May 2013
1 post
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Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how lucky I am. This weekend, though, the wedding of my counterpart to my favorite health extension worker reminded me how incredibly fortunate I am - to be in Peace Corps, to have amazing friends, and, yes, to be in Ethiopia. When I found out that Brihan (my counterpart, who is intelligent, motivated, and has a great sense of humor) was going to marry his...
April 2013
2 posts
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Snapshot: Breakfast
Most days after aerobics class I go to Samson and Meskerem’s little cafe for breakfast. The couple has been operating the restaurant for a little under a year now, and they serve my favorite breakfast food in Ethiopia, fuul. I walk up to the front of the restaurant and start to wash my hands; as I do, Samson spots me and says good morning (Akkam bulte? Fayya dha?). Is there fuul? I ask....
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The Whirlwind Tour: Ethiopia in Six Days
My brother, Tom, and sister-in-law, Emily, came to visit last month. It was great timing - while the end of my service is approaching rapidly (only 16 weeks to go!), I was in a place in my service where things felt stagnant. Our whirlwind tour of Ethiopia was not only a ton of fun, but also really wore me out - which made coming back to site a welcome rest. Now it feels good to be back, and I...
February 2013
2 posts
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No Leotard, No Problem
Mettu is quiet at 6:30am. The sun is still just below the horizon, starting to give the sky a pink glow. The people who are awake are mostly women, cooking injera in smoky kitchens. A few people are out delivering bread to tiny shops well off the main road or heading to the bus station. Down one narrow alleyway, though, the lights are on and the music is turned up. In the martial arts studio of...
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Work without much Work: Sustainability in Action...
I wrote a few months ago about our amazing summer camp in Nekemte. Since the school year began, the girls we took to camp have been running a club here in town for their peers. Although Kim, Ashley, and I show up each week, our role is simple: make sure they have the materials they need, review the lesson plans, and watch while we beam with pride. This past week, during the school break, the girls...
January 2013
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Gexee, my first Afaan Oromo teacher, was my second, self-proclaimed Ethiopian mom. During my first few months here, we spent six and a half hours a day together, plowing through the language one-on-one. It was exhausting and intense, and when the training staff switched our teachers on us, I nearly cried. Sometimes we’d get so exhausted in class that she’d decided we needed a break,...
December 2012
2 posts
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I guess 18 months of spicy food and coffee finally...
In the past, I’ve poo-pooed my Ethiopian friends’ and neighbors’ insinuations that foreigners can’t handle their spicy food. A recent illness made me realize that maybe I do have to take it easy on the spice…but I’m getting ahead of myself. A few weeks ago, I woke up with a weird pain in my side. It felt like a side stitch, and I didn’t think much of it....
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Biyya Bartani: They came; they saw; they...
One of the most common questions people asked about my parents while they were here was biyya bartani? (“they learned the country?”) — meaning, have they gotten to know it a bit? As evidenced by this beautiful reflection on their visit, my mom certainly did:
The countryside and the mountains are beautiful in Ethiopia. If Van Gogh had painted “Starry night” in Ethiopia, the...
November 2012
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What to expect when you're expecting...to visit...
It’s been a busy two weeks! My parents arrived in Ethiopia on November 4, and we’ve been jet-setting around the country ever since. As their visit approached, I asked them to reflect on their expectations for visiting Ethioipia. Here’s what mom had to say, in response to some questions I posed:
Hi. I am looking forward to seeing you and I am very excited to learn more about...
October 2012
4 posts
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Girls Leading Our World: Empowering young women...
Club GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) kicked off in Mettu last week. Thanks to the incredible experience and training campers received at Camp GLOW in Nekemte, our club is entirely student-run, with the other Peace Corps volunteers and I playing only an advisory role. They’ve all developed such poise and leadership, I was sitting in the back of the classroom getting a little choked up as they...
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Ethiopia Never Fails to Suprise Me
Last Monday, one of the guards at the Health Center approached me early in the morning, speaking in rapid Afaan Oromo. I hadn’t had my buna yet (excuses, excuses), so all I got was he was inviting me to lunch. He and I often eat the same tiny cafe, and so I thought we were just going to purposely show up at the same time. I gladly agreed. I knew I was wrong when just about everyone on the...
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Guyya Harka Dhiqaana Addunyaa: World Handwashing...
Today is one of those days that I’m feeling so great about my Peace Corps service that I thought I should write about it before something happens to chase the euphoria away. Today is World Handwashing Day. Washing your hands seems like a pretty basic task, but it’s so important: with proper handwashing technique using soap, half of all diarrheal disease and a third of pneumonia cases...
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...and we're back.
It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog — sorry, loyal fans. In my second year, I’m really learning what it means to persist in projects that seem valuable: ask for help, ask again, take charge, remind, nag, cede control, express your gratitude. Repeat. Tomorrow, I’ll write about how those lessons paid off for the training I’m doing alongside health...
September 2012
3 posts
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Texting In the New Year
Happy 2005! Today was the first day of the new Ethiopian year. While I was doing my typical holiday routine (coka, dabo, doro wat, buna; rinse and repeat), my friend Leah was keeping me updated on her own progress halfway across the country. Here’s how her day went: 10:05 am: I just got buna’ed 10:15 am: Nothing like cake for breakfast. 10:36 am: I think my landlady is drunk. Awesome....
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The Same, but Different: Funeral Edition
I attended a funeral today - the first in Ethiopia that I’ve attended on purpose. I knew something was up when I went to get breakfast and saw a few of my neighbors carrying a rolled up tent and a huge (like, 2’ diameter) cooking pot. At that point, I wasn’t sure if there was to be a wedding or a funeral. In Ethiopia, just about every neighborhood has an idir, a kind of...
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It’s rainy season again, and I forgot. I forgot what it’s like to hear the rain crashing down above you and think it’s pouring as hard as it can, then to feel the atmosphere take a deep breath before it releases a fresh torrent, harder, louder. I forgot what it’s like to feel the thunder and lightning in your chest more than you hear or see them. I forgot how much sense it...
August 2012
1 post
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Wet Cold Ethiopian Summer
Like many Americans, I went to summer camp when I was a kid. I have some great memories of my time at Camp Hoover, going on hikes, singing songs, swimming in the lake, learning new crafts, and making friends from all around the area. As you might suspect, this is not a common experience for Ethiopian children. “Camping” isn’t really a thing here (why would you sleep outside when...
July 2012
2 posts
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Slumpin' It
During Pre-Service Training, Peace Corps trainees are introduced to a little graph called the Volunteer Life Cycle. It shows peaks of “adjustment” and valleys of “vulnerability” throughout a volunteer’s 27 months of service. Right now I’ve been in country for a little over a year, and so I’m in a place on that life cycle represented by a big valley: the...
May 2012
4 posts
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The Mediocre: Ups and Downs Abound
Halfway through today, this blog was going to be filed as “The Good,” since things seemed to be going pretty smoothly. The hiccups of the afternoon, along with a low-level cold I’m hosting, moved it into “mediocre.” Heregoes: I got up with my alarm at 7:30 this morning: either I slept through my neighbor’s onion chopping, or she took care of food preparation...
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The Same, but Different: Wedding Edition
Weddings in Ethiopia are as big of a deal as in the U.S. I attended my first complete wedding — that is, I helped with the food preparation and stayed until the gabi came home (more on that later) — this past weekend. While traditions vary based on religion and region, here’s how it all went down: Preparation In towns like mine, weddings are held in the home — or, rather,...
WatchTurn the volume up, then imagine this at 1- to 2-minute intervals all day.
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The Ugly: Joanna and the Terrible, Horrible, No...
Many people back home have asked me what a typical day is like here. It’s impossible to answer that question: as many have said before and will say again, there is no typical day in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. So I’m going to chronicle three different days over the next few weeks, and we’ll call them The Good, The Mediocre, and The Ugly. [[MORE]] Since my parents are on...
April 2012
7 posts
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Ni Mi'aawaa: Better Misur Wot
After a discouraging first try, I decided to give misur wot (spicy lentil stew) another shot. I think 10 months of watching women make wot just about every day has taught me a few things about the general ingredient order, amounts, and timing that are common to most stews. Serve over injera (you can buy it at Ethiopian grocery stores on, for example, U Street in DC), rice, or pasta, or just use...
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Fassikathon
A little more than a month after Kim and I first arrived at site, Ethiopians celebrated their New Year. We were both a little sad: no one really invited us to their homes. Since then, we’ve been trying to make up for lost time on holidays, and Kim put together quite the program for us yesterday for Fassika, or Ethiopian Easter. Celeste and Sile warned us about their busy Fassika last year,...
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Last week, I saw a really plump sheep walking around on a leash (not unusual) with a sign pinned to it (unusual). I was confused, but a friend explained that it was being raffled off in time for Easter (which in Ethiopia is this coming Sunday). I couldn’t stop laughing, and explained that in America, we raffle things off, too. Like restaurant gift certificates, or gift baskets. Not so much...
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Ni Mi'aawaa: Lentil Soup
Lentils are, by far, my favorite legume. They cook quickly, they taste delicious, and there are two types available in Ethiopia. I prefer to make my lentil soup with green lentils, but red lentils are a fun, sweet change now and then. It’s been hot in Mettu lately, but for some reason that doesn’t decrease my soup consumption. Mabye it’s convenience (soup can be re-boiled the...
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This weekend, my neighbor prepared doro wot (spicy chicken stew). The first step is chopping 3 kilos of onions. She had an audience: the chicken she was going to stew stood tied to a post in the yard, watching her as she did the prep work on her porch.
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It never gets old.
This conversation happens approximately 19 times a day between one of the seratenyas (helper ladies) on my compound and her ~1 year old son who loves toddling off on his own, but soon finds he misses his mommy.
Abuti: Hadha! (Mom!)
Mom: Wayye? (Yes?)
Abuti: Hadha! (Mom!)
Mom: Wayye? (Yes?)
Abuti: Hadha! (Mom!)
Mom: Wayye? (Yes?)
...repeat.
4 tags
Pack it up, Pack it in
Ethiopia is lucky enough to be getting another group of Peace Corps Trainees at the beginning of June. By now, invitations are out, and their recipients — if they’re anything like me — are a little excited, a little scared, and completely and utterly clueless about what living in Ethiopia will be like. There are many things invitees should do when they’re preparing to join...
March 2012
4 posts
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The Worst Part? He kept me up all night.
I had to go to Addis for a training a few weeks ago, and was lucky enough to travel with Chelsea, who lives in the next town south. To facilitate our traveling together, she slept over the night before our departure. As a finicky sleeper, I have trouble enough sharing a bed, but this night was unique: I heard my compound’s dog, Charlie, as well as another, unidentified canine, barking all...
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In America, we stifle our grief. Funerals are quiet affairs: there are tears, to be sure, but they are quickly wiped away. In Ethiopia, they don’t play that way. When someone dies, the whole neighborhood knows, because his or her loved ones get together and collectively wail. They walk through the streets; they howl, and scream, and weep, and it’s horrible and beautiful. They sit...
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When the power goes out...
…it is all of a sudden 2:00 in the morning. The only sound at first is dogs barking in the distance, soon joined by the soft murmur of my neighbors’ voices through our shared walls.
With darkness comes sudden clarity, as I remember what I’ve forgotten: to charge my phone and laptop, to pick up matches, to get kerosene for my stove. I’ll shut down the laptop soon, since...
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This is the dawning of the Age of Malaria... Age...
Those of us in the southwest of Ethiopia — what the Peace Corps folks refer to as the “Jimma Loop” — had a regional training this past week. We covered quite a few different topics, but one that touched me personally was a discussion on our last day about malaria. A CDC/Ethiopia doctor reviewed the science behind malaria infection and discussed ways we could work with our...
February 2012
6 posts
New! I figured out how to enable comments -...
Comment away!
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In-Service Training: Or, The Thing that Happened...
Three months into service, when we’re supposed to be done with our community needs assessments, all PCVs are supposed to attend an In-Service Training, where we present our assessments and beef up on our technical skills. Unfortunately, for a bunch of reasons that we can just round up to “because we’re in Ethiopia,” the training (originally scheduled for November), had to...
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Every single day, I walk down the street.
Random 18-yr-old boy on the street: Hi.
Me: Hi.
Him: Want me to walk with you?
Me: Not really.
Him: Why not?
Me: It's not necessary.
Him: Do you want me to cry?
Me: Don't cry. Be strong.
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It's Christmas Time Again
After a few weeks to rest, Christmas was back in full force. I celebrated Ganna - Ethiopian Christmas — in my town. If you’re a devoted reader of this blog, you know what a holiday here means: lots and lots of buna. At the last minute, I decided to invite a few friends over for buna in the morning. I got started early: popping popcorn (the traditional snack of the coffee ceremony),...
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It Looks Nothing at All Like Christmas
…and that’s because, on December 25, it wasn’t — not in Ethiopia (more on that later). Luckily, I escaped with a few friends to a little slice of America: a clinic in the town of Chiri (which I insisted on spelling “Cheery”) staffed by four Americans, including a couple that has two adorable toddlers. The compound features a main house, with a kitchen, huge...
I disappeared. (Ani bade.)
Sorry for the lameness that has overtaken me and caused me to neglect this blog. There’s so much to catch you all up on! Forthcoming: Christmas. Christmas again. Training in Addis. Weekend in Djibouti. And…the project ideas I’ve more or less settled on for my remaining 19 months here (can you believe I’ve been at site for half a year? I certainly can’t).
January 2012
1 post
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Just like Thanksgiving...sorta (Or, Oh my goodness...
Irreecha is an Oromo (the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia) pre-harvest celebration that Kim and I were lucky enough to celebrate on December 8th with people from all over the area. As usual, we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves in to — we just knew there were going to be some festivities by the river, and so we met up to head that way as soon as we each had a chance to...
December 2011
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Warning: This blog post is kinda gross, Cathy.
I’d been having trouble getting back into a routine since being back at site, but today, I got up at a reasonable hour, made some breakfast, and headed to the Health Center to discuss potential projects with Brihan, my counterpart. I told him what I had in mind (another post, forthcoming), and he gave me some advice on who to talk to. Mulu, the nurse at the health center in charge of the...
November 2011
2 posts
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Baga Nagaa Dhuftan! (Wel-come!)
After a two-day long bus journey, I disembarked at the head of my road. I put my larger bag on the ground to collect myself, and three or four men asked if they could help me carry it. I assured them that it’s very light (perhaps an exaggeration, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle) and headed toward my compound. There was a new cafe on the corner; the workers who were building the...
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There's No Place Like Home
…but “home” is becoming a growing number of localities on at least two continents. As I prepare to head back to the good ol’ U.S. of A. for a few weeks to see family and friends — and, most importantly, watch my brother and sister-out-law tie the knot — I’ve been thinking about the luxuries big and small that I’ll be enjoying when I’m home....
October 2011
9 posts
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Mud, Dung, Hay, Water, Time
I spent yesterday doing the most work I’ve done since getting to site. I also spent it playing with mud and cow dung. Let me back up. A lot of cooking in Ethiopia is done over a wood fire, the pots or the round, flat griddle used to cook injera, known as an elee, balanced on three stones. Unfortunately, open fires don’t do a very efficient job of directing the heat to the cooking, and...
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“that virgin, vital, beautiful day: today” |... →
Check out my friend Leah’s snapshot of life in another part of Ethiopia…
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This is what happens when you go with the flow.
Yesterday, I had coffee at a clinic, got a language lesson in the middle of the street, and — oh, yeah — crashed a funeral. Just an average day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer. The day started off on a less than cheery, but not terribly exceptional note: Kim and I went to the hospital to invite its director to a meeting we’re having on Friday. We sat and waited, chatting,...
