Our Meskel Vlog

This is our video about Meskel, otherwise known as "the finding of the true cross." For some reason, this is celebrated with lots of singing, dancing, drinking and tons of bonfires around town. I do not understand it perfectly, but I like the way they celebrate!

 

~Jessie

The Expat Disaster Multiplier Effect

D-“Shit happens.” A comforting remark I have heard many times in reference to life’s minor albeit annoying inconveniences that may befall a person on any given day. You get locked out of your house, you forget to go to the market, you get 90% of the way through cooking a meal before you realize you are missing an essential ingredient…these sorts of things. Well, I have learned from my travels and multi-year stints abroad that life’s “minor inconveniences” are made many times worse just for having them happen to you abroad. It all began at 4:00am this morning. I was startled awake by the loud crackling speakers broadcasting what I suppose is the morning prayer from the orthodox church. The sound can only be described as sort of a sour, droning chant that can (and did) carry on for hours without pause. Exactly what days this will happen is hitherto unpredictable for me. For obvious reasons, I procrastinated on getting ready for work this morning until it was time to run to the kitchen to heat up water for my bucket shower. When I got to the bathroom I decided I only had time to wash my hair (bathing is an extremely time consuming ritual now when we choose to do it). I proceeded to reach for the shampoo when suddenly I slipped back and gave myself the deepest cut of my life just above my elbow on the rusty, corrugated sheet metal door of the bathroom. The gash was BAD. If I were back home I almost certainly would have stitches by now, but if you read my previous post about my last visit to the hospital you might understand why I decided to try and tough it out at home. I went to work and taught as normal. The cut was on my left arm unfortunately as it is the arm I use to write on the chalk board. Luckily, despite how deep it was, it didn’t bleed a lot. Still, I was beginning to worry that I might actually need to call the medical office about it since my entire arm was feeling sore. After I showed it to Jessie, however, she demanded I call about it. We were coming home from an after-work coffee break with our site mate when I suddenly noticed that I did NOT have my keys. When I misplace something important in this country, I tend to get a little more worried than usual, as other PCVs and locals alike have warned me that if you leave ANYTHING in ANY public place, you will NEVER see it again. This time, I had lost the house key, compound key, and my school locker key that I share with another teacher. All kinds of things are going through my head as I panic looking EVERYWHERE for this key. Even doing that irrational thing where I look in my pocket 10+ times as if the keys would reappear there. Did it fall out at the coffee shop and the people who found are just waiting until I am away so they can rob my house? Etc. Luckily, I have an awesome local counterpart. I say that because he GETS SHIT DONE! I told him I was locked out and the only place I could think to look was at the school (it was 8pm). He grumbled on the phone but said he would come right over. When I walked over to meet him he said he had phoned the principal and she would walk with us to open the office and see if my key was there. My counterpart elected brave the pitch-black streets of Fiche with its gangs of wild dogs, torn up side roads, the distinct possibility of hyenas, and various other miscreants that roam the streets of the town after dark on the off chance that my keys were at the school. Cool guy 8-). It was a little awkward though when I got a call back from the PC medical office about the gash on my arm. I didn’t want to explain that it wasn’t a good time to talk since we were dodging wild dogs in the dark on the way to find my lost keys. After I hung up my counterpart laughed and said “This is probably the worst day in Fiche.” We were let in to the school compound by our M-14 toting security guard. “That’s some serious fire power to guard an empty school” I thought to myself. I should have been embarrassed, but I was so relived to find my keys dangling out of my locker. After I got them back, the cut on my arm hurt a little less and even looked smaller. Or at least, the worry I felt over my arm was quickly eclipsed by the key ordeal. Gotta love self-manufactured crises $-D Donovan Gregg

I Love Zombies!

J-I had a bit of a rough one today. You see, teaching here works in shifts. Since last week, I had been working the afternoon shift, and I thought that I was going to change shifts at the “end of the month.” I was in the midst of writing out my lesson plan for today, when I was informed that “the end of the month” had already come to pass because the calendar here is very, very different. Unfortunately, I was informed of this only after I had missed several classes. I might not be living in the West anymore, but even after 2 years living in a culture with a different sense of time, this type of thing does still occasionally get to me. I was essentially told not to bother showing up today, and I knew that this would wind up reflecting poorly on me as opposed to those who had not told me of the change. So, why did I end today grinning instead of agitatedly pressing my temples in frustration? I’ll tell you why: zombies. Specifically, “The Walking Dead.” Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I am no fan of horror/gore as a genre. However, for some odd reason, I am nuts about the AMC series “The Walking Dead.” For at least a week now, I have been slumping in my seat every time that a promo for the next season was aired on the Fox International station that is often playing on restaurant TVs here. It’s mostly a movie station, but it kept airing promos for the upcoming season. Considering what a cliff-hanger the last season left off at, you can imagine how bummed I was at the thought of not being able to watch the next season as it unfolds (or more likely having people back home post spoilers about it that ruin all the best moments in the season as would often happen back in South Korea). I thought for sure that at best we would have to wait until someone over here got a bootlegged copy to circulate among the volunteers, or at worst I’d have to wait until I went home. Well, It turns out that I was dead wrong about that (I’m not touching that pun; it’s too obvious). We were hanging out at our favorite juice bar again, drinking a couple of avocado juices, when we noticed that the place was starting to get really packed. They still had the channel tuned in to Fox, which was running plenty of pre-season-premier related stuff, but they had music playing over it so that you couldn’t tell what was being said. We cleared out as they were running the final episode of last season because we didn’t want to watch the first episode of this season without sound (and subtitled in Arabic). Still, the place seemed pretty packed and lively, and it did seem like a lot of people were paying a lot of attention to the silent TV. We decided to hit up a local net café to pass the remaining hour before the show would premier, and then we would duck into the hotel across the street from our house to see if they were playing the show with the volume up. This hotel, of which we are regulars at the restaurant/bar portion (for better or worse), normally plays the news on high volume all evening. Still, we took a chance, and at 7:20 PM we walked in to find the last episode of last season finishing up with the volume on, and a large collection of locals sitting around waiting anxiously for the new season. We grabbed a seat at a partially unoccupied table, ordered a couple of beers, and had a serious hour of bonding time with some of the men in our community. It was an AMAZING episode, a great experience, and we look forward to continuing doing this every Monday until the mid-season finale. The people of Fiche are Walking Dead fans; who knew?

My Trip to the Hospital

D-WARNING: The following story contains details that no true gentlemen would ever recount in any proper conversation, but because this story pertains to life in the Peace Corps, I will dispense with these formalities. No, seriously, this story is gross; consider yourself warned. Ughhhhh, when I get diarrhea at home it is unpleasant and inconvenient. When I get diarrhea in the Peace Corps, I know that the diarrhea is going to be the least inconvenient part of my day. You see, the worst part about getting diarrhea is what you have to do about it. That, or maybe I have had two exceptionally bad experiences, or I am a sissy…. who knows… but I digress… The course of my day started with calling in sick once I determined that walking to school and standing all morning would be dangerous. Still, I had to walk to the hospital very, very slowly, for obvious reasons. Thinking back it would have been smarter to take a tuktuk (or bajaj as they are referred to here). Anyway, on my way there a gangly beggar-woman started following me while rambling in a language that I am sure only she understood. I asked her in Afan Oromo “Maalbarbada?” (What do you want?), but I couldn’t identify an intelligible response. Normally they reply by asking for money or something. I really badly wanted to lose her, so I quickened my pace when suddenly she knelt to the ground and started screaming “WAYYO! WAYYO!” If you read the last post, this was this same thing that the “demon-possessed” girl was screaming. Obviously this woman was also deranged, but luckily some other local folks descended upon her and kept her from harassing me further. I finally reached the hospital after asking half a dozen locals who were shocked that I could speak any of the local language. I had to explain to at least three differentpeople what the Peace Corps is. One of them even replied “I don’t understand” to which I replied “It’s okay, I am not entirely sure my family does either.” I arrived at the clinic entrance only to find that is crowded with at least 70 people waiting to see a doctor, and many of these people were truly sick looking. Here’s where things got a little awkward. Because I am obviously a westerner, I was immediately served first, as had been the case the last time I had to go to the hospital for a similar issue. On one hand you feel bad about it, but on the other you just want to get the hell out of there. So I just went on ahead. By the way, the Peace Corps medical staff are amazing! However, in a case such as this, they will advise you to go to a local clinic to run tests, after which my Peace Corps doctor will consult with the local doctor over the phone to determine the best course of action. Per the Peace Corps doc’s request, I called him immediately after I arrived at the clinic, which would be necessary anyway since neither my Amharic orAfan Oromo skills are up to the task of explaining the problem. You can also see why pantomiming would also be awkward. People already think you are weird enough because you are white and in their town in the first place. Embarrassed at the extremely blatant priority given to me, I walk past all of the other sick people and into the doctor’s office. The doctor luckily spoke English very well and determined with the help of my Peace Corps doctor that I needed to provide a stool sample. Ahh man, I knew this was coming. I walked over to the lab with a man who was asking me the usual questions, and as per usual went right to the front of the line at the lab to get my tests done. Then to my befuddlement, the nurse hands me a stick that looks like a little tooth pick with a tiny little piece of cotton at the end and instructs me to bring back a stool sample. I thought to myself “Okay, at least they only need tiny bit. Last time they made go into a cup.” Another nurse directs me outside to the latrine, outside of which there are at least half a dozen other people there for the same purpose only they were content with just squatting out there on the lawn sans privacy. Well, I am still a little too green to do that, so I proceed to the latrine where it immediately became quite clear to me why no one was inside of it as it was near full and completely filthy on the inside. Still, I wanted my privacy. I proceeded to do what I thought was the right thing with the stick and just swabbed the area a little bit when suddenly I dropped the stick down the hole. Damn, now I had to go back and get another one. This time I was handed a Q-tip and a little lid to rest it on when I was finished (Couldn’t they have given me that last time as well? Whatever.). I repeated the same steps I took before and was very happy to finally hand over the sample and get out of there. Not so fast. The lady looked confused at the stick and said “No stool?” She explained that there needed to be more and handed me a bigger cup, to which I argued that getting it in a cup squatting over a latrine simply wasn’t an option because I am passing only liquid which is expelled like a shot gun blast. She still didn’t understand. Suddenly a woman pushes past me with a bloody sample of her own. The nurse actually grabbed the woman’s sample and showed it to me and said “See! Like this!” Getting angry, I explained that there was no way to collect a larger sample under these conditions without making a mess on my hands. Setting the cup on the ground wasn’t an option either unless she wanted to sample every other patient who had hitherto been there that morning as well. I asked for toilet paper, but she refused, saying there wasn’t any. There was also no soap and water available, so it wasn’t like I could just take it like a man and wash up later. By now I am furious and contemplating hopping a bus to Addis and meeting the Peace Corps doctor face to face. I called him instead and passed the phone off to the technician. Finally, the male tech produced toilet paper, rubber gloves, a bigger cup, and lead me to a TOILET. Anyway, to keep a long story from becoming an epic novel, I only have gastroenteritis, which is treatable with simple antibiotics. Luckily, I already had the antibiotics in my med kit so I didn’t have to navigate a pharmacy after that as well. Donovan Gregg

Spiders and Demonic Possession

D-Ahhh, it’s that time again… time for another blog update! This week was the first week of teaching in our new schools. So far, Jessie and I are both satisfied with our classes; however, with only 35 students to teach, it is safe to assume that they are only 2/3 full as more are expected to arrive next week. Why? I have no idea. It’s best not to ask. I find that most times the answers to my questions leave me more confused than I was before I asked. Perhaps you are wondering about the curious title of this post, and as I attempt to describe the following events I am reminded that I really need to carry my camera with me everywhere I go. I was finishing up my first class of the day; the students all stood up and uniformly said GOODBYE TEACHER!! I picked my jacket up off the floor (as it had fallen off of the desk), and in a manner becoming of a respected teacher in Ethiopia I briskly walked out of the room in a cool fashion. With my jacket over my shoulder, I suddenly felt a slight tickle under my collar. The floor was filthy so it must be a leaf or something, or so I thought. It was the latter. I reached back to remove whatever was bothering me, and when I brought my hand back in front of me…well, let’s just say for a second it looked like I brought a baby pet tarantula for show and tell. I started flailing around like the little sissy I apparently am. All of the other students outside were laughing hysterically, of course, until they walked up and saw this thing. Many of the boys walked up, and you could just see their faces sober up the second they saw it. It was black with a red tint and a big fat black ass. I am assured there are no poisonous spiders in the Highlands, but still. Still trying to recover my usual resting heart rate from the spider incident, I suddenly became aware of frantic screaming coming from up the dirt road leading to the other classroom. By this time I was standing with some of the other teachers. I noticed a girl who was being carried out of the classroom by five large (by Ethiopian standards) guys. This girl was moving her body in ways I have never outside of the movies. The girl was also screaming “MALO, MALO, WAYYO WAYYO!!!” which roughly translates into “PLEASE, PLEASE WHY ME? WHY ME?” Naturally, I asked the other teachers what in the hell was going on. The teachers replied with what sounded like “Satin, Satin.” Since I was a bit dense it didn’t dawn on me that they were actually saying “Satan, Satan.” I was about to ask where they were carrying her, but I noticed that they were carrying her in the direction of the Orthodox Church. Apparently, the consensus was that this girl had been possessed by a demon, for which she would presumably receive an exorcism. In the end, I counted over 8 people trying to restrain her. Donovan Gregg

The 3 Funniest Things I Saw Today All Involved Animals

J-Funny Thing #1:  The Junior Horse Thief

We were sitting at our favorite Mana-Jussii (juice bar) enjoying some papaya/papaya & avocado juice when a garri (horse drawn cart) pulled up to deliver water to the shop.  There is a particularly adorable little kid who hangs out at this shop.  Either his father is the owner or his mother is one of the waitresses.  He’s about 4 years old, if I were to guess, and he’s one of the cutest little kids I’ve seen here.  He likes to play a waving version of peek-a-boo with me whenever I’m in the shop.  Well, when the cart pulled up, the man driving it and the woman waitressing both start to unload the barrels of water from it.  Not missing a beat, the little kid jumps up on the cart, grabs the reigns, and uses the reigns to “mush” the horse so that it starts to pull out onto the road.  He only got about 3 feet before the cart’s owner grabbed the horse to stop him and the waitress pulled the kid off the cart, but it was funny enough that everyone in Mana-Jussii was busting a gut over it.  The kid looked pretty darn proud of himself as he ran past us into the back of the shop, and I couldn’t help but think, “This is what kids do when they can’t play Grand Theft Auto on a gaming consol.”  I will forevermore think of him as the pint-sized horse thief.

Funny Thing #2: Cows Going out for Coffee

It is common practice here that coffee shops cover the floors of their restaurants with fresh-cut, long green grass.  It’s an old-fashioned symbol of welcome here, and I personally love it because it means all the coffee shops smell like freshly mowed grass.  However, it appears that I’m not the only one who enjoys this smell.  Today when we were walking by one of the coffee shops (which had apparently been temporarily been abandoned by its owner), there were three very large, black cows wedged into the doorway of the shop.  It was such a bizarre site that it took me a second to realize that they were eating the grass off the floor.  The truth is, the coffee here is so good that even the cows need to go out for a shayii-buna break!

Funny Thing #3: The Wheelbarrow Sheep

Just when I thought my odd day was over, I saw something that really, REALLY made me wish that I had my camera.  As we were sitting down to enjoy some dinner and a draft, we spotted a man walking down the main road with a fairly large sheep.  Now, seeing someone walking with a herd animal is hardly newsworthy here, but it was the manner in which he was walking that had us both in stitches.  Normally people either have their sheep tied to a rope either by their neck or by their horns.  Sometimes you’ll notice a person taking the sheep by its front legs and pulling it in the direction that they want it to go.  Not this man.  No, instead he had taken both of the sheep’s hind legs and was jogging behind it at a rather brisk pace.  I mean it sincerely when I say that it looked like he was engaging in a one-man wheelbarrow race with the sheep as his partner.  I’m not sure if I will ever see this brave soul with his trusty sheep partner again, but I genuinely hope that I do, because words will never do justice to this particular comedy act.

Fiche is Fabulous!

J-Before we were assigned to our permanent sites, our director told us that “90% of PCVs think that they have the best site in their country.”  I honestly believe that we do.  Back before they had our sites assigned, we were asked what we were looking for in a site.  Our specs were: 1) Cold if that’s possible, 2) Green, 3) Rainy, 4) Clean air, 5) Strong enough internet connection that we can access at least once every week or two, 6) Not too big, not too small.  Boy, did they ever deliver!

Fiche is perfect for us climate wise.  It really reminds me of Oregon in terms of that, though as a general rule when it rains here it tends to be for part of the day instead of for days on end.  We also get a decent amount of thunderstorms, our favorite type of stay-home weather.  Unlike a few of the other places I’ve been in country, the air smells so fresh and clean that you enjoy every breath of it.  Granted, the air’s a little thin this high up, but we tend to be fully adjusted to it within a day or two of getting here.

It’s green, green, green as far as the eye can see here.  When you take the 2-ish hour drive up from Addis, part of you would swear that you’re driving through the shire, except that you see little clusters of grass huts instead of Tolkienian hill houses.  There are rolling fields, plenty of pasture land for the abundant sheep, goats, and cows to graze on, and the town is surrounded by tall hills.  So far, our favorite geographic feature is the massive gorge that surrounds our town.  We haven’t managed to get a picture that does it justice yet, but I promise we will post one as soon as we do.  It actually looks quite similar to the Grand Canyon, only it’s green instead of red.  Beautiful.

I cannot wait to start teaching classes! I will be teaching 3 classes a day at the Prep School in my town.  All of my 3 classes are going to be 11th grade, and I will meet with them 5 days a week.  I’m hoping that means I will be able to see them improving and growing over the year I teach them.  Class sizes are supposed to be around 45 which is actually pretty small here.  Some of my friends who I was training with were told that they would probably have classes of about 90.  The school itself is lovely.  It’s covered in trees, which of course makes the Oregonian in me feel right at home.  The classrooms are relatively modern; they even have plasma-screen TVs in them.  Now, how exactly those TVs get used in my classes could be a slight point of contention in the coming months, but I’m really hoping that I can use them to incorporate PowerPoint into my classes.

From a technology and electricity standpoint, this place is pretty darn good.  The power only went out 1 time during our site visit, which is impressive considering what we’ve experienced elsewhere. On our street alone there are 4 internet cafes with a good connection and fair prices.  That means that, in addition to Facebook stalking all my friends here and abroad, I will be able to keep the blog relatively well updated.  This is turn means fewer mass-postings and better updated information.  Maybe it even means that my blog could be a contender for the PC blog contest that would get me sent home for a few weeks to see friends and family (more on that later when the voting opens up)!

Last but not least, we have a lovely home.  Unlike a lot of PCVs, we get a two room house.  That might sound small to people reading back home, but it’s more than enough room for us.  We’ve already ordered a bed, 3 chairs, a table, and a counter for it that should be ready around the time we move in.  We even got a little front porch.  The compound is grassy and green (again), and I’m hoping that my landlord will let me dig some of it up to plant a little veggie/spice garden in.  The epitome of awesome comes in the form of our detached bathroom.  We have a western style toilet.  I’ll say that again, we have a throne toilet and will not be spending the next 2 years squatting over a hole.  I can’t really put words to how disproportionately happy that makes me.  Granted, it’s tankless and that means that you have to bring a bucket of water in to flush it, but I really don’t care about that detail.  The only downside is that our “shower” is a faucet head that spews water so icey-cold that it makes the one back in Butajira feel like a spa.  All that means is that we’re going to buy a couple of buckets and an instant water boiler and take bucket baths for the next 2 years.
All in all, I think you can tell how happy I am with this site placement.  :-D

Accidental Foreshadowing

J-I have a quick note to make about this blog before I tell my next story.  We only post from time to time because the internet situation here is less than ideal.  Still, whenever we have something that we want to post later, we write it out and save it on the computer so that we can do a mass posting next time we get a solid connection.  That being said, we don’t go back and edit/change former things that we’ve written so that one story will flow nicely into the next.  This is what I mean when I call this post “accidental foreshadowing,” because it has everything to do with the last paragraph of my last post.

We went out for dinner with 4 other PCTs on our last night in Addis.  We chose to go to a place called The Picnic Basket which was about a ten minute walk from the hotel we were staying at.  Three of the people in our group were guys, and two of them are more or less the biggest guys in our program, so we assumed that it was going to be a pretty uneventful walk.  Our walk home proved just how long and eventful ten minutes can be.

Within seconds of leaving the restaurant, a man walks up to us and says “I have tried to maintain my dignity but you fucking parasites….”  Yeah, this guy was obviously deranged, but dash it all if he didn’t have a pretty impressive vocabulary.  Luckily he was too in his own little world to bother us further, so he just kind of shambled off down the sidewalk in the opposite direction that we needed to go.  Then we were approached by a man who informed us of the shocking fact that that guy was crazy! 

This new man again spoke impressive English, and he decided that he really, really wanted to talk to one of the guys in our group.  He glommed on to this individual and walked a decent chunk of the way back to the hotel with us before finally making it clear that he wanted to sell us dictionaries.  Seriously, this guy walked with us, talking non-stop in English for at least five minutes straight because he wanted to sell us overpriced dictionaries.   When we made it clear that we weren’t interested, he was actually pretty cool about it and warned us to be careful on this side of town because it was crawling with gangs of child pick-pockets. 

Within a minute of getting this warning, we started to hear chanting, clapping, and shouting from up ahead.  Now, the streets of Addis aren’t exactly well lit, but we could still make out a group of kids a little ways in front of us.  I’d guess there were at least a dozen boys ranging from pre-teens to full blown teenagers.  They’d picked their spot well, because there was a potted tree in the middle of the sidewalk and there was a barrier that would prevent us from avoiding them by walking into the street (which would have been a dumb move in its own right). 

Donovan was up ahead of me a ways, and I was bringing up the back of our group with one of our guy friends.  My first instinct was to clutch my purse to my chest with both arms and take my phone out of my pocket and keep it tight in my fist.  I came up with three reasons for doing this in the split second I made the decision.  1) I figured that these kids were probably the same ones from before, so they’d probably go for my pockets.  2) If need be, it’s be something I could throw at the crowd to get the off of me while I ran away.  3) If worse came to worse, it’s a hard piece of plastic that I can use for self-defense.  Luckily, none of the above ended up being necessary.

I managed to skirt around the crowd with only a few of them grabbing at me.  When I broke out ahead of them, I saw another one of the female volunteers standing out front and basically told her to come with me and jog as fast as she could.  There was a shop open up ahead with a few grownups sitting around out front, so I figured that was the best place to go if these kids were trying anything worse than a snatch and grab.  That was just my instinct, get yourself to light and possible help as quickly as possible, and I’m happy that was my gut reaction. 

We looked back on the remaining four in our group, three guys and one very small girl (who one of our guys had grabbed hold of the second that the ids descended on them).  We couldn’t see this from where we were standing, but they told us what was going on in there later that evening when we were back at the hotel.  The kids were all yelling at them and trying to distract them by shoving pictures and other random goods in their faces like they were trying to sell them stuff.  Then they started to reach into their pockets to try to grab anything they could.  When the guys shoved their hands in their pockets to keep the kids hands out, the kids started pulling on their arms, pushing them, and more or less trying to tackle them to the ground.  As I said before, we had some pretty hefty dudes with us, so the kids were not successful at getting them to the ground. 

Donovan managed to break out of the crowd before the others did, and he promptly charged back at the kids, yelling and shouting to try to get them off of the other three.  In addition to what the other guys were doing, this seemed to freak the kids out enough that they started running the other way down the street.  The end results?  Nobody lost anything (at least in our group; the same can’t be said for some volunteers that were in another group about 10 minutes behind us).  We all made it out safe and sound, though a little shaken and annoyed for the experience. 

The only other thing that happened was that right before our hotel, a drunk guy with a big stick under his arm came stumbling up to us saying, “I love America.  I love Ethiopia!”  Then he started trying to follow us.  The nice thing with the encounter is that a very large Ethiopian man intercepted him and got him away from us.  We all said “Thank you,” and finally got back into the hotel parking lot, more or less swearing to never go out in Addis after dark again.

Like I said, it was an eventful ten minutes!

Give People the Chance to Surprise You

J-We’re in Addis Ababa again for a few days before we go to our site (Fiche, if you want to Google it), and we’ve been given a little walking around cash so that we can go out for dinner while we’re here.  Along with 6 other volunteers, we decided to go out for some Mexican at a nearby-ish restaurant.  Our first happy encounter came in the form of a shuttle bus from our hotel that happened across us as we were attempting to figure out how to commandeer a line taxi.  They gave us a ride to the restaurant free of charge (though I’m still concerned that they might try to invoice the organization for it, despite the fact that we didn’t tell them who we were affiliated with).  Then, when dropping us off at “La Familia,” they told us to call the hotel whenever we wanted to be picked up.  Cool beans, right?

Then we had some delicious Mexican food that included such beautiful items as: salsa, sour cream, fresh tortillas, and beef that we’re 100% sure was not goat.  The real treat were the desserts.  Donovan and I got the Kahlua mousse and “quadriple” chocolate cake, which was a good chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles on top, which some of you back home might recognize as a facsimile of “Hauge special.”  The prices were good by Western standards, which means pricey by the standards of a PCT budget.  It was still absolutely worth it!

The hiccup came when we tried to call the shuttle to come back, and were told that the service was not available.  I don’t have all the details on that because I was not the one handling the call, but the long and short of it is that they were not going to come get us.  It was dark outside, and though we were within a technical walking distance of the hotel, it would have probably take us about half an hour walking on the unfamiliar, dark streets of Addis to get back.  There were also a couple of rather shady looking individuals outside the restaurant eyeing our party with a little too much interest for our liking (also, they both had canes, and one was wearing a bandana over his face).  This meant walking was a no-go.  We started discussing our other options and had pretty much decided to pony up and call on one of Peace Corps pre-vetted cabs, when our second little moment of awesome happened.

A woman who I would guess was in her early 50s came up to us and (in flawless English) asked where we needed to get to.  We told her that all of us were staying at the Ghion Hotel, and she asked if we wanted her to arrange a shuttle there.  We said that would be lovely, assuming that she probably had a preferred cab, maybe a nephew or a friend, who she could call to give us a ride.  She counted that there were 8 of us and commented that we’d need to take two trips, seeing as her car could only hold four passengers at a time.  Yes, her car, as in her little white VW that she had parked out front.  It turned out that she was the owner of the restaurant.  She led the two of us and the other couple in our group out to the car, and I noticed the man with the mask and the cane start to head towards us.  I can’t say for sure if he was planning on rolling us because he veered off in a different direction the moment he saw us getting in to the lady’s car.  Still, I’m really happy that we erred on the side of caution and got into the car with a stranger (no sarcasm, seriously).

We ended up getting a lot of interesting information from her on the five or so minute drive back to our hotel.  It turns out that she is a half Ethiopian, half Armenian resident of Addis who spent 12 years working at restaurants in California.  She was very open and friendly and told us about how she moved back to Addis and started her restaurant back when there were no other Mexican places in the city (there are a couple now, but I’m guessing you can already tell which one has my loyalty for the next two years).  She didn’t start it as a Mexican restaurant, but she’d spent years slowly adding more and more tex-mex items to the menu, starting with guacamole because Ethiopia grows crazy good avocados.  The menu is now full of some of the best tex-mex I’ve ever had outside of the states, and apparently the place is popular with both locals and foreigners alike, though business always goes down a little during the rainy season because a lot of people are out of town.  Like I said, it was an informative ride.

She dropped the four of us off at the gate of the hotel and then turned around to get the other half of our group who was still waiting at the restaurant.  Needless to say, we all went into the lobby of the hotel and started praising the heck out of the place to our fellow PCTs because both the food and the owner are amazing.  It just goes to show you that there are awesome people in all corners of the globe, and sometimes a little trust is a good thing to have.

Of course, there’s also a decent sprinkling of jerks out there, as evidenced by the fact that while we were having this little faith-in-humanity-restored moment of ours, a fellow PCT got mobbed by a bunch of kids and had his phone stolen.  He’s fine, and the phone was broken, uncharged, and only cost $20.00, but still.  I guess it takes all kinds, and I’m just happy I keep running into the good kind.

Fiche Town

J-I know most of you have probably already seen this via Facebook, but Donovan and I just got word about our final site placement about 2 days ago at this point.  We’ll be living in a place called Fiche, a town about 2 hours north of Addis Ababa with a population of about 30,000 people.  We haven’t been there yet, but we’ll be visiting for the work week starting this coming Tuesday.  To prepare us for this, Peace Corps gave us a brief description of the town that we’d like to share with you (though apparently a lot of this can be Googled).  Here’s our info:

“Found along Addis Ababa-Debre Markos Road, Fiche is a small, densely populated town sitting nearly 2,800 meters above sea level in the central highland plains; it is located 112 Km northwest from Addis Ababa in the north Shewa Zone of Ethiopia’s Oromia region….”

So far so good!  I’m glad that we’re in so close to the capital because we occasionally have to hop down this way for trainings, and I know that’s going to be a two day+ journey for a few of my fellow PCTs.  It also means that travel, both domestic and foreign, will be pretty convenient because the largest airport in the country is in Addis.  Anyone feel like meeting up in Africa or Europe during summer 2015-ish?

94% of the population is Ethiopian Orthodox, and the remaining 6% is divided between Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, or other.  There are 6 Orthodox churches, 3 Protestant churches, and 1 mosque.  I look forward to visiting a handful of each from time to time, even though I won’t be able to understand what’s being said.

The local languages are Afan Oromo (otherwise known as Oromifa/the language we’ve been studying for the last month) and Amharic (otherwise known as Amerenia/the national language of Ethiopia/not the language we’ve been studying for the last month).  We’re interested to see how that’s all going to work out, though a lot of the more seasoned volunteers tell us that we probably won’t need either to get by in our site, seeing as so many people speak English.  The thing is, I already know how it feels to live in a place where I can’t communicate with the locals, and I really don’t want to go through that again.  In short, it looks like I’ll be learning the Amharic Fidel after all!

The part of the document that got me really excited (from an air-quality standpoint) was that Fiche has no factories or commercial farming.  People living there mostly work in different governmental sectors or administration/service.  The part that made me laugh the most was that our paper said that bars, and tej/tella bets in our town were “beyond counting.”  Again, this is just some of the information that we have on the front end and does not reflect any personal experiences that we’ve had there yet.  Still, it sounds like a pretty ideal post!  We’ll let you know more once we’ve actually spent a few days living at 9000 feet!

The First Warm Shower I’ve Taken in over a Month

D- Seriously, the first few times you wake up at 6:30am and greet the day by trudging off to an ice cold shower doesn’t seem that harrowing. After all, this is Peace Corps. This is most certainly what I signed up for, right? Well… after about two weeks it absolutely loses its novelty which motivates you to start cutting corners. Who really needs to wash their whole body every single day anyway? After a while, I only feel inclined to take the full polar plunge every 4-5 days. The rest of the time I just wash my hair and let Old Spice take care of the rest. For those of you not in the know, Ethiopia as it turns out is not that warm (especially this time of year, and least not in many of the areas that volunteers go).

We arrived in Addis Ababa today for a counterpart workshop where we will meet our Ethiopian co-workers at our future sites. We get to stay in a really nice hotel which has most of the normal amenities that you would expect from a hotel in the West and perhaps more. It was here where I felt the very first warm water touch my skin in about six weeks. I find it impossible to articulate the joy of something that seemed too mundane for thought less than two months ago. I also had Chinese food today, which kicked ass.

A Brief Musing on the Hokey-Pokey Shower

J-I was taking a shower the other day when I had a borderline epiphany.  You see, our current housing situation provides us with a cold shower.  By cold, I mean imagine taking your garden hose and hooking it up to a shower head.  That’s not a complaint; it’s just a good way of explaining the temperature to someone who isn't experiencing it.  I actually much prefer this to the bucket showers that some of my fellow PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) are having to take every day.  At least the cold shower gets you clean, which is far harder to manage with a bucket shower.  Anyhow, back to my musing.

When I was taking a shower the other evening, I broke into a fit of mad laughter as I realized that I had been doing the hokey-pokey every day for the last few weeks without realizing it.  It start by turning on the tap.  Then I put my head in, I take my head out, I suds my head up, and rinse all the soap out.  I put my loofah in, take my loofah out, add some soap, and scrub the whole day out.  I put my left leg in, I take my left leg out…you can imagine where this is going.  I definitely do plenty of the “shake it all about” as I shiver in the shower, though I have yet to manage the “you put your whole self in” move as of this posting.

As I said, I know this sounds like complaining, but it really isn't.  I find it all very amusing, and that’s why I bothered to write it down and share it.  Maybe when we get to our final placement site (no word on that for a few weeks yet), then I’ll get a stove and start warming up water for whenever we want o bathe.  Until then, I’ll just be doing the hokey pokey, seeing as that’s what it’s all about. 

A Strange Soundtrack

J-It starts when the storm comes in in the night.  The thunder rolls and the lightning claps, often knocking out the power for an hour or so and plunging us into perfect darkness.  The storm continues, illuminating our compound and the white mosquito net over our bed with the occasional flash of light and peppering our metal roof with steady drops of rain.  Then the mosque down the street begins its nightly ritual chanting for Ramadan at 9 PM sharp.  It rises and falls in its sing-song way, and we listen, unable to distinguish the words but appreciative for this new instrument in our nightly lullaby.  Last come the hyenas that stalk between the houses here.  They aren't the comical, laughing variety.  They make a rising “Woooo” sound as they call the rest of the pack over to whatever food they have found.  This has been the symphony of our nights ever since we got to Butajira, and I must say that I really enjoy this nightly lullaby.

“Planting trees under whose shade you will never sit.”

J-This was one of the metaphors presented to us about Peace Corps service during the first few weeks of our training.  Normally, I am not a fan of metaphors outside of literature.  In real life, they almost always either fall short or end up growing exponentially out of control until the speaker can’t remember if the initial metaphor was supposed to be about a tree, river, road, or path.  Today seemed an exception to that rule.  Today, we made the phrase a reality.

Let me backtrack a little.  This past Sunday, we all had the day free.  A lot of the volunteers in our Cabele (district) were out by the gorge near our houses with our host siblings.  Some of us were strolling along the precipitous cliffs, others were playing soccer, and some of us were just sitting near the edge watching the men heard their cattle and sheep in the green valley below our feet.  While we were out there, all of us noticed that there were a large number of deep, freshly dug holes dotting the area above the cliffs.  As we walked along the cliff side, we noticed some men digging these holes.  They were glad to explain to Donovan and another volunteer that they were planting trees to prevent the rest of the cliff from eroding away, which was a serious concern judging from the obvious slip-slope slides that had already happened.  They were digging the holes this weekend and were planning on putting the saplings they had with them (which was at least a few hundred) in the ground starting either this Monday or Tuesday.  They invited all of us to come by any time to help them plant, though I doubt any of us realized what exactly would come of that invitation the following day.

This Monday, after being in classes from 8 AM til 5:30, Donovan still wanted to go down to the cliff to see if he could help plant, despite the fact that we were both pretty tired.  All of the other volunteers who had been around when the invitation was extended showed up too.  Five volunteers showed up, each with at least 4 kids in tow.  We could not find the men at first, so we hung around to watch the sun begin to set and the kids from our Cabele playing another round of soccer.  Eventually, a man from the work crew approached us to say hi.  They were done digging holes for the day, and from the look of things they were exhausted.  They took us around and showed us the dozens of new holes they had dug that day, and in the end decided to give us a brief demonstration on how to unwrap and plant the saplings.  They filled up a plastic box with about a dozen baby trees and took them over to the freshly dug holes.  Of course, all of the volunteers wanted to literally get our hands dirty, so we each grabbed one, dropped to our knees, and began to cover the saplings’ roots with dirt.  A handful of our host siblings and neighbors had followed us out to the cliffs, although most of the kids were still playing soccer at our insistence, and they too wanted to help plant the trees.  We polished off that initial test basket in perhaps 5-10 minutes, and the both kids and the volunteers wanted to do more.  We filled it up again and took it over to some other holes.

This was when things started picking up speed.  The kids who were still playing soccer saw all of us having a good time planting the trees, and they started to join us.  Each time that a new basket of plants was brought down to the current work site, you had to grab 2 plants because it was going to be empty by the time you were done planting the first.  By the end of things, the kids weren’t even waiting for the basket to come back; they’d run to where the saplings were piled and bring back 3 or 4 of them, which they were then happy to share with anyone who asked.  All told, a handful of workers, 5 PCTs, and about 20 children planted at the very least 200 (we weren’t keeping track) trees in the course of a half hour.

My nails have dirt under them that I think it’ll probably take a week or two to scrub out, but I can honestly say that this was the most rewarding thing I have done during training, even though it was completely unrelated to it.

First Impressions

J- I am about a week into this experience, and so far I love absolutely every part of it. The program and the people running it are the best I have ever worked with in any of my domestic and foreign adventures, bar none.  I feel like I am in incredibly well looked after and will be well looked after even when I leave Addis for Butajira in the next few weeks.  From what I have seen, the training we will receive is going to be top notch.  The program directors are all very personable, experienced, and informative.  I just went through my first meet and greet with the medical staff, and I am confident that the care I receive through them is better than anything I would be able to swing back home.  I already have my 1^st Aid kit, a large bag full of various antibiotics, and a 3 month supply of Malaria pills.

On the note that might surprise everyone the most, I LOVE THE FOOD HERE.  Normally I won’t net-yell at you on this site, but I really needed to emphasize that fact.  More surprising still, we seem to have finally encountered one world cuisine that I take to better than Donovan.

My fellow trainees are all very chill dudes and dudettes.  Out of the 70 of us, I can’t think of a single one who isn’t fun to talk to.  I’ve met so many people with awesome travel stories and backgrounds.  I have no doubt that I am going to make a lot of life-long friends in this group.  Some of the more interesting encounters include:

A)     A fellow German speaker who noticed my “Uni Tuebingen” shirt on the plane.

B)      2 girls who both spent part of their youth on an ostrich and/or emu farm.

C)      Many people who absolutely snow us in terms of international travel and work experience.

D)     A bunch of people who I would bet money are going to be officers in the foreign service at some point in the future.

This might all sound like rosy glasses or a honeymoon post, but I’m still pretty sure that I’m going to enjoy the next 27 months.

Introduction

Hello everybody!  Welcome to our blog “From Beervana to Bunatopia.”  A quick note about the name: “beervana,” as those of you back home you probably already know, is one of the many names for our beloved hometown Portland, Oregon, and “buna” is the Amharic word for coffee.  Ethiopia is considered by most officiandos to be the birthplace of coffee.  It made sense to bring the names of these two terrific brews together in our blog, seeing as we both love them so much.

Posts that begin with a “J-” were written by Jessie, and posts that begin with a “D-” were written by Donovan.  We’re going to be sharing this web space so that we can bring you, our reader(s), more than one point of view on our life and times in Ethiopia.