3/26
It has been a busy few weeks, I have barely slept, and not had much of any free
time. (That is about as far as I got before I had to take a nap) and I'm
back. The AGE summit is behind us, the kids are home, and the GAD
committee is glad to breath a sigh of relief that everything went so well.
But, there is no rest for the weary. As the M&E officer (monitoring
and evaluating) it is now my duty to put into numbers all of the things that we
did. For your sake I will say it looks something like forty kids directly
trained to be leaders and gender ambassadors for their country. We also
are hoping/estimating that those kids over the next few weeks will help train
about fourteen-hundred other kids on gender related activities. I have to
say I was incredibly impressed with the kids that came. They are without
a doubt Ethiopia's best and brightest. They were intelligent and quick
learners, who were able to understand instructions that many of the kids I work
with would have taken weeks to understand. I truly have very high hopes
for them, not only for their individual futures, but what they could accomplish
for their country! It was great getting to see them participate in
activities, running their first ever 5K with nearly seven thousand other women,
and meeting people like the American ambassador to Ethiopia, the creators
of different NGOs, and the programmer of one of Ethiopia's TV programs entirely
dedicated to educating the child viewers (think sesame street). The look
on their faces when they met Ethiopia's Miss Ethiopia winner, who also happens
to be an airline pilot as well as a humanitarian, was fantastic. Finally, meeting the girls from the Center for Creative Leadership, who were not only our
translators but also fun, amazing, dedicated girls, is a friendship I am truly
happy to have made.
Still, for me I still have at least a weekends work ahead of me to meet my
deadline for submitting the final breakdown. Already I have spent about a
day of working on collating the data, and sifting through endless pages of
numbers and names. The amount of a breakdown that they want for the grant
is really annoying, and especially since I was ill-prepared for having to do it
like this. Still, it will get done, and then I will sleep for a full
night for the first time in three weeks.
To add on to all of the AGE summit, I also had my second site visit by the PC this
week. One of my program managers came to see how I was doing, talk to
community members and make sure they were satisfied with me, and help me with
any difficulties I may have been having. It went great, with my
co-workers getting ideas about how I can help them, as well as me getting great
feedback that I think will greatly improve how I am working here. I am
excited to see that changes that come out of the meeting.
Finally, I have had an interesting week with the bees. I am was given a
swarm of bees that someone had found in a tree. This prompted me to
quickly prepare a hive for them, and set things up in less than an hour.
That happened among a full day of work making for an interesting
afternoon. I am also preparing to buy three more colonies from one of the
teachers I work with. So at least for the next few days I know I will be
kept well occupied.
Finally, to bring all of this to a close I had great news the other night
around 11 pm in the form of a knock on my door from my landladies son. The
water is BACK! It was a few days short of being six weeks without
water! I don't know how long it will stay, but I am going to be making
the best of it. My laundry is being washed right now, some of it has been
dirty for about seven weeks at this point!
3/4
It has been a long time since I checked in last. I have been here at
site, my typical day has settled into a few hours at the office where I play a
game on my computer or read a book. Then going for coffee for a few
hours, lunch, maybe a movie, more coffee, then bed time. I am trying to
get the school clubs started back up, but as getting them started in the first
place, getting them resumed is taking an act of god.
The AGE summit is almost here. I am leaving for Addis on Saturday. It is
exciting that months of work is about to come together. I am crossing my
fingers that it all goes well. Also my new site mate came for site visit
this week. It should be fun to have another American to hang out with
now. The Ethiopians that I hang out with keep telling me I am speaking
another language to the new PCV. They are so used to how I talk to them,
pronouncing everything very carefully and slowing down my speech, that when I talk
to an American they don't understand anything.
Finally, today I am supposed to get a visit from Peter Vrooman, the Deputy
Chief of Mission, from the US embassy. He is going to stop by with his
family for lunch before he heads back to Addis. It has been an
interesting week in the middle of being so bored and it is so refreshing.
2/19
It has been several weeks of nothing to do. Two weeks before the kids had
their exams I stopped the clubs. I wanted them to have the time to study,
but, I also wanted a break. About the same time bee keeping season
ended. So with my projects on hold I have had a lot of time on my
hands. Pretty much the only thing I have done since then is go to a
wedding. It was actually not bad, they had a lot of T'ej there (honey
whine) so I was able to stay entertained. That was the second wedding I
have been to in Ethiopia (not including the one I crashed), so far I have gone
to an Orthodox wedding, and a Catholic wedding. I need to go to a Muslim
wedding, and I will have seen the gambit.
Last week the power was out for about four days, coming on for only about ten
minutes a day, if at all. Also the phone lines were cut, I am not sure
how or why, so there was no cell, land line, or internet access for about three
days. Finally there has been no water for going on three weeks now.
I keep eighty liters of water at my house, but I ran out early into the second
week, my landlord keeps a fifty-five gallon drum of water, along with I don't
know how many jerry cans, even she ran out. It has come down to sending
jerry cans on a donkey or horse cart in the afternoon, and the next day they
return them. Since I only have one jerry can it means I have to be very
careful with water consumption. Still, people ask me how Gassera is, and
I still tell them it is fine, I don't find it difficult to live here.
They always look at me like I am crazy and say: "there is a lack of power,
and water, and network, it is not good." I just tell them it isn't a
problem, and that I still like living here. I would think that after
living here your whole life that it would be something you hardly even notice
anymore.
So I have had a lot of time to think these last few weeks. I felt like
sharing some of my thoughts. I apologize in advance!
With just the money I make as a "resettlement allowance" to go home
at the end of my service, I could live in this town for approximately 5.5years.
In Amharic and Oromifa they have only one word for both "need", and
"want". Is that because in these languages infancy, needs were
the same as wants? Or is it because, these cultures consider wants and
needs as equal. Sometimes I wonder about this.
I am the first white person ever to live in this area of Ethiopia. I
guess that kinda makes sense that the women point me out to their children and
tell them to look at the forenji.
I have another post already to go, but I forgot to post it last time I was in
Robe. It describes my visit to Harar, but I want to be able to add some
pictures to it, so it will have to wait till the next time I have a computer
with internet
1/26
It is amazing what a few hours can make on the course of your day. I went
to say goodbye to some Dutch friends who had finished their work here and are
returning home. They invited us to their home for food, drinks, and
goodbyes. I left in the late morning, on the bus, I was subjected to more
than the usual amount of people pointing and talking about me. There was
a lady who was trying to get me to sit by her or give her my number, and on the
ride there a very young girl in the seat by me was trying to press up against
me and even put her head on my shoulder a few times. Needless to say it
was not a very enjoyable ride. I get to Robe, and head to a restaurant
for lunch. As soon as I walk in this kid yells at me to "give me
money", I tell him he is "balagay" (rude: very insulting to
Ethiopians) and walk to a table. He came back and I had to be very
forceful with him, but he finally got the picture and seemed to understand that
he was making me angry. I had a great breakfast though and that lifted my
spirits again. I did some shopping and couldn't find a lot of what I
wanted to buy. As I got onto my email, the network went out so I wasn't able to
even look at a single message. I went to get a drink and the lady
at the first place walked away as I was talking and went to a coworker and
started pointing and talking about me, so I left. The next place was
similar but I managed to get a drink, but at that point I was steaming
again. But then I made it to my friends house. They had invited
many people, and prepared amazing food, both traditional and foreign.
There was shiro and doro (chicken) wat with enjera, as well as fallafel, humus,
and meat loaf. The best part was the HUGE plate of chocolates, cookies,
and pastries. We spent most of the time eating, talking, and listening
to music I have never heard before. Then we played settlers of Bale with
leftovers, coffee, and tea. It truly helped me forget the rough day I
had. On the bus it almost started up again when they tried to charge me
40 birr for the ride back to Gassera. It normally costs 29 and I was
starting to make a fuss, but one of the teachers from my school explained that
there had been no buses going to site so they had negotiated with a bus that
normal goes another route to take us, they had of course charged more but it
was the agreed upon amount. I was in the very last row by a window.
And even though Ethiopians HATE riding with the windows open, I decided I was
going to enjoy myself this ride so I opened the window wide and stuck my head
in the wind. It is crazy the amount of enjoyment I can get from just
having the wind in my face. It took me back to riding along the ocean
with the windows open. Even though by the time I got back to site my face
and entire right side of my body had a thick layer of dust on it, it still was
well worth it.
Tomorrow I am going back to Addis to have a GAD committee meeting, then if I get
approval I am going on a short vacation to see the city of Harrar.
Everyone who has gone has said how beautiful it is so I am very excited to see
it. I am excited for the trip, but I know that when I get back to site I
have to really buckle down and find some new work to do before I lose my mind.
