow for such a large group, the scenery was unrivaled.  

The brochures had told us there would be bottled water along the route, which I kept hoping to find, but to no avail other than some locals splashing welcomed lake water from buckets.  The 10am heat was beating down towards the end but I kept going and proudly finished without walking.  It’s officially the longest I’d ever run.  What a fun day! I am now looking forward to adding 3k by November for the run in Addis.

Some of us Group 2 folks after the run

Never Being Dirty

It occurred to me recently how easy it is to live in America and never actually be dirty.  You may shower every day, maybe every third day if you’re a rebel.  And I can’t blame you, if I had endless hot water at the turn of a knob, I too would bathe on a regular basis.  But really, how dirty do you get going from your house to your car to your office and back? You may workout and get sweaty in your sterilized gym and freshly laundered clothes.  You may play in the dirt a bit on a hot summer day, working in the garden and even mowing your own lawn- but still, it’s pretty easy to go through life never being dirty.

Think about it, all ground is covered by cement, or grass, or at the least pine straw or mulch.  You’re probably now racking your brain for a patch of dirt around your neighborhood.  A single spot that has unfortunately been worn free of the grass that used to cover it—that is what covers a majority of my town.  Even in the rainy season, as the brown fields turn bright green with grass, the roads are dirt, or more than likely, mud.  On a dry morning you are bound to run into a big gust of wind that throws a wall of dirt on you.  On a rainy morning you are bound to come across a section of the road flooded with water up to your ankles, which you hop across using stones sticking out or the muck.

My dirty tennis shoes.

No matter what you do here, you get dirty.

That is a dirt line, not a tan line. Don't judge me.

I’ve been told once by an Ethiopian that my feet were dirty.  I was sitting at a café reading a book and he felt it was necessary, without introduction, to question the cleanliness of my feet.  Being suggested to bathe by an Ethiopian— not my proudest moment.

Another time, one of my PCV friends and I were commenting on how tan our arms were from being in the sun so much.  This was followed by the realization that at least one shade of our “tan” was actually dirt.

I also had to explain to people that my freckles were not specks of dirt and, also not the first stage of me becoming African, despite how much sense that would make.

One more example of the dirty life I’m leading is demonstrated by the rain jacket I brought to Ethiopia, which is mostly yellow and partly white.  Ok, not the smartest choice of colors for Africa, but I was living in glorious America when I bought it, in denial of how dirty life could be.  Since it rains everyday during the summer, I find myself wearing that rain jacket everyday, without a break from the rain to wash and dry it.  After my co-worker mentioned my dirty sleeves (she was polite not to point out the dirty sides and back also) I finally decided to brave the rain for a day without my jacket.  I’m happy to report the jacket now looks brand new—for the time being!

It doesn’t help either that I am living with a dog that comes home in the evenings often covered in mud… or sometimes what I believe is excrement of some type.  When asking the kids in Amharic what Arbay had gotten into, they all giggled and finally said it was poop.  Needless to say, she has earned herself several impromptu baths!

Reading List

Since arriving in Ethiopia, just over 6 months ago, I have read quite a few books. Not as many as some people, in fact I hardly read at all during the first 10 weeks of training, but more pleasure reading than I had time for during all 4 years of college. Reading has becoming part of my every day routine, so I thought I would give you an idea of the kind of reading I have been doing.   

One read even inspired my dog’s name, Arbay. I was reading Robinson Crusoe when I got her, and decided to use a variation of the Amharic word for “Friday” because it was what Crusoe named his first friend. “Arbay” literally means “my Friday” which is perfect, because in many ways she is my best friend these days. (That isn’t supposed to sound pitiful, but wonderful, because everyone needs a dog who understands you on bad days!)

So far, I have read the following books: 

• Catcher In The Rye
  
• Into The Wild
• The Alchemist
• Robinson Crusoe
• 90 Minutes In Heaven
• Searching For God Knows What
• Three Cups of Tea
• First They Killed My Father
• Atlas Shrugged
• The Lost Boys of Sudan
• Mountains Beyond Mountains
• Twilight
• Shah of Shahs
• Do Hard Things

Currently I am reading the rest of the Twilight series and loving the recent recommendation (seriously, they are great books, you all should read them). There are several books on my shelf that have arrived in the mail in the past couple months that I will be picking up soon, but I am also up for other suggestions, so keep the books coming!
 
I have been loving inspiration non-fiction; it is motivating me through these tough days. All snail mail is appreciated, so keep the letters coming!

My Newest Addition

My puppy living on the street a week before I got her in February.

One of the hardest parts of living here in Ethiopia is living alone.  As a recent college graduate, I have never lived anywhere besides my parents’ home and on-campus housing at college, which means my transition here is more than just cultural.  I am growing up in many ways I never imagined I would.  I guess I never thought about the situation I was entering into until now; everything during training went by so fast. I was busy it seemed like every hour of the day with class, friends and host family.  Somehow, the whirlwind of events cleared and I found myself living, alone, in Africa.

Like with anything in my life that startles me, I rectified the situation.  Call me crazy, but I am now the proud owner of an Ethiopian puppy.  I could not resist. Her little face was too cute and I have seen what happens to dogs on the street here, it is not pretty (they are mostly turned into vicious guard dogs).  Only a few baths later and she could almost be mistaken for an American dog.

Playtime with the baby cow on my compound.

I thought I was crazy myself about 48 hours after she arrived in my house. Thinking to myself, I’m not responsible enough for a living animal. Given, I have had family dogs practically my whole life, but it never occurred to me that I was only 10 when we were raising my current family dog.  There is a big difference between raising a puppy when you are 10 surrounded by family and raising a puppy in Africa by yourself when you are 22. The responsibility level goes up a bit.

I know I am ridiculous for getting her, but honestly, she makes my house feel more like home all of a sudden (and my dad thinks it was a good idea! Right, Dad?).  I have someone to come home to, and company late at night when I start thinking those scary thoughts about living alone.  I must admit, I do not live completely alone.  My house is in a gated compound where two families also live, but still I cook for one, and find myself without an English-speaking companion.  The puppy, Arbay, is a great friend, and she listens to my English as though she understands every word (except “my house is not a bathroom” it seems).

Arbay has allowed me to get to know my community even better also! Each afternoon the children on my compound and I run around the yard together feeding her injera as we play.  One day I went in search of the local Muslim butcher, because most butchers are closed during this Orthodox Christian 55-day fasting period, to add some protein to the puppy’s diet.  A few hours later I had met the family that owns the shop, been invited into their home, downed a few rounds of coffee, and made a collection of new friends!

All wrapped up around the poles!

 Almost every day I walk her to my favorite café for lunch where we sit outside together while I eat my daily dose of Ethiopian food, passing her scraps of injera.  If a ferengi walking down the street in my town draws attention, a ferengi leading a puppy around with a leash multiplies that number by 10 at least.  But, now when I leave her at home the people I pass on that route ask, “Where is your puppy?”

I also realize now that I am not alone, even without the puppy.  If she somehow finds a hole in the fence and sneaks outside the compound, I have the whole neighborhood helping me find her.  Then the children that live in my compound go around with scraps of wood blocking all the possible escape routes around the fence.  Even as I write this, the children on my compound just knocked on my door announcing there is a coffee ceremony in my landlord’s house.  I am not alone here even though sometimes it can feel like it.  Ethiopians are so warm and hospitable it amazes me.  Nevertheless, the puppy has afforded me some new and wonderful experiences and I am so blessed to have her in my life now.

To answer the most commonly asked question from Ethiopians, no, she is not a ferengi dog; she is Habesha (Ethiopian).  I think they are surprised because they have never seen a clean dog before.  And, to answer the most commonly-asked question from home, yes, I plan on bringing her home with me. It is possible to do, and I have gotten some advice from a current volunteer who plans to do the same, so here’s hoping that works!