It's the Little Things

It was Ethiopian New Year last week. I've never seen so many sheep and
goats being dragged, pushed, carted, or carried home for the
slaughter. People must be so sick of sheep leftovers after New Year's
Day. It was a festive week; very little work got done. Everyone was
out and about, dressed to the nines in their traditional clothing,
visiting friends and family. Little boys also carry around flowers or
drawings of flowers and exchange them for coins (kind of like trick or
treating).

My major accomplishment over the holiday was baking a pumpkin pie with
Marcy. Here is what we used: one pumpkin (7 birr, or about 80 US
cents), a graham cracker (actually Digestive Biscuit) crust,
disposable aluminum baking pans, and a Dutch oven. It took the greater
part of an afternoon, but with what results! How rewarding to have
started with nothing and to end up with something so great. We also
managed to play about three games of Scrabble while it was baking,
which was an added bonus.

Other recent achievements: forming a committee for my thesis, making a
toilet paper holder for my latrine (out of dental floss, duct tape,
and a stick, no less), finally getting all of my utility bills up to
date, and making hotel reservations for when my parents come to visit.
It's the little things.

I'm trying hard to reframe my attitude. It's easy to complain: about
lack of work, about cultural difficulties, about the rain or the sun
or the mud or the dust, about not being able to find cheese, about how
gosh-darn hard this language is. But I'm trying to start thinking a
little more positively, about what I do have, and what I have
accomplished. I think that this is especially important as I'm coming
up on the year mark of being here in Ethiopia. It would be easy to
feel like I've done nothing this year and like I've achieved very
little. But instead, I'm trying to focus on the fact that I'm
comfortable in this town that was completely foreign to me a year ago,
that I can have a basic friendly conversation with the little old lady
selling me salad greens, that I have friends and neighbors who I love,
and that I understand the HIV treatment system and can navigate the
hospital, which was once such a scary place. And, of course, the
knowledge that I can bake a delicious pumpkin pie without a pie tin or
an oven!