Peace In My Garden...For a Moment

The day after my landlord’s family moved out I found myself completely alone in my compound for the first time.  There were a couple weeks earlier this year when the family only had one girl helping around the house, and when she went to school I would be alone, but I was always expecting someone to show up any minute.  This time I was alone.  No one was coming or going.  I locked the gate from the inside and wasn’t expecting any visitors.

What do you do with a whole compound to yourself? I wondered.  I’ve had countless ideas throughout the past year and a half about things I would love to do if I were alone in my compound, but all of a sudden none of them were coming to mind.  I realized that I wasn’t just alone, I was lonely.

I found myself strolling around my compound trying to think of something to fill my Sunday afternoon.  That’s when I grabbed a shovel, headed to the front yard and started digging.  I think I took my inspiration from Barbara Kingsolver, the author of two of my recent reads.  My life fits in somewhere between The Poisonwood Bible and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle although far less extreme than either.  The latter has been one of my favorite reads so far (highly recommended) and had me hoping for just a moment that my mother’s green thumb didn’t reach a genetic dead-end with me like I thought.

Several hours later, I’d tilled an L-shaped bed in the corner of my small yard, putting that permaculture training from last year to use for the first time.  I felt so accomplished with myself, as if I’d truly been able to push loneliness out of my compound with a little gardening.  I walked around the corner of the big house into view of the door of my house and realized that I’ll never truly be alone. No, I’m not being sappy, I mean I literally can never be alone because the landlord left his mama and baby cow to live on my compound (and a guy comes by to tend for them daily).  My first lesson of living alone: never leave the door open and house unattended.

The baby cow stood in my doorway munching on my bag of tomatoes and I swear he was snickering at me.  I entered my house to find a disaster area that must have taken the cow over an hour to meticulously destroy.  In a nutshell, the majority of the mess came from him eating a bag of flour I had on my counter and then traipsing around my house leaving flour-drool all over the place. After quickly sweeping a pile of flour into my trashcan (the drool clean-up would take hours later on). Venturing into the backyard to empty my trash bucket, I was so livid that I swung the bucket to hit the cow and managed to crack my bucket.  Oops.

In one afternoon I revisited every high and low of the Peace Corps emotional roller coaster.  All in a day’s work, I figure.  At the end of the day though, I have a garden growing and while my hatred for the baby cow is also growing, I am learning to live with the cattle.  I also just found out that I will be allowed to move into the big house on my compound (which my landlord just vacated) as soon as we return from a “training” down south next week!  Hooray for triple the living space!

My Book Exchange

During my first month in Dangila I had my furniture made at a garage that I walk past on my way into town.  Just about everyday I would stop by to say “hi” and check on the progress of my furniture.  The workers there are all about my age and they have turned into great friends.  In fact, seven months later I still stop by several times a week to say “hi” and chat with my friends.  When my furniture was finished back in March and the donkey cart was charging me a ridiculous price to haul my furniture, the guys hauled the shelves to my home free of charge.  One particular friend, Andualem, speaks decent English, and as he delivered my last piece of furniture, he noticed my shelf stocked with books I have collected from friends and the PC library.  He asked if he could read one, and I hesitantly agreed to let him borrow a book.

This is Andualem.

I have to be careful in Dangila because, for all I know, word could spread and a dozen people may approach me tomorrow asking to borrow books.  Such epidemics have been known to spread especially with children and candy!  A couple weeks later no such requests had been made for books, and when I asked Andualem how the book was coming he said something about chapter 2.  I didn’t quite understand what he was saying, so I asked him to clarify, and realized he was saying that he read it twice!  I was so impressed and immediately offered to bring him a new book the next day.  Just about every month since then I have been trading books with Andualem as he finishes them.  He prefers nonfiction best, as I learned when I gave him the first “Harry Potter” book a while back.  After he handed it back to me and expressed to me that many of the words were confusing, I reread it from his view-point and realized that mail-carrying owls and the rest of the Hogwarts world contains vocabulary that a mediocre English speaker wouldn’t be able to decode.  I select Andualem’s books more carefully from now on,  but I am so impressed with his motivation to read and improve his English skills.  Something about this book program I have with him makes me happy knowing that I’m giving him an opportunity to improve his English.

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!