100 Days in Ethiopia!

I have been living in Ethiopia for 100 days now.  Although 100 days is just a modest dent in the 2+ years I will spend here, it still feels like an achievement that should be marked by a parade down main street, a fireworks display, or at the very least-a more practical commemoration- this blog entry.  So, what have my last 100 days been like?  I can say without a doubt that they have been the most challenging 100 days of my life.  I have never questioned myself, my abilities, my motivation, or my goals as frequently as I have in the past 100 days.  I have cried myself to sleep some nights.  I have woken up in the morning excited about the day to come.  I have been frustrated, annoyed, and confused by the obstacles of adjusting to life in a developing country.  I have been in awe of the intricacies of a culture so rich in history and tradition.  I have been asked for money and been argued with when I said that I didn’t have any.  I have seen the generosity of people who have less than I do.  I have had rocks thrown at me.  I have been welcomed into the homes and into the lives of strangers.  I have been proud of my accomplishments.  I have been inexplicably humbled by just how much I do not know.  

Living here in Ethiopia has been so much more than an adjustment.  It has been a complete overhaul of anything that could be considered “normal” life in America.  I feel pushed to my limits just about every day.  Completing even the simplest tasks such as buying bread or going to the bank feel like enormous triumphs.  Every day I experience something different, learn something new, and depending on my mood, these things all feel exciting and satisfying or overwhelming and terrifying. 

New Year's Eve bonfire

As some of you may know, Ethiopia celebrated the beginning of a new year this week.  I won’t bore you with the details of the Ethiopian calendar (you can Google that on your own time!), but it basically boils down to a few key points.  Ethiopia uses the Coptic calendar, which my sources say is also used in Egypt.  The Coptic calendar is approximately 7 years and 8 months behind the Western calendar.  So on what, in America, has become as an infamous day of remembrance, September 11, Ethiopia celebrated the start of a new year filled with hope, promise, and potential.  The Ethiopian calendar consists of 13 months- 12 months with 30 days each, and the 13^th month with 4-5 days.  Local time also follows the Middle Eastern model of beginning the day at sunrise.  So today, September 13, 2012 at noon (Western time and date) will be the 3^rd day of the first month 2005 at 6am Ethiopian time.  Does that make sense?  Probably not.  It is confusing.  I typically look at my clock, and think about time in 3 ways- what time is now in ferengi (foreign) time?  What time is it in Ethiopian time? And what time is it at home?  There are a lot of math calculations, which I usually do incorrectly.

New Year's meal- the "before" picture

I spent the New Year holiday with my landlord and his family.  My landlord has been extremely helpful to me, helping me out around town since I’ve been here in Ambo.  His family is also very nice, and unless they’re really good at faking it, they always seem happy to see me.  On New Year’s Eve, I knocked on my landlord’s door around dinner time hoping that they would feed me, and also hoping to score an invite to whatever celebrations would be had the following day.  Not only did I eat dinner with them, I also took part in the traditional bonfire and coffee ceremony in the yard.  On New Year’s Day, I joined them for lunch where we ate doro wat (a spicy chicken dish), sheep meat (which 2 days prior had been peacefully grazing in the front yard), and homemade cheese with injera (the sour pancake-like bread used to eat with instead of utensils).  They also served homemade beer called talla (which is completely foul), popcorn (very yummy- like kettle corn), and it wouldn’t be a party without another coffee ceremony!

With the start of 2005, I’ve been thinking about where I was in my life back in American 2005.  I was graduating from college, leaving friends, moving back home, and beginning a career.  It was a very difficult year of transitions.   I was sad to leave my college friends, bummed to have to move back in with my parents (sorry, Mom & Dad!), and I felt so overwhelmed and in over my head at my new job.  Eventually though things got to be really great.  I made new friends, finally moved out to my own apartment, and got the hang of that full-time job thing.  I think it’s pretty fitting that it’s 2005 in Ethiopia, another year of transitions.  Things are tough right now.  I need to make new friends again, and I’m definitely feeling a bit clueless about my job.  The past has taught me that being open to learn, making mistakes, practice, and persistence leads to confidence, and I cannot wait for the day that I’ll be able to say I feel confident in Ethiopia.  Good thing I have plenty of time to get there.  Maybe in the next 100 days…

It's a lot of work, and I haven't even started working yet!

When it works, this is the tap I get water from.

“Ya know, that kinda sounds like a lot of work.”  I have find myself saying or at least thinking this phrase quite often over my last 2 weeks at my new home in Ambo.  I have had no real, official work to do just yet, as the school year has not yet started, but every day just being is a lot of work.  Doing all of the daily tasks that are so simple in the U.S. and that require little if any brainpower or physical exertion are downright exhausting here!  Let’s take for example one of the simplest tasks of all humans (not to mention animals) - going to the bathroom.  Back in my comfortable apartment in the U.S., I could walk barefoot into my bathroom at any time day or night.  I knew that I would be able to sit on the clean toilet and wash my hands with hot water and pretty-smelling soap.  Going to the bathroom was something I barely ever gave much thought to.  Here in Ethiopia, going to the bathroom is a topic that takes up a great deal of brain space and the cause of a certain amount of stress.  First of all, when the urge strikes, I generally try to hold off on actually going to the bathroom for as long as is physically possible.  Why do I do this?  I don’t quite know.  It is only putting off the inevitable, but I guess I figure that if I can hold it for as long as possible, maybe I will have to go less frequently.   Then of course, I have to put on shoes, bring my toilet paper with me, go outside and walk to the end of the compound to the little mud room with a  hole in the ground, greeting my neighbors along the way.  Once in the latrine, shint bet (in Amharic), mana fincaani (in Afan Oromo), whatever you want to call it, my main goal it to successfully go to the bathroom without falling over or peeing on my feet, both of which I have done, regularly.  The trick is to get low to the ground, spread your feet while keeping your knees together, and pee slowly.  This is generally easier said than done!  Then I do, what for some reason feels like a walk of shame, back to my house so that I can wash my hands with cold water and dry them on a probably less than clean, slightly smelly towel.  So now that you know the intimate details of my bathroom habits, a topic I would not normally broadcast to the world, let’s move on to why my towel is less than clean and slightly smelly.

Toilet- good thing this isn't a scratch and sniff!

Another thing that is just a lot of work here in Ethiopia is doing laundry.  Washing clothes by hand is a tedious, painful, and time consuming process, which is why I hope to hire someone to perform this task for me- hopefully soon.  I think back in the U.S. I had a sweater or two that’s labels read “Hand wash only”, and if I’m being honest those sweaters probably got hand washed about once a year, no matter the frequency of which they were worn.  Well here everything is hand wash only, and given that I am walking on mud and dirt roads, clothes get dirty pretty quickly.  While living with my host family, I had 2 lovely host sisters who “helped” me wash my clothes.  By helped me, really they let me wash about two t-shirts before taking over and finishing the process for me.  I feel that to some extent, hand washing my own clothes is part of the Peace Corps experience and some sort of rite of passage.  That being said, I will probably do it once before paying someone else to literally do my dirty work.

A third thing that is really a lot of work here is cooking.  Now, I would consider myself to be a fairly good cook, and one who actually enjoys cooking.  I did, after all, graduate from culinary school and spend several years of my life cooking in restaurants- standing for hours on end, working like a manic through the busy rush, sweating from every pore, and (most of the time) loving it.  I even enjoyed cooking at home, for friends or preparing food for a party.  Here in Ethiopia, I can’t stand the idea of cooking.  It just sounds torturous to me!  First of all, there’s no grocery store or one stop shopping.  There’s a market and a bunch of small shops- which you can’t go into.  You just stand at the window, look inside behind the counter, and ask the shop keeper for whatever it is your looking for.  Normally I love grocery shopping (or any kind of shopping, really).  I love going to Stop & Shop, and don’t even get me started on Whole Foods- I could spend an hour in their produce section alone!  I go up and down every aisle, just perusing.  Here it’s just totally different.  No time to just take your time, if you’re too slow, the next customer will come up to the window and all but push you aside to get the goods they came for.  There’s absolutely no idea of a line here or any sort of orderly process.  It’s every woman for herself, and you’d better get your elbows ready!!  As far as the actual cooking process goes, I’m trying to convince myself that I just hate cooking now because my small, lopsided, 2 burner electric stove currently resides on the floor.  I’m hoping that once I get my furniture in another few weeks, and can maybe make a bit of a kitchen area in my house, that maybe it won’t be so bad.  Here’s hoping…

My kitchen sink, bathroom sink, bathtub, washing machine, and dishwasher.

The final thing I’m going to write about that’s just a lot of work here is bathing- the good ol’ bucket bath.  Because this is another tedious and time-consuming process, I usually break mine down into two stages- hair and body.  Typically I don’t do them both on the same day because quite frankly it’s a pain in the ass.  Plus, with water being in short supply, it can be difficult to know when enough water will be available.  Although, it is surprising how little water is actually needed to get “clean”.  I say “clean” because I don’t really ever feel fully clean.  I suppose maybe I should just say cleaner.  To wash my hair, I fill a tall bucket with cold water, kneel on the floor, dunk my head into the bucket as much as I can, and use a small pitcher to get my hair all wet.  Then I shift over to a wide, shallow bucket to shampoo, condition, and rinse.  Then I wrap my hair up in my previously mentioned smelly towel.  This process probably takes about 15 minutes, and can be quite uncomfortable from kneeling and bending like that.  As for washing my body, this I have found, after splashing water all over the place, needs to be done in small sections.  For example, usually I start at the top- shoulders, armpits, arms, back, and chest, then move down to belly, bum, and lady parts, then upper legs, lower legs, and finally feet.  This is all done while squatting low inside the wide, shallow bucket, trying to maneuver my body to keep as much water inside the bucket as possible, and using a pitcher to wet and rinse off the soap.  I bathe inside my house, so again the key here is to get as low as possible in the bucket as to not get everything around me soaked.  Now that I am on my own, I can heat up my own water, without feeling like a diva, which is a very pleasant change from cold bucket baths.

Basically all things water-related are a lot of work- having a limited supply of water, boiling and filtering drinking water, washing anything.  Access to clean, safe water seems like a basic human right, but is unfortunately a major issue all over the world.  It is most definitely taken for granted in the U.S. and in other developed countries.  I know it was something I certainly didn’t appreciate enough.  So now, here when something sounds like a lot of work, and I just don’t really feel like doing it, I simply don’t.  Sure, maybe I should care more that my hair is unwashed, that the bottom of my jeans are muddy, but really it’s not a big deal.  It will all get taken care of, eventually…