Anna in Ethiopia

Odds and Ends

2009-10-26T09:19:00.001+03:00

After two years here, my time in Ethiopia is coming to an end. It's
hard to believe; you never picture the end of these things when you
begin them, or even during the experience. It has just snuck up on me,
and now I have less than a month left in Ethiopia. There are a lot of
difficult goodbyes looming, and certainly a tough transition back into
life in the States, but I'm also really looking forward to catching up
with friends and family, and to being back home. (I'm also terrified
that I'm going to freeze to death in Denver and Seattle in
December/January!)

Meanwhile life goes on here. Thesis work is coming along apace, and
I'm wrapping up my other work. And I've had a few small adventures
recently.

Last weekend, my friend Jennifer and I decided to walk from her town
(which is 80 km south of Bahir Dar) as far north toward B/Dar as
possible. It was one of the better days in Ethiopia. Some of the
highlights:

We had a child named after us. I asked mom if her two-month old baby
girl had a name. Not yet, she said, then thought about it for a bit.
"Ayinaddis," she said (the name means new eyes), "because I'm so
surprised to see you here." Mom was 19, and this was her second baby
(#1 is three years old). She and two friends were walking back from
market in the small town of Durbete. They said that they had about a
two hour walk back to their village. I asked how many people lived in
the village. "Oh, it's big," says the man. "Four hundred people." It's
hard to imagine how life in this small town of 400, with no
electricity, a two-hour walk from the nearest market or health center,
would differ from my own Ethiopian life in Bahir Dar, less than an
hour's drive away. None of this group of three had ever been to Bahir
Dar; mom said it was her dream for the baby to make it to the city.

We met a group of three guys walking to market, and started chatting
with them in Amharic. During the 90 minute walk into the next town,
our group gradually grew to two Americans, 20 Ethiopians, and a sheep
on a leash. We were quite the spectacle, walking into town.

Were told "tenkara gulbet allachew" (literally "you guys have a strong knee").

We rested under a wild fig tree in the middle of a teff field, exactly
in the middle of nowhere. It was the only time during the whole day
that we didn't see other people walking. It was incredibly beautiful
and peaceful, and felt, really for the first time, like I was seeing
what most of Ethiopia is like. Eighty percent of Ethiopians live in
rural areas.

We made up stories to tell people who asked what we were doing. Best
story: we are a Swedish walking team, having come from the Sudan. I
was told by an illiterate farmer that I was a lier when I told her
this.

After eight hours of walking (we figure probably close to 20 miles),
we took a bus back to Bahir Dar, and hobbled back to my house. I will
tell you that walking for eight hours and then sitting quietly in a
bus for an hour before stretching is probably not the best idea. We
were proud of ourselves, though, for making it as far as we did, and
for generally avoiding the ills that we had most feared: sunburn,
blisters, and roving packs of Ethiopian children throwing rocks (this
is an odd, but common, peril faced especially by walkers and bikers in
this country).

Other bits and pieces of recent life:

* I'm coming more and more to appreciate small things about Ethiopian
culture. I helped my friend Christen move some stuff from her house to
another friend's place last week. We were both loaded down, walking
down the steep hill to her house, and two Ethiopian girls just grabbed
the extra bags and insisted on walking them all the way down the hill
with us. Then they invited us to coffee at their house. We sat around
for probably 40 minutes, drinking coffee and eating homemade bread.
What hospitality! I think that when I first arrived here, I didn't
realize that this kind of invitation was real, because it seems so
different from the way that things work in America, but now, as I'm
gaining more and more awareness of the language and the culture, I'm
really coming to appreciate it.

* I was sitting at the internet cafe the other day when some kids
walked by with a "pet" vervet monkey on a leash. I petted him and
greeted the kids when they came into the cafe to say hi to me. When
the kids were ready to leave, the monkey jumped up onto my lap, ready
to stay with me. Seems somehow like the perfect contrast of the modern
and the wild: email and a monkey.

* Went to a party this weekend which felt very much like an American
barbecue. Except of course that the sheep had to be slaughtered, and
then the whole thing was roasted (wrapped in tinfoil) over an open
fire.

* When I lay down in bed the other night, something smelled funny,
kind of like the dead rat I had found a couple of months ago in my
living room. I went on a quest to find it. Turns out that it was a
small lizard had crawled between my two mattresses, and that I had
probably crushed it in my sleep. Several days earlier, apparently. Not
pleasant.

* Was punched in the kidney in the bus station by a man who wasn't
wearing any pants. Everyone around me just stood still, sort of
perplexed about what had just happened, and the man ran away.

* Just in time for me to leave, I finished my hand-made hammock. It's
hanging precariously between a tree and one of the columns on my front
porch. Almost a kilometer of rope went into that sucker.

well hello there

2009-08-05T10:56:00.001+03:00

Quick update: news in the past few weeks:

* Group three PCVs are receiving their invitations now. They'll arrive
in October. Exciting! At least two of us have acquaintances in the new
group (including another UW PCMI student!). If any of you Group Threes
are reading this, welcome! It's exciting, crazy, etc., but definitely
worth it.

* I finally, at long last, got my IRB approval from the Ethiopian
Public Health Association. Maybe I'll be able to finish my Master's
research, after all.

* Allergies in Ethiopia are bad news. I've been coughing and sniffling
like crazy. Ethiopians are worried about me. "This is beyond the
common cold," one of my coworkers told me. "It is rape." Confused, I
asked him what he meant. He told me the word in Amharic for _ripe_,
and then said that the cold had matured. Priceless.

* COS Conference in a little over three weeks. It's hard to believe
we're getting that close to the end. About four months from now, I'll
be on my way home. Scheming up some lovely travel for after finishing
here.

* Five-year-old birthday party on my compound last weekend. Dancing
five year-old Ethiopians are really cute.

* Rainy season has worked its magic. The countryside is gorgeous and
green, the cows are slightly less skeletal, mangos are abundant, and
every puddle is filled with frogs. Except for the mud, it would be
perfect. I do miss the summer in the NW, though. I'm getting excited
about moving back.

I'll be in Addis next week for a long meeting. Need to set up some
much-needed g-mail chat dates while I'm there. Will write again from
there.

The World's a Small Place

2009-07-14T14:16:00.001+03:00

Two coincidences this week. It makes the world seem like a pretty tiny
place (funny to be saying that when I'm so many thousands of miles
away from home...). Oddly, they both involve University of Washington.

It turns out that there's a former Fellow from the UW who's now [back]
living and working in Bahir Dar. It was odd to talk about the Ave,
about professors from the Department of Global Health, to reminisce
about classes. It was lovely to chat with this guy. I wish I had met
him earlier. For one, he mentioned how generous and kind people in
Seattle had been to him when he first arrived, and how he wanted to
repay the favor. I feel like I need to do the same when I get back to
Seattle--people have been so lovely to me here, as well.

And then on Friday, Kyle and I had dinner with some visiting PCVs from
Cameroon. We were sitting around chatting, and I asked where in the US
the five of them were from. And of course, one was from Seattle. And
was, like me, a Master's student. And, get this, we had been in a
class together in the winter of 2007. Who would ever have dreamed, in
a classroom in Seattle on a rainy winter evening, that two and a half
years later, this forestry Master's student would be living in
Cameroon, would be coming to Ethiopia on vacation, and would come to
visit my very site. Crazy.

I'm beginning to think that these UW connections may be pretty
important. Maybe for finding a job?

What's New?

2009-07-06T10:01:00.001+03:00

I've been a bit MIA. Sorry for the long delay in posting. There hasn't
been much to tell, these past few weeks. Life goes on as usual in
Ethiopia. It was reassuring, somehow, to visit the US and to realize
that not that much had changed at home. It's equally reassuring (and
yet at the same time depressing) to see the sameness of the day-to-day
routine here. Not much has changed since before I left for the States.
In fact, not all that much has changed since I arrived here in 2007.

So what is new?

There has been a large military presence in town this week, apparently
because of the coincidental overlap of a huge convoy of UN trucks,
equipment, tanks, etc., making their way between Addis Ababa and
Darfur, and a country-wide meeting of generals to discuss the
Ethiopian Army's successes in the past year.

What this means for us is that there are lots of people in camouflage
meandering around town, that two of the main streets are blocked off,
and that there are a lot of scary tanks lurking around. I've been
assured that no one is going to war (at least not in the immediate
future), but it is a bit intimidating.

There is one charming side effect of all this military presence,
however. Ethiopian men are very physical with each other about showing
their affection for one another. Friends drape their arms over each
other's shoulders, even sit on each other's laps, and it means nothing
whatsoever about sexuality (homosexuality is, in fact, still illegal
here, but that's another post...). So the fact that there are a lot of
soldiers in town, and a lot of soldiers who are friends with each
other, means that there are a lot of pairs of camouflaged men walking
down the street holding hands. I'd love to get a picture. If I wasn't
scared of what the consequences of taking pictures of soldiers were...

Otherwise, the rainy season has (thankfully) finally arrived, only
about 6 weeks late. When I got back to Bahir Dar in early June, the
lack of rain was already the focus of almost every conversation.
Really only in the last week have we gotten proper soaking rainstorms.
The sound of rainfall on a tin roof is seriously one of my favorites.
It makes for great sleeping. Lake Tana is slowly beginning to refill
(it had been so low that the ferry hadn't been running), and I'm
hoping that the reservoirs are all being to fill back up. We're still
on an electricity-rationing program of one day on, one day off. This
routine is tiresome (especially for businesses!), but it's at least
predictable--I've been planning meetings around when there will be
power.

I just started teaching a "Life Skills" and health education class for
seventh, eighth, and ninth grade girls. I think that it's going to be
great, and really useful for them, but I'm also paralyzed with fear of
teenagers. They just have the potential to be so mean. The one saving
grace is that these girls are pretty shy, and aren't likely to be
overtly obnoxious. I've decided that my strategy is going to be to
make an absolute fool of myself at every opportunity and to just allow
them to laugh at me. This is the first attempt I've made at direct
service-provision--everything else I've done here has really been
about systems, so it'll be fun (and terrifying!) to actually get to do
something with "beneficiaries." It's also an opportunity to practice
some Amharic (I'm teaching mostly in English, with an Ethiopian
co-teacher, but the girls howl with surprised laughter every time I
say anything in Amharic, so I think I'll keep pushing myself to try
more).

I pass the 21-month mark in country this week. It's hard to believe
that I've been here that long, and that time is moving this fast. I
got my official date for "close of service" (checking out of the Peace
Corps); I think that it will be November 25th. I'm planning a few
weeks of travel (more on that soon...), and then on being back in the
States before Christmas. It's crazy that I'll be home in less than
five months.

That does mean that I have to start cracking down a bit on some of my
projects. If projects are as slow to wind-down as they were to
start-up in the first place, it means that I need to start shutting
things down, soon. I also still have all of my Master's thesis
research to complete in the next months (a minor hold-up with the
Public Health Association here aside, I'm just about ready to go on
data collection). I have a feeling that these last few months are
going to fly. Another crop of dear friends are finishing their
contracts in the next few weeks and are heading back to wherever home
is, and it reminds me of how transient this life here is (at least for
most farenjis), and also about my own departure. I'm beginning to
imagine what the process of saying goodbye will be like. It's
certainly not going to be easy.

One more thing: I'm searching for easy reading material for the 7th,
8th, and 9th graders at the after-school center where I'm teaching
life skills. The kids are at the level of reading easy chapter books
in English, but the issue is that it's difficult to find material with
subject matter that's complex or exciting enough to engage 13-16 year
olds, written in English that's simple enough that they don't get
overwhelmed. Those of you with kids or with experience teaching--I'd
love ideas!

Oh, America

2009-05-13T21:50:00.002+03:00

I'm in the US for a wedding and a quick visit home. Quote of the day, or perhaps even of the week:

Me: I live in Africa.
Lady shampooing my hair at the hair-cutting place: Oh really, where in Africa do you live?
Me: Ethiopia
LSMHATHCP: Oh, cool. Do you speak, um, African?
Me: I speak Amharic, which is the language where I live.
LSMHATCHP: Oooh. Okay. So how many dialects of African are there?
Me: A lot.

Reading List

2009-04-07T12:30:00.001+03:00

I'm passing off a lot of books to Peace Corps staff to take back to
the office this week. My house has become sort of a de facto library
for volunteers passing through, which is lovely, but I was beginning
to realize that I have far more books floating around my house than I
would ever be able to carry back to Addis.

The purge got me thinking about what I've read since coming to Africa.
Thanks to many of you who have sent me books, and to an incredibly
varied collection among the PCVs and other ex-pats, I've really read
quite a lot. I've kept a list, and it's now at 90 (including,
shamefully, two textbooks and at least 8 books written for young
adults…). Here are the highlights, in no particular order.

Best books I've read in Africa (Fiction):
• Middlesex
• Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• Interpreter of Maladies
• One Thousand Splendid Suns
• Unaccustomed Earth
• Say You're One of Them
• The God of Small Things
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals
• The Hours
• The Book Thief

Best books I've read in Africa (Nonfiction):
• Eat, Pray, Love
• Do They Hear You When You Cry?
• And the Band Played On
• Pathologies of Power
• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• The Devil in the White City
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames
• Dark Star Safari
• How to be Alone
• Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words
• Persepolis
• There is No Me Without You
• Aid and Other Dirty Business

I still have 8 months left here, including three months of rainy
season…I'm taking recommendations :)

You've Disappeared

2009-04-07T12:29:00.001+03:00

"Hanni, tafash." This is perhaps the most frequent sentence I hear in
Amharic. You've disappeared. It's akin to "long time, no see," but
stronger. Similar to "I've missed you," but more accusatory. And
Ethiopians use it all the time. My favorite shop owner told me I had
disappeared one afternoon, when I'd been at his shop that same
morning. A friend in Addis told me I had disappeared, despite my
having talked to her on the phone once a week over the past three
months. At the hospital, if I'm out doing something else for a half
day, every member of the staff feels the need to remind me that I have
"tafash"-ed when I come back.

I'm beginning to see the meaning of this phrase as it works in
Ethiopian culture. As I spend more time here, I'm realizing how much
of every activity in Ethiopia is directed toward preserving and
strengthening social relationships. We talked about this a little bit
in training—about Ethiopia being a collectivist society in
counterpoint to America's individualism—but it has taken more than a
year of actually living here to realize how deeply held these values
are. My Ethiopian friends actually feel like I've disappeared when
they haven't seen me in days or hours—relationships are that central
to the way of life here. Nearly everything about this culture hinges
on other people. You have to maintain relationships with people here,
because you rely on them. Particularly in smaller communities (though,
still, I think, even in a city like Bahir Dar or even Addis), you
can't get by without other people, and so relationships are sacrosanct
and conflict between individuals is rare and very quickly smoothed
over.

I've seen time and again (despite my lingering awkwardness at showing
up uninvited at someone's doorstep) that hosting makes people happy,
and that they're pleased that I value their friendship enough to stop
by their homes. I'm beginning to understand the many (at first
perplexing) phone calls when people have nothing to say; they just
need to check in and make sure that I'm still here. Other things too:
hierarchies at work are about preserving social relationships, about
not rocking the boat. So too is the focus (obsession?) with respect
(or as it's occasionally called here, "respection"). Conflict is
avoided as best as possible. Communication is indirect…but is subtle
and constant and of paramount importance. Ethiopians have
communicatory finesse, to be sure. I still certainly miss lots of the
subtext and undercurrents of what people say.

It's enlightening and at the same time disorienting to start figuring
these things out about the society I'm living in. It's certainly
helpful to start reflecting on the way things work here, and is
incredibly interesting in the academic sense. But it's also tricky,
acknowledging how different my own culture is from the Ethiopian, and
trying to navigate how I fit in here. I'm beginning to think that I
would enjoy being an anthropologist, though it would also, obviously,
be hard work.

The more I live here, the more I realize how little I understand about
this place. It's incredible to finally get how complicated a culture
really is. Lots to think about…

By the way, I have indeed disappeared from this blog, for which I
heartily apologize, and will try to remedy in the future.

Small Town Life

2009-02-27T13:42:00.001+03:00

I've been checking out the rural life this week.

My good friend Tom is an anthropologist. He's living on Zege
peninsula, which is about 30 km by land (or 15 km by boat) from Bahir
Dar, studying religion and culture there. Tom's been encouraging me
for ages that I need to get out to Zege to meet his friends and to see
what his life is like there. Monday was a religious holiday (a saint's
day for the local church/monastery), so I took the opportunity to go
for a visit.

The whole thing worked out perfectly, and left me (a) impressed with
Tom and his work, (b) loving rural Ethiopian, and (c) simultaneously
pretty glad that I live in a city.

I took the ferry over to the peninsula on Monday morning. At the port,
the nurse from the Zege Health Center took me under his wing. He
bought my ticket, found us a place to stand on the very crowded boat,
and we listened to Teddy Afro (the immensely popular and currently
imprisoned Ethiopian pop star) on his mobile phone. He had worked with
Doctors without Borders when they were in Ethiopia and had a lot to
say about the state of health in this country. It was also really
interesting to hear what it's like to practice medicine in an
under-stocked, over-burdened, but also really enthusiastic, committed
health center.

We arrived at Zege, and the crowd was herded up the dock toward the
monastery where the holiday celebrations were happening. The nurse,
having bought it, of course had my ticket, so there was a bit of a
hold up at the gate until I could sweet talk my way past the guards
(sometimes speaking a little Amharic goes a long way). I found Tom
amid the melee, and we headed out for a walk along the lakeshore to
let the crowd die down a bit. The peninsula is mostly covered in
coffee forest, and is incredibly beautiful. We walked out to where
Tom's friend has a coffee plantation, but Menelik wasn't around.
Asking some kids where he had gone, we were shuttled through the
coffee up a big hill on narrow rocky paths through the forest to
another friend's house, which was tucked away in the hills above the
lakefront. It's incredible to think what life must be like there. No
electricity, water only that you've hauled from the lake (see my
previous post about hauling water: it's no fun).

Menelik took Tom and me back to his own house, where a bunch of
friends had gathered. The whole day seemed to revolve around T'ella
(moonshine beer), food, and relaxing with friends. This is my kind of
holiday. We chatted with friends at Menelik's place for most of the
morning, then went up to the church to check out what was happening.
Came back to Menilik's during mass (we couldn't go in because it's a
fasting period and we'd eaten that morning, and anyway, 3 hours of
mass in ge'ez might have been a little much), then went back to the
church again. Got temporarily lost on the winding paths around the
church, but picked up an entourage on the half hour walk back to town.

Afaf town (it means hilltop or clifftop) is on a little cove
overlooking the lake back toward Bahir Dar. Perhaps about 3000 people
live in town (no one seems quite sure). It's a small place, but is
also the market hub for all of the surrounding countryside, so it's
pretty lively. It has its own post office, a couple of pharmacies
(including a couple of veterinary pharmacies), and a smattering of
barbers, tailors, and all-purpose souks. It also has perhaps the
nicest collection of people I've ever met (or perhaps it's just a
credit to Tom that he's on such good terms with everyone that they
treated me so wonderfully). We had coffee (and more T'ella and of
course more food) with his close friends Tomas and Haregua at their
grandmother's house. I got to hold a three-month-old baby. Most of
Zege life, at least on a holiday, seems to consist of socializing, and
it was fantastic. It becomes easy to see why social relationships are
so important, and why it's so important in Ethiopian society to
preserve those relationships above anything else. And I think that I'm
finally at the point in my Amharic learning that I can enjoy just
chewing the fat with people. It also didn't hurt that Tom was there,
and is fluent. It would be fun (and hard, of course) to go live in a
rural village for a few months to give my Amharic a kick-start.

Tuesday morning we went back to grandma's house for a doughnut and
more T'ella (and more time holding the baby of course), and then
stopped by the health center. Seid, my new friend from the ferry, took
me around and introduced me to everyone. I'd love to go spend a week
working there to see how different the health center is from the
referral hospital. I found out that their lab can run a malaria slide
and an HIV rapid test. That's it. They're about to get TB microscopy,
but not until they receive the supplies from the Ministry of Health.
They can give injections, deliver babies, and treat malaria. That's
really about all. And this isn't even the most basic health care
delivery unit—there are five health posts attached to the health
center with even more rudimentary services. It makes you think.

And then yesterday I went with my friend Saul to Dagi. To get to Dagi,
as Saul said, you "go to Merawi [a medium-ish town about 35 km from
Bahir Dar on the main road]. Then you go past it a little bit, through
a tiny town called Wetet Abay. Then you go, um, left." Which is pretty
much exactly what we did. An hour later, having traveled along
impossible "roads," forded a river in the Land Cruiser, and passed
about a hundred donkey carts hauling firewood the 18 km to town, we
arrived in Dagi. This is the kind of place where folks haven't seen a
white person before. It's small enough not to have a post office or
electricity. It does, however, have a single (miserable looking)
hotel, called, hilariously, "Sheraton." Saul and his team from the
Carter Center are doing trachoma (bacterial eye infection) surgery and
research, and they did their exams by the sunlight coming in through
the open window and door in the (mud) health post room. It was
ridiculous watching patients getting weighed—the scale was totally
foreign and mysterious (and a bit scary) for them. Saul told me that
the first time they came to Dagi, patients didn't know how to open the
door if it was closed; they'd never seen a door handle. He also said
that the chairs confused some of the patients; they'd only ever sat on
mats or stools. Incredible.

I amused myself for about a half hour in Dagi by making faces at and
teasingly scaring a group of 15 or so kids who were staring at me.

What's impossible to get my mind around is this: but by an accident of
birth, I could be living in Zege or in Dagi. But for coincidence, I
could have been one of those kids, and she me.

The world's a pretty crazy place.

Water

2009-02-25T11:45:00.001+03:00

I feel like an old-time polar explorer reporting on the state of my
supplies. Sixth day without water. Can't cook, wash dishes, or flush
the toilet. Morale is low.

The irony is that we had a flood on my compound just a week ago. The
spigot had been leaking slowly for a few days, and we finally had a
plumber come take a look at it. The shut-off valve from the main
municipal pipe was broken, so this plumber guy says that he'll just
take off the broken spigot then force a new one on against the flow of
water out of the pipe. If only it had been that easy. Turns out that
the old faucet was leaking because its screw threads were totally
rusted out. Rusted, it turns out, onto the inside of the pipe. So the
plumber dude gets the old spigot off, but the new one can't go in
because of these little rusty bits of old spigot stuck in there. He
surveys the situation, and says "I need to go home for a part."
Meanwhile, there's a mini-fire hydrant's worth of water spewing out
into the compound. Tsehay and I tried to stem the flow with our hands,
with a stick, with a stick wrapped up in a plastic bad. Nothing worked
particularly well. The 9-year-old and I start bailing water into every
bucket on the compound (which, incidentally, is no small number), and
pouring water onto the trees and flowers when the buckets fill up.
Meanwhile two four-year-olds are reveling in the mud, splashing and
hooting about. Plumber guy eventually returns and smacks the rusty
bits ineffectually with a hammer. Water continues to pour. I'm
imagining at this point that it will NEVER stop running. But,
miraculously, he eventually gets the gunk out of the pipe and is able
to jam the new spigot on (with lots of splashing), and blissfully, the
tide stops. We were charged 30 birr (just under three dollars) for the
part, and 10 birr for labor, and thought that our water troubles were
over.

And no we've been without water for six days. One day is really no
trouble. You don't need to wash your dishes after a day. And there's
usually enough water stored up in various buckets or solar shower or
Nalgenes that you can get by for about a day. Day two is rougher. And
by a week, the situation is pretty miserable. We've been begging
jerry-cans of water from neighbors (who mysteriously get water back at
night, though we do not), and I hauled 12 liters of water in plastic
bottles from Kyle's house, but I can report that hauled water does not
go far when there are 5 people living on your compound. Rainy season
and guaranteed good water supply are three months away. Yikes.

Cheap Food Availability

2009-01-23T12:03:00.001+03:00

An idea stolen from Charlene (a fellow UW Peace Corps-er who's in Mongolia).

From an article from the NY Times about cost-saving grocery items…not
necessarily so cheap (and/or available) here...
(http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/healthy-foods-for-under-1/?hp)

1. Oats: cheap by American standards (about 20 cents for a
medium-sized tin), but far more expensive than other grains here.
Still, I buy them virtually every time I shop.

2. Eggs: Cost about 12 cents apiece, up from 7 cents each when I moved here.

3. Kale: Everywhere. 10 cents for a head.

4. Potatoes: Again, everywhere. Maybe 30 cents a kilo.

5. Apples: Ha, only in Addis, and about 50 cents each.

6. Nuts: Uh, peanuts are cheap-ish, as is peanut butter. Otherwise,
forget it, unless you're a rich farengi and can afford the
extortionate prices in Addis.

7. Bananas: Yep. About 70 cents a kilo. And sweeter than any banana
I've ever had in the States.

8. Garbanzo Beans: Yes, though usually ground up into a fine powder.
Definitely my major source of protein.

9. Broccoli: Ha. I tried to grow it once but it never flowered…

10. Watermelon: I saw this (and was delighted) when we had a training
in the South. Never up North, though.

11. Wild Rice: Cracked wheat almost approximates this.

12. Beets: Thankfully, yes! I love them! About 50 cents per kilo,
though somewhat seasonal.

13. Butternut Squash: Nope. Pumpkin, sometimes (in the Fall), is as
close as it gets.

14. Whole Grain Pasta: At the farengi grocery stores sometimes, but
about 10 times more expensive than the white flour stuff.

15. Sardines: Not sure about this one. Never looked for them. Canned
tuna is disgusting enough, tinned in oil and flake-form as it is…

16. Spinach: Hard to say, really…we have lots of different kinds of
green leafy veggies, but I'm not sure I've ever seen spinach itself.

17. Tofu: Maybe in Addis. I looked up a recipe to make it, but it seemed hard.

18. Milk: Great in coffee, less great for anything else. I mostly use
the powered kind, which is ridiculously expensive (about $6 for the
equivalent of 3 liters), to avoid having to pasteurize the farm kind.

19. Pumpkin Seeds: I guess so, when pumpkins are in season, but
really? What am I going to do with a whole pumpkin?

20. Coffee: Need I really say more that that Ethiopia is its
birthplace? A cup in a café is about 5-10 cents. A kilo of raw beans
is maybe $2.50. Not sure I've gone a day since coming here without
drinking coffee. Really.

home again (almost)

2009-01-12T12:19:00.002+03:00

I've been away from Bahir Dar now for exactly one month (with a three day stop over back home in between). It's been lovely and refreshing, but I'd be lying to say that I wasn't excited to get back home.

I spent a week in Ambo with the new trainees, who arrived at the beginning of December. It was fun to recount my experience over the past year. They certainly had lots of questions. They seem like a great group (so excited to be here! so idealistic and un-jaded!), and it will be great to have some new neighbors and new energy. Five weeks into training, all 40 of them are still here, which is nice. Ambo was a great town, and it was fun to watch the trainees navigate it with their still-shaky Amharic and to realize how far we've all come in the past year or so. It was also great to get to spend time with the training staff (many of them back from last year). During our training, I think that both volunteers and staff were a little scared of each other, and it was hard to actually make friends with the Ethiopians. Not so this year--our staff is really incredible, and it was wonderful to get to joke around with them (in Amharic, no less!).

My parents arrived in Ethiopia on Christmas Eve morning, and we were together for nearly three lovely weeks. We spent time in Addis, Bahir Dar, and Lalibela in Ethiopia, and in Ruaha National Park in the Southwest and Zanzibar, in Tanzania.

Brief highlights:

* Christmas Dinner with Liz, Chris, and Chris's parents at the fanciest restaurant in Addis
* Visiting the monasteries on Zege Penninsula in Lake Tana with Tom, my friend the anthropologist, who lives there and consequently knows everything about them
* Seeing the rock-hewn churches at Lalibela (again). They were just as spectacular the second time
* Getting stuck in Lalibela (the plane apparently needed a "particle," which had to be shipped from Addis the following morning), and having a taxi driver from town appear at the airport shouting "Hana! Hana!," looking specifically for me to take me & parents back to town (ah, the benefits of speaking Amharic!)
* The van from the airport back to Lalibela breaking down on the road, and the Ethiopian Airlines car driving right past us without so much as a wave to make sure that we were okay
* Spotting two leopards resting in a Rainy Tree after killing an impala. Mom missed out on that one because she wanted to take a nap
* Drinking a gin & tonic by a campfire under the stars in Ruaha National Park
* Holding a baby bushbaby (less spectacular was having the baby bushbaby pee on me)
* Watching lions eat giraffe guts from about 3 meters away
* Snorkeling in Zanzibar--so many fish! I have decided that scuba diving is decidedly in my future
* Consistent access to cheese, non-Ethiopian food (though I did miss my injera fix somewhat), and hot showers for nearly three weeks

I'm back to Bahir Dar on Wednesday, after a much-needed, but potentially somewhat stressful, meeting with my UW advisor tomorrow here in Addis Ababa. It will probably be quite a challenge to get up and running again after having been away for so long, and I'm sure that I have dozens of exclamations of "tafash!" ("you've disappeared!", kind of akin to "long time no see") waiting for me in Bahir Dar. But my oh my will it be good to be home again.

Landmarks

2008-12-05T12:05:00.001+03:00

The second group of PCVs arrived in Ethiopia last night. It has me
thinking about how far I've come in the past 14 months…and about how
far I still have to go in the next year. I remember stepping off of
that plane exhausted, disoriented, and terrified. Lugging my 80+
pounds of luggage to the bus they had rented for us and staring,
stunned, at the city, which was empty as we drove through it around 10
pm, on our way to the hotel. I remember thinking, more than once,
"what have I gotten myself into?"

With this new group arriving, and with the departures from Bahir Dar
of two dear friends (one a short term intern from Germany, the other
Teddy, my first friend at I-TECH), I've been imagining my own
departure. It's hard to fathom. I can't picture what it would be like
to say goodbye to these people, to this place, that has become my
home. I suppose that's a good sign—that I am indeed settled here. I
have a feeling that, for better or for worse, that this next year is
going to fly by.

It's been a while since I've posted an update. I moved into a new
house about a month ago. My old landlord, not unsurprisingly, given
ridiculous inflation, tried to increase my rent when my contract ran
out in October. The surprise was that he wanted to raise it by almost
50%. So, with the help of just about everybody I know in Bahir Dar, I
found a new place, not far from the old, and moved in. I love this new
place, and kind of can't quite remember how I survived a year in the
old one. I have a kitchen, an indoor bathroom, and quite a bit more
room than in the old house. And particularly nice is the fact that I'm
not alone on my compound any more. There's a wonderful family sharing
the yard with me. Mom, Tsehay (which means "sun") is a jewel: kind and
helpful and with such a warm smile. She often brings me an injera and
a little pot of wot if there's extra. Dad works for the Ministry of
Capacity Building and is often out in the field, but also seems quite
nice. Two kids, Tsion (age 9), and Beniam (age 4), are super sweet,
though still a little bit shy and not quite sure of what to make of a
ferenji living on their compound. They both go to a good private
school in town, and are learning English. Yesterday Tsion came to my
door after school, her first exams of the year in hand. She wanted to
show me how well she was doing (20/20 in English!). I gave her a
high-five. She also drew a rabbit for me to put up on my wall, having
seen drawings from other kids hanging there. Beniam won't really talk
to me yet, but I can see by his shy smile that he wants to like me. We
have a full year—I'm sure he'll be my buddy by the time I leave here.

Holiday time again now, and much better than last year. I remember
being lonely and unsure of myself last year. At Christmastime, we'd
only been in Bahir Dar a little over a week. It's so nice to have
friends and a home and to know how things work here. We orchestrated,
along with 6 volunteers, a huge Thanksgiving celebration at Charlie &
Dee's (my adopted parents here) house, complete with a turkey special
ordered from the US Embassy. What a treat! Their house is lovely and
warm, and they're incredibly generous. A friend from the States had
come for a visit, and acted as a Thanksgiving-food-mule, delivering
cranberries, huge golden onions, celery, and sweet potatoes. Charlie
and Dee's guard didn't even recognize the onions—they look nothing
like our little tiny red onions here. We shared an incredible dinner
(how good to have such friends!), and then spent the afternoon
painting a mural on the inside of Charlie and Dee's gate.

My parents are arriving in Ethiopia in less than three weeks. I know
that they're excited about seeing my life here, and I'm excited to
show them around. It will be interesting to see how they react to life
here. Sometimes it's easy to forget, in the routine of it all, how
different my life here is. I know that all of my friends here are
eager to meet them, as well.

What else? I'm struggling again with finding productive work, but am,
at least, making progress on my thesis. The goal is to have my
proposal done and submitted to the ethical review boards in the US and
Ethiopia by the first of the year. I'm planning to look at the
factors—demographic, clinical, and social—that are associated with
poor outcomes in the first six months of HIV treatment. We're seeing a
lot of clients coming in to the hospital acutely sick, getting tested
for HIV and started on treatment, and then never showing up again.
Will be interesting to see if we can sort out just who the patients
are who are most likely to drop out of care. I'm also hoping to
conduct (through a translator) a few interviews, to try to tease out
some of the problems people encounter with HIV treatment. My best
guess is that transport costs, fear of stigma (and therefore not
telling others about the treatment and not having any social support),
and perhaps drug and alcohol use, will show up as issues. But I
suppose I'll have to wait for the data to tell me…

So life is fine here. It's starting to feel like I've been away for a
very long time, and I'm sure that it will be nice to have a short
break with my parents (and who wouldn't be excited about spending a
few days on the beach in Zanzibar?!). I miss all of my friends and
family back in the States (and around the world…). Know that I'm
thinking of you often, and particularly during the holidays. Hope that
you're all well.

OBAMA!

2008-11-05T14:44:00.001+03:00

Jubilant.

And very, very tired.

Stayed up all night to watch the election returns (first ones came
back just after 3am). Watching the concession and acceptance speeches
this morning around 8am (having been there since midnight) at the
Obama Cafe (with fellow Americans, Ethiopians, a Brit, some Dutchmen,
a few Canadians, and a German) was one of the better things I've ever
done. I actually cried with relief.

Congra, Obama, as they say here.

VOTE!

2008-10-31T16:45:00.001+03:00

We're getting down to the wire on the US election. It's big news here
(and has been for several months). Many of my friends, both Ethiopians
and ex-pats, are asking about it and thinking about it. A great new
café in Bahir Dar opened up a couple of months ago—Obama Café and
Restaurant. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite haunts. I even
(thanks to friends and family back in Denver) brought them some
additional Barack paraphernalia from the convention last August (which
the proprietors were exceptionally excited about). I got my absentee
ballot in the mail a week or so ago, sent it back, thanks to the Peace
Corps, priority. While my vote isn't going to change the situation in
Washington State, it still feels like such a privilege to be able to
make a choice (at least symbolically) from so very far away. It's
really overwhelming to see how many people here care, and how deeply,
about the results of this election. I'm inspired to see people without
a lot of access to international news media who know more about the
repercussions of this election than many Americans do. A great new
café in Bahir Dar opened up a couple of months ago—Obama Café and
Restaurant. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite haunts. I even
(thanks to friends and family back in Denver) brought them some
additional Barack paraphernalia from the convention last August (which
the proprietors were exceptionally excited about).

If you haven't already, PLEASE make sure to vote in this election. Do
it for yourselves, for me, and especially for those millions of people
in Ethiopia and elsewhere who care deeply about what happens in
America and don't have that privilege.

A year?!

2008-10-31T16:41:00.001+03:00

Happy Halloween! My pen-pals (elementary school students from North
Carolina) had lots of questions for me about what Halloween is like in
Ethiopia. They may be sad to learn the truth that there are no
costumes or trick or treating here. Though I can imagine that my
neighbor boys would be absolutely nutso for Halloween if they heard
about it.

We just passed the one year anniversary of being in Peace Corps.
Amazing. We finished our Mid-Service Conference (complete with lots of
interesting--and a few less interesting--presentations, a bowling
outing--human pinsetters!, physicals, a slightly-too-aggressive dental
cleaning, and an eye exam at an Ethiopian clinic that turned into a
join appointment--Kristen and I had our eyes looked at
simultaneously), and I've been hanging out in Addis for the week
taking advantage of some time to get stuff done in the capital. It's
been a nice break, but actually, for the first time in a while, I did
in fact feel sad about leaving Bahir Dar. I've been feeling *good*
there these days. Incredible! I'm making real friends, enjoying my
work, and trying to get started on the thesis project. I've finally
been able to cobble together about 10 different projects at I-TECH and
elsewhere, and have been (can you believe it?) _busy_ these days. So
it felt like bad timing to be away from home this week. It has been
lovely, though, to get to spend time with the other volunteers in a
big group. I haven't seen some of these guys since April. We're down
to 29 of us now (lost another one just last week), and so the group
feels particularly close knit (that's code for small...). Our Country
Director resigned last week, meaning that nearly every single member
of our original senior staff has turned over since we arrived. Ah, new
programs. We've been an experiment from the very start.

So things are looking and feeling up. I'm moving out of my house next
week into a beautiful new place, complete with indoor toilet and
(gasp!) kitchen counters. I'm hoping that my new landlord will have
arranged to turn on the water, fix the windows so that they actually
shut, and get the kitchen door to unlock in the week that I've been
gone. Too much to ask? Potentially. Anyhow, the place is great, and
I'm excited about the move. It's a bit farther from work and town, but
I'll no longer be living on a compound by myself, which I think will
be great news for my (currently struggling) Amharic. The family also
has two adorable little kids, Tsion, who is in second grade, and
Biniam, who's in first. So given how much I love kids, this is going
to be a perfect situation.

My parents will be coming to visit in just 8 weeks. I'm already
counting down. Excited to get to share Ethiopia with them, and also to
get to see a little corner of Tanzania. Many of the volunteers have
visitors over Christmas and New Years or are going home. It feels like
a really big milestone in our time here. I'm sure that the next year
is just going to fly. The new volunteers--Group Two--arrive on
December 4th. We're all excited to get to meet them. There's lots of
speculation about what this group will be like. If it's anything like
ours, then *unique* might be the best descriptor.

To an English Friend in Africa

2008-09-23T15:29:00.001+03:00

A poem by Ben Okri, a Nigerian poet. Yes, it's a little cheesy, but
sometimes these things just speak to me, and I thought I'd share it
with you all. I particularly liked these lines: "Remember that all
things which happen/ To you are raw materials." I think that it's a
good mantra for when things don't go exactly the way that I would have
liked them to go, here and elsewhere...

_To an English Friend in Africa_

Be grateful for the freedom
To see other dreams.
Bless your loneliness as much as you drank
Of your former companionships,
All that you are experiencing now
Will become moods of future joys
So bless it all,
Do not think your way superior
To another's
Do not venture to judge
But see things with fresh and open eyes
But praise when you can
And when you can't, be silent.

Time is now a gift for you
A gift of freedom
To think and remember and understand
The ever perplexing past
And to recreate yourself anew
In order to transform time.

Live while you are alive.
Learn the ways of silence and wisdom
Learn to act, learn new speech
Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit and
Learn to free yourself from all the things
That have molded you
And which limit your secret and undiscovered road.

Remember that all things which happen
To you are raw materials
Endlessly fertile
Endlessly yielding of thoughts that could change your life
And go on doing so forever.

Never forget to pray and be thankful
For all things good or bad on the rich road:
For everything is changeable
So long as you live while you are alive.

Fear not, but be full of light and love;
Fear not, but be alert and receptive;
Fear not, but act decisively when you should;
Fear not, but know when to stop;
Fear not, for you are loved by me;
Fear not, for death is not the real terror,
But life—magically—is.

Be joyful in your silence
Be strong in your patience
Do not try to wrestle with the universe
But be sometimes like water or air
Sometimes like fire
And constant like the earth.

Live slowly, think slowly, for time is a mystery.
Never forget that love
Requires always that you be
The greatest person you are capable of being,
Self-regenerating and strong and gentle—
Your own star and hero.

Love demands the best in all of us
To always and in time overcome the worst
And lowest in our souls.
Love the world wisely.

It is love alone that is the greatest weapon
And the deepest and darkest secret.

So fear not, my friend.
The darkness is gentler than you think.
Be grateful for the manifold
Dreams of creation
And the many ways of the unnumbered peoples.

Be grateful for life as you live it.
And may a wonderful light
Always guide you on the unfolding road.

A bit of promotion

2008-09-17T14:41:00.001+03:00

Just found the URL for the orphanage that I've been working with.
They're are really great organization, currently struggling to find
room for more and more children who are being given up for adoption.
When I arrived in Bahir Dar, they had about 12 live-in children and
maybe an additional 20 attending day care. They're up to 23 live-ins
and probably 60 total in day care. They're building an additional
center, hiring qualified staff (including a social worker, hurray!),
and trying really hard to do what's best for these kids. Grace Center
(or Centre, if you were to ask them) is one of the best stops on the
tour that I give to every visitor to Bahir Dar. It's a pretty special
place. Clean, bright, filled with happy, healthy babies. My visits
there (and the relationship I'm forming with the family that runs it)
have definitely helped me to keep my sanity, and it's doing SO much
more for the kids and the families it serves.

Here's the link: http://www.gracecentres.org/index.html. Take the
religious affiliation as you will--they're a pretty fabulous group
(and the religious element here in Bahir Dar is actually rather
minimal). I'm sure that they would appreciate your support.

It's the Little Things

2008-09-17T14:15:00.001+03:00

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!

Also...

2008-08-25T12:24:00.004+03:00

Check out Ruth's photos of her trip to Ethiopia and our trip to Uganda!

On Community

2008-08-25T12:22:00.000+03:00

It’s incredible to finally feel like I belong, at least in some measure, in this place that is so very different from my home and what I’m familiar with. It’s surprising and heartening. Not to say that I feel totally comfortable or “at home” here all the time—far from it, still—but I at least feel like I’m making some steps in the right direction and being rewarded for them.

The Olympics have been a tremendous community-builder. People here are crazy for the track and field. I’ve been watching a lot of it at the small café on the corner of my block. The first Ethiopian gold medal race was one of the most memorable moments for me here so far. Kristen Straw was here visiting, and we were walking by with some groceries when we saw a huge crowd gathered at the café. We went in and it was 21 minutes into the 29 (ish) minute race. Tirunesh Dibaba, the Ethiopian, was holding steady in second place behind a Kenyan. She was keeping pace, but barely. The crowd was tense. At the very end, though, just a couple of seconds after the bell rang signaling the last lap, Tirunesh took off, and ended the race at last 10 meters in the lead. I’ve never seen spectators as excited about an athletic event—jumping up and down, hooting and cheering, high fives all around. Straw and I cheered along with them. What a moment of national pride. And then they showed the American who won bronze pulling the flag around her shoulders. Straw and I applauded and cheered. The whole bar—maybe 50 men (we were literally the only women in the place)—turned and stared at us. And then they stood up and cheered along with us. How incredible…to think that athletics can bring people together like that. Amazing.

We said goodbye this week to a dear friend and colleague, Dr. Happyson, who is ending his year-and-a-half long contract here in Ethiopia, to return to his family in the US (Zimbawean, he emigrated to California a few years ago). He’s been a great friend and mentor, and I’ll be sad to see him go. It was interesting, though, at the hospital, to realize how much a part of the work community he had become, even given the language barrier and the various ambiguities of working here. It gave me hope that when I leave in a year or so, people will feel the same way about saying goodbye to me as they have to him. It was also nice to see that Happyson felt sad on some level to be leaving here, despite his excitement about seeing his wife and daughters.

I’m also starting to feel more and more comfortable in my neighborhood. There’s a big group of pre-teen boys who have taken to me. They come over every day (sometimes more than once a day!), wanting to play soccer or hang out in my yard or chit-chat with me or practice English or just to say hello. Sometimes they’re enormously annoying, like when they knock on my gate at 7:15am and won’t leave me alone, but I’m also really growing to like them. And it’s nice to know that they’re looking out for me. (At all times! They always know whether I’m home or not). We have English class every weekend for half an hour or an hour, and this week I read out loud the three storybooks I have here. They were hanging on every word, and hanging off of me to look at the pictures. That’s something I could use more of if you’re interested in sending—picture books (about a 2nd grade level, with pictures, no figurative language, and lots of repetition). They needn’t be new, and I’ll just plan on leaving them with a school here when I go.

And there’s an incredibly sweet old lady who lives on the next block who has made a special effort to befriend me. It’s hard, because she speaks not a word of English, and my Amharic is still not great (and I probably have a very strong accent…), and she’s somewhat hard of hearing, but her face just lights up every time she sees me. She kisses each of my shoulders, which is a sign of great respect, and holds and pats my hands while talking to me. She’s asked a couple of times to come see my house, but I’ve always been on my way somewhere. This morning she came by at about 9am (thankfully I was already awake and dressed!) and I had her in for tea. Conversation was, predictably, a little tough, but it was clear that it was so special for her to be at my house. She lives alone, and I’m sure that even just the company was nice. I enjoyed spending time with her as well.

This whole day was one of the best so far in Ethiopia. After tea with my neighbor, I went to the market and had a surprisingly hassle-free shopping trip. Then went to my friend Tigist’s daughter’s 10th birthday party. Tigist works with me, and another three of the women I really like from work were there too, as well as some of Rewina’s friends and aunts and uncles and neighbors. What a lovely celebration! We all crammed in around the coffee table in their one-room house, and Tigist had prepared all sorts of special foods. We all brought little gifts for Rewina (I brought a set of Uno cards), and Rewina was so excited about all the attention. She had been in the hospital last week for pneumonia, and it was so lovely to see her well and happy again. She was dressed up in a traditional dress, and everyone got jazzed up about taking pictures. They also had some fireworks (sparklers and tiny miniature fountains for the top of the cake), which the kids (and some of the adults!) were half crazy for and half terrified of. We hung out all afternoon, drinking coffee and eating cake and fruit and playing Uno and taking photos of each other.

How great is it to have friends? It’s been almost 11 months since I got to Ethiopia, and I’m just beginning to make real friends. I’m feeling pretty proud of myself, and really happy about that development. I’m realizing how much being a part of a community means to me, especially in a place like Ethiopia where community is everything. I feel tremendously lucky to be finding—or making—little by little, a community of my own here.

On an unrelated note, thought that I should share that the mouse problem has been solved by my friendly neighborhood cat, who caught and ate the mouse (Or rat? Even though it was huge, I’d prefer to believe it was a mouse…) in front of me. There may have been a time in my life when that would have freaked me out. That time is not now: I was (a) fascinated, and (b) rooting for the cat. So nights are once again peaceful, without mice eating my tomatoes or scurrying under my bed. I did, however, find two small frogs in my living room tonight. Oh, rainy season.

One other thing. Today is the end of a fasting season for Orthodox Christians (they’ve been abstaining from meat, milk, animal products, and alcohol for 2.5 weeks). So, fittingly, everyone is gorging on dairy and meat today. On my way back from the market, I took a bajaj (motorcycle taxi, usually holds three or four people). Passengers: me, a young technical college student, and his very large, very vocal sheep, on its way to being lunch.

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the planet (quite...)

2008-08-01T13:49:00.002+03:00

Yes, it has been more than six weeks since I've posted anything. Let me tell you what I've been up to...

I just arrived this morning from the most wonderful trip. My best friend Ruth came to visit, and we went together to Uganda to see another dear friend, Lauren. Ruth arrived in Ethiopia on July 11, and I have no idea where the past three weeks have gone. It was so lovely to spend time with these two amazing people, and we also managed to pack in quite a lot of activity. Photos to follow, I promise. Here's--in brief(ish)--what we did. I'm exhausted! And a bit bummed to be back to the "real" world after such a nice vacation.

I met Ruth at the airport late Friday night, and we spent the next rainy, cold day in Addis, checking out museums that I had never seen. We saw Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) at the suprisingly poorly maintained National Museum, and learned about the ten-zillion Ethiopian cultures at the surprisingly lovely Ethnological Museum. Low point of the day? Me ruining a pair of Ruth's socks with my disgusting wet muddy smelly leather shoes.

We hired a car the next day to drive us up to Bahir Dar (not wanting to submit a jet-lagged friend to the misery of the minibus journey, but still wanting to see the countryside). We spent nearly a week in Bahir Dar, meeting all of my friends, impressing people with Ruth's height (she's 6'2"), making lots of delicious food (and having delicious food prepared for us, including--gasp--homemade pizza), having our hair done in cornrows (much to the delight of all of my neighbors, who watched the whole process), and checking out the local tourist sites. A highlight was definitely taking the local bus out to the Blue Nile Falls. We paid a third of what we would on an organized tour, and our luck was phenomenal--timing was perfect both ways, and on the bus we met a great newlywed Ethiopian couple (the wife had actually presented about psychosocial support for orphans during our Pre-Service Training) and a fabulous family from Addis, including a nine-year-old with the most flawless English I've experienced in Ethiopia ("I think there's going to be a stampede!" he shouted when we saw a herd of cows). We shared a great hiking/boat tour to the foot of the falls, which were, unfortunately, pretty anemic since the hydroelectric plant upstream is straining to produce enough electricity to cope with increasing energy demands. At any rate, time in B/D was great (and no rain, except for some spectacular thundershowers late at night, which was a treat).

Next spent some time in Gondar with the volunteers there. Saw the impressive castles and churches, and spent some nice time with people there. Then back to Addis, a morning spent being overwhelmed by the hugeness that is Merkato (it's reported to be the largest outdoor market in Africa, which is definitely saying something). Spent hours scouring the market for various odds and ends...jars for honey (we were convinced to buy 4 kilograms of raw honey, it was so tasty...We'll hope that US customs will allow it in...), gifts--including some pretty awesome shoes (wait for them, Andrew), etc. All in all, it was much less of a hassle than we had expected, and we came away from the morning quite pleased with the experience and proud of our bargaining prowess and anti-pickpocketing abilities. We both decided, however, that Addis might not be the greatest place to live; given the traffic, the pollution, the overcrowding, the hassle, the cold, and the rain in Addis, I much prefer Bahir Dar. It is nice to be in the city occasionally though--hit up some good foreign restaurants and actually get some productive work done (I had a couple of really great meeting regarding thesis work before Ruth arrived...more about that another time).

And then. UGANDA. We flew in last Friday and Lauren met us at the airport. I don't think I've ever crammed as much activity into a week as we did this past one. First spent three days at Murchison Falls National Park in the Northwest of the country. Downright amazing. The falls purportedly are the largest in the world, in terms of the amount of water going over them. I'd believe it. There was frothy white foam (apparently from minerals being scraped off of rocks upstream) trailing down the river for miles. We saw crocodiles, hippos, approximately a million different species of antelope, giraffes, elephants, warthogs, and some spectacular birds. Favorites included the Goliath Heron (huge!), the hideous Maribu Stork, the Red-Throated Bee-Eater, the Pied Kingfisher, and an enormous, odd-looking fellow called the Abyssinian Ground Hornbill.

We also got to spend lots of quality time together, and I especially enjoyed seeing Lauren's work. She's a Yale Med Student who's in Kampala for the summer doing research on lead poisoning among schoolkids on the outskirts of Kampala. She and another student are testing 150 kids and doing home visits, including GPS surveys of the homes' proximity to the dumping site, which they suspect is leaching heavy metals. Pretty neat work, and I'm so impressed at Lauren and Danny for their organization and competence in carrying out such a big project. The kids (age 6 and 7) were so so cute. One was quite vociforous about not wanting his blood tested. "Mzungu [aka farengi, aka white person] needles hurt too much!" he yelled. But then he got some stickers, a lollipop, and the opportunity to play with Ruth's camera and it turned out that the mzungus weren't so bad after all.

On Wednesday, we went on a day trip to Jinja, where Ruth and Lauren mountain biked and Danny and I went whitewater rafting on the Nile. Ironically, I didn't bike because I was too scared. Ironic, because this rafting was pretty much the most terrifying (and at the same time one of the most amazing) things I've ever done. We went off of an 8 foot waterfall. Got flipped five times. Sucked under water multiple multiple times. Went through a rapid known only as "The Bad Place." Danny somehow tricked me into going on the most adventuresome boat ("Team Extreme"), with a bunch of crazy people. It was wonderful. Terrifying. Totally, completely, entirely, paralyzingly terrifying, but also so incredibly fun. Lauren and Ruth biked to one of the rapids to take our photos and captured a pretty nice time lapse series of us paddling like crazy, then holding on for dear life, then flipping vertically up into the air, then being rescued by safety kayaks. Having survived it, it's both incredible and hilarious.

And then yesterday packed up and spent the night in Entebbe, near the airport, on the shores of Lake Victoria. I waded, probably inviting lots of schistosomaisis and other fun parasites in, but it was worth it. Sad goodbyes last night, and bleary-eyed ones this morning, as I stumbled out to the airport at three in the morning.

What a trip. I am so lucky to have had this opportunity, and so very very lucky to have these girls as friends. Such a treat.

And now I'm back in Addis, getting ready to head back tomorrow to Bahir Dar and to the realities of work and thesis preparations and life with a squat toilet and only cold water. I'm trying to let this trip be refreshing and re-energizing, rather than letting myself feel sad about it being over. I have all sorts of plans for renewed enthusiasm and motivation for work. Hoping that those will last.

I'll write more soon. Perhaps part of my leaf-turning-over can include a resolution to be a bit better about keeping in touch. Keep sending me snail mail, too. I'm actually pretty good(ish) about replying to that.

And so it is

2008-06-10T09:54:00.001+03:00

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.

Why do we give?

2008-05-26T17:32:00.003+03:00

I owe a post about the more mundane things in life, but thought I'd indulge myself with a little philosophy today. I've been thinking a lot lately about what it is that motivates us (well, me, really) to do "good" things, and why and when that altruistic spirit fills or eludes me. Here are two different takes on how I've felt about the whole matter of giving and helping. I wrote the first bit a few weeks ago, the second tonight. Perhaps each has its place. I'm definitely still a bit baffled. Anyhow…

Am I a cynic?

Joining the Peace Corps is one of the ultimate American tropes for doing good. I've noticed in a number of movies that I've watched recently that people refer to it all the time; "if you want to save the world, join the Peace Corps" is a leitmotif in Hollywood (I hadn't noticed this before actually up and joining…). But what really brings us here? Why did I join Peace Corps? Did I have some illusion that I would be helping to save the world? Maybe. But I think that what motivated me more was my own personal needs.

I help because it makes me feel good to help. I go to volunteer at an orphanage at least in part because I love the fact that these babies adore me. I gave my neighbor kids a soccer ball, at least half knowing how good it would make me feel to walk by every evening and to see them playing with it. I went into Public Health because I love the intellectual challenge as well as the idea that I could be changing things for the better.

Does the fact that my giving is colored by self-service dilute the fact that I am giving in the first place? I'm not sure. I feel awfully selfish at times, guilty for knowing that I'm here for less-than-purely altruistic reasons, knowing that I will probably benefit far more than anyone in Ethiopia—much less the world as a whole—will from my being here for two years. It's not that I think that it's wrong, per se, for me to profit from this experience. It's just different from the way that people usually perceive Peace Corps service (as being something wholly selfless and giving). My being here doesn't necessarily make me a good person. Just a person who feels she should be doing good work.

Or am I an idealist?

I saw a woman in pain today. Not just a small ache, but actually suffering. She was emaciated, really barely more than skin and bones, wearing old tattered clothing, and had clearly walked a long way to get to the hospital from the rural areas. She was grasping at her waist, leaning heavily on her family members, grimacing, and stumbling across the gravel walkway that the hospital seems to think is a good idea for rainy season, barefoot. She was no more than thirty years old, but could have been dying.

That really brought me back to reality. I'm not sure that I've ever actually seen that kind of pain. You get kind of inured to the everyday sufferings of people here—kids living on the street, people without money for a blanket, women carrying 50-pound bags of charcoal miles and miles to market, babies born with HIV. I thought that maybe I had grown insensitive to it. I'm glad to know that I'm not. I felt horrible for this woman: a true ache in the pit of my belly. And it made me realize something. That for all of my complaining, my discontent, all of my feeling homesick, or unproductive, or lonely, or lost, maybe there's some small thing I can do to help someone who is suffering.

I certainly hope so. If not, what am I here for? And not just in Ethiopia; why be alive if you can't try to ease some of the world's awful pain?

I'm not sure how that translates into actual work. Sometimes Public Health work, particularly the more academic, hands-off kind of work that I'm used to, feels really distant from helping anyone. But I hope that it does. Or that it can. I need for it to, need to make sure that what I do can in fact make some small positive change. I've been searching for some meaning, and I think that she might have helped me to find it. I'll be thinking of her tonight.

I don't have an answer about why we give. Or about why I feel driven (at least sometimes) to help. But I'm certainly wrestling with it these days.

Back in Action

2008-05-01T14:28:00.001+03:00

Today is the third holiday (of four) in a ten-day period. Sunday was Ethiopian Easter (fasika), and most people are taking the bulk of the week off to be with their families. I, meanwhile, am working on getting my life in Bahir Dar sorted out after nearly four weeks away. All the chores have built up, and I'm fighting the urge to just sit and read in the cool shade of my front porch all day.

It's been a busy few weeks. In-Service "Training" complete; I think that it left most of us feeling that there was something to be desired. I'm beginning to realize how much of this experience is going to be dictated by the effort that I myself choose to put into it, rather than by anything Peace Corps or ITECH can do for me. I'm going to have to make this work on my own. Which is okay (good, even), but certainly presents a bit of a challenge. It's awfully easy to be complacent and to just enjoy hanging out and having few responsibilities. Motivation is going to have to come from myself, and that's not always the easiest. I'm working on finding a balance of structure imposed on myself and also just letting things unfold as they will. And continuously reminding myself that it's still early, and that I have lots of time to figure out what exactly my place here should look like.

After training, a group of seven of us went up to the Simien Mountains, three or four hours North of Gondar. We spent 4 days up in the mountains, hiking and camping and seeing all sorts of fabulous animals. Gelada Baboons are a new favorite. The males look like little lions, and the females carry their babies piggyback, clinging onto the mommas' backs. They're pretty adapted to humans (several thousand people actually live in the national park), but by no means tame. You can get pretty close up to them, though—I'd say that I got within about 6 feet of a family. We also saw Klipspringer (antelope) and Walia Ibex, as well as jackals and all sorts of interesting birds and tons of cool plants. This park is a pretty special place. I'm not sure that "mountains" really describes it best. The landscape is completely alien. Almost like the rocky spires in the Grand Canyon combined with the shrubby high altitude tundra of the Northern New Mexico/Southern Colorado mountains, with a little bit of Mongolian or Russian steppes thrown in for good measure. Seeing the sun rise over a huge abyss on the last morning was one of the most beautiful things I've experienced, the layers of mountains in the distance turning from deep grey to dark blue to brilliant green and yellow and ochre-red. I took about a hundred landscape photos (between the seven of us, we must have taken 1,000!), but not one can capture that beauty and magnificence. We tossed a stone down one of the canyons and estimated 6 seconds for it to land. That means it was almost 600 feet deep (thanks, Dad, for the math reminder on that one…). And six seconds was a conservative estimate. These are some big mountains.

It was coooold up in the mountains, and we all wore most of our clothing most of the time. I'm fairly certain that no article of clothing has ever been as dirty as my favorite purple sweatshirt was when I washed it on Tuesday after coming back down. I take that back. I haven't yet washed my socks from the trip…

An article was published about Peace Corps recently than focused in part on the Ethiopia program. It's at http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080425/ts_csm/opeacecorps;_ylt=AjH.oCVEqOGhNjRa3lG9HNys0NUE. I'd love to hear what you think of it. Some of us were a bit dismayed. While I'm sure that older volunteers with a lifetime of experience do have a lot to offer Peace Corps (as they do in any field), I'm not so sure that experience is as closely correlated with success in the Peace Corps as this article makes it out to be. That is, I think that there are a lot of young "inexperienced" volunteers here in this program who have a lot (a LOT) to offer. And I think it's important to keep in mind that Peace Corps isn't exactly a development organization—two of its three goals are about cultural exchange. Let's keep in mind what we're trying to achieve. Granted, I'm not totally convinced that the Peace Corps is always a useful way to spend taxpayers' dollars, but I do think that volunteers can and do accomplish something around the world. Measuring those accomplishments is clearly a tough task, though, especially as the Peace Corps moves from teaching English and helping with agriculture to tackling immensely complicated, politicized issues like HIV/AIDS. As an aside, I thought that the statement that PC hasn't been politicized was one of the more laughable assertions in this article. I'd love to hear opinions on the article, especially from RPCVs.

Hope that you're all well. It's been too long since I've posted anything. I'll try to be in better touch in the next weeks and months.

How things change.

2008-04-05T12:53:00.003+03:00

I'm at the Peace Corps Resource Center in Addis, where they recently installed satellite internet. And guess what? I can actually see my own blog, for the first time in months (bad formatting and all...).

How amazing is it that the way we see the world can change, and just in a few months? I remember the first morning here, after having arrived into Addis late at night, getting up and looking out the window of the hotel onto Mexico Square (really a large traffic circle) and being just overwhelmed by all the traffic (both vehichle and pedestrian). Venturing out onto the street for the first time that afternoon was downright terrifying. I knew not a single word of Amharic, knew no places except for the name of the hotel we were staying in, and was absolutely paralyzed at the thought of navigating the city on my own. This morning, on my way to the Peace Corps office, I had to transfer mini-bus taxis at Mexico, and I felt so calm about the whole thing. Addis is still huge and intimidating, but here I am, figuring it out. Neat.

Had a couple of really good meetings this week, and am actually enjoying Addis Ababa for the first time. Nice to have a little break from the everyday grind, as well.

Slight Acheivements

2008-04-01T13:54:00.001+03:00

Things I've accomplished in the last week:

1) A woman from the Ethiopian Telecommunications Communications
Corporation called me this morning to tell me that my bill was due.
And I understood. I even heard her say "she speaks Amharic!" to a
colleague as she hung up the phone. And I managed to pay the bill in
only 4 steps (a security guard and 3 different desks).

2) I bought an umbrella for the sun. Everyone has been telling me that
I need one because I'll turn black (tan, I'm guessing). They think
it's funny when I say I'll actually just turn into a beet. The
surprising thing about this purchase? I love it! I carry it
everywhere. Bright green and floral. I think I love it mostly because
I blend in ever so slightly better.

3) I found a good tutor and am finally learning to read. Huzzah!

I'm leaving for Addis, then our In-Service Training, then a short
hiking trip, on Thursday. No idea what the Internet situation will be
like. I'll update sometime in the near(ish) future.

Released from Lock-Down!

2008-03-26T09:01:00.001+03:00

Our three months of being confined to our sites is finally over.
Christie, Straw, and I took the opportunity to head to Gondar for the
weekend, with my friend from the Clinton Foundation and his wife (it's
about 3 hours North of me). I'm trying hard not to be insanely jealous
of the volunteers living in Gondar. It's a great little city, tucked
into the foothills, cool and breezy, and full of medieval castles,
pine trees, and much-friendlier-than-in-Bahir-Dar street kids. We
spent the weekend relaxing (being away from work!), cooking delicious
food, meeting fabulous travelers from all over the world, and
exploring the city.

On the way up to Gondar in my friend's car—got to avoid the bus!—we
stopped to see a castle built in 1537. It was already about a million
degrees out and the sun was pretty intense, but the mile or so walk up
to the site was absolutely lovely. A group of four little boys, about
10 or 11 years old, followed us all the way up. They were sweet, until
we got to the wall surrounding the castle, at which point, the four of
them ran in front of us, made a line blocking the path, and told us
that we had to stop, that they were the guards, and that we had to pay
them 10 birr (about a dollar). Um, no, we're not going to pay you, we
say, and we go back and forth for a few minutes, arguing about whether
or not they could actually charge us to get in there. They finally
relented when we just decided to push through the brambles to get in.
A slightly older guy showed up a little later, and reiterated that we
needed to pay 10 birr, apiece. The castle was beautiful, and worth it,
so we just ponied up. This "guard" was probably no more legitimate
than the kids, and we realized that the kids didn't get anything out
of the deal (and 50 birr is the equivalent of a couple of days worth
of work), but what can you do? None of us spoke Amharic with enough
authority to get out of being cheated. Hindsight is 20/20. And I
suppose he needed it more than we did.

In Gondar, we stopped by the Tara Center, where the three PCVs living
there volunteer some of their time. It's a
child-sponsorship/environmental/animal rescue/artisan
support/generally amazing NGO run by an Englishwoman who's married to
an Ethiopian man. The most exciting moment of the visit? Having a baby
Gelada baboon (named Mary, no less) sit on my shoulder and groom my
hair. Yes, this is Africa.

Got back to Bahir Dar on Sunday afternoon, and met up with Levi and
Megan, who was visiting town. Meg is one of the only volunteers who
can cut hair, and we opened up an impromptu salon on my lawn. In the
dark. She cut hair by the light of a headlamp. It was a very Peace
Corps moment. I'm planning to have my hair braided into elaborate
cornrows in a couple of weeks by the hair cutters who live down the
block from me; they've been eyeing my hair since I moved in.

Less than two weeks now until our In-Service Training. Time is
simultaneously both flying and crawling along. Each day feels long,
but suddenly it's the end of the week, or indeed of the month. Been in
country nearly 6 months now, which is hard to believe.

P.S. Exciting news: mangos are in season as of a week or two ago. Four
birr for a kilo, which I will be buying approximately, oh, all the
time. Sad news: tomatoes are no longer in season. The ones that are
left are yellow and scrawny. Funny how much my life revolves around
produce…

A Little Red Tape

2008-03-14T14:41:00.001+03:00

March 10

On Friday morning, I handed our Safety & Security officer a manila
envelope stamped with four official looking purple Bureau of
Immigration stamps across its flap and the Amhara Regional insignia on
its face. In it were two letters (each itself generously and variously
stamped), a photocopy, and some forms that I had fought for most of
Wednesday afternoon to procure. This whole process, of course, is to
get a replacement card for my stolen Ethiopian Resident ID Card.

The odyssey started at the police station. I arrived around 12:30pm,
thinking that some officers were bound to be on duty during lunch, and
that in fact the station might be less busy. That was true, I suppose,
but didn't really serve me. I chatted for a long time with the lone
guy on duty. He spoke no English, so we had a halting conversation in
Amharic, trying to find my police report, and, more importantly,
trying to figure out what exactly I was doing here in Ethiopia (this,
if you hadn't gotten the idea, is a very common topic of conversation
here). Next, my buddy offers me some coffee. It was probably 90F
degrees out at this time of day. I politely declined, citing the heat.

"But that's exactly why you should drink it!" he exclaims, "for making
an internal-external balance." I laugh…and somehow the next think I
know, there's a cup in my hand and I'm being asked if it's delicious
(to its credit, yes, it is).

Still no report located. Hmmm. What date was the theft? That depends
on what day it is today. It's March 7th by my reckoning, but we can't
seem to come to an agreement over whether it's the 25th or the 26th of
February in the Ethiopian calendar. We decide it's probably the 26th,
counting exaggeratedly on our fingers. Knowing the date doesn't help
to find my report though. I begin to suspect we're just stalling for
time.

Indeed, finally, the Chief Inspector (lots of stars on his shoulders)
arrives, and, because he speaks good English, is able to help me
figure out what I need: A piece of paper to request the forms
requesting the letter from the police to the Immigration Bureau. I
discover that I can purchase it from the tiny office next to the
police station. I do, and the Inspector helps me to write the letter
(that is, he dictates it to an underling while I sit back and get
confused).

But, alas, the man who does the stamps and the filling-out-of-forms is
still out on lunch break. Wait here, I am told. No, on second thought,
come with me, the Inspector beckons. And that is how I end up having
my second tea/coffee break with the Ethiopian police force, a cup of
tea being forced upon me, quite generously. Another conversation about
what, precisely, it is that I am doing here.

Back to the station, and, unfortunately, still no form/stamp man. I
wait in the office with a few of the cops. We attempt to make small
talk in Amharic; I have long since run out of anything to say, my
vocabulary really being sufficient for about a 15-minute conversation
(we're now on hour 2). They keep asking for my name for various
registers. I tell one of them, and then tell him that my surname means
"tall man." This is just about the funniest thing he has ever heard,
and he brings in three of his buddies and makes me tell it again.

Around 2, the stamp/form man finally arrives, stamps my letter and
tells me to go purchase the forms from the same tiny office. I do, and
some belabored carbon-copy and record-book action (and another 30
minutes or so) later, I am finally able to walk out of the station
with an official letter from the Bahir Dar police requesting a letter
from the Bahir Dar Immigration Bureau.

It doesn't quite end there, though. The hour sitting in the
Immigration office waiting for my letter to be typed was uneventful.
By that time I was numb to the process.

I've never been prouder of acquiring anything in my life, as I was
when I was handed over that majestic letter. And I will never complain
about the DMV again.

A Sad Goodbye, Peaches, Theives, and the Baby Room (Every Day an Adventure...)

2008-03-03T14:22:00.001+03:00

Saturday, March 1

I was in the middle of a good sulk, hating just about everything about my life here (more about that in a minute) when I tried my first "kok," a tiny, rock hard, green peach. It was truly the most delightful thing I've encountered in months. Juicy, sweet, and totally not how you would imagine it would taste, looking at the little fuzzy green thing. Thirty cents for a half-kilo—this is decidedly a find.

I found the "kok" at the market, which is already one of my least favorite places in Bahir Dar, and became even more so today. It's crowded, overwhelming, hot, smelly in some parts, and populated by far too many aggressive teenage boys who will gladly carry your bags or help you find what you're looking for, for a price. There are also a lot of grabby, pushy kids; the market is definitely the number one site for unprovoked pinches and slaps (and, to be fair, hand-holding and patting).

Today, I was almost done with my shopping. I was ninety-nine percent done, in fact, and ready to get on a motorcycle taxi back home. When someone stole my wallet. I didn't even see it happen. One minute it was sitting there at the top of my market bag, and the next, when I turned back around, eggs and lemons purchased (yes, they come from the same vendor; don't ask), it was gone. F… I looked around, asked my egg-and-lemon-lady (who is great and totally trustworthy) if she had seen it. Nothing. Argh. Had to beg a bajaj driver to take me home for free. We established that I was a volunteer here, and he said that, for today, he too would be a volunteer. He brought me all the way to my house, rather than just to the stop on the main road, which was incredibly nice. Got home and had a good cry, then called Peace Corps, who insisted that I should report this to the police.

So Levi and I traipsed all over town looking for the right police precinct (they call them "Police Centers") to report the incident, then, in a sloppy mixture of Amharic, English, and charades, filed a report. The demographic data they wanted about me included both the usual--age, citizenship, etc—but also religion, which I found odd. I said I was Christian (it's certainly not trying to explain agnosticism to the Bahir Dar police…). I'm fairly confident that nothing will come of all this. I walked a couple of officers back up to the place where it had disappeared, and they said they'd "ask some questions." I'm supposed to go back to the Police Center on Monday to check whether they've found anything. Unlikely, I think. Thankfully, all I had was the equivalent of about 20 bucks (a lot of money here, but not that much money in the grand scheme) and my Peace Corps ID, Ethiopian residency permit, Washington State driver's license, CPR certification, and REI membership card (ha, enjoy that, thief) in there. No passport, no credit cards. Could have been a lot worse. The driver's license picture was an exceptionally good one, though.

This is the kind of petty crime that is nothing but infuriating. Not scary, not really even invasive enough to make me feel vulnerable, not even important in the long-term, but just makes me feel like an idiot. I'm sure that it was just some kid who had seen me stash the wallet at the top of the bag. It's flipping frustrating to have this happen. Just such a hassle.

The theft is on top of some of the saddest news I've gotten since coming here: that Beth will be leaving town. She has to go for health reasons, and isn't happy about it. I'm incredibly upset about it; things certainly won't be the same here without her. Peace Corps is really losing a jewel in losing her. I hope that they realize it. The news of her departure has had me wondering the past couple of days if I'm really strong enough to do this on my own. I've relied on her so incredibly much, and will miss her terribly. Oh, adjustment.

Meanwhile, it's hot and dusty out, I'm recovering from another bout of the stomach flu, and am incredibly complain-y. I just washed my bed sheets, which is perhaps the worst chore here. There was no cheese at the one farenji grocery store. Whine. Maybe it's time for another peach.

Monday, March 3

I went today to an orphanage/daycare center that takes care of about 40 kids. It's run by an Australian family, with the goal of national or international adoptions for those kids whose families can't take care of them anymore. About 10 kids live on site, plus several full-time staff, the family (which has four kids of its own, including 18 month old adopted Ethiopian twins), and a volunteer or two at any time.

The place was entirely overwhelming, in all of the best ways. There is a room called the "baby room" (those of you who have seen my reaction when I get anywhere near a baby can imagine what I thought of that). In it, there were about 8 babies, ranging from about three months up to 16 months old, in various stages of crawling-ness, and all extraordinarily cute. One had just started smiling, and couldn't stop grinning goofily. One was absolutely terrified of me and scowled reproachingly at me. Cristina, an American volunteer (originally from outside of Denver, no less!), who was showing me around, said "feel free to touch them if you wash your hands." No need to tell me twice! I think I'll be going back approximately all the time to see and cuddle these little things. There was also a nap room, full of little cribs with mosquito nets draped over the top so that they looked like little cages. The "big kid" rooms (ages 2 – 4) were similarly fantastic, though I've never seen so many runny noses in my whole life. It must be absolutely overwhelming to work there—there're always at least a few of them who are sick (most live with their families or relatives and bring back germs to share with the others…), and there are always at least a few of them who are howling over something or another. But, man, are they precious. I might have to designate one set of clothes "kid-clothes" (my white shirt was pretty grimy when I left today) and go hang out with them more often.

Add It To My Resume

2008-02-25T13:56:00.001+03:00

ELECTRICAL REWIRING
I repaired—or attempted to—an outlet (220 Volt AC), which had fallen out of my bedroom wall. Suffered only minor electrical shock, including charred black fingertip and a serious scare, when a current passed from one thumb up my arm, around my shoulders, and down the other arm. Christie, who was helping me, and I both sprang back from the spark, physically fine, but slightly terrified. Note: remember to turn off fuse before attempting further electrics maintenance. The bad news is that the outlet is no longer functioning, reducing me to a single outlet and an extension cord.

EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT COORDINATION
Another volunteer who was visiting town came down with some serious gastrointestinal nastiness last weekend. She was unable even to keep down the anti-nausea medication our medical director had prescribed, and was having trouble making it from the bed in her hotel to the toilet without feeling lightheaded. A stool sample was described as "raspberry lemonade" (gross, I know…). Needless to say, she was not feeling good. And needed an IV and some antibiotics, pretty badly. This, of course, would have to have happened during the worst week in cell phone reception in recent history, at 10pm on a Saturday night (which is as good as 2am in a place where public transit shuts down at 8pm), on a night when the two doctors I know were both out of town, and when all of the roads in Bahir Dar had been torn up for construction. I got to test my emergency network here in town, rustling up an all-night clinic, a car to come pick her and another volunteer up at the hotel, and another to pick me and a third visitor up at my house to accompany them to the clinic. The good news is that, 4 liters of IV fluid, some heavy-duty antibiotics, and an unpleasant night spent at the clinic later, she's feeling much better. Unofficial diagnosis: shigellosis. Not something I'd like to get. Ever. In some ways, though, it was good to be able to test out what to do in an emergency with something that was serious—real—but not immediately life-threatening.

HOSTEL MANAGEMENT
Bahir Dar has become the hub for other volunteers needing a break from their smaller towns. Of the 12 weekends since we've been at site, there has been at least one visitor in town during 7 of those weekends. Which is lovely. And I'm more than happy to be a host. But it's also exhausting. It does mean that I've gotten to know the town quite well. If you come to visit, I can point you to the quietest place to sit beside the lake, to the cheapest little shop for buying a propane tank, to the streets with the fewest harassing shoe-shine boys (and the ones with the shoe-shine boys who are most likely to be able to fix your broken sandal), or to the 3 places where you can get pizza and the 2 places with ice cream here. You know, the basics. I also have some fantastically comfortable floor space you're more than welcome to.

ZOOKEEPING
There are two new families living on my compound. One is a nest of small red sparrow-like birds living in a hole in my outside wall, directly above the fuse box (I discovered this family after the mini-electrocution). I've only seen mom, but can hear a bunch of babies chirping in there. The other is a momma-cat, who had been hanging around my yard for some time, and her three incredibly cute four- or five-week-old kittens. They're white, orange, and gray, very shy, and incredibly cute. She must have had them in a little den in the huge rock pile out in my backyard. I spent approximately 5 hours this week stalking them—luring them out of hiding and then cooing uncontrollably. Got a good sunburn out of the endeavor, too.

COFFEE FARMING
There's a bunna (coffee) bush on my compound, and I finally got around to peeling the beans I had picked several weeks ago. A coffee bush (tree?) is about 6 feet tall, scraggly, and bears bright red coffee berries the size of small grapes and tough-skinned. You should apparently pick them and dry them in the sun (though the 5 or 6 weeks I left them to dry might have been slightly excessive. Ah, laziness…). You then peel off the berry skin (not easy—there must be some trick I'm unaware of), and inside each one are two green coffee beans. Roast 'em, grind 'em, brew 'em, and you have coffee. A lot of work. I'll never under-appreciate a latte again.

Getting Adjusted

2008-02-09T09:39:00.000+03:00

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.

Epiphany and Stardom

2008-01-21T10:27:00.001+03:00

Today was Epiphany (Timket in Amharic), which is a big religious holiday here. Ethiopians claim that the original Arc of the Covenant is here, and each Orthodox Church has its own smaller arc as well (they're not unlike the arcs that hold the torah at synagogues). For Timket, each church takes its arc out and parades it to a park or a field in town, where it meets with the arcs from all of the other churches in the area. There's a blessing of the arcs (and everyone there) with holy water, a huge celebration, and then the arcs are each paraded back to their homes.

The whole town has been full of energy this weekend. Even now (I'm writing this at home, around 8pm, and the festivities are mostly over), I can hear horns blowing and people clapping somewhere along my road. I went to the park where the arcs had assembled around 10:30 this morning. When I stepped out of my gate, my whole street was bustling with families dressed in their finest coming from and heading towards the various festivals and to family and friends' houses. Ethiopian traditional dress is almost entirely white. Women wear "habesha kemis" (Ethiopian dresses), which are made from a lightweight white crepe material, with beautiful colored hems or embroidery, and "netela"—scarves or wraps made from the same material—over their heads and shoulders. Men wear white pants and a long white tunic, sometimes with a white sweater vest over it, and some wear white turbans. Because it's starting to get hot out this time of year, almost everyone had an umbrella as well. The church officials didn't just carry umbrellas to shield the arcs and themselves, but elaborately decorated parasols, some of them gleaming with glitter and velvet. Most of them also had tassels and iconography.

The park had a total party atmosphere. I could hear people singing, horns blowing, and drums beating from several blocks away, and the field was just full of people dancing and clapping. We joined in the procession wholeheartedly, and paraded the first arc back to Kidus Georgis church, in the center of town, which took a good two hours, because we stopped to sing and dance every fifty meters or so. Beth has mastered the Ethiopian traditional dance moves, complete with epileptic shoulder movements, and she got a huge amount of attention for her dancing prowess. I meanwhile, befriended the world's cutest old women, and learned to ululate wildly in appreciation for a good dance. We also saw a man in a fabulous bike-turned-wheelchair play a beautiful tune on a small harp, singing his heart out for everyone who could hear. From time to time a gang of young men and boys carrying huge stalks of sugar cane would run by, thrusting the sugar cane up and down in their hands almost like war spears, dancing wildly and pushing people out of the way.

People were in a fantastic mood, and were incredibly welcoming and kind. We each had a couple of kids by the hand at one point, and several people told me never to forget them. An unbelievably wrinkled old woman with a small fez on her head and a cane made from old re-bar (who had exactly 2 teeth) was just absolutely smitten with us, patting our shoulders and cheeks, and encouraging us to dance.

The whole thing was pretty magical although I've almost never been as hot and sunburned as I was at the end of the parade. The closest thing I could compare it to is a street fair—or maybe the May Day protest in San Francisco for immigrants' rights a couple of years ago, which was more of a party than a protest march, at least among the crowd I was walking with. It was overwhelming, exhausting, and just fabulous. I'm really glad we got to experience this. Maybe next year I'll go to Gondar (a city about 3 hours North of here by bus), where 22 churches apparently all gather together to celebrate (here it was 7).

What else is new around here? Oh! Guess who was on Ethiopian National TV yesterday afternoon?

That's right: I was, with Levi. Last weekend, we attended an event thrown by the Regional AIDS Prevention and Control Office. It was the launch of a short documentary about World AIDS Day, and a thank you celebration for all of the local partners who had helped with AIDS Day programming back in December. For some reason, Beth's boss, who was one of the people planning the event, felt that the three of us needed to be sitting at the table of honor, up front, with the director of the office. At some point, Beth's parents called from the States, so she was off talking to them when Levi and I noticed a camera trained on us.

"I bet that's ETV," I told Levi.

"You know, I don't want it to be, but look at how nice that camera is," he said.

Well, it was. We didn't make our debut until today, but debut we did. Lake, our friend and one of the trainers from back in Wolisso (who lives here in Bahir Dar) told us yesterday that he had seen us on the afternoon news. "Levi was wearing shorts," he reported.

Other than the holiday and the new stardom, things are beginning to settle into a routine. Work is beginning to pick up as I start to get to know people and systems at the hospital. I did get to see a really neat use of technology this week. Every month or so, ITECH provides distance education seminars for its providers around the world. I sat in with Dr. Manuel (my supervisor) and a couple of others on a session on HIV dermatology. They use a real time web cam so that the participants can see the presenter, and also broadcast his PowerPoint, complete with a pointer. The participants can then write to him using some sort of instant messaging, so that it's actually a dynamic, live interaction. While HIV dermatology isn't really my thing (a photo of a fungus-covered toenail cemented for me the fact that I don't actually want to be a doctor), I was really impressed with the technology. I didn't catch the name of the software, but will be sure to next time. Neat stuff.

I went to the post office on Tuesday to find my box filled with letters and cards (a lot of the Christmas/New Year's cards didn't make it through until now). THANK YOU to everyone who wrote! I'll start writing back, but it may take me a little while. Meanwhile, keep the letters coming! I love that feeling of reaching up into my PO Box (it's higher than I can even see!) and finding good stuff from people I miss.

Pictures from Ethiopia

2008-01-19T03:31:00.000+03:00

This is Anna's dad, making an entry at her request. She can't put pictures into these entries because of the way she has to make her entries via e-mail, and she asked me to put some here for her.

However, the blog software won't cooperate. It makes the assumption that you're going to have a lot of text and very few photos, and it compresses what I wanted to be captions into a paragraph that streams along the side of the first picture or two. So I've placed the photos Anna sent us on my own web-site, where you can view them:

http://clem.mscd.edu/%7Etalmanl/Anna/Pix01.html

or, equivalently,

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yvngjp

--Lou Talman, Anna's dad

It's been a month already?

2008-01-10T17:25:00.001+03:00

I've decided that the two best things that I brought with me from the United States are my camping solar shower and a sharp paring knife. I used both today, and both were a treat (particularly because the knife was cutting some apple, brought from Addis at considerable cost, into slices).

All is well here. I've been in Bahir Dar nearly 4 weeks, and I'm finally beginning to feel more at home here. My neighbors recognize me and wave hello. The shoeshine boys I pass every morning on my way to work have stopped shouting "money, money!" at me… at least most of the time (now it's usually "hello, hello!" which is remarkably better). The kids on my street yell my name at me as I walk past. Sometimes they ask me if I want for them to find a kitten or a puppy for me. I'm considering it.

It's amazing how quickly people start to know you. I was waiting for a motorcycle taxi to Beth's new house (on the other side of town from mine), and when I tried to get into it, the driver said, "no, no, you go toward the hospital." Indeed, I usually do. Another taxi driver wouldn't let me get out 100m from my stop when another woman was getting off, because he knew where I usually end up. A man at a café reminded me which kebele (neighborhood) I live in. About once a day, someone asks me if I remember them; they remember me! It doesn't feel menacing, particularly because my house feels so safe, behind a big wall in a quiet neighborhood, but it is kind of incredible. Since Day One of Staging in Washington DC, we've been told about the "fishbowl effect." I guess I hadn't quite internalized it until now—people really know a lot about me already here, and there really isn't any stopping it. Next step is to spread the word that I'm a volunteer and therefore don't have much money to spare; the presumption is that any foreigner here is loaded. I've also made a resolution to be polite and make conversation with people who are polite to me, even if I don't feel like talking to them, and to try to just ignore the rude folks. We'll see how it goes.

Yesterday, I got a lovely package from a group of my grad school friends who are back in Seattle, which will keep me well stocked with books to read and puzzles to solve for quite some time. The post office is really something. Usually, we have to lean through the window of the "Parcels—Foreign and Domestic" office and point out large bags of mail which haven't been opened to inspect whether there might in fact be something in there for one of us. This time, though, I actually got a slip in my box notifying me: amazing. It had only taken 3 weeks for the package from Seattle to arrive, but another box from Denver had been in transit since December 3 ^rd. The Christmas cookies in that one were a little worse for the wear. Meanwhile, attempting to mail a small box to the States was a 45-minute-long, prohibitively expensive hassle; so, sorry, don't expect gifts until someone comes to visit and can haul them back to the States!

I've met a number of great Ethiopians here in town, as well as a couple of interesting ex-pats. Clinton Foundation, MSF, and the Carter Foundation are all here, and the University also hires visiting professors, so there are a number of foreigners wandering around. I think that Bahir Dar will be a nice little community to live in.

I've been working on record-keeping, particularly the charting system, at work. A colleague and I went searching for the charts of people who had missed their November appointments yesterday. Of 78 charts, 44 were missing. People have some idea of where they might be, but it requires a long, manual search of unsorted piles in order to find them. And of those we did find, only one had really missed his appointment; the rest just hadn't been recorded right in the system (probably because the charts never made it to the data entry clerk). Hmmm.

I'm also working on putting together a couple of talks about burnout, management skills, and teambuilding for the HIV team at the hospital. The work environment here really doesn't incorporate much in terms of continuing education or support for the employees. I hope that it will be appreciated.

I'm getting used to living by myself, and am trying to get into some sort of routine. It definitely takes time to feel comfortable in a new spot, and adding a new language and culture means that this is taking even longer. I'm trying to keep the Peace Corps' favorite virtues, patience and flexibility, in mind.

St. Gabriel's Day Feast

2007-12-29T22:26:00.001+03:00

What a day. Today is an Ethiopian religious holiday, St. Gabriel's day, which meant lots of people in traditional clothing milling about on the streets, that the Telecommunications company was closed (and Kristen therefore couldn't replace her stolen cell phone SIM card as planned, though we didn't know that until we had walked all the way out there, of course, argh), and that we had more than one reason to celebrate today.

A number of folks from nearby towns had come into Bahir Dar for the weekend to celebrate Christmas and New Year's (and, as it turns out, St. Gabriel's...), and celebrate we did. We prepared a *feast*, which included fried chicken, made from scratch. From scratch meaning from _live_ chickens. [Disclaimer: if you are squeamish or vegetarian, or both, this post may not be for you].

We went to the market (four of us: Levi, Beth, Christie, and I), and bought 2 chickens (30 birr, or about $3, each), and Levi carried them home, tied together with a bit of cloth, upside down, in one hand. We also bought a huge aluminum pot for scalding the feathers off of them, as per Peace Corps cookbook instructions, and an enormous bottle of oil, along with some other handy items. Took a motorcycle taxi home; the driver saw absolutely no problem with cramming the 4 of us into the 3-person taxi, or with the fact that we were carrying this squawking cargo.

Slaughtering chickens is an experience I am glad to have had, and hope not to have to take any part in again anytime soon. We were fairly inept about the whole process, but succeeded, at least marginally, in the long run. I'll try to upload some pictures, eventually (the event was well documented, and with good reason--certainly among the more dramatic activities of life in Ethiopia thus far...). Levi was responsible for the killing, which was culturally appropriate, as only men do the actual slaughtering here.

The precise moment of killing a chicken is entirely unpleasant, in a way I couldn't have predicted. Blood spurting everywhere, pained clucking until the last moment, wild death throes. Ours didn't really "run around" like chickens with their heads cut off, but there was still some violent wing flapping going on after their heads were already on the ground. Levi's pants and shirt were covered in blood--looked like he had just been in some sort of terrible knife fight. Christie kept saying "it's only nerves, he's already gone," as a mantra as they were flapping around, and we all had to repeat it to keep being able to face what was happening. I only had one major flip-out, when blood spattered onto my glasses, it was more than I could take and I had to run to wash my face. Beth (a nurse) was quite clinical about the whole matter, at least once they were actually dead, and in fact, I was proud of all four of us for our bravery about the whole thing.

Even once the chickens were plucked (no mean feat in itself...), we realized that we'd never actually prepared a whole chicken. None of us, in fact, had any idea how to skin or section a chicken. And the fact that we were working on the carcasses next to a plastic bucket filled with chicken heads, wings, feathers, and plenty of blood/water soup didn't make the task any easier. Nor did a kitten trying frantically to get at the meat. All in all it took us almost 2 hours to slaughter, pluck, cut-up, and fry the meat. And these two full chickens made a whopping 10 pieces of fried chicken (granted, some of the pieces were big, because we couldn't figure out how to separate them to make them any smaller).

This whole time, I was picturing a pack of boneless skinless chicken breasts for sale at ANY grocery store in America, and was thinking (a) about how these chickens probably had a nicer life (and perhaps even a nicer death, unfortunately enough), than any of the ones in American groceries, (b) how BIG American chicken breasts are--hormones? (c) how either appreciative and/or disgusted I am going to be about being able to buy those chicken breasts when I get back to the states. I feel like I really understood, for the first time, what it really means to kill an animal in order to eat it. It's terrible. And at the same time manageable, just kind of feels like a part of life. I was both appalled and impressed at my own ability to take part in killing and eating a chicken. So it gave me yet another something to think about. Getting and preparing food, even cleaning up after eating, takes so much more effort here (and yet is so very much cheaper...we're given 600 birr per month--just over $60--for food, which is, frankly, exorbitant).

The rest of the dinner was much easier to prepare (and equally delicious), though it was decidedly an odd selection (including many goodies sent from families and friends, which were much appreciated. Even canned ham was happily consumed--this should tell you something about our state of mind). It was also wonderful to get to see everyone who came in for the weekend; though it has only been a couple of weeks since we left training, I was already missing these folks, who I'd grown so close to over the past couple of months.

Starting Work, Slowly.

2007-12-27T17:12:00.001+03:00

I've been thinking a lot about how different HIV is here than what I saw in the US when I was working at the AIDS Health Project. I spent the morning in the Opportunistic Infections clinic at the major referral hospital (that is, the highest level of care available in Ethiopia, other than some specialty clinics and labs in Addis) here in Bahir Dar. This hospital is where I'll probably be spending most of my time for the next two years.

I kept thinking about one evening when I was co-facilitating the HIV+ Drop-In Group back in San Francisco and we spent almost half of the group time focused on one man's fears about starting ART. I don't mean to say in any way that I think that that evening was unimportant. I think that it meant a lot to him and to the rest of the group; his fears were absolutely real, and I think that it's fabulous that we had the time and energy--the luxury, I guess--to discuss them. Today we were seeing patients with acute PCP pneumonia, with Herpes Zoster rashes all over their faces, with leprosy, with CD4 counts of 6 (normal is 1000). I suppose that my perception of AIDS in the US might be different if I had worked on the wards at SF General, or if I had been in the Bronx, or in the inner city of any major American city, but I was just so struck today by the differences in the immediate needs of these people. Mental health is (barely) an afterthought in HIV care (in healthcare generally, I suppose) here; there's one page on the 8 page intake form for starting HIV care that explores a few "social" issues (like family support, mental status, etc).

Each patient had between 3 and 10 minutes with the doctor this morning. This doc sees 60-70 patients a day. And when I told him that this seemed like a very busy day, he told me that it's actually much better since they've added another physician--he used to see up to 110 patients a day. It's hard to fathom doing that day after day after day. The burnout must be incredible. It also must be incredibly frustrating as a well-trained physician, to not have every lab test, diagnostic tool, and medication you might want available at your fingertips. There was a man today in whom the doctor suspected deep vein thrombosis, but without a doppler ultrasound, a CT scan, or an MRI, he's out of luck in terms of getting a firm diagnosis. He said that he'll send some blood tests to Addis, and then potentially start treatment with a bloodthinner, but only if the patient can afford it (500 birr, or about $50, which is pretty prohibitively expensive in a place where the average monthly salary is not even quite that high). It makes sense why there are now more Ethiopian doctors working in Chicago than there are in the whole country of Ethiopia. (Which in turn contributes to the problems with the overburdened health system here...)

All of this means that I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed about how exactly I'm going to be able to find a place in all of this, how anything I can possibly do here will have any effect. There are an awful lot of problems. I'm feeling a bit at sea about how to begin confronting any little piece of it. One thing is certain though. I feel really lucky to be working with the people at ITECH and at the hospital here; everyone seems incredibly dedicated, smart, and thoughtful.

In short, I guess that I'm beginning to see the challenges of being in the Peace Corps, of trying to figure out a way to make your work feel meaningful and to feel as though you're making a positive difference in someone's life. There's a lot of work ahead of me. I'm excited and simultaneously terrified about jumping into it. I keep trying to tell myself that this is week 2, and that I have some time to figure these things out.

All in all, though, I'm doing fine. Christmas was nice; got the day off after all, since ITECH is US-funded, despite "American Christmas" not being an Ethiopian Federal holiday (we'll get the day off for Ethiopian Christmas on January 6). Steph was in town from her site, about an hour away from Bahir Dar, and she and the three of us here (Beth, Levi, and I) made a fantastic, if non-traditional, Christmas dinner of hummus, chicken noodle soup (sent in a package from the US), and no-bake cookies. We also had a nice time singing Christmas carols with a group of British, Swiss, and German relief-workers from Northern Uganda and Sudan who were in town vacationing, and went on a long walk by the lake. I also bought myself a fabulous Christmas present--a new, teal bike called the Viva "Sport Geometry."

Actually, the names of products here (and menu items) is one of my favorite amusements. There's another brand of bike called the "Flying Pigeon." A popular restaurant dish is "Shiro Feces" (ground chick peas and spices). We saw a bag of "Organic Testes," some unidentified white powder, at a grocery store. "Earaccuissene" items at one of our favorite restaurants (Eurocuisine? Maybe?) include "Roasted Lamp," "Hum and Chesses Burger," and "Peeper Stack." I could spend two years here fully occupied as a proofreader.

Thanks for all of the emails around Christmastime. Thinking of everyone especially this time of year. Hard to believe that 2008 is already almost here. This year has disappeared without me realizing it--makes me wonder how quickly the next two will go. Happy New Year!

I'm home (?) in Bahir Dar

2007-12-18T12:44:00.001+03:00

After 34 mosquito bites to Beth's face, a scraped shin and cut toe, getting locked out twice, and bruised hands (long stories all of them), we're little worse for the wear. Beginning to get set up…it's going to be a looooong process. Here's something I wrote yesterday morning and then promptly forgot at home and couldn't send. Hope you're all well…

December 17, 2007

First morning waking up in my new house in Bahir Dar. Beth and I both slept on new foam mattresses on the bedroom floor in the house (her house won't be ready until after the first of the year, so she'll be staying with me, which is actually a huge relief—it's so nice to be going through this with someone else).

It's been a busy busy week. We swore-in on Thursday afternoon, after a very long day (got up at 4:15 to catch a bus into Addis). My host mother cried when I left and made me promise to call every week. They gave me a going away gift of two plates, three spoons, one fork, one knife, and one cup; they're awfully worried about me living on my own. The small gifts I had collected for them went over well. Wind-up toys were a particular success, with everyone, not just the small kids. I was sad to leave them, but I'm also feeling ready to have my own space and to have a little more control over my own life.

Anyhow, the Swearing-In ceremony was lovely. The worldwide Director came in from Washington, as did the Africa Regional Director. The event was at the US Embassy, which is huge and gorgeous, as was not unexpected. My speech went well, and resulted in lots of people coming up to me at the reception and speaking to me as if I was fluent in Amharic. The Ambassador told me that I get to eat first when all 42 of us come back for dinner after three months.

We spent Friday in Addis, relaxing and shopping for things that are available only in the capital. Bought liquid dish soap, saran wrap and foil, resisted the temptation to spend $10 on a bottle of olive oil, and stocked up on a few "farenji" items. Then Beth and I went on an odyssey to find large wicker laundry baskets (which seemed immediately necessary, because we each had about 14 small bags to bring to Bahir Dar, which could be neatly stuffed into such a basket).

Now, neither of us knew the word for basket in Amharic, but we asked her language teacher where we should go to find them, thinking that they would be immediately obvious and that we could just point and bargain. We proudly got off of a minibus after have navigated our way halfway across the city and found the appointed location with no trouble. We walked down the road a little, looking for this basket store or market. Nothing. Beth called her teacher again, who wasn't too helpful, but who at least taught us how to ask where they might be. We went into a hotel to ask, and were directed somewhere "very close, maybe 5 minutes away" where there was a large market. We started walking, through twisty back streets and alleys, asking people every 200 yards or so where this Shola place was, until was finally found it, maybe half an hour later. The place looked promising—housewares everywhere. We wandered around forever, asking people again and again if they knew where these baskets were. Nope. Finally, we found a taxi and were about to give up. Beth made one last valiant attempt, asking the driver if he knew where to find the baskets. He said he did. We drove in a big circle, directly back to where we had started! The baskets were there, maybe 150 yards in the opposite direction from where we had gotten off of the minibus. We each bought one ($3), and asked the driver how much it would be to take us to the Ras Hotel, on Churchill Rd, near the Piazza and the National Theater. He told us 35 birr ($4), which seemed reasonable. Got in, and went a totally different direction than we had come, but thought, well, maybe it's a shortcut. Not a shortcut. We ended up on a dirt road, under construction, and he stopped the taxi. Here you are, he said, the Ras Ambo Hotel. Not on Churchill Rd, not near the Piazza. We tell him no, no, just the Ras Hotel, near Piazza, Churchill Rd. Oh, right right, he says, smacking a palm to his forehead.

We finally get to the hotel, relieved not to have been kidnapped, and as we pull up to the curb, he says "100 birr." What?! We offered him 50 because we had gone a long way out of the way, but he was obstinate, lowering the price little by little, trying to bargain with us, "okay, 90 birr, or even 80, but no less than 80." No! We all went into the hotel, where we drew quite a crowd, to have the receptionist translate/mediate. In the end he finally stormed off with the 50 birr, and we felt exhausted and defeated. But at least we had the baskets.

Saturday morning we all departed for our various locations on 5 Peace Corps contracted busses. Up at 4:45 again, to be ready to leave at 5:30. What time did we actually leave? 7:42. Oh my, a logistical nightmare. But we finally got loaded up and on our way. It was one of the longest days of my life. We dropped people off all along the way, which involved unloading luggage from the top of the bus, and also passed through the Blue Nile Gorge again, going about 20mph for 2 hours. We finally arrived safely in Bahir Dar at about 9:30pm, only to find that there were no rooms at the hotel we had intended to stay in. We found rooms, much more expensive, but beautiful, and collapsed.

Yesterday was spent trying to figure out how to furnish my house. Made three trips by motorcycle taxi to and from the market, including one trip back with involved me and Beth sitting with a roll of 10 meters of linoleum rolled up on our laps, a mattress stuffed behind our heads and another roped to the top of the taxi, and a can of kerosene wedged between my knees. The bajaj (motorcycle taxi) driver asked what we were doing here, then asked us to teach him about HIV (which we did, a little), and then gave us his name and number; "you will be my customers. I am Muslim. You know Muslim? It means I do not cheat. It is good."

Making boxed macaroni and cheese (sent from the US) on my new kerosene stove with my new pots, and eating it off of paper Christmas plates Beth received in a package was one of the best moments in Ethiopia thus far. It felt as though we were really doing this, like living here was actually going to be okay. Doing the dishes under a little spigot in my bathroom was less appealing—need to get some basins for that.

So here I am, beginning to set up a new life. There's a lot of work (a LOT) ahead of me in getting settled here, but I'm feeling largely optimistic about it. I don't know precisely when I'll start work (it's Monday morning and there's no way I'm going in to the office today—far too much to get done around the house first), or what precisely my work will consist of. Those are big, anxiety producing unknowns, but I'm sure that things will get worked out eventually. For now, I'm safe and have a place to sleep and a way to cook, and that's about all I could ask for.

p.s.--Check out the Peace Corps website in the next few days for a picture of all of us at Swearing-In!

I have a home!

2007-11-30T09:43:00.000+03:00

Hello All,

Just wanted to update you all regarding my site assignment and new address. Training will be over in two weeks, and I'll be moving to Bahir Dar, in the North of Ethiopia. I've been in Bahir Dar this week for site visit (seeing my house, talking with my supervisor, learning my way around town), and it seems like it's going to be fabulous.

I'll be living by myself in a two-room house. I have a cold water shower and a porcelain squat toilet (at least I have running water!). I'm the only one on my compound, so I'm thinking about getting a dog, if rabies shots are available in town (not that I really need one, after last week's cat bite and two immune globulin shots...but it's Peace Corps policy).

My house is about 150m away from my work, which will be with ITECH (International Training and Education Center for HIV), which is actually based out of the University of Washington. I'll be working, it seems, mostly on linkage and referrals in the antiretroviral treatment program. I have no idea what that actually means on a day to day basis, but everyone in the HIV field here in Bahir Dar (we've met a lot of them this week) seems fantastic and really committed.

Here's my new address:

Anna Talman

PO Box 2153

Bahir Dar

Ethiopia.

Simple enough. Also check out my blog, at anniopia[dot]blogspot[dot]com (emails seem not to send if they have that address in them. May be related to the Ministry of Info's blocking of blogger. Hmmm.

So I'm feeling good about the next two years. Swearing in is on December 15th, and I've been selected to give a short speech in Amharic. Yikes! I think that it's likely to be quite the event, since we're the first group back in 10 years.

I'd like to upload some pictures, but there are several roadblocks. (1) my camera broke on day one in Ethiopia, so I've been using a friend's backup film camera, (2) uploading them to the internet might take a year with this connection, and (3) since blogger is blocked in ethiopia, I can't load them directly to my blog. I'll keep troubleshooting and figure *something* out.

Anyhow, just wanted to let you know that I'm doing well. I'm headed back to Addis Ababa from Bahir Dar at 4am tomorrow; should arrive by around 4pm, and then back to my host family on Sunday, and to training on Monday.

Amazing!!

2007-11-25T17:50:00.001+03:00

This has really been quite the eventful week! I'm writing at an Internet cafe (much much faster than in Wolisso) in Bahir Dar. I've just come from seeing the source of the Blue Nile. And a hippo. Amazing!

So yes, I got my site assignment on Tuesday, afeter much anticipation and nervousness. I'll be living in Bahir Dar, in the Northern part of Ethiopia, on the shores of Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia. It's a pretty tropical town, with lots of flowers and palm trees (and hippos!). The town seems fabulous, as does my counterpart, who works for the international organization ITECH (International Training and Education Center for HIV), which does hospital based technical assistance. I'll be working on linkages and referrals here in Bahir Dar.

I'm feeling really good, and very excited about being here.

One strange thing: the evening after site announcements I got bitten by a cat in a freak accident (I stepped on its tail answering a call from my parents, whoops), and had to have two very painful shots. One involved a special trip to Addis Ababa (5 hours round trip!) just for the shot. But now I at least won't die of rabies. I guess that's fair.

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner at our Country Director's beautiful home on Friday. Included: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie and chocolate chip mint ice cream imported from the States. It was truly an extravaganza, and will tide me over for a number of months to come.

The trip to Bahir Dar was, well, a trip. We arrived late at the bus station with tons of luggage (there are four of us travelling together; theree in B.D and one about an hour away), including 4 metal safes weighing at least 40 or 50 pounds a piece. We got to the bus station a little late, and amid the chaos (the place was literally teeming with people), it seemed that there would be no tickets to Bahir Dar that day. But we finagled some at last (through a middleman), and loaded the luggage (paying 50% of the ticket price as a luggage fee!), and finally took off. We all thought we would get to B.D. in a single day, but nooooo, 12 hours later, we stopped in a small town along the way and spent the night in a room which cost 25 birr ($2.50) for the night, and took off again at 5 this morning. It was a loooong, hot, dusty ride, part of which went through the Blue Nile gorge, which was beautiful (and scary steep in a big bus....). Kind of torturesome.

I've been told to write more about day to day details. I'll do some of that soon. There're folks waiting on the computer. One more detail: we had a roll stolen from our table by a MONKEY on Wednesday night. I'm truly in Africa. The Nile, hippos, and monkey theives. My oh my. More soon.

Updates

2007-11-12T09:40:00.001+03:00

November 10, 2007

Sorry that everything I've posted so far has been composed in such a rush; whenever I'm at the Internet "café" (really more of a shop—there is nothing in the way of food/drink…), there are 3 or 4 other farenjis (foreigners) waiting to use the computer, so I have to hurry to check email, news, and post in a rush. So now I'm borrowing my friend Beth's computer and taking a little time to actually think through some stories that I want to tell you.

Things are going well. We finished week five of training (of 10 total) this afternoon. Our midterm language test is on Monday. It's hard to believe both how quickly time is flying, and that we're still only halfway through training. I have a feeling, however, that the next 5 weeks are going to go even faster than the first five. We're going to Addis Ababa on a field trip next Saturday, and then the following week, we take off for site visits to our respective towns (still no more word on where that will be). Then there are only two more weeks left before swearing in on the 15 ^th of December (which sounds like it's going to be kind of a big deal—the Ambassador is holding a couple of events for us, and a number of Peace Corps officials from Washington are flying in).

Language learning is frustratingly slow, but when I actually think about it, it's clear that I am indeed making progress. The first time I went to buy laundry soap, I asked for it purely by charades. Yesterday, a couple of us bought some more, and were able not only to ask for it by name, but to bargain a bit as well. It's still going to be something to be thrown into a community on my own. I'm guessing that my workplace counterparts will probably speak fairly good English (secondary education and above is taught primarily in English), but folks I interact with on a daily basis are probably another story. It's definitely going to be a challenge.

There are many small adventures and funny stories. Language mistakes are some of the best. My host brother told me that Oromiffa (the regional language which half of us are learning) is a "very dangerous" language (he meant difficult). A friend of the family told me that he had seen the group of Peace Corps volunteers having lunch, and that one girl was "very freaky." When I asked him what he meant, he told me that she was hugging everyone and saying hello. Oh, right. Friendly. In language class we crack our teacher up about once a week by mispronouncing words so egregiously that they turn from innocent new vocab into swear words.

It's still slightly surreal that I'm here. I'm writing this right now sitting in a huge carved wooden chair on the patio of the Lodge here in town, which is a fabulous refuge, peaceful and beautiful. I can see monkeys playing in the trees nearby. It's sunny and breezy, and I have no responsibilities until Monday morning. It's hard to believe that *this* is my life right now, that I'm really here and really doing this. I'm sure that there will be many difficulties and challenges ahead (and training certainly hasn't been all sunshine and lollipops. There is a decided lack of lollipops, in fact), but for the moment, I'm feeling really good.

Thanks for all your emails and letters. It's amazing to be so far from home and yet so connected. The world really is turning into a smaller place, isn't it? I can't imagine what Peace Corps would have been like 40 years ago. I think, also, that we're a little bit spoiled here during training, with 24 hour electricity and hot springs--and corresponding hot showers--within walking distance! It will be interesting to see how that picture changes with heading out to our own sites…

More soon. I'm sending happy, Autumnal thoughts your way. Have some hot apple cider in my honor, if you're in that kind of climate.

November 12

I just finished my midterm; it went super smoothly. I have the rest of the day off to poke around town, do laundry, catch up on email and facebook (ha) and play a game or two of scrabble. What a luxury to have some free time! Talk to you soon.

A quick hello before curfew

2007-11-07T18:19:00.001+03:00

It's already starting to be dusk and I need to be home before dark, but just wanted to tell you that I'm doing well.

Training continues apace. We had a great fieldtrip this weekend to a beautiful crater lake near our training site. It was about a 4km hike down to the lake, where we took a little canoe to a the island in the middle, where there is a small monastery. The whole place was wonderful, as was the peanut butter sandwich I had for lunch. It was lovely also to have a day off from training. On the way out, we took horses, which was fun.

On both Sunday and Monday, I went to Addis Ababa (a 2 hour van ride) for a day trip. Once was for a protestant wedding with my friend Beth's host family and some folks from their church (that trip was a little overwhelming--we stopped 9 times on the way back; including once for banana flavored gum and once to pray by the side of the road. We were exhausted!). On Monday we had a technical trip to talk with folks from Save the Children and CDC Ethiopia, which was fabulous. I also bought a poster for my house and a KitKat bar, which were wholeheartily appreciated.

I'm slowly learning Amharic, and am occasionally able to string together full sentences with my host family. Yesterday I learned from my friends' host family to make injera (the Ethiopian flat bread staple) and to milk a cow. Quite the evening!

I'm doing well. I miss all of you, and live for letters. I'll write you back for sure if I get one from you (hint hint).

More soon!

Testing 1, 2, 3

2007-10-19T17:34:00.001+03:00

Hello all,

I apologize for the long interval between posts. It appears that blogspot has been blocked by the Ethiopian government for some weeks, so I'm trying a secret route posting via email. If this doesn't work well, I'll try to set up a livejournal or something else.

Things are going really well here. I've been in a small town about 100km away from Addis for the past couple of weeks, starting my training. We'll be here for the next 8 weeks, living with host families and learning the language and technical information about Ethiopia, HIV, and culture. It's been exhausting so far ( 5.5 days a weeks, 8am - 5pm), but instructive. And the other PCVs are phenomenal.

My host family is great. It's an older woman, widowed, who is mother to 8 children and a couple of nieces/nephews. There are currently 4 living at home, but others are in and out. We communicate in a patois of English, Amharic (which I am working hard to pick up, but which is decidedly difficult), and charades. The other PCVs and I joke that we could win the world championships at charades! We have 24 hour a day electricity and an outdoor tap, but no indoor plumbing. We watch alot of ETV, the national TV channel, and Uno and frisbee have both met with huge sucess.

We get a lot of attention on the street. Most of it is positive--the kids follow us around a lot. Most just wave or repeat again and again "what is your name?" or "how are you?" Some shout "you! you! you!" or "money!" We are definitely a curiousity. My host family is also perplexed by some things I do, but we're learning to get along and to communicate.

The big news of the day is that we were divided up by region today. I found out that I'll be moving to Amhara region after we swear in on October 15. That means that I'll continue learning Amharic language, rather than switching to Orominya. I feel good about it, and am looking forward to finding out in a month or so specifically where I'll be.

I received some mail yesterday at mail call. We LIVE for mail, and everyone was very jealous of my letters (and *package*, thanks to Reed!), and it made me super happy. So thanks to all who wrote. It looks like padded envelopes and packages take about 2 weeks, while letters take about 10 days or so. Not bad.

That's enough for now. Hope that you're all well. I miss you all and am thinking about you lots. Denaderu (goodnight)!

Here we go!!

2007-10-06T04:10:00.000+03:00

Check it out--we made CNN.com! http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/10/04/ethiopia.peacecorps.ap/

Staging in DC culminated tonight with a special event at the Ethiopian Embassy; the Ambassador, the Deputy Director of Peace Corps, and several other important folks came to wish us well. We all cleaned up in our best togs and enjoyed some excellent Ethiopian food and some inspiration from them and from returned volunteers. It feels really special to be a part of this first returning group. It's also a big responsibility, and I feel a tremendous sense of duty.

Staging has been a whirlwind. My brain is full! The other 42 trainees, however, are wonderful to a person, and I am incredibly lucky to be spending the next two years with these people.

More soon, from a medium-sized town outside of Addis Ababa, where we're set to train. We fly out tomorrow evening around 8:30 pm. It should be an adventure getting 43 people, each with 80lbs+ of luggage, to the airport!

My life [almost] fits in two bags

2007-09-29T02:09:00.000+03:00

78.5 pounds. Plus a damn heavy carry-on. I whittled it down from the initial 105 that I thought I wanted to bring.

I'm still taking too much; I'm sure of it.

Officialities

2007-09-22T23:57:00.000+03:00

I now have an official launch date for Peace Corps. I'll be leaving Denver the morning of October 2nd (that's only 10 days away!) for Washington DC, were we'll spend three or so days getting the how-not-to-hurt-yourself-and-or-others talk, turn in mounds of paperwork, and line up for (probably quite a few) shots. We also have an official dinner at the Ethiopian embassy, requiring semi-formal attire, which has limited use for the next two years other than for that one dinner.

Two weeks from today I'll be on a plane with 44 other volunteers, heading to Rome, then Addis Ababa. Yikes.

Meanwhile the packing and preparations continue apace. It seems as though everyone I've ever met wants to reconnect in the next couple of weeks before I take off for the wild blue yonder. I've never socialized this much in my life! It has been nice to get to catch up with folks a little bit, though. I had a fantastic trip to San Francisco earlier this month, and was in Kansas City and Chicago just last weekend, getting to see some family and some dear dear friends. I count myself as being very lucky that I have this many wonderful people in my life who I get to spend some time with before I leave.

School starts back up at the UW this coming week. It's a little odd not to be heading back. Hard also to believe that today is the first official day of Fall. It doesn't feel like it here in Denver, where it's probably 85° today. Probably won't feel much like it in Ethiopia, either, at 8 degrees North latitude.

Mail

2007-09-06T23:32:00.000+03:00

Would it be weird to send myself mail? I might mail myself a book or some magazines now so that they'll arrive shortly after I get there.

You can too...hint hint :)

Anna Talman/PCT
US Peace Corps/Ethiopia
PO Box 7788
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Oh, the suspense

2007-09-05T09:33:00.001+03:00

I'm feeling overwhelmed by the not-knowing, the suspense of not having all of the details in place about what my life is going to look like for the next two years. I don't have--and can't make--a plan. I suppose that this is good practice for the "staying flexible" that everyone talks about needing as a fundamental skill in the Peace Corps. But to be honest it's driving me a little batty now. Everyone around me is asking questions about what I'll be doing, where I'll be working, what language I'll be speaking, etc etc etc, and the answer of "I really don't know, honestly," is getting a little old.

I realized today just how very long it's been since I started this process. My Peace Corps dental record is a year old (I went to get a cleaning, oh joy of joys, today, and updated it). Looking back at my application, I realized that I started communicating with the Peace Corps in January 2006, nearly 22 months ago. Could the process get any more drawn out?

The goodbye process has also gotten drawn out. It doesn't feel real somehow, to say farewell to someone (even to dear dear friends) a full month before leaving. I wonder when it will all sink in that I'm actually going (and for so long!). Maybe once the bags begin to get packed.

Right, and then there's that. All the packing. Recent highlights from my list of things to acquire/find/organize before I leave:

* a vegetable peeler and a sharp paring knife
* a roll of duct tape and a roll of toilet paper
* shortwave radio
* approximately nine million gallons of sunscreen (three months' worth; how much does one presume that comes to for someone as pale as I am?)
* solar powered battery charger
* small crossword and math puzzle books; travel scrabble

Some trips to Target, REI, and the thrift store are probably in order. Perhaps that will keep me occupied for a little while; it has the semblance, at least, of feeling like I'm making some kind of plan.

Moving is the pits

2007-08-12T02:42:00.001+03:00

Much as I'm devastatingly sad to be leaving Seattle, I'll be relieved to be done with the *moving* thing.

I am absolutely appalled at the amount of stuff I've accumulated over the past few years. This afternoon I found posters that I bought the summer before I went to college. Six years ago. Why I've been toting them around since, I'm not sure. Also, do I really need to haul a liter of book glue back to Denver with me? [apparently: I packed it.]

And where does all this dust come from?!

Also realized that I drive a two-door Echo. And that my dad and a bag of his are coming with us on this drive. It's just not all going to fit. I'm trying to think of it as being good practice for winnowing all my stuff down to 80 pounds for the next couple of years. But mostly I just think of it as being a terrible chore.

So it's real

2007-07-30T08:10:00.000+03:00

My departure is official. I've started a blog.

Not only that, but I've started selling furniture on Craigslist. As is typical for me, I went directly from entirely ignoring the fact that I'm moving in a couple of weeks to full-fledged panic. I packed about a third of my room today, and will probably be rid of most of my furniture by the end of the week. Then comes the odd limbo of not having furniture, but not being ready to leave quite yet (I leave August 15th). Why do I always set myself up for that?

I have a feeling that leaving Seattle is going to make this whole Peace Corps thing come into sharp relief. The notion still hasn't entirely set in that I'll be living abroad, with who knows what kind of Internet and phone access (let alone electricity and water!), for two years. Yes, I've been abroad before, but in neat little chunks. A summer, a semester, a month. Two years. Wow. Two years ago I had just barely moved to San Francisco; it's amazing to think how much has changed in my life since then. I can only imagine that as much (probably more!) will have changed when I return in a couple of years.

So, here we go. I'll be updating periodically about departure preparations, and then whenever I can from Ethiopia. Here goes nothing!