Arrival of Group 3

Last week I was invited to Assela to help with the Training of Trainers for Peace Corps’s third group of trainees.  Assela is located about 4 hours southeast of the capital, and it is where most of the Ethiopian runners train because of its elevation.  This was the third, and last week of the training to prepare the Ethiopian trainers.  You see, Amharic is not commonly taught as a second language to foreigners, and Ethiopian teaching methods consist of mainly writing lists of words on a chalkboard to be copied.  So, we had a lot of work to do to prepare the teachers!

Only 4 of the 14 teachers were returning from my group of training, but at least some of them had experience with Peace Corps previously.  One other volunteer and myself taught a few sessions on interactive teaching methods, and we listened to each teacher give a micro-lesson.  Overall it was a fun week getting to know the trainers, not to mention a week of hot showers and eating out!

The most exciting part of the week was actually my last hour and a half in Assela; it was what we had been preparing the teachers for all week: the arrival of group 3!  Since I was leaving early Sunday morning on a bus back to Dangila, I had to be in Addis, the capital, Saturday night, which means I had to leave Assela by around 3pm.  Since the volunteers didn’t arrive for the lunch program until 1:30pm, it was a very brief meeting, but exciting nonetheless.  It was so fun for me to be on the other side of things.  I have been there, I know the anxiety leading up to meeting your host family, I know the pressure of having to learn this difficult language, and I know the awkwardness of trying to understand this culture.  I have great memories of those events from last winter and I have grown so much in the past 10 months, but I don’t envy them.  I had a great experience, but I’m so glad that I’m past that.  Life if so vastly different at site than it is during training, and meeting the new group was a great reminder of how far I’ve come.

In November I will get to meet the volunteers placed near me when they visit for their site visit, and in December I get to spend another week in Assela helping with training, just before they are sworn-in as volunteers.  It is exciting to have 40 new Americans in-country!

Travels to Tigray

The twelve-year-old boy in charge of taking money on the mini-bus from Mekele to Wukro was very surprised when six foreigners hopped in.  He watched us carefully for a while, and eventually asked me a question in Amharic.  He curiously asked where we were going, and where we were from, and then I mentioned that we lived in Ethiopia.
“No you don’t,” he said.
“Yes we do,” I said, as I pointed at each person and said where he or she lives.
He continued to look at me with curious eyes as if he was calculating the possibility of what I had told him.  He still seemed very skeptical.
“Is it not possible?” I asked.
“It is possible,” he responded, “but it is not.”
 

That was one of my favorite conversations I encountered on my trip to visit Tigray.  I eventually convinced him that it was the truth, and then he continued to ramble on for the rest of the trip about his favorite movies. 

It is amazing how each part of the country is vastly different from the others.  I was so impressed by the number of stone buildings replacing the mud walls that I am surrounded by in Amhara.  The soil was much sandier, and coupled with the sandstone houses, and dry countryside, everything appeared beige.  Tigray is the northeastern Region in Ethiopia, bordering Eritrea.  The first language of the region is Tigrinia, making it feel like a completely different country, not knowing a single word.  Luckily, for the ease of getting around, if you started a conversation in Amharic, people would often respond accordingly.

I was able to spend two nights in Mekele, and two around Axum, visiting many historical sites in each of those cities and in-between.  The history of Ethiopia is so rich, and at each site, I kept trying to imagine what the atmosphere would have been like thousands of years ago.  Castles, churches, monoliths; each had their own ancient tales.

While my stories are abundant, only pictures can tell the bulk of what I saw.  From the camel market in Mekele, to the church chiseled out of a mountain outside Wukro, to St. Mary’s Church in Axum, where it is believed that the Ark of the Covenant is still kept.  This beautiful country continues to amaze me.

 

Meskel Square

Last weekend I was all packed up and ready to leave for about a week to visit the northern part of Ethiopia, Tigray Region.  We left on an 11-hour bus trip to the capital city, Addis Ababa, to begin our journey and we were planning on flying out Sunday morning to Mekele, the capital of the Tigray Region.  I knew Sunday was the Meskel holiday, but I didn’t know that it was celebrated in Addis with a mass gathering in Meskel Square!  Since we were coincidentally there on Saturday afternoon, we decided to brave the crowd and experience Meskel the right way.

Three of us met up with our Ethiopian friend and started walking towards Meskel Square.  The main streets were blocked off and masses of Ethiopians were starting to gather.  It looked like downtown right before a baseball game.  We joined the flow of people and along the walk there was a glimpse of the normally bare Meskel Square that was now overflowing with people.  The Square is about the length of a football field; enclosed on one side by a half-oval of steps where people were crammed into, and open on the other side to the main road which was closed to traffic.  The square (which is actually not square, but a half-oval) and out into the street formed a stage filled with hundreds of performers and priest all dressed in white traditional clothes.

As with most mass-gatherings, it was a bit chaotic, and the only way in was now packed with people.  The crowd around us became more dense as we were being pushed towards the small opening in front of us.  Once through a security check and around a corner we realized that the only way to get into the raised section above us was to scale a 6-foot wall.  It seemed like this was the only option, so while clutching our bags and forming a chain we made our way to the wall and followed the Ethiopians in helping each other over.  At last there was no pushing.

We then followed a natural aisle through the masses of people and found a spot where we could peak over people to see the festivities down below.  Luckily in a crowd of Ethiopians I can actually see over most people!  There was a presentation from the Orthodox Pope, and performers dressed in red, yellow and green formed the shape of the Ethiopian flag.  After about an hour, around dusk, waxed rope used as candles was passed out among the crowd of people and the highlight of the Meskel holiday was about to take place: the bonfire!  In the middle of the square a huge pile of wood was being prepared for burning as the people started to pass their flame from candle-to-candle throughout the mass crowd.  The sky turned dark blue just as the candle light filled the square while groups of Ethiopians continued chanting and dancing.  Just as the whole crowd had received the passing flame, the bonfire was lit and fireworks were shot into the air.  The sky filled with smoke and the thousands of twinkling candles formed a sea of lights.  It was a truly majestic scene.  Not long after the fireworks stopped the crowd disseminated in what seemed like a much easier fashion than the initial wall-climbing fiasco.  It was such a great evening; one of my favorite days in Ethiopia.  I retract my former comment about all Ethiopian holidays seeming the same, because Meskel was different in many ways.  I loved celebrating in Addis, feeling like I was a part of something big and truly experiencing the Ethiopian culture in a new way.