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…