The Sunday Ritual

After breakfast, which normally consists of hash browns or pancakes with a side of coffee, I prepare the most important thing for the next week of my life: more coffee.  Here you can buy your coffee pre-roast or even pre-ground, but I didn’t join the Peace Corps to keep acting like an American.  No, here I have to do things the right way, the old way, the local way. 

I buy my weekly half-kilo of coffee beans green and raw.  I scrub them off, pull out the debris, and rinse them at least once more for good measure.  Even at this stage, that faint aroma of this divine substance that I’ve been addicted to since I was 15 years old starts to leech into the air.  I take the first few handfuls and toss them into my non-stick pan that’s been preheating on my electric stovetop.  Then I sit back and continue whatever book it is that I’m currently working on on my Kindle.  Hey, there’s nothing wrong with adding a slightly modern touch!

After a while, I hear and smell the beans beginning to change.  Like most cooking, after you do it a few times you don’t really need to use your eyes as much.  I put down my book, currently the Sherlock Holmes anthology, and stir them around a bit, maybe adding a splash of water if it feels like it needs it.  Then back to the book.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

When at last the beans have taken on the medium roast qualities that I favor, I shake them loose from the pan and pour them into the old powdered milk tin that I store them in. Sticking your nose into that can, you’d think you’d died and gone to coffee addict heaven. 

In the background, I hear the soundtrack of Fiche.  Maybe today it’s the cock’s-crow of the Orthodox church’s priest blasting over those crackling speakers.  Maybe it’s the repetitive, washing machine “duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh-duh-dun” of some Ethiopian music playing at one of the cafés down the street.  Maybe it’s a few sheep grazing outside of our compound wall, bahing  in a way that sounds less like a sheep and more like somebody impersonating a sheep.  If I’m lucky, it’s the melodic drizzling of the rain on the metal roof of our house, and the rain has silenced all of the other sounds by driving everyone in town indoors.

On go a few more handfuls.  Down go a few more chapters.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

After four or five repetitions, I’ve normally eaten half of the day and roasted the entire half-kilo.  My repurposed milk can smells so wonderful that I normally spend a few minutes with it glued to my face at the end.  Then the lid goes on, and I know I’ve spent a productive day in the Peace Corps.

Don’t worry.  I promise that I’ll bring you some, and we can do this ritual together when I’m home this summer.  Goal 3 all the way.

            ~Jessie

ADDIS ABABA: I hate it....and I LOVE IT!!!

Ahh Addis Ababa… Whether you love it or hate it, you pretty much end up doing both in drastically manic phases from one minute to the next.  Addis, after all, is a city of extreme dichotomy. One minute you are drinking a liter of delicious German beer in a delightfully nostalgic German beer garden, and the next you are being a accosted by a crazy naked man or dodging herds of cattle on what were supposed to be the streets of Addis Ababa’s posh district (relatively speaking).

I believe I can speak for the moral majority of volunteers when I say that upon arriving in Addis for the first time, your first thought is something along the lines of “Wow, what a dump, yet somehow not as bad as I had imagined.”  Then you go to your training site, which in our case was Butajira. Then you adjust your previous impression and settle with “Ok, Butajira is a dump, and Addis ain’t all that bad.” THEN you go to your site, and your impression is readjusted yet again to “OK, my site is a dumb, Addis is beautiful, and Butajira ain’t all that bad.” However, we feel generally quite smitten with our site, and despite the fact that Butajira had more in terms of Western comforts, our site is actually a much more pleasant place to live.

Still, once in a while, most people based in the Addis area (this includes any site up to 4 hours away) feel that they just need a weekend in Addis to get away and decompress for a while. After weeks of chronic water and power outages, you need a least one night to scrub layers of dead skin off of your arms and use the internet. The city actually does have many of the staples befitting any modern city. It has chaotic but reliable public transportation, a decent cheeseburger, a modern movie theater, and several affordable options in terms of accommodation that have hot showers and possibly even wifi! For volunteers with deeps pockets or those who simply just need this regardless of the price, you can even go to the Sheraton Hotel which hosts a Sunday brunch complete with cheese, sausages, bacon, and limitless champagne. Addis has just about anything within reason. A taxi ride almost anywhere in the city won’t cost you more than about $10 with the so-called “white-price.” There are numerous restaurants serving all kinds of decent international cuisine such as Indian, Thai, Chinese, German, American, French, Korean, and even some of the best Mexican food I have ever had outside of Mexico.  Then again, I am no Mexican food coinsure.

Perhaps the worst part about Addis is the arrival and the departure, as we must go through the infamous Mercato bus station, which is something on which to be elaborated in another post. Addis Ababa is the most disgusting, wonderful, grotesque, shocking, awful, exciting, and extremely frustrating place I have ever been. I love to hate it, and I hate to love it.

-Donovan

Advice to Anyone Who Wants to Send a PCV a Care Package

I must start out this post by giving some credit where it is long overdue.  My mother, Shirley Hauge, is unequivocally the official winner of the unofficial care package sending contest.  Sorry to other PCVs, but this point is beyond arguing.  My mom rules, period, end of story.  Now, the point of this post is not to brag about how awesome my mom is (because she is).  The point is to give some sincere advice to people looking to send packages to their loved ones overseas.  If you pack your packages as well as my mom does, you will maximize the happiness that you are shipping to your beloved expat.

Tip #1-No Empty Spaces

This is the cardinal complaint of most PCVs I talk to.  You go to the post office, most likely expecting that it’s going to be another “nothing day” only to find to your extreme delight that there is a box waiting for you!  It’s suddenly a beautiful day, no matter how bad it was going before.  There are few sights as welcome before your eyes as that beautiful, red-white-and-blue flat-rate packaging.  Now, you know that no matter what’s in that box, you’re going to be doing a happy dance when you get it to your house/hut and tear into it.  Short of it being full of nothing but packaging peanuts, there’s no way that you’re actually going to be anything other than sincerely grateful when you tear it open to see what’s inside.

Still, there is something so sad about getting a 10 pound under the weight limit flat-rate box with lots of unfilled space inside.  These things are crazy expensive to ship (I believe the largest flat-rate costs $80-90 to send to Ethiopia).  PCVs understand that, and I think that’s one of the things that makes it so extra endearing and appreciated whenever we get one.  The point is, you’re spending money to send the empty space too.  Why not cram a few extra goodies in there to fill up the gaps?

One brilliant thing that my mom always does is that she takes stuff out of the original packaging.  If she’s sending us pasta with a sauce mix or some spices that we can’t find in country, she always takes them out of the boxes and locks them into two plastic baggies.  The double bagging ensures that they won’t spill and has the added bonus that you can then reuse the baggies to store stuff in.  It also makes it so that you don’t feel bad for producing a lot of extra packaging waste when you use your goodies.  It saves space and provides something useful and reusable.  As I said, BRILLIANT!

Case in point, here is a 19 pound package that my mom sent us.

Tip #2-Listen to What They Ask for

Another complaint I hear from other PCVs is that they often get items that are “off by one.”  Stuff like they tell their parents how much they’re missing dark chocolate and they get a Hershey’s bar in the next package, or they ask for hand-sanitizer and get antibacterial soap, which’d be great except for the fact that they only get running water at their site two times per week, so they really can’t waste precious water washing their hands, which is why they wanted the hand-sanitizer in the first place.  Don’t get me wrong; no matter what you send your PCV, it will be appreciated, but just keep in mind that when they ask for specific things, there’s probably a reason behind it.  There’s nothing wrong with asking them to send you a detailed email of things they need.  They’ll love whatever you give them, but they’ll appreciate it extra if it’s exactly what they wanted.

That being said…

Tip #3-Always Throw in Something Unexpected

Care package days are like a mini-Christmas, especially for Peace Corps volunteers.  As much as you want people to send you exactly what you asked for, there’s nothing better than the hidden surprise at the bottom.  Now, you know your PCV a lot better than I do.  Just think about it for a second.  What is that one thing (especially food item) that he or she has been missing but would never even think about asking for?  What’s that thing that’s going to drop his/her jaw and cause him/her to go dancing around their room for five minutes when they see it at the bottom of the box?

Here are some of the best surprises that my mom has sent us:

1) CHEESE!

A lot of people get sent Velveeta because their families assume that real cheese isn’t something that you can reasonably send them.  In the 2-4 weeks that it takes to get there, surely it will spoil.  Well, the time that my mom decided to send us literally 4 pounds of cheese, it took us about 4 weeks to get the package, one week of which it was probably sitting in the warm post office in Fiche during the height of the hot/dry season.  It was absolutely fine when we got it, not moldy, dried out, or spoiled in any way.  The key is to send hard cheeses that have been aged about a year.  It makes sense if you stop to think about it.  Cheese is already rotten from a technical standpoint, and we were making it for centuries before we came up with refrigeration.  My point is, if your PCV likes cheese and is in a country where you can’t really find it, they will LOVE this for a surprise.

2) Collapsible Kitchen Equipment

I have no clue where she found this stuff, but my mom found measuring cups and a full sized colander that are both made of silicone and collapse down into nothing.  I’d never even heard of these before I got them, but they are wonderful.  They are compact, and I can pack them anywhere.  I love baking, so kitchen equipment that makes it so that I don’t have to do the math to convert my recipes into metric is a godsend.

3) Chocolate Chips (a Costco sized Bag)

As I said, baking is something that I love to do, so these little guys (all four pounds of them) have been greatly appreciated.  They wind up getting consumed at a much slower rate than chocolate candies, so they keep the care package joy alive for longer.

4) Nerds Rope

There’s been one in every package.  It’s something I eat maybe one time per year when I’m home, but I turn into a giddy 6 year old whenever I get one.

5) Bacon Bits

We’re in a country that doesn’t do pork at all, let alone the nectar of the gods that is bacon.  She sent us a Costco bag of bacon bits that were consumed in less than a week.  ‘Nuf said. 

As I said, you know the things that’re going to make your PCV’s day.  Don’t hesitate to send them just because you think they might be a little past their prime when they get there.  Believe me, most of us already do highly questionable things when it comes to our food sanitation.  We’re probably eating three-day-old spaghetti that’s been left out at room temperature in an improvised tuperware container on the counter.  Topping it off with some shredded parmesan that’s been living in the same conditions is not going to hurt us.  It’ll just make the spaghetti that much more magical and delicious.

So, there is all of my care package related advice.  The number one thing to keep in mind is that you know what’s going to make your expat, whether they are a PCV, a member of the military, or any other foreigner living abroad for an extended period of time, happy.  That is, above all else, what you are shipping us: love and happiness, and we all love you for it.  Take care, and happy packing!

            ~Jessie

My Wife Has a Horrible Sense of Humor

So there I sat, miserable on the toilet for the umpteenth time in country while I rounded up the usual suspects in my head. What did it this time?...The fish goulash? Perhaps my beer glass wasn’t cleaned enough?.... Whatever, most Peace Corps volunteers by now know better than to try to identify a culprit. One way or another, there I was, stuck in a hotel in Addis unable to travel due to this sudden and all too familiar condition.

 On the orders of our Peace Corps doctor, Jessie ran to the pharmacy to procure some rehydration salts, which are actually quite amazing at keeping you hydrated when you are indisposed in this manor. She explained to the pharmacist what the problem was and what she needed, “rehydration salts for gastric issues.” Thinking nothing of it, I simply consumed them without looking at the package. Later that night, following a day of zero progress towards recovery, my condition grew markedly worse. I had been in and out of thee bathroom three times within 20 minutes even having had nothing to eat and very little to drink other than the “rehydration salts.” Now, I believe I mentioned earlier that I was sitting miserably on the toilet. It was about this time that the following conversation took place through the bathroom door:

Me: Jessie, can you please mix me up some more rehydration salts? I think I am going to really need them after this.

Jessie: Sure.
30 seconds later…
Jessie: no… NO!!!! (the way she said this had me afraid for a second that she had gotten a message that someone had died)

Me: What? Are we out?

Jessie: You’ve been drinking a saline laxative!

Me: …What?

Jessie: Yeah, the package says “Epsom Salts.”

 It was a very long night.  
-Donovan

Harar Trip #1: The Preamble

One of the downsides to being an education volunteer in Ethiopia (at least of being a G11 PELLE volunteer) is that we don’t get the insanely flexible schedule that most people associate with the typical Peace Corps experience. We are assigned to a school and have a “real job.” This means that we don’t get the same travel opportunities that volunteers in the other sectors get. Whereas our fellow PCVs in Environment/Agriculture and Health can take their accumulated vacation time absolutely whenever they want (i.e. over Christmas), our vacation has to be scheduled during either the semester break or the summer break (the rainy season).

 That being said, when we do get a shot at exploring our host country, G11s make the most of it! Case in point, during the weeklong semester break the we had in February, tons of G11s chose to go to the ancient, walled city of Harar. We, along with 4 of our dearest friends, were among the throng that descended upon Harar. The reasons that we all chose to use this singular week of travel to visit Harar will become clear in subsequent posts which I intend on posting to the net over the next few weeks, along with corroborating pictures and videos that I feel the need to present with them as evidence to support the wild claims that I am going to make. Believe me when I say that you would not believe me if I didn’t have photos and videos to prove it. As Donovan always puts it, “Pics or shens.”

 Harar is an independent city in the far eastern region of Ethiopia. Though it is technically in Oromia, it is nearly surrounded by the Somali region. For those wondering, the Somali region is part of Ethiopia, but yes, it does border and once belonged to Somalia. Yes, THAT Somalia. As is true for the majority of the country, PCVs are not allowed to go to Somali for security reasons. If we are ever caught “travelling illegally” to any of these places, we will be “administratively separated” or “Admin-Sepped,” a euphemism for fired or asked to leave of our own free will. We aren’t even supposed to go that far east in Oromia, with the exception being Harar and one, thin strip of road that leads to it. Although flying was an option, our party opted to take the bus there.

The landscape that we observed on the 10+ hour bus ride to Harar was rugged to say the least. The villages that we passed were some of the most austere looking places that I have ever seen in my travels. They were more like the place I envisioned myself living when I first got my invitation to Peace Corps and it said “Ethiopia.” The fact that people can scratch a living out of what appear to the naked eye to be barren wastes is astounding and a testament to our tenacity and adaptability. The only other living things that we saw along that road were packs of wild camel, broad acacia trees, and a smattering of birds here and there.

 My only regret with the bus ride was not the fact that it was so long, but the fact that it was intolerably loud on the bus on account of the non-stop music videos that they were blasting without rest. A Scandinavian on our bus commented to me that all of the videos and corresponding music ran together in his mind into one video after five straight hours. My remark to him was that we had all been living there for about 6 months, and at that point 5 hours was nothing in comparison. After another five hours, we arrived at the ancient, walled city itself, and our adventures truly began.

A few pictures of us and the people who we tend to run with, Olivia, Little Lauren, Patrick and Manny.

~Jessie

The Rains Return, and so Do I

It started not with a sound but with a smell carried on a soft gust of air. We all know that smell, the scent of chilled, summer rain falling on warm ground. I love that smell more than any perfume that I have ever smelled, probably more than the scent of most foods even. It’s been months, nearly six of them since we’d last seen even a drop of rain. Two Oregonians going that long in the sun must be some sort of record. After the smell came the sight of large raindrops hitting the windshields of the cars lined up in front of Dashen Hotel. The air cooled almost imperceptibly, and the dust that'd been hanging in the air for weeks on end was pulled to the ground. A fresh, cool breeze has been this welcome few times in my life. We passed the storm sitting out at our usual table on their porch, drinking in the smell, the sight, and the sound as we drank up the last of our “jambos.”

The storm only lasted a quarter of an hour at most, but the impact has been longer lasting than that. It gives me hope that times are changing, that the shift in the weather is a foreshadowing of greater changes to come. I pine away waiting for the short but strong monsoon season that lies around the corner and the end of the first school year. I wait impatiently for when the storms fall over Fiche every day, when it becomes cold and the earth comes alive again. I look forward to days spent cooped up inside with my Kindle and 400 some-odd classic novels that need to be read. I anticipate power-outages that last for days on end as the flash floods knock over the power lines held up only by poles that are shoved into the earth as securely as candles in a birthday cake. I long for the moment when I see the green grass again and feel it pushing up through the gaps between my toes. The land is thirsty, and so am I.

How things looked 2 months into the dry season.

~Jessie