Why use a lawnmower when there are so many goats in this town? 10.21.2002

We’re nearing the end of week 2 as trainees, and we actually find out our site placement at the end of week 3 (on HALLOWEEN! Although I’m fairly positive that’s not a celebrated holiday here in Ityop’ya L) So I will know in a little over a week where I’ll be living for the remainder of my time here. We have a week-long site visit during week 5, in which we’ll get to see our future homes/communities. I’m excited but also pretty nervous about the whole ordeal.

This morning we went to the local public health center to learn about the services offered to HIV+ individuals, as well as educational services/programs they have going on. When we walked onto the grounds, I noticed that the grass was very well kept and then saw a bunch of goats grazing away and realized that’s how lawns are kept up here – no gas powered machines, simply grazing animals. So resourceful…Language lessons are going…Amharic is very difficult, and I’m still getting used to being on a regular schedule, as that’s something I haven’t done in awhile. Nor have I used my brain this much in a long time, or since being in college (so almost a year!) Basically, I am really headache (according to one of my host brothers, when I was trying to explain that my head hurts from learning Amharic…).

Highlights of my week: Passed my first Amharic language test (Saturday, 10.17) I learned how to do laundry by hand (Sunday, 10.18). I used a variety of buckets and a bar of laundry soap, then hung it up outside to dry. My parents called me on Sunday, which was amazing (you guys made my week!) :) I can also successfully use a šint bet (hole in the ground)…I wonder how people potty train their kids here…seems like it could be a dangerous situation. Lastly, we discovered the Ethiopian version of Oreos – they’re called Glory (so now we call them GloryOs) and are sandwich cookies with fruit-flavored cream (we’ve tried orange and pineapple). Normally, I’d pass on such a treat, but at this point they’re pretty fantastic (not to mention cheap).

The weather is here, wish you were beautiful (Jimmy Buffet!)…but really, the weather has been great – the skies are blue and everything where I am is lush and green, as the rainy season has just ended. When it’s sunny it’s HOT, but there’s often times a nice breeze, which makes the outdoors suitable for jacket-wearing.

The Ethiopian day starts at 6 (instead of 12 like I’m used to)…I still have my watch set to normal (to me) time, which is 7 hours ahead of EST…and my computer is still set to EST, so there’s much confusion when using my computer, looking at my watch, and the clock in my house. Ex: Computer: 3:30 My watch: 10:30 Clock in house: 4:30…Rrrrrrrrright. Have I mentioned that it’s 2002?!

I’m making good progress on the cross-cultural aspect of our training, as my homestay is continuing to go well – it must be as awkward for the family to have me living in their house as it is for me to be living with them. I’m very appreciative of them taking me in for 10 weeks – that’s a pretty long time to have some strange animal living in your house. My life seems to be a giant game of charades and largely consists of me pointing to things and stating the Amharic word if I know it, and asking what it is if I don’t. They’ve lately been giving me warm, sweetened milk with my dinner, straight from a cow, mooo! And I learned that an Ethiopian rooster says “Ko ko looooooo” as opposed to the American rooster’s “Cock a doodle doo”…

Ethiopian Calendar:

Mäskäräm – September – 9.11 – 10.10

T’ïk’ïmt – October – 10.11 – 11.09

Hïdar – November – 11.10 – 12.09

Tahïsas – December – 12.10 – 1.08

T’ïr – January – 1.09 – 2.07

Yäkatit – February – 2.08 – 3.09

Mägabit – March – 3.10 – 4.08

Miyaziya – April – 4.09 – 5.08

Gïnbot – May – 5.09 – 6.07

Säne – June – 6.08 – 7.07

Hamle – July – 7.08 – 8.06

Nähase – August – 8.07 – 9.06

P’agume – 13th month – 9.06 – 9.10

An Explanation of my Service

So you’re probably wondering what I’m actually doing in Ethiopia (Ïtyop’ya), so I’ll fill you in on my assignment. The mission of PC is to promote world peace and friendship by:

1. Sending trained volunteers to developing countries that have requested assistance to help the people meet their basic needs
2. Promoting a better understanding of Americans to other peoples served (share the goodness of American culture with Ethiopians)
3. Promoting a better understanding of other peoples to Americans (share the goodness of Ethiopian culture with Americans)



In a nutshell, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health requested PC’s assistance to develop the capacity of hospitals, health posts, health centers, organizations and communities to plan, coordinate and deliver HIV/AIDS services. My official job title is a Community HIV/AIDS Advisor , and to prepare for our future work, we have intensive training for the first 10 weeks in country. The components include the following trainings: language, cultural/host family, safety and security, personal health, and technical/skills.

About halfway during training, we will be assigned to our permanent site, and also to an Ethiopian counterpart, who will be of great help to us once we are settled in. The first three months at site we will be responsible for doing a community needs assessment (CNA). Basically, we are here to involve the community in which we live in everything we do – we are here to assist and share ideas, not lead. PC does work under 3 pillars in the HIV/AIDS realm: Prevention, Care & Support, and with Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs). We’ll be working from the bottom up, as we are not yet sure of what our community actually needs. Our perceived needs could be very different from their actual needs, and that’s why we’ll spend 3 whole months assessing our site. Nothing is set in stone as to what each volunteer will be doing, but after our CNA, we will have 2 years to complete a primary project within our community with an identified host organization (secondary projects are allowed).

I won’t know for about another month as to where I will be living permanently, but I’ll keep y’all (miss that word!) posted. If you have any questions, feel free to email me – not sure when I’ll be able to respond, but remember that T.I.A. (this is Africa) and not everything runs on a tight schedule or is at your fingertips, as it is in America :)

“And now, I am make coffee.” (10.12.2009/2002)

As you probably know, Ethiopia has some darn good coffee. It is said to be the birthplace of humans and coffee (trivia!). There is a ceremony revolving around bunna (Amharic for coffee), that takes place on the floor. First, the beans are roasted, then ground with a mortar and pestle before being boiled on a charcoal stove. It is served in tiny cups with a lot of sugar and sometimes milk…it’s pretty delicious and puts American coffee to shame (sorry Starbucks). Before we moved in with our host families, we all had lunch together, and took part in our first coffee ceremony.

That being said, we are now living with our host families. I am living in a small rural town outside of Assela, which is the closest big city. We live in a compound a few blocks off the main paved road (all the other roads are made of dirt but they’ve been pretty muddy since it’s been raining a lot). My host family is incredibly nice and hospitable and there are 13 of them living here, plus a few goats, a pregnant cow, a couple dogs, and a cat and kitten. Fortunately, one of our group LCF’s (Language/Cross-cultural Facilitator) lives right next door to me, so she was a huge help in having things not be incredibly awkward when I first moved in, seeing as how I only knew about 10-15 Amharic words/phrases, aka “survival language” (ex: Where’s the toilet? Thank you. I need sleep. I don’t want food. It’s good! Water..you get the point). In case you’re wondering, I have my own room (it’s spacious) with green walls and a very comfortable bed, so I’ve been sleeping relatively well (thank goodness for earplugs – there are many boisterous animals at night). My family has a shower with running water (it’s ice cold, but I’ll have rock solid abs after 10 weeks here), and our toilet (aka šint bet in Amharic) is located outside in the compound and it’s a room made of mud and hay with a cement hole in the ground for to do your business. If anything, I’ll build some nice quad muscles as well!

We started language training (Amharic for now), and it is going to be quite challenging, but ultimately rewarding. Fortunately, we were broken down into even smaller groups (3 people/group) for language training. As you know, English has 26 letters. The Amharic syllabary (or fidel) contains 34 base characters (if you include the letter v) and each character has 7 variations, or orders. So that’s 238 characters we’ll be learning to read/write. Whoa. Day one went well – we learned how to pronounce everything, then for our “practical application” took our knowledge to the streets. We walked to the post office (I sent 2 letters – one to my parents and one to my sister – let me know if/when they arrive – sent on 10.12.09) and were to greet people along the way. People are really surprised when Amharic comes out of the färenjis’ (foreigners) mouths. I laugh a lot, some kids laugh and run away, but ultimately everyone stares and most reply back. But after the standard greeting, I’m at a loss for words. With time…

We are known to draw quite a crowd – Americans don’t often come to these parts. I had a girl say to me today “Hey China girl, how are you?” Not Chinese…but I don’t know how to say that in Amharic [yet]. People seem to be out and about all the time here, as are animals roaming the streets. Cows, chickens, goats, dogs, horses, donkeys…all are really cute. I had to dodge a few donkeys earlier and yesterday I got splashed by dirty water from a passing donkey cart taxi. L

The food is pretty awesome here. I don’t think I’ve had anything processed besides the candy I bought at the airport en route (aka junk food isn’t found in abundance here, so feel free to send me snack foods and candy!). Injera is a country staple and is made from something called tef, which is a superfood/grain. Injera is kind of like a thin sourdough pancake that also doubles as a utensil (you rip off pieces and pick up the other food with your right hand and eat it!). Since moving in with my HF, we’ve had injera at almost every meal, along with deliciously prepared vegetables (spicy lentils, potatoes, cabbage, corn, greens). So I’ve been eating well and fortunately, haven’t had any GI difficulties yet (I just knocked on my bed frame – it’s made of wood).

My HF bros and the younger kids in the house have all been teaching me Amharic words and tonight they busted out a deck of cards to help me with learning numbers. It’s kind of overwhelming, but also fun. One of them wrote down everyone’s first name and I had to write it in the script – it took me a small eternity, but I enjoyed it. We’ve also been watching a lot of “country music videos” – not the twangy stuff you’re thinking of, but Ethiopian country music (mainly from the Oroma region). There’s lots of shoulder shaking in their dancing – it’s amazing how they move and I hope to learn some of their moves – see if you can google Ethiopian dancing – you’ll be amazed.

I apologize in advance for not posting very often – there’s no internet in my town and these next 10 weeks of training are going to be incredibly busy. Check back periodically for updates, but I can guarantee they won’t be daily! I know that I’ve been out of touch, but know that I am healthy and happy and I hope all of you are the same J Käs Bäkäs Ïnk’Ulal Bäïgrwa Tïhedeläč (Little by little the egg goes by foot).

Finally Here (10.09.09/2002)

My journey has officially started. I left Tallahassee Monday, Oct 5, and made it to Philly without any problems. I met a fellow PCT (Peace Corps Trainee – get used to the acronyms now) at the airport in Charlotte, so we shared a cab to the hotel then had lunch (cheese steaks, what what! When in Philly…) before our brief orientation. Our session lasted about 4.5 hours, and we were given a bit of information about our lives for the next 2+ years, in addition to some administrative stuff. We had our last American dinner out on the town in Philly, then a few of us walked to see the Liberty Bell…quite patriotic. The following morning we had a very early breakfast at the hotel, then got yellow fever vaccines before driving to Newark, our point of departure.

We left Newark, NJ aboard Lufthansa – for our first snack, we had beer and pretzels…how GERMAN (and tasty)! I napped here and there and watched a few movies and listened to music on the flights over. Both legs of the trip were fine, but my feet looked like chubby sausages by the time we got to Germany. I must admit – I didn’t do my flyrobics to keep my blood circulating. So I had to loosen my chacos a great deal in order for them to fit…

Our arrival to Addis went swimmingly (didn’t have to make use of our schwimmweste on the airplane!) We arrived around 7 at night and were taken to our hotel. If you’ve never traveled with 40 people in a group, you should sometime, just to see the amount of luggage – and we were all limited in the amount we were able to bring! We had orientation for the next 2 days in Addis Ababa (the capital city of Ethiopia), along with a few (only 4) shots. We were introduced to the Peace Corps more in depth and given some information about what we’ll actually be doing here, as well as a detailed schedule of our next 10 weeks of PST (pre-service training).

A little bit about my training group: we are group 3 to return to Ethiopia. There are 42 of us, spanning across the country and quite an age range. There are 4 married couples among us. We were all together during our time in Addis, but have since been split into 4 smaller groups for training purposes. We are doing a community –based training, where we will live with a host family in order to really integrate into the community/culture.