World Cup Fever

June in Ethiopia is pretty slow, at least in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer.  I remember it being slow last year, but this year the days just seem to drag by.  I mentioned in a previous blog that June has turned into a waiting game.  Students are having exams, which means I can’t teach my English class, and I’m not permitted to be on campus most days, even to arrange future programs.  The money for my internet café project has yet to come in, so that is at a stand still at the moment.  This leaves a lot of time for drinking coffee, eating injera, and watching the World Cup!

Not the world’s biggest soccer… er… football fan, but I’ve come to really appreciate the camaraderie of watching the matches with energized strangers.  Cafes and restaurants with television begin to fill, together we watch the players take the field and arbitrarily we each choose the team we want to root for during the next two hours.  Later you return home and look on your map to figure out where that country you yelled so hard for is located.  Who doesn’t love it?

Ethiopians really love football.  They don’t have a team in the World Cup but they sure do care about each and every match! It’s become something to do each afternoon, and evening for that matter, and I really do love the atmosphere.  One fateful afternoon the local television cut out with just 30 minutes until America played!  When power goes off in the neighboring town it cuts our television. Bad timing! I quickly got in a bajaj taxi and asked the driver, who is one of my friends, if there was any place in town that has the games by satellite.

Success came at a price—the only place with sports satellite is the hotel I’ve successfully boycotted for the past nine months, ever since they were the only place in town to refuse to donate to my HIV testing lottery program last October.  I bit the bullet and found a cozy spot (not really, the chairs are plastic) next to some loud truckers and local sports fanatics.  The crowd continued to grow since it was the only place in a town of over 30,000 people showing the match.  Look at that, the World Cup bringing people back together—sorry HaHu Hotel for boycotting you for so long… (this is the part where they admit to being lame for not donating).

My favorite part (read: most awkward part) of that match was that with every exciting play (goal, yellow card, bad call, etc) everyone would turn around to catch my reaction.  Needless to say I haven’t returned for another game there, although I am grateful there is a place in town with the sports satellite.  Most games I watch either at my landlord’s house, a nearby restaurant that I go to all the time anyway, or recently in my compound with neighbor Yedelfree who just bought a TV!

I hope America is just as excited about the World Cup as Dangila is, even though I doubt that’s possible.  Maybe in four years I can bring some football hype your way!

Finding Stillness

The key to living here is recognizing and enjoying life’s simple pleasures.  Letting that adorable child hold your hand on the way to town; taking time to read a book you’ve always wanted to read; saying a prayer of thankfulness when the water and electricity is working; finding a spot of stillness and peace.  When I was preparing for this Peace Corps experience I never thought I’d be reveling in any of these simple joys, but there are a lot of things about life here that I wasn’t necessarily prepared for.

Just the other day I had one of those moments of calmness in the midst of what seemed like a stressful, er, typical day in Dangila.  I decided to go for an afternoon walk through a new part of town—an activity which is asking for harassment on some level.  I realized that I had never ventured very far down my street to the left of my compound and decided spontaneously to explore.

Just a few blocks away from my house is a Mosque, which reliably wakes me with its “call to prayer” each morning, and whose minaret I consider an irreplaceable part of the Dangila skyline, but I’ve never walked past it before.  I headed in that direction and after passing the Mosque, as children began following behind me, I decided to make an ‘S’ shape, weaving through the blocks without a clear direction where I was heading.  Confused, and I assume bored of following the crazy ferengi, the children dispersed and I found myself staring down a donkey cart path that led away from town through a covering of acacia and eucalyptus trees.  I quickly took cover in the foliage of the forest, avoiding being spotted by nearby boys herding their sheep.  That path diverged into a narrow walking path, which Arbay (my dog) and I followed single-file.  I suddenly found myself surrounded on all sides by a forest; I was outdoors and completely alone (besides Arbay), for the first time in Dangila.

The only sound I could hear was the leaves on the trees rustling as the wind blew.  A sense peace and stillness came over me, and I was content to stay there the rest of the afternoon.  It was a calmness so rarely found as a foreigner here that I won’t soon forget.  I was with an antsy dog though, so our journey continued through to the other side of the forest where a field of young eucalyptus trees were growing, not yet knee-high.  I

followed on the edge of the tall forest, alongside the field, until I reached an open field where a group of boys were playing soccer.  I took a deep breath, knowing my serenity was going to be interrupted, but to my surprise a boy yelled out to me in English, “watch football!” and so I did.  I watched from the edge of the field as the boys kicked around the ball, and eventually they came over to talk to me.  I was impressed with their attitude towards me as a potential friend instead of a foreigner to gawk at inappropriately.  We talked in half English, half Amharic, and they were thoroughly entertained by my dog that shakes hands at the command of “selam.”

At the end, as I said I should go home, they made me promise to return the next day to play with them again.  A forest in Dangila that led me to a field of polite, eager young boys? I think I must have been dreaming.  I think I will explore new areas of Dangila on afternoon walks more often!