Getting Adjusted

Yesterday afternoon, I rode past a security guard at a state-run petroleum depot, in full military uniform (camouflage) holding a long rifle (not an uncommon sight here). What was odd—and amusing—was that there was a goat scratching its head against the barrel of the rifle while the man sat there impassively. I still haven't gotten accustomed to seeing goats, cows, horses and sheep in my street when I come out of my front gate. There's a baby lamb now (born on Monday) which one of my neighbor kids handed to me (he'd had it riding on his shoulders) when I walked past. "Konjo, aydelem?" (it's pretty, isn't it?) he asked me. Indeed, it was—soft and clean and sweet, baa-ing softly to its mom from my arms. It scampered back to mom's side, kicking its little feet indignantly when I put it back down. Maybe I would like living in the countryside after all. It's nice being in a place like Bahir Dar, where with a twenty minute walk in one direction I can be in the city-center (such as it is), with restaurants and nightclubs and internet, and with a twenty minute walk in the other direction, I can be in a totally rural area, with mud huts and shepherds wearing short green canvas shorts and blankets thrown around their shoulders for warmth. I walked out to a huge field near my house the other day, and saw kids, dogs, and livestock all running around happily, and women hanging out at the edge of the field, gossiping and supervising.

 

I've had a good couple of weeks. Peace Corps folks from Addis Ababa came for a site visit this week—checking up on our work and making sure that we're doing okay with the transition. I was amazed to hear myself saying mostly positive things about my life and work here. I guess that I'm beginning to settle into a routine. There are several interesting projects on the horizon for work. I'm working on systems for tracing patients who have dropped out of HIV-care at the hospital, on a survey to find out why they're dropping out, on linking the hospital's services to other community organizations, and on a project run by the Clinton Foundation to have orphans in town tested for HIV. I'll write more sometime soon about what my work is actually like—it occurs to me that I haven't really yet.

 

 Next week, I'll be at a regional review meeting for all of the organizations working on HIV in Amhara province. It's in Debre Markos, where a couple of other volunteers live, and a number of others are coming from other towns in the region as well. I'm hoping that it will be a nice mini-reunion (as well as potentially being a useful meeting!). We had a few other volunteers in town last week for the PC site visit, and it was interesting to hear what people have been doing. My frustrations were totally normalized—I think that we're all feeling a lot of the same aggravations at adjusting to life here.

 

Adjustment. I'm beginning to see what that means. Adjusting expectations of getting a million things done all at once. Adjusting ideas of what it means to live abroad. Adjusting to living alone. To not having a TV. Adjusting to being stared at, shouted at, and sometimes followed on the street (and just as much, adjusting to not having those things happen when you expect that they will). Adjusting to new communication patterns with colleagues. To being partially informed (at best) about what's going on around me. To plans changing or falling through. Adjusting to being so far from home. To the idea that this is home for the next while. And, most significantly, realizing how long it takes to adjust. It occurred to me that I've been here two full months, and I'm still just getting my life figured out. I just keep repeating to myself again and again, "it takes time."

 

I've found myself incredibly frustrated with language learning recently. I have the basics down, solidly. I can greet people, ask directions, order food in a restaurant, bargain, take public transit, and make general small talk fairly competently. But then there's sitting in a department meeting at work and knowing vaguely what the topic being discussed might be, but not being able to follow along for the life of me (let alone imagine contributing anything to the discussion…). There's having a little, sick, old man approach me on the hospital compound and ask me for something and not catching a word of it. There's trying to ask my neighbors if they have baby kittens (a very pregnant mom-cat has been in my yard a lot in the past few weeks) and having them hold up every cat in their place saying, "is this your cat? Is your cat lost?" There's getting a plate of bread ("dabbo") and a macchiato, rather than a double macchiato. The learning feels far less rewarding than at the beginning; progress is so much slower and so much subtler. It's also easy to just be complacent and rely on my colleagues' excellent English for work. (They are, however, so proud when I can come up with something unexpected in Amharic). What probably needs to happen is to really devote myself to learning this language (actually study, maybe?), but this odd sense of entitlement, that the ability should just come on its own, is plaguing me. Maybe I can make a mini-resolution to work hard at it for a few weeks and to see if I notice any difference. Any advice from those of you have learned a language from scratch by living in it?

 

I'm getting excited about the idea of travel—only bit longer in forced captivity here in Bahir Dar (Peace Corps requires us to stay in our sites, with a few exceptions, like the meeting next week, for the first three months, so that we can "integrate" better into the community). Rough plans in store for seeing Axum and Lalibela—holy sites here in the North—for going hiking in the Simein Mountains, and for the distant future, for seeing Tanzania and Egypt. Also looking forward to seeing all of the other volunteers at our In-Service Training in April (and checking out some of their towns). It's amazing how strong some of the friendships formed in those first 10 weeks together have continued to be.

 

It's getting warmer and warmer here. I took one of my two wool blankets off my bed, and last night, I even kicked the remaining one off. Despite being in the Northern hemisphere, weather here seems to be virtually unrelated to the seasons as I'm familiar with them. We're nearing the end of dry season here, but before the rains start, we're in for some hot weather. A colleague informed me that it was 29 degrees centigrade (about 85 Fahrenheit) on Friday, and that it will get up to 34—or even to 39 (102 F!)—for the next couple of months. April is supposedly the hottest month. I'll let you know. I thought that I had escaped that kind of heat in coming to Ethiopia. I'm going to try my best not to be whiny about it. (At the very least, I'm telling myself to be thankful that I'm not in Mongolia, where it's -30F).

 

The good thing about the warm weather, bright sun (and plenty of water during rainy season) is that a garden is a very real possibility. I met one of my neighbors (she's from South Carolina originally, and is teaching at the University here), who has cucumbers and watermelons, among other delights growing in her garden, knows where to get seeds, and even said she'd help me set up a garden of my own. So I have a new grand plan to feed myself from my yard. Okay, not really, but I would like to get some veggies and maybe some flowers growing. I've told myself for years that I was never going to garden, that I didn't like it, plus, there's too much to live up to, with a pretty darn good gardener for a mother, and an expert gardener for a grandfather. But perhaps I've been deluding myself—I'm actually really excited about the idea. Sunflowers and strawberries will both apparently even grow here. That would be lovely. Putting a shovel on the list of things to buy when I get back from the conference next week.