Going To War for the Orphans

I’m an eternal optimist, always hoping for the best and expecting success. I think positive thoughts and have hope things will work out, and sometimes they do, others they do not.  When it came to my Internet Café Project receiving this container from the town, I was downright pessimistic.  I had many a tiny hope and prayer that it would work out but I was already thinking of plans for when they completely rejected the project idea.

4pm last Thursday was the set time, the mayor finally having arranged the meeting for HAPCO, the Iddir, himself, and me. My heart raced with nervousness as my supervisor and I walked to the meeting.  Having been reading a book about war I couldn’t help but think how our situation was analogous to going to battle.  We strode into the meeting with peace agreement in hand but weapons in our back pockets in case it got nasty.

I sat in a daze as Amharic filled the room, trying my best to keep up with the conversation.  The Iddir chairman having forgotten his peace agreement instead went straight for his pistol; I expected nothing more.  His words were slurred, and as usual I could not comprehend his speech other than to know that it was nothing short of bombastic.  I watched the Mayor’s response and he remained unshaken, giving me my first ounce of hope.

The day had turned into night and we finished the meeting mainly because the room in which we were sitting had no electricity.  As we dispersed into the chilly street I turned to my supervisor to verify what all was said in the meeting. No shots had been fired and although it got off to a rocky start, filled with complaints and disagreements, it ended with handshakes and smiles. My suspensions were confirmed: the container was to be used for the internet café! I doubted and doubted only to be surprised by a positive outcome.

This is the container we will use for the internet cafe!

Apparently the other Iddir members were more willing to negotiate, less interested in hearing themselves talk, thankfully.  We have had another meeting this week to write up an agreement between my project and the Iddir, knowing the community group would still be very actively involved in my project.  Community participation is the key to success for Peace Corps projects so I was in favor of a joint project.  What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the appointment of the Iddir chairman as the new chairman of the internet café project committee.  Seriously?

I’ve turned a new leaf, creating hope and optimism where one might have thought it wasn’t possible.  Maybe this new faith in the chairman is more of a begging prayer.  I still hardly understand his Amharic, am annoyed by his arrogant arm-crossing behavior when other people are finally permitted to speak, and believe he doesn’t listen to anyone besides himself, but I also think he actually wants to help the orphans.  Well, I pray he does anyway.

Next step is a meeting with all the new committee members, whom we’ve selected from various government offices including Labor & Social Affairs, Women’s Affairs, Youth & Sports, and HAPCO.  These representatives will govern the internet café after I leave, insuring that the café remains open, the project is profitable, and the orphans receive the lion’s share.  For now I’m just so very thankful there is a chance I’ll get to see this project through myself.

My Internet Café Project

I realized recently that while I’ve mentioned my internet café project a bunch, I’ve never told the story in its entirety.  The ten orphan boys I grew to love last fall needed something sustainable to get them off the street, or at least put food in their mouths.  This past spring, while talking with my counterpart at HAPCO about helping these boys, we thought of the idea of opening an internet café whose profits will help support these orphans, and others too.  The internet café project we decided would employ one manager, one guard, and several part-time teenage orphans when they weren’t in school.  Every month a percentage of the profits would be divided amongst the orphans we wanted to help.

It was a flawless plan, we figured.  Since Ethiopians are just discovering the glory of the world wide web and Dangila isn’t yet connected (except for my house!), we thought this was a perfect business plan, bound to be a success.

I applied for Peace Corps funding through a grant accessible to Peace Corps volunteers working with HIV, funded by PEPFAR.  My counterpart and I came up with a project proposal, submitted it and were soon approved for the $5,000.  A month or two later, in July, we received the money and began figuring out the logistics of getting the café up and running.  I purchased two computers, a photocopy machine, and a printer in Addis and hauled them up to Dangila.  The next step was securing a location – if you haven’t read my blog entry “Not Knowing Everything” (and why would you have not?) you should now, to understand the rest of this story.  And yet here I am, two and a half months later, without a container for the café.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, or container apparently.  There is a catch with this supposed “empty container for orphans.”  An Iddir (community group) was put in charge of organizing the container to benefit orphans from kebele 05 (which is like a small county or neighborhood- - there are five in Dangila).  The container was actually purchased with HAPCO funding over a year ago and since then, not a single birr has been given to the orphans it was suppose to support.  Yet the Iddir won’t relinquish control of the container.

The Iddir chairman’s reasons for not giving the container to this internet café project are flawed and ridiculous.  He says the container is suppose to help only kebele 05 kids, while our project has six orphans from kebeles 01-04.  Twelve of eighteen are from kebele 05 though and we increased the number of orphans early in the project to include all children which were supposed to be supported by the failed container projects.

It came to me one day that I should write him a sincere letter asking if we could please work together to achieve the mutual goal of helping orphans.  It was translated with the help of my friend and presented it to him in his office.  He hardly looked at the letter and definitely wouldn’t look me in the eye.  All he said was, “Aychelem” – it’s not possible.

Next step? Well, HAPCO has a signed contract with the Iddir since the funding originally came from them.  The Iddir promised to help set up a business to help the orphans, and a year later since they have not yet supported the orphans, HAPCO has the ability to take the container back, to give it to my project.  The mayor, who is in full support of my internet café project, wants to first give the Iddir time to “do the right thing” and simply hand over the container. Not likely. Hence the two and a half months of waiting.  And I fear if HAPCO actually tries to enforce the contract and take the container back things could get really ugly.

In the meantime we conducted a basic computer and basic business training for the eighteen orphans we want to help.  The internet café is not simply giving these orphans a portion of its profits, but the project also aims to keep the children involved in the café, and make them active internet users (which they will be able to access free-of-charge for a certain number of hours per month).

With the training completed and the waiting game with the Iddir still counting days, I am starting to worry.  There are only three and a half months left until I leave Dangila and finish Peace Corps, so I am starting to fear this project won’t finish.  I have literally put blood, sweat, and tears into this project (albeit blood by paper cut).  Six months have passed since brainstorming this idea and at the moment I’m feeling disheartened.  I don’t know where to go from here and simply waiting is becoming an impossibility.

Tears and frustration. Sometimes you can give all you have and it still might not be enough.  But I’m not giving up. No ma’am.

Not Knowing Everything

After living in Ethiopia for over a year and a half I’ve come to terms with not knowing a lot of things.  I sit through casual conversations, coffee ceremonies, and even important meetings without knowing what is being said completely.  My language skills are increasing but Amharic is not a language I will likely ever speak fluently.  I’ve become accustomed to sitting through meetings understanding a bare minimum waiting patiently to get a rundown of the meeting from my counterpart after the fact.  I am fortunate enough to have a counterpart willing to attend most meetings as my translator.  But then there are countless get-togethers with neighbors of which I will never know the full extent of what was said.  This is something I’ve come to terms with here.  Coming from home where you understand every little eavesdropped conversation this took some time to get used to, but now I’m strangely fine with not knowing everything.

The road to the market in Dangila.

Sometimes this not-knowing finds me in awkward situations.  Many times this is not so much from the lack of understanding the language, but more from the lack of direct communication.  It is not the culture here to directly correct someone.  I had a school teacher tell me recently that students learn to correct their mistakes here if you simply speak correctly, you do not need to tell them directly when they are incorrect.  Not true.  This is why person after person still yells “Where are you go?!” on the street when I pass.  This applies for when I make mistakes also; they never get corrected.

The main road in Dangila.

A good example would be when I took those 10 orphan boys to get tested for HIV during my Testing Raffle event last fall.  Several people knew this was happening, and the boys all agreed and wanted to go, but no one cared to mention that the boys were all 14, and you cannot get tested without a guardian until you are 15. That was an awkward arrival at the health center.

This not-knowing is something I’ve learned to deal with but not something that I find particularly fun, nor does it tend to end with a positive outcome… until this past week.  After a meeting with my counterpart and the Dangila mayor about my internet café project I was told we needed to come up with possible vacant land options to submit to the mayor.  Then the town would decide whether or not to approve our land proposal, and once a location is approved the grant would pay for a container to be built on that land for our internet café.  My counterpart and I were sitting in our office discussing land options for a few hours when he mentions casually, ‘we could use the container across town that was built to help orphans.’

Excuse me?
There is a vacant container that was built with the intention of starting a business to help orphans? Why were we not planning on using this all along? We struggled to come up with that 25% “Community Contribution” necessary to receive the grant money.  How did this never come up?

The next day we pitched the idea to the mayor of using that container for our project and he was elated with the idea! He mentioned that he is very excited to help us in creating a sustainable business to really help Dangila’s orphans for years to come!

Sometimes things just fall into place.  And something you wonder how you can not-know something so obvious for such a long period of time.  But usually I am out-of-the-loop, which I've come to accept as part of the ferengi role. I’m very ecstatic about the possibility of having this premade location for our internet café!

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.