Playing In the Rain

I wrote a couple months ago about the water problems in town, and the consequential battles I have had on my compound.  I am happy to report that the “helper girl” with whom I did not see eye-to-eye has since left and the water collection process is much less of a battle.  While water problems still persist in my area of town, I would now equate my water issues to playing with bath toys; let me explain.

Since I have been living in Dangila for about five months now, I have never had water during the day.  The one tap on my compound only ever flows with water sometime around 10pm to 2am.  I have learned to live with this, in fact this past week I almost didn’t notice that we hadn’t had water in six days!  I have become very good at conserving water and making do with my 20 liter bucket, accompanied by my collection of water bottles that I fill up as well.  The chore that takes the most amount of water by far is washing clothes, and I tend to do laundry on the day after the water comes, filling up my wash basins to get the job done without having to touch my core water stash.

It is frustrating that every day it pours buckets of rain, and yet we still have no water coming out of the pipe.  Day six of no water and I became desperate for a few liters to wash dishes, not wanting to use my remaining two liters on anything but an emergency cooking/drinking stash.  Don’t call the authorities or anything, I could always buy bottled water in town to drink if I needed to, but I try not to.  The rain began to pour in the late afternoon and I went outside to witness Billie (formerly Muluwark, but I now call her by her nickname) filling up big containers with rainwater gushing from one the gutter spouts that lie on either side of my doorway.  I noticed one of her empty washbasins lying around and picked it up to help her collect water from the opposite spout.  Maritu, the helper girl of my landlord, soon came to join us with her own big containers.  One spout ends about six inches from the ground, perfect for collecting in a washbasin, while the other spout ends just an inch from the ground.  Billie quickly grabbed a plastic bag to fill from the latter spout, which she would then pour into her bucket.

The buckets I fill as often as I can!

After a while of helping out I decided that I really needed to wash dishes, so I grabbed my washbasin and was given a turn to fill it up at the spout that was still pouring out water, which was now mostly clear, as opposed to the first few loads which were a bit mucky.  An hour later, I was as happy as could be with a bucket full of clean dishes, retaining those last couple of liters of pipe water for drinking.  I think this was the beginning of a daily routine, which will allow me to wash clothes whenever I wish! Plus, it is fun being resourceful and playing in the rain, filling up buckets like they were bath toys!

Home Improvements

Each month Peace Corps pays me a living allowance through my Ethiopian bank account. It is a nice wage for an Ethiopian life style, I have never run out, even with my regional travels, but converted to US Dollars you could not get far in America. On top of my allowance, I am given monthly rent money. Each volunteer’s rent is different depending on the city, and I would say mine is just about average at USD $60 a month. I think my rent is pretty high actually for my small town, considering I have just two small rooms, but I don’t complain, especially since I don’t actually pay it! Peace Corps found our houses and they also negotiated our rents, so I really had no say in the matter. A few volunteers have switched houses for various reasons since arriving at site four months ago, so I could always move if there was a problem, but I really love my compound and neighbors. I have noticed lately the abundant amount of home-improvement projects happening on my compound. In fact, it seems that my landlord takes my rent every month and puts it right back into the compound. I have a feeling he’s not short on cash, and I’m not complaining as I get to reap the benefits of these projects! As I was moving in, four months ago, the new double bathroom with showers was just finishing being installed. Since that time, we have gotten a new water tank, a new fence was built in the backyard, and recently gutters were put in! I didn’t know Ethiopians even knew what gutters were. A man actually pounded and welded the gutters together from sheet metal, so it may have been a pioneer project. I’m not sure if I inspired these improvements or if this is an on-going trend, but I definitely appreciate the new additions! I should add that water problems are continuing even with daily rains, and the water tank hasn’t been filled in over a month now (for reasons that are lost in translation), which also means the showers aren’t working either (although I prefer a heated bucket bath anyways).

Most recently, after arriving back home from traveling last month, I came home to find the electricity out in town. All of Ethiopia has been having major electrical problems, for reasons I’m not exactly sure of, although rumors are abundant. Electricity here is all from hydro-electric power plants, so I’m hoping it is going to improve as the rainy season progresses. Dangila right now has electricity every other day, and talking to other volunteers I think that is pretty typical. Well, I came home that day and my landlord’s son, Yenebeb, tells me in Amharic that they now have a generator. I was confused at first, as a generator is something only one hotel in town has, but I didn’t think much of it. Right around 7:30pm, I heard a motor running and the lights popped on in my house! Not only did the landlord get a generator, but it runs electricity to the whole compound, not just the landlord’s house like I assumed! I am surely the only volunteer in the country with access to a generator, and it is probably the only residential generator in my entire zone. Like I said, I have no complaints about my relatively high rent. As I was writing this on my computer in my dark house, the generator popped on to recharge my dwindling computer battery!

Water Wars

I have mentioned the water situation in Dangila in the past, but I have yet to convey the entire story, and considering it is almost a daily routine these days, I figure it is a story worth telling.  Many towns in Ethiopia have a steady water supply available from a spigot either in ones compound or from a neighboring compound.  Some Peace Corps volunteers are in towns where they must haul water from a river.  That mentioned, some volunteers also have running water and flush toilets!  I find myself in the middle of these two extremes, but nevertheless would consider my routine a “water war.”

Many families in Ethiopia have girls that live with them to help with cooking and cleaning, formerly I have called them “maid girls,” but in Amharic they are called “saratanyas.”  I debate this concept constantly, still figuring out how I feel about it.  Typically, they are teenage girls who are from a rural community without a school (or perhaps without a good school) who live with families in towns like Dangila.  They attend the normal half day of school (all schooling here is split into morning session and afternoon session students, by grade) and help around the house for the rest of the day.  In my compound, there are three saratanyas, two help with my landlord’s family, and one to help with the other family with a 1-year-old baby.


Back to the water situation.  Dangila has running water normally between the hours of midnight and 2am, every two or three days, if we’re lucky.  My compound has a small water tank on a tower to provide a working spigot during the day, which is wonderful when the tower is working, and before that supply runs dry.  Lately, the tower hasn’t been working, and like most things, I do not know the reason, I just know that when I turn the knob, water hasn’t been pouring into my bucket as I would like it to.

I have one bucket for storing water which I would assume holds about 5 gallons.  When I am stingy, that bucket can last me about three days, but when I have laundry or want to bathe more than every three days, I could easily use two buckets a day.  Therefore, every night around 11pm I access my current water situation.  I have been hoarding all plastic bottles purchased, and I make sure to keep them filled with tap water for reserve on days when my stash is running low.  I like to empty my bucket before filling it, to rinse out any dust that has collected in the bottom.  I fill up all the bottles I can with the remaining good water, and wait until midnight to see if the water will actually come.  There is no pattern or schedule, the water comes sporadically.  One unfortunate night I counted my chickens before they hatched and dumped out the semi-dusty bottom fourth of my bucket, only to realize the water wasn’t coming that night (that dusty water could have still been used for chores like cleaning dishes).  So, starting at around 10pm until midnight the water may or may not come, you just never know.  When the water does come, I can hear the sound of water beating down on empty plastic outside my window.  And guess whose job it is to fill the buckets for the other families on my compound?  The saratanyas.

The one spigot on my compound is on the right side of this picture.

I have one bucket.  I have timed it, and as the water slowly pours into my bucket, it takes about 5 minutes to fill.  The landlord has, I would guess, over 15 containers to store water, and the other family has at least 6.  So begins the water wars.  The girls speak hardly any English and when they speak in Amharic it is faster than anything I could understand, plus I’m not really up-to-par on my water vocabulary, which makes for a nightly battle.

Once the saratanya starts filling up her containers, I can’t very well butt in with my bucket, and unaware of water-retrieving etiquette, I would just wait in my house for a break in the sound of water pounding on plastic, when I would hurry outside to catch the spigot unoccupied.  The girl who fills up the buckets for my landlord is the only one who isn’t incredibly warm towards me.  I thought I was making it up, but one desperate day I asked the kids in my compound for water, as they always have spare from their 15+ containers.  They eagerly set out to fill up my bucket from one of their containers, and the saratanya snapped at the kids for helping me!   It has taken a few months, but I now know that if I sit outside by my front door and read a book with my headlamp with my empty bucket beside me, the saratanya will eventually beckon me in Amharic and allow me to fill my one bucket before continuing with her marathon of containers.  As the spigot begins to fill my bucket I run back and forth from my house to the spigot filling any other pitchers, pots, or bottles unoccupied by water already.  I swear my 5 minute routine could be on a game show!

The Girl with a Plan

I always like to have a plan.  I plan things for tomorrow, I plan things for later this year, and I have even started planning possible adventures for after my time in the Peace Corps.  I suppose that is just who I am.  The next two years are going to be a testament to this habit of mine because it has never been harder to have a plan.

Recently I have found myself writing letters in the morning, explaining briefly, what I plan to do that day.  If you have received one of these letters, you can probably disregard what I wrote, because something entirely different probably occurred.  Yet, I am sitting here in my house on my laptop with a list in front of me of things I need to do tomorrow.  I can guarantee you all these things won’t be crossed off in the next 24 hours.  What I cannot guarantee is that ANY of these things will be crossed off!

That’s the funny thing about life here, you really never know what is going to happen when you wake up in the morning.  Everyday is different, and most days I really love that part of my life right now.  I don’t mind when things do go as planned I suppose, I just love having that plan in case I find time to myself (which is not often these days).  In fact, writing a new blog has been on my list for a while now, and guess what? That didn’t go as planned either.

I PLAN on getting online tomorrow and emailing my mom this update for her to post, but you just never know.  That plan requires the electricity to be on, the little store nearby that lets me use internet must be open, the phone line has to be working to allow the computer to dial up.  All that can only be a factor if I actually find time to go to the store in the first place.

Why have my plans fallen by the wayside? Well, partly because Ethiopians do not plan.  It is not unusual for me to get a knock on my door at any hour telling me to come drink coffee or eat injera.  These get-togethers are not typically announced to me beforehand, but rather a spontaneous gathering.  It is also not usually a question, but rather a command, “Be!” (Eat!).  These impromptu invitations have caused me more than once to eat a meal twice.  I will have just finished lunch when a knock comes announcing lunch next door.  I politely eat a small serving and enjoy the Ethiopian company.

Just this morning I planned on having a relaxing Saturday with only one appointment, lunch at 1pm lunch.  I planned on getting up at 6am and going on a run with Arbay at sunrise, the only time I can find a little peace and quiet outside my house.  Believe it or not, that part went as planned!  Then I planned on taking a shower, which had to be substituted with a bucket bath because not only was the water off, but the water tank on my compound was empty.  My lazy morning of reading was suspended when my neighbor Ali started talking to me about his new satellite dish.  It is not uncommon for families to have satellite TV, which Ali told me, cost 1400 Birr ($140) for the satellite box and dish (once you have the box and dish there are no additional payments).

So Ali tells me he thinks he has to pay 200 Birr for someone to assemble the dish ($20 for assembling a small dish here is outrageous!).  I tell him I am quite handy and that I will help him put it together.  After a short trip to the hardware store, where they let us borrow the 2 wrenches we needed, it took less than an hour for me to decode the confusing instructions put together the dish with the help of Ali and the 12-year-old son of my landlord.  They were so grateful that they insisted on feeding me lunch at noon, which I could not decline, before hurrying off to my 1pm lunch appointment.

After that lunch appointment and coffee ceremony, I headed home expecting another coffee ceremony at my neighbor’s house (which was mentioned to me earlier this morning).  It is now 4pm, the other coffee ceremony has yet to occur, but I did take time to play jump rope (with an old tube of some sort) with the kids in my compound for a while.  Now I finally have found a brief moment of silence and decided to sneak away to my house before the next inevitable knock at my door!

The Fabric of My Life

If you are what you eat, I am a weird mix between Ethiopian and American. If home is where the heart is, then my home is in Marietta, GA.  But, if you are what your home is, then I am currently a very unfashionable person.

I did not realize until just this week how peculiar the patterns and colors in my home would be to an outsider looking in; by outsider, I mean an American, because in Ethiopia, my home blends right in.  Now, I never thought I would say the words, “blends right in” about this harsh color of pink that adorns my walls, but it is true.  I believe there is some Ethiopian paint company out there who made about four shades of paint for the entire country and must have a monopoly because I have yet to see any competitors.  The colors I have seen are electric blue, bright yellow, a prominent teal, and a vivid pink.  These shades are used for just about every house, office, and store, inside and out.

You can ask my college roommates, I am not typically concerned with decorations or stylish trends, but I do admit that my house is pushing even my limit for clashing colors.  Against one of my wonderfully pink walls sits my disgracefully green sofa.  Even visiting PC staff made a comment about how Ethiopian the pattern of the sofa is.  I do not know if green is the right color to use, but I will upload a picture so you can name the floral pattern yourself.  The sofa was donated by my landlord though and since I do not care enough to have another slip cover made; I am going to let it be.  I must add that the literal translation of slipcover in Amharic is “sofa clothes,” haha.

Underneath my beautiful sofa lies my intriguingly geometric floor covering, also chosen by my landlord.  I am not sure that an attractive floor covering exists in this country anyway, but especially since it was free of cost for me, I will not be complaining!  It serves its purpose of covering my cement floors, and creating an easy-to-sweep surface, which is good enough for me.

Moving into the adjacent bedroom, prominently hanging from the middle of the ceiling is the bright blue mosquito net I was given by Peace Corps.  I did not know that mosquito nets came in this lovely color, and you can imagine my surprise when I opened the packaging since my net in training was a simple white.  I think it accents the pink walls appropriately and brings out the best in the plastic flooring beneath it though.

Finally, nestled beneath the radiant blue mosquito net rests my cozy Ethiopian bed sheets.  When you shop for sheets here, they present you with three options: floral blue, floral green or floral pink.  I, of course, opted for floral pink to highlight the pink walls.  Since that original purchase, I have added a second set of sheets that are floral blue, just to switch it up a little bit.  That second pair of sheets comes in handy when I do not feel like both hand washing sheets and changing my sheets on the same day!

I hope this little fabric tour of my home has given you a better idea of my living situation. I must admit that coming into the Peace Corps I thought my walls might be made of straw, and I never thought I would have a sofa, so all these amenities and the beautiful patterns that come with them are very much appreciated!

My Compound and Its Pecking Order

New puppy checking out mama cow.

With all the animals running around my compound I am still trying to figure out who actually lives here and who has just found his way through a hole in the fence for a visit.  My compound has a ten-foot high cement wall around two sides and a wood/metal fence around the other two sides.  The latter of which is known to have several holes, found recently by my growing puppy.   Within my compound, there is one main house where my landlord, his wife, and their three children reside.  Beside the main house is a long building containing five rooms, with three separate doors.  Two of those rooms and one of those doors belongs to my humble abode, where my puppy and I reside.  The other three rooms are the home to another family with just a little 10-month-old baby.

As you walk through the yellow door to my compound, you find the main house in front of you on the right, and the longer building I live in on the left. In front of the house is a small yard area usually filled with construction material belonging to my landlord who works as a contractor.  Between the two houses is the walkway to the backyard, which contains a few rooms used as the landlord’s kitchen and housing for various animals. 

Part of the backyard is partitioned off to house the large cow at night (see the post titled “My Undefined Role” for more details about her); another partition stands to hold loads of scrap wood used for fire, and in the center of the main yard area there is a small water tower and faucet where we all get our water.  This tower in the backyard creates the perfect circle, around which the animals tend to chase each other, battling for a dominate position and respect.  This brings me to the subject of my ponderings this week- the pecking order forming in my compound.  Allow me to first list the order, and then I will try to explain some rather entertaining stories that lead me to these conclusions.

Human adults
The large mother cow
Human children
The baby calf
Arbay, my puppy
Chickens

Now each of these steps contains obvious exceptions.  First, I have seen the children, and adults often fall down on this list to just above chickens, as a small puppy brings them to shrieks and screams.  Rather entertaining for me, especially when it is children who come into my compound uninvited to sneak a peak at the “ferengi house.”  I also might add that Arbay has never bitten anyone, as I would then find their horrified reaction as appropriate rather than amusing. I have often been one of the adults to fall below the large cow on the list, but on principle it is the humans who corral the cow into her sleeping area each night, so she will remain below humans on the list.

Arbay, as she grows bigger by the day, grows equally braver. I predict in another month that she will be just about equal with the calf.  I have often seen her curiously approaching the calf, whom we call Teja (Amharic for calf, and therefore his name), and each time she gets slightly more daring.  However, she remains second to the bottom on this list because as she grows, so does Teja, and I can’t help but think of the consequences of Teja’s agitated head-first charges once he grows horns bigger than his mother’s.

Arbay also has been known to drop to the bottom of this list.  Most of the time the chickens do not stand a chance against her; a few times I have seen her scare them so much that they have actually made the flight over the ten-foot compound wall!  I do not however feel pity for them, because it is that rooster who also serves as my alarm clock each morning before the sun even dares to show its face.  One of the funniest interactions I have seen though was when the chicken turned around mid-chase, pecking her beak back at Arbay, causing her to become the chased for the first time in their relationship!