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.