Dusty Season

Ethiopian spring has sprung! The only big differences here are that pollen is replaced by dust, green grass is replaced with dirt, and colorful flowers are replaced by, well, the lack of anything colorful at all.  Having moved to Dangila last February this was the first season I experienced here, and since then apparently I blocked that memory from my mind.  I completely forgot how hot it can get here, and how dusty everything becomes.  My supervisor even brought up my joke last spring about “which road is not dusty?” (see blogs from last spring) and we laughed about it in the office for a good hour this morning.

Even though the “air condition” right now is not exactly favorable (air condition here literally means the condition of the air, having nothing to do with machines that alter temperatures) I still find myself in one of the happiest states that I think I’ve been in since I arrived.  Friends are always surrounding me (Ethiopian and foreign), work is good (meaning it is existent), and I am loving Dangila.  Last fall I made a deal with myself to stay in site for an entire month without leaving, and let’s just say it didn’t happen.  I always like spending weekends with friends and taking advantage of every opportunity that arises.  But this month I’m just completely happy and content here is Dangila, and I will easily spend a month here without leaving.

The other day I was working the HIV testing event at the high school and happen to leave the compound to walk home for lunch at the shift change between 9th and 10th grade.  The shift change is basically my worst nightmare; a sea of turquoise uniforms, 5,000 teenagers, all without somewhere to be for the next 15 minutes, and I found myself in the middle.  A year ago, the event would have brought me to tears; I would have drowned in the sea of the harassment, feeling like an outsider.  This year I swam through that sea with confidence.  Not a single person yelled “ferengi,” but instead the students called my name, chatted with me as I walked, and greeted me with friendly handshakes.  I’m finally starting to feel like I belong here, and I’m a part of this community.

 

I just finished week 4 of English/Life Skills classes with my two classes of high school girls, I have meetings set up to start a business project with those 10 boys I helped out with last fall, and there is less than a week until the big Easter celebration (and the end of fasting!).  Yesterday I had a sudden urge to clean my house (a rarity) and found myself mopping my floors a few minutes later.  Yenebeb (the 9-year-old son of my landlord) walked by my door and asked with a smile, “are you cleaning for the holiday?”  A common Ethiopian habit is to clean everything before big holidays (I suppose Americans do this too) because they always host the neighbors and want their house to look nice.  I smiled and said “yes” figuring it was easier than admitting I hadn’t mopped my house in probably 8 months.  No time like the present for a little spring cleaning!

Time is starting to fly by during year 2 in Ethiopia.  The countdown is at 9.5 months, which doesn’t seem like enough to finish all I want to do here.  Before I know it dusty season will become muddy season, muddy season will fade, and my departure will be imminent.

Hitting the Ground Running

I arrived back in Dangila just one week ago and have already logged more hours in the classroom than in the entire prior year.  Before I left for Mid-Service Conference my counterpart from the Anti-Malaria Association, Yebeletal, and I decided we wanted to co-teach a group of girls grade 9-12.  We decided upon a basic curriculum, English and Life skills, and approached the high school and preparatory school in town about our “English Club” idea.  They were immediately receptive, but I still doubted the amount of work that would be done to arrange the classes while I was out of town.

To my surprise when I visited Yebeletal’s office the day after arriving back in Dangila he said we had class that night, and two classes the next day! Moreover, one session of the class had already been conducted without me!  I immediately jumped onboard and began preparing my Life skills (empowerment tools) lessons.  Now I am teaching a two-hour class four days a week! The schools were instructed to choose 15 female students from each grade that wanted to attend an extracurricular class, and we divided them into two groups to keep the classes under 30 students each.

In addition to teaching, HAPCO (my counterpart organization) has finally received funding for their normal activities such as VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing, for HIV).  These events I have mentioned in the past, where the health workers go out into the community and set up a testing station for a few days at a time to allow residents to get tested without having to go to the health center.  This week I’ve attended two all-day VCT events at the high school, where my job includes running around trying to recruit the 9th and 10th graders to get tested, along with trying to speed up the line of people waiting by taking student’s age and distributing identification numbers.  In just two days 600 students were tested!  I feel like the past week has been a complete whirlwind of events and work; In fact, I haven’t even had time to unpack my backpack from the trip.

I’ve been talking to my HAPCO supervisor about starting a project with those 10 orphaned boys I helped out late last year, and I have a couple other big project ideas swirling around in my head that should keep me just as busy for the next six months.  The craziest part of all this chaos is that the months I have left here definitely feel numbered. I’m down to less than 10 months until my group can begin to COS (close service).  As exhausted as I am from this week filled with long workdays, I would love to spend the next 10 months doing just that.  I really want to make the most of every day I have left here, because I know it will all be over with before I know it.

Once again, I want to thank everyone for supporting me in this journey of mine.  I am truly having the time of my life and slowly but surely discovering what I want to do in this world. Thank you.

Cultural Catch 22

One of my recent projects I started talking to my HAPCO counterparts about is a promotional campaign for people to get HIV tested.  That’s right, bringing my Communication degree skills to Dangila!  Let me explain some of the preliminary research I have been doing first...

At the health center in Dangila people with HIV can come get first-line ART medication for free.  This medication has only become available in Ethiopia a couple years ago, and it is changing HIV.  With the medication, HIV can be seen as a chronic illness, not the death sentence it used to be.  The problem is that in Ethiopia, there is still a huge stigma surrounding HIV and people don’t completely understand the drugs.  I have been reviewing some charts of ART patients in the health center and the problem seems to be that people aren’t starting ART soon enough, so it is not effective.  I realized that what I want to convey to the people of Dangila is that they need to be tested on a regular basis so that if they do have HIV, they can start ARTs at the appropriate stage to help prolong their life.

It was through all of this that I came up with the idea to have an advertising push for getting yourself tested.  Since it is free to be tested at the health center, it seems to me like an easy product to sell.  All they have to do is walk over there once every three months, get pricked by a needle, and wait 30 minutes for results.  I want people to realize that with ARTs available, there isn’t a death certificate attached to the disease; ART can extend your life, but you have to know that you have HIV in the early stages.

I got together with one of my good Ethiopian friends while HAPCO was in a meeting and we translated a sample flier into Amharic.  It wound up being so catchy; the translation was funny and engaging and I was very excited about printing them out and hanging them all over town! I presented the idea to my HAPCO supervisor after their meeting finished and ran into an unexpected wall.  The very religious people of Ethiopia don’t believe that medicine can extend your life, but rather only God can decide the number of days you will live.  So, basically, you can’t deliver the punch line of my flier; you can’t say ART extends your life.  This life-changing drug is available and you can pretty much only say “ART will relieve the pain of HIV,” which isn’t what it does.

 
I found myself caught in this loop of wanting to express to the Ethiopians the greatness of ART in order to reduce stigma around HIV, but not being able to convey how it can extend your life without insulting their religion and culture.  I just don’t get it.  I am religious and I agree that God has our days numbered before we were ever created.  I also believe that God created this world full of hidden wonders so that we can discover the world for ourselves.  One recent discovery, which I believe God allowed for and provided for, is ART.  It is the same concept as getting your infants vaccinated, which many Ethiopians do; you are using God-given medications to stop the diseases from killing you so that you can fulfill God’s purpose for your life!

 
But apparently all of that would be found insulting to their religion.  It doesn’t make sense to me, but I intend to figure out a way to communicate to the people how important it is to get tested without using the incentive of life-extending drugs.  Still working on it...

Exploit Me, Please!

Today I headed into the HAPCO office around 9:30am as usual.  I wrote a letter and read a magazine while I waited for my supervisor, Tilahun, to come back from an appointment of some sort.  When he returned we chatted about the town and he informed he that once again, there is no work to do, because they are waiting on funding.  As I was walking out of the office a couple hours after I arrived I confirmed once more that there were no meetings today before heading out into the community for the afternoon.  Tilahun called after me, “Wait! There is one.  There is an HIV testing going on at the preparatory school that started yesterday and is finishing today.  I am going to visit this afternoon if you would like to come.”

After lunch, I came back to the office and three of us hopped into a bajaj, the three-wheeled taxis, and rode the five minutes to the school.  I had been to one VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) out in the rural areas a few weeks before, so I knew what to expect—a large group of people each given a number as an identification waiting to be called.  Each person is first called upon by the counselor, who privately gathers basic personal information such as age, and gender.  Next, the medical worker will call each person up to have his or her blood drawn.  Finally, after about 30 minutes, the same counselor will call each person back to give then a brief counseling session as they read the HIV results.  Because this is a “mobile VCT,” is it not held in a health center, but simply outside in a small area, in which the counselor secludes himself/herself in a wooded area for privacy.

As we walked into the compound of the preparatory school and I followed Tilahun we approached a group of three men sitting around chatting.  I waited for a moment, looking around for a cluster of high school-aged students nearby to find the testing site, when I saw a rack holding vials of blood beside one of the men.  “This is where they are doing the testing? Where are the students?” It was about 2pm on Tuesday, the second day of this two-day VCT.  They had sat outside for almost two full days and only had 40 students tested yesterday and just 28 today! The school has over 3,000 students!

A group of high school students in their blue uniforms.

I could not believe it. Tilahun was very disappointed, saying that he was expecting over 300 students to be tested in these two days.  We sat around for a little while and I zoned out of the Amharic conversation going on around me and started looking around the schoolyard for students dressed in blue uniforms.  As a few students walked in relatively close proximity to us, Tilahun noticed them too, called to them in Amharic asking them to come to the VCT.  I watched them wave and keep on walking, but Tilahun’s eagerness sparked motivation inside of me. “Come on!” I said standing up from the bench I was seated on and motioning for Tilahun to follow me.  “Let’s not just sit around, let’s go talk to these students that seem to just be lingering around the campus.”  Tilahun was more than willing to humor me but I could tell the tone of his response that he did not think it would do any good.

During training in Ambo, we split up into four groups of ten people and spend one day a week for four weeks in smaller towns surrounding Ambo.  We visited schools and anti-AIDS clubs, learning a lot about how to start getting involved with HIV activities.  If I learned nothing else from those visit (which is not the case), one statement made by a student there stuck in my mind: “Just your ferengi presence is power.”  I knew it was true because it is hard not to notice the heads turning everywhere I go.  Tilahun always talks about “incentives” for meetings, claiming we must supply people with per diem, or at least tea and coffee to get them to come.  I know that if I advertise that I am going to be pretty much anywhere, people show up, no free tea or coffee necessary.

We walked around the school’s campus and noticed several groups of students merely hanging out by the doors of their classrooms.  Tilahun took the initiative and told the students to get back in their seats, and they obeyed as we strolled in behind them, standing in front of the classroom.  He began speaking in Amharic about the VCT going on today, which they had all been informed about last week.  As he spoke, I looked out to a sea of eyes, all staring at me.  I heard him introduce me in his impromptu speech and a few students spoke out, wanting me to say something in English.  I am pretty sure I was already beaming at this point, realizing how much this was going to help promote the testing; I then greeted them in Amharic and spoke very briefly in English about the VCT going on, unsure of how much they were really comprehending.  I am still uncertain if they could detect a tone of begging across language and cultural barriers, but at the time, I did not care, knowing that this operation was already shamelessly using my presence as power.  We repeated this about five more times to classrooms of about thirty students, all of which happen to be missing a teacher today.  That problem I will address another day.

Students lining up to get tested for HIV.

By the time we finished talking to the last classroom and returned to the testing area there, gathered around the site, was a group of blue-uniform wearing students all waiting to be tested.  It was the exact site I expected when arriving an hour or so before.  Tilahun smiled back at me, happy in our accomplishment of recruiting so many students.  I think today he finally realized how much we can accomplish together.  We did not reach the original goal, but in the last two hours of the VCT we nearly doubled the amount of students tested.  I told Tilahun to please exploit the ferengi any time you want to help people learn about HIV.  I had one of the best days today at an event that was almost overlooked.  For the first time I did not get frustrated by the stares, instead I smiled and allowed myself to be the circus show, smiling and waving as students took pictures of me with their cell phones, knowing that being exploited for the betterment of Dangila is something I can endure any day.