Friday, October 30, 2015
Happy Halloween!
10/30
Happy Halloween!!! Sadly missing another holiday, but I have been invited to a party in Bale Goba in order to celebrate Halloween. I have also found some pumpkins and been cooking with that. I am pretty happy how my cooking skills have progressed while being in Ethiopia. Not only have I learned to make breads and pastries, but I have done it while using a dutch oven to cook. I can't wait to get back to modern appliances and seeing what I can make. I have just made some pumpkin pies, while not exactly what you think of when you say pumpkin pie in America, they were rather tasty and incredibly easy to make. Today I will be making pumpkin bread to take to the party.
We have really gotten into the rhythm of having a horse, it is rather time consuming and I can image it being hard to deal with in America with such a hectic lifestyle (at least compared to here). Most of the time is really taken by the fact that we have to take him to and from where he stays to my office every day in order to let him graze. Still, it is a welcome distraction in spite of the fact that it means every day I have to be up and going by eight A.M. rain or shine, week day or weekend. Spending the time brushing and cleaning him every day gives me something to do even if I have nothing else for the rest of the day. I also have embarrassed the bareback riding. It isn't really practical to carry the saddle to him every day, just to ride him the ten minutes to my office so once a day, assuming he isn't wet from the rain, I ride him up to the office without the saddle. I feel almost more comfortable, not physically of course, riding without the saddle now. It also doesn't really help that the saddle in Ethiopia are pretty terrible. Then of course there is the time we ride him just for fun. It is really relaxing and enjoyable. Yesterday some friends and I took him up to the reforestation area around the gorge. It was beautiful, and when we got to the end we stopped and drank a bottle of honey wine. We also got invited to a celebration of one of the bee cooperatives who has their hives in the forest. They graciously offered us the sheep they were cooking as well as some gin. Getting into the swing of everything, finding him a house, getting the food and such taken care of may have been a huge headache, but so worth it in the end.
On a less fun note, I can't even believe I complained at my midnight curfew as a teen. Living in a compound in Ethiopia means you have certain rules. You have to respect your landlord and their property of course, regardless of if their baby comes into your house, picks up and plays with everything, and occasionally pees on your floor. You have to get permission for everything, even if that means that you do not get permission for things like making a garden. But, I think the worst is a curfew. It is an unspoken rule in Ethiopia that you have to be home at a reasonable time. If you are not then the landlord will lock the gate and you are out of luck. This means I have, for the last year and a half, been living with a nine P.M. curfew. I honestly feel like a child again having to watch the clock and make sure I get home in time. It is one of the bigger things I am looking forward to being done with.
Seeing how today was the deadline for submitting the paperwork to extend my stay in Ethiopia, and I did not figure anything out, it looks like I will be leaving Ethiopia in five and a half months. I am looking forward to starting the next phase of my life despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea what I will be doing. Looks like I have a lot of research to do in order to find my next calling.
Friday, October 16, 2015
Six Months Left
Only six months left!!! It is hard to believe we have already been
here twenty-one months, it has gone by really fast. I am considering
extending in a few places for different reasons. But, the closer to the
deadline the more I am leaning towards finishing my service and moving onto the
next stage of my life, whatever that may be. It is also hard to imagine
all the things that are going on in the states. People getting engaged,
having babies, and of course getting really drunk on GOOD alcohol.
Looking ahead I am trying to prioritize what I need to get done, what I want to get done, and what probably won't get done. I am still going to play with my bees, but with this little time left and them not doing as well as I would like, due to the lack of trees for food I think, I am not thinking that I will be able to do all the stuff I wanted to. Still I have learned a LOT since working on them here and I still have plenty to continue learning. I have been able recently to work more directly with farmers which is one of the things I always wanted. They seem to be realizing the resource I can be to help them, I just wish it had happened sooner. Still I have made all the mistakes that they are making now and I am happy to get in there with them and help them avoid making my mistakes.
I haven't started working with the schools this year. I should have if I had wanted to but, I can't decide. In many aspects working with the school was one of the most rewarding things I did, and in others it was by far the most frustrating. I am happy to say that I met some kids that really were awesome and I was happy to work with and I hope in one way or another I helped them, but trying to get the clubs started, getting kids to attend, getting translators and counterparts, is all very difficult and time consuming. Not like I have any lack of time on my hands. Finally camps, as many of you know I just directed a small community camp at my site, I think it went really well but of course could be improved upon. But I am torn on if I want to try and do one more before the end of my service. There are two big barriers I see being difficult to overcome. First is translators, while I can get community members to fascilitate some of the sessions we would need someone there to help us for the sessions we lead, as well as the general instructions etc. The person that helped us last time just went to university and is one of the students I was so happy to work with. The second is finances, due to recent rule changes in the way PC Ethiopia does grants it is very hard for us to get small amounts of money, like what I need to pay for snacks, this rule change comes to the dismay of many of us as we are in fact being encouraged to do small community camps by PC but unable to get support. If I can overcome these two big difficulties though I may very well try to do one more small camp.
In recent personal news I FINALLY have a horse. And by I, I mean we. My site mate and I finally took the plunge to get the horse together. That way when I leave he will have a home and I don't have to worry about trying to get him to a good home. I think technically he is actually a pony though, the horses in Ethiopia are really small. He is about average for the area and still only 13 hands and 276kg (608lbs). We named him Sargaent Shriver after the first director of PC. Thankfully he is really patient, while I have ridden a horse a very few times, my site mate had never before he came here so there has been a bit of a learning curve. But, we are learning, and enjoying having him. I would be willing to bet he is happy to be with us seeing has he has put on over 25lbs in the week we have had him. When we first bought him we were unable to buy a saddle since all the materials weren't available at the market. So for the first week we were riding bareback. It was the first time in my life riding bareback and I am not sad at all to have a saddle now. I also am not sure I will ever be able to have children after this... I also did my first jump on a horse. It was just a tiny ditch and not much to speak of, the somewhat impressive part was that I did it at a canter, riding bareback, and stayed seated even though I didn't realize Sarge had decided to jump it till mid jump. It did earn me the applause of the people watching which was pretty funny though. I don't know if you still read this Donna, but if you do thank you for letting me tag along with you riding, without the stuff I learned from you I probably wouldn't have been able to even get this far.
The next few months are going to be interesting, I am going to addis this week for a Gender and Development (GAD) committee meeting. Then there is Halloween, then some good beekeeping time, then the holidays really get started. The new volunteers will be incoming, we will have our Close of Service conference, then we will be outbound. I have to remember to breathe in November, because after that I won't be able to.
Looking ahead I am trying to prioritize what I need to get done, what I want to get done, and what probably won't get done. I am still going to play with my bees, but with this little time left and them not doing as well as I would like, due to the lack of trees for food I think, I am not thinking that I will be able to do all the stuff I wanted to. Still I have learned a LOT since working on them here and I still have plenty to continue learning. I have been able recently to work more directly with farmers which is one of the things I always wanted. They seem to be realizing the resource I can be to help them, I just wish it had happened sooner. Still I have made all the mistakes that they are making now and I am happy to get in there with them and help them avoid making my mistakes.
I haven't started working with the schools this year. I should have if I had wanted to but, I can't decide. In many aspects working with the school was one of the most rewarding things I did, and in others it was by far the most frustrating. I am happy to say that I met some kids that really were awesome and I was happy to work with and I hope in one way or another I helped them, but trying to get the clubs started, getting kids to attend, getting translators and counterparts, is all very difficult and time consuming. Not like I have any lack of time on my hands. Finally camps, as many of you know I just directed a small community camp at my site, I think it went really well but of course could be improved upon. But I am torn on if I want to try and do one more before the end of my service. There are two big barriers I see being difficult to overcome. First is translators, while I can get community members to fascilitate some of the sessions we would need someone there to help us for the sessions we lead, as well as the general instructions etc. The person that helped us last time just went to university and is one of the students I was so happy to work with. The second is finances, due to recent rule changes in the way PC Ethiopia does grants it is very hard for us to get small amounts of money, like what I need to pay for snacks, this rule change comes to the dismay of many of us as we are in fact being encouraged to do small community camps by PC but unable to get support. If I can overcome these two big difficulties though I may very well try to do one more small camp.
In recent personal news I FINALLY have a horse. And by I, I mean we. My site mate and I finally took the plunge to get the horse together. That way when I leave he will have a home and I don't have to worry about trying to get him to a good home. I think technically he is actually a pony though, the horses in Ethiopia are really small. He is about average for the area and still only 13 hands and 276kg (608lbs). We named him Sargaent Shriver after the first director of PC. Thankfully he is really patient, while I have ridden a horse a very few times, my site mate had never before he came here so there has been a bit of a learning curve. But, we are learning, and enjoying having him. I would be willing to bet he is happy to be with us seeing has he has put on over 25lbs in the week we have had him. When we first bought him we were unable to buy a saddle since all the materials weren't available at the market. So for the first week we were riding bareback. It was the first time in my life riding bareback and I am not sad at all to have a saddle now. I also am not sure I will ever be able to have children after this... I also did my first jump on a horse. It was just a tiny ditch and not much to speak of, the somewhat impressive part was that I did it at a canter, riding bareback, and stayed seated even though I didn't realize Sarge had decided to jump it till mid jump. It did earn me the applause of the people watching which was pretty funny though. I don't know if you still read this Donna, but if you do thank you for letting me tag along with you riding, without the stuff I learned from you I probably wouldn't have been able to even get this far.
The next few months are going to be interesting, I am going to addis this week for a Gender and Development (GAD) committee meeting. Then there is Halloween, then some good beekeeping time, then the holidays really get started. The new volunteers will be incoming, we will have our Close of Service conference, then we will be outbound. I have to remember to breathe in November, because after that I won't be able to.
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