Laundry Day!

I can't quite call this the bane of my existence, but it comes pretty darn close!  Point is, I hate doing laundry, no matter where I am, but here I enter a special level of you know where.  Enjoy the hyper sped up and edited version!

~Jessie

Christmas Conversion

“Really?  You want me to cook a fillet mignon until it’s grey on the inside?  Jessie, why do you always have me ruin these beautiful steaks?”

I honestly can’t even recall how many times my stepdad Greg and I have had this conversation over the years.  What can I say?  I just like my meat well-done.  No one else in my family is this way.  They’re all on, over, and out bloody rare types, my husband included, but not me.  Somehow, just like my steaks, I turned out wrong.  I think some part of me still holds onto this childish idea that well-done steaks, like well-done pork or chicken, are simply healthier and more hygienic.  That’s the closest I can come to a good explanation about why I like the meat I eat cleansed with fire.

Needless to say, especially for those of you who read Donovan’s blog “Actually, I’ll have my steak raw,” there is a cultural norm here that is the well-done steak lover’s nightmare: raw meat is a delicacy.  I’ve had a few timid samples, a bite here and there, most notably the raw camel that I tried in Harar, but the mere idea of chowing down on a big, raw, bloody plate of beef has historically been enough to make me a little squeamish.

Well, this Christmas (of the Ethiopian variety), we got invited over to one of Donovan’s coworker’s homes to celebrate, which was really nice because we ended up spending that one at home on our own last year.  We arrived and, within moments, had some farso (unstrained, homebrewed beer) in hand and were comfortably seated in the family’s living room.   

I like my farso like I like my life: gritty!

Then our host proudly declared, “My wife is out seeing some neighbors right now, but don’t worry.  She and I have a very equal relationship, so I will cook for you!”

Now, this statement was pretty shocking, but also pretty awesome because most of the men that I’ve met around here would never even consider cooking if they had a wife to do it for them. 

Then he happily declared, “I will make you gorid gorid!”

“Oh, god, please no,” I thought to myself, though my polite smile did not betray my inner terror.  “Not gorid gorid.”

Gorid gorid is, simply put, bite sized chunks of raw beef, often served with either chili powder or a spice sauce.  Soon enough, he had finished slicing up the meat, and the two of us had a plate with at least a kilogram of raw meat chunks on the table in front of us.  As is the custom here, the family had already eaten before we got there, so this kilo was entirely for the two of us.

Then he said, “Sorry that it is not fresher.  I wanted to have you over when we slaughtered the bull (at 1 AM the previous night), but I knew that you were asleep.  Now it is not so good.  It is cold.”

It was only maybe 6 PM.  This raw pile of meat in front of us had literally been mooing about 17 hours before we ate it, and our host considered that regrettably past its prime.  Oh boy.  Still, I can’t stand the thought of turning down the hospitality of anyone who has been kind enough to invite me into their home for a holiday, so I dug right in.

OK, so maybe I didn't "dig right in" from the first bite.

Oh, wow, seriously?  Dang this stuff was good!  I honestly couldn’t believe it.  This was the most tender, melt in your mouth piece of meat I have had in country.  Normally the beef here is extremely tough, like eating a stale hunk of jerky tough, but not this.  I wound up holding my own against my carnivorous husband and ate about half a kilo of gorid gorid.  More to my surprise, it’s been about 4 days since then, and I’ve felt perfectly fine.  No gastric distress to speak of whatsoever!

Donovan keeps telling me, “Now, just because you liked the beef that way this time, it doesn’t mean that you have to start eating your steaks rare when we go home.”

And I keep replying, “Oh, I agree with that!  I still like my steaks cooked, but when can we go get some gorid gorid and beers at our favorite butcher shop?”

~Jessie

Why the Wanderlust?

Explanation: The following blog post is the first of a six-week long blogging challenge that we have decided to take part in via "BloggingAbroad.org". Generally, these are co-authored but penned by one of us. We will take turns over the coming weeks. 
This post is in response to a question along the lines of “Why do you live abroad and how did you get there?”

“Why am I here?” It seems that no matter where we are located we find ourselves asking that question. “Why are you there?” This is a question we almost exclusively get from people back home.  However, it is the question that drives us from one corner of the world to the next, because the simple answer in all its complexity is… we love traveling! When I first met my wife, the first thing I learned about her was that she had been to Egypt, and the first thing she learned about me was that I had just returned from Norway. Did we meet at a "traveler’s anonymous" group, sort of like an AA meeting? No, but we should probably go to one at this point.

Two years after we met we embarked on our first yearlong stint abroad in 2008 on a study program in Tübingen, Germany. One thing you learn in Germany is that they often have single words that sum up concepts that most often take entire sentences to say in English. One of my favorites is Wanderlust, a word often appropriated to English that essentially means "travel bug" or to have "itchy feet." It is safe to say that we discovered our Wanderlust in Germany, and in a special way we found Heimatgefühl, or a sense of home.

Venice during the semester break.

The true potency of the wanderlust that we had acquired in Germany didn’t fully bubble to the surface until about August 2011, just before we got married.  We both have slightly different versions of this story, but for the sake of brevity I’ll just speak for myself. I graduated from university in March of 2011, which was still a bad year for the economy. When I finally hit the American job market I was baffled and dismayed at the uninspiring options I had to choose from. I was working at a call center before my German professor sent me a link to a corporate job that needed German speakers. “Oh wow, an office job that will let me use a foreign language and gain experience working for an international company!!!” I thought with the most naïve excitement.  The old timers attribute this attitude to a sense of entitlement that only a so-called ‘Millennial’ can sport, but I really expected a lot more on the other side of the walk at graduation. Instead, all I found were the sour words of encouragement that often went something like “Just feel lucky that you have a job!”

I had a job all right! Forty hours a week plugging away at a computer and getting screamed at by Germans over the phone between my all too frequent trips to the break room stocked with M&Ms and free Starbucks coffee. And thank god for the coffee as I was supposed to report to work by 4am for the European workday. I think I was supposed to love this but all I thought to myself after three months on the job was “THIS IS IT?!?!?!” “This is why I got a… I mean TWO degrees?!?!?” I know that you are supposed to start at the bottom and work your way up, but still. To cheer myself up I started looking around the room for something to aspire to, or a sort of goal to keep me motivated in the morning. I looked at my boss and thought to myself “Hmm, if I do a good job and stick with this long enough maybe I will be like my boss. Do I want that? No. Hmm, or maybe I could be his boss? No, don’t want that. Oh, or maybe I could run this whole center someday? Oh, please god no!” However, in that economy, simply wanting to leave and actually leaving was easier said than done, and only a fool would even say it anyway. It took months to complete what my wife and I still refer to as the “Paperwork Gauntlet,” but in February 2012, just 11 months after graduation, we were on our way to our first adventure abroad since we left Germany, in South Korea.

We left for Korea with four objectives:

1. Move to a foreign country we know nothing about and kickass at it.

2. Travel to other countries in the vicinity of said country.

3. Pay off student loans.

4.  Try all kinds of food most people would prefer not to even look at.

Making kimchi with our best friend in Korea.

We accomplished all of those objectives in spades! Korea was often a frustrating place to live, but we both felt that we had overcome the challenges and all we wanted was more. Now that we had more work experience, we applied to join the Peace Corps, something Jessie had wanted to do since before we met, though she herself often says that she can’t quite explain why.

This was one of those “back in the day” style Peace Corps assignments.  Starting from literally every group after us, you theoretically have some say in where they send you.  That was not the case for us.  We had to turn down a post in Mongolia on health concerns, and left South Korea to visit Jessie’s Not-Returned Peace Corps Volunteer aunt who still lives in the country that she was assigned, Palau a paradise in the South Pacific Ocean, having no idea if or when we would next hear from the Peace Corps about our assignment.  

Donovan standing on "Little Beach," the family beach in Palau.

About one day into the trip, we got an email, the preview of which said, “Congratulations on your invitation to serve in…” before promptly cutting off at precisely the point of interest.  We sat outside of Melekeok Elementary School, pirating a weak wifi signal and waiting with baited breath to see where this next step was going to take us.  The minute that the email loaded, I snapped up the computer, not letting Jessie read it (because me announcing important things like this to her instead of letting her read them for herself has somehow become a tradition for us).

Seeing the country name, I smiled to myself as Jessie animatedly asked, “Well?  Where are they sending us?”

“Guess!  What’s the most stereotypically Peace Corps country ever?”

After a slight pause, proving that she and I are often too much of the same mind, she cautiously guessed, “Ethiopia?”

Well, she got it on the first guess!  We quickly ran back to her aunt’s house with the news and were greeted with such responses as:

“Oh…well…”

“Is this a good thing?  Did you want Africa?”

And perhaps the most entertaining, “You know the old expression, don’t you?  PCVs who go to Asia come back more spiritual.  PCVs who go to Latin America come back more political.  PCVs who go to Africa come back crying, and PCVs who go to Oceania don’t come back at all!”

I can’t say that this experience has left us or will leave us crying, but I can say that it has been a good thing and one heck of an adventure at that.

Last day of school 2015.

In the end, I think that is what this all comes down to.  This is an adventure for us.  Be it studying in Europe (a move we hope to repeat), working in Asia (another possible repeat), or volunteering here in Africa, we view this as an adventure, and it’s one that we’re lucky enough to share with each other (and with those of you who follow our blog).  We’ve gone from an office with copious amounts of M& Ms, to the land of kimchi, and finally on to the land of perfect coffee.  Now, having entered 2016, the year in which we will end our service, with just 7 months until we “gong out” and leave, all we can do is wonder, “Where’s next?”

Peace Corps Swear-in at the US Embassy: The only time in service PCVs look this good!

-Donovan