And so it is

Today: my big news is that my house is infested. With millipedes and
with mice. I hate the rainy season. The millipedes aren't such a big
deal. I pretty much ignore them. But the mice are another thing
altogether. I want them out. I went on an odyssey yesterday to find
rat poison (they steal the food out of the trap I bought without
springing it!). I was so proud of myself for finding it (after asking
about 50 people at the market where to look...). Followed the
instructions: injera covered with poison covered with shiro (a
chickpea and berbere paste). These little jerks dragged the scraps of
injera *under* my bed to munch on them, leaving most of the shiro, and
quite likely all of the poison. I woke up this morning thinking "why
does my bed smell like shiro?" Gross. I suppose I'll survive,
though...

In other news, a post from June 7th:

I'm sitting on my front stoop, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine
and a cool breeze. There are about 20 or 30 small birds flying into
and out of my yard and my trees, pecking around in the dirt for bugs
or spilled grain. A whole little crowd of them will swoop down from
the trees, hop about and peck at the ground, then, suddenly spooked by
something I can't sense, they all take off again and perch high above
me. They're extraordinarily beautiful—brilliant yellow-gold and black,
with delicate little claws and tiny red eyes. I have no idea what kind
they might be. Ethiopia has turned me into a birdwatcher. In my yard
alone, I've seen gorgeous long-tailed flycatchers with two-foot long
white feathery tails, woodpeckers with hilarious mohawks, tiny little
lovebirds that are brilliant teal, red, or neon green, and my
favorites, which someone told me are starlings, small elegant dark
blue birds that turn iridescent in the sunshine, shimmering like
peacock tails. And of course, elsewhere nearby there are fish eagles
(the spitting image of the American bald eagle), huge pelicans, a
variety of hawks and falcons, and enormous toucan-like birds with
monstrous curved beaks. I've never been interested in birds in my
life, but here, I find myself reaching for my camera or my binoculars
and asking my colleagues about the species we see near the office.
"What's that one called?" I ask.
"Wof," they usually answer. Bird. While there are specific words for
each kind, people aren't really familiar with all of the different
species. I'm planning a quest to find a bird identification book when
I go into Addis next time.

It's sometimes easy to forget how amazingly beautiful this place is.
I've made friends with a couple from New Mexico who have just moved to
town, and had dinner with them by candlelight the other night (the
power was out, as it has been three or so days per week for the past
couple of months). After dinner, we went out onto the patio and looked
up at the stars. With the whole city darkened, and incredibly clear
skies, the stars were brilliant. We lay on the driveway flat on our
backs and stared up at the sky for quite some time. Saw some shooting
stars. Or fireflies. Sometimes it was hard to tell. But regardless, it
was lovely, lying there in the total dark, with only a crescent moon
and some low clouds on the horizon with occasional flashes of
lightning.

It's been a busy week, but not in the way that I would have expected.
When we were given our site placements, Peace Corps assigned us a
supervisor and a counterpart—in my case, they're the people at I-TECH
with whom I'm supposed to be working most closely. My supervisor was
promoted about eight or ten weeks ago and moved to Addis. I was happy
for him, and hadn't noticed his absence much, since he had been really
busy with management and administration and wasn't at the hospital
much. But a week ago Thursday, first thing in the morning, my
counterpart, Hailu, mentioned that might be moving to Afar Region
(which is, precisely as it sounds, afar). By the end of the day he had
decided that he would indeed be moving away. When? The following
Sunday—three days later. It's been a shock to see him go. He was
particularly motivated and energetic and was a lot of fun to work
with. So my role, once again, is readjusting. I hadn't realized quite
how mobile people here are, both in terms of moving from one job to
another with little notice, but even from region to region. So I'm
trying to figure out my place within the organization and within the
hospital itself, once again.

I realize every once in a while both that I'm learning a lot about
this place, and that there's still a whole lot more to figure out. I'm
constantly surprised; there's never a dull moment when it comes to
navigating my way through this country and this culture. I'm beginning
to understand that my expectations of how any situation will unfold
are so thoroughly colored by my own culture and experience that it's
no wonder that they're rarely fulfilled as I predicted. Here's a for
instance: in collaboration with the Clinton Foundation, I'm
coordinating a project tracking all of the pediatric patients who have
missed appointments at the hospital. There are about 375 patients, and
we've trained seven outreach workers, mainly women living with
HIV/AIDS, to go out to nearby communities to find the families, record
why they stopped coming in to care, and to encourage them to see a
doctor. The Clinton Foundation folks prepared a
questionnaire/reporting form for these outreach workers to fill out,
and I made a master list of the patients, both of which got translated
into Amharic script because the outreach workers don't speak much
English. What I didn't anticipate, didn't even consider, however, was
the fact that some of the people who would be good candidates for this
job might not read or write at all. It's not something I would have
even thought about asking about it. I'm not sure that I've ever met
adult in the States who didn't read (or at least I wasn't aware of it,
if I have). We had a meeting last week with the outreach workers to
see how the first round of tracking had gone, and I watched as one of
these ladies had a friend read out loud to her the names of the
children she had tracked. I was stunned for two reasons. First,
although I knew that female literacy in Ethiopia is something like
24%, knowing that and actually absorbing the meaning of that statistic
are two very different things. Second, I was baffled by this woman's
memory. She told the story of how she found five of eight children in
the town where she was assigned to search, telling details about where
the houses were, what the children's siblings' names were, who at the
town administration had been able to help her. I can barely remember
what I had for dinner last night without writing it down. I can't
imagine what it would be like to not be able to rely on that
off-loading of information. I was really impressed with her, and
stunned at my own insensitivity.

So, all in all, things are fine here these days. The "summer" (rainy
season) is starting in earnest; we've had some spectacular thunder and
lightning, and a couple of nights of serious rain: even one of hail!
I'm enjoying the slightly cooler (though much more humid…) weather; it
feels like a personal triumph to be able to wear long sleeves during
the day. Meanwhile, I'm feeling myself growing restless, wondering
when the next trip will be. Good thing it's only five more weeks until
my "bestie" comes to visit from the States. We have an adventure to
Uganda (including going to see chimps!) planned for the end of July.
The other priority on my list is to come up with something to write my
Master's thesis about. I'm open to any and all suggestions. J

I watched Hillary's concession speech live the other night on the BBC;
that was sort of odd. I've felt pretty disconnected from American
politics (though one of the tourist agencies here in town is a clear
Obama supporter, with a bumper sticker on their desk at the airport
and another on their van!). Honestly, I was stunned to hear that
Hillary and Barack have been campaigning for sixteen months already
(and the election is still 4 months away!). When did the run-in to the
election get so damned long? I'm already keeping my eyes open for my
absentee ballot.