Thanks & Giving

Thanks

This past September during my Peace Corps Mid-Service Conference, my fellow volunteers and I had a chance to read a letter that we had each written to ourselves one year prior at the end of our Pre-Service Training as we were about to head out to our permanent sites.  One line that I had written was to remind myself to “give thanks to everyone and everything that has kept you here.”  Over this past Thanksgiving weekend, this little reminder continued to run through my head as I reflected on the things that I am thankful for.

I am eternally grateful for my amazing network of family and friends back home.  I feel so blessed to have parents and a sister and brother who love me and support me through every crazy moment of life here in Ethiopia.  I appreciate that they care enough to ask questions and take an interest in my life and work.  And I am super-thankful to have two parents who are just crazy enough to want to come to Ethiopia! (See you in 20 days, Mom & Dad!!) I am also grateful for aunts and uncles and cousins and friends who email me, write letters, send cards and care packages.  I cannot overstate just how much that all means to me.  Peace Corps service is challenging, and life in Ethiopia can be difficult.  It is easy to feel alone and depressed, so something as little as getting a card in the mail from a loved one or a simple Skype call can really brighten my day.  So I’d like to give a huge thank you to everyone who has ever written me a letter, sent a card, answered my phone call, emailed me, or sent a care package.  Your thoughtfulness has made a difference in my life, and you have made my time in Ethiopia just a little bit easier!

Celebrating Thanksgiving with friends.

It is a rare thing to walk into a room full of 70 strangers and instantly feel a connection to those people, but that’s what happened to me in June 2012.  Those 70 strangers were my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, and the connection I felt was that clearly we all had a couple screws loose because we had all agreed to move to Ethiopia for the next 27 months.  70 of us started this journey, and 60 of us are still here a year and a half later.  I feel so grateful for the amazing friends that I have made among my fellow volunteers.  I know that I can call them up crying when I’ve had a bad day, or excited when a project has been successful, or frustrated when something hasn’t gone according to plan.  I know that they will instantly understand me because they have had the same experiences.  We can cry together, laugh together, share horror stories and gossip, and give advice, all without judgment.  I know that these friends will be friends for life, and I can’t wait to hang out in America when we’ve all showered and our clothes aren’t dirty and falling apart at the seams.

Grade 8 English Club students

I am thankful for the students at my school who attend my clubs and programs.  I really love these kids.  It has been an incredible experience to watch them learn, and to be a part of their lives.  I don’t know how I would manage in Ethiopia if my job was only to work with adults.  Having the kids at my school be excited to see me and interested to learn feels validating, and makes me believe that maybe I am having some small impact here, at least for these kids.  I am also thankful for the teachers at my school who care about me.  There are a handful of teachers who I know support my work in the school and who I can go to for help when I need it. 

One teacher at my school said to me a few weeks ago, “I think that you are very brave.”  “No,” I told him “I am not brave. Most of the time I am afraid, but I am alone and I have to take care of myself.”  Thinking about it now, I realize that in a way, yes, I am alone here, and I have been afraid plenty of times, and I’ve had to figure out a lot of things on my own.  But the truth is I’m not really alone and there are kind and generous people here who have helped me and taken care of me.  I know that God will never give me more than I can handle, and I guess I’ve learned that I can handle a lot.  It’s easy to lose sight of the good things I’ve experienced here, the things that keep me here.  This Thanksgiving I am truly thankful to everyone and everything that has kept me here.

Giving

My mini-library, stocked with donated books

‘Tis the season for giving.  This is just a little reminder for anyone who would like to contribute to my book project.  I am collecting donated books to improve the library at my school.  If enough books are donated, I am also hoping to start a library at a new school here in Ambo.  English fluency is extremely important for students in Ethiopia because starting in grade 9 through university level, all subjects are taught in English.  That means that students cannot learn science or math or any other subject unless they have a solid foundation in English.  Very few homes in Ethiopia contain any books at all.  Students in primary school have very few resources to improve their English skills.  I believe that reading is essential for these kids.  I let the students in my English clubs borrow one book at a time, and there is usually a line for books.  They absolutely love reading these books!

If you would like to contribute to the improvement of 2 school libraries here in Ambo, you can purchase used books from the website betterworldbooks.com   You can also reference my blog post from April 3, 2013 for instructions.  I’m looking for any books beginning with children’s picture books through simple chapter books, up to about a 4^th or 5^th grade reading level would be best.  Many thanks to those who have already sent books, and it’s not too late for anyone who would like to participate in this worthwhile project.  Books from this particular website are inexpensive, in good condition, and ship for free.  So far, all the books have arrived quickly and without any problems.  Feel free to email me if you have any questions.  Thanks in advance!

Ambo Girls

The Ambo Girls who helped with this blog- Tigist, Meskele, Lidiya, Dame, Mahlet and Megnot

Today, October 11, has been designated by the United Nations as "International Day of the Girl Child".  "The day promotes girls' human rights, highlights gender inequalities that remain between girls and boys and addresses the various forms of discrimination and abuse suffered by girls around the globe."

In my opinion, girls are the unsung heroes of Ethiopian society.  The girls here are absolutely amazing.  They are strong, sweet, and beyond their years in many ways.  From a very young age, girls are responsible for the upkeep of households and caring for younger children, usually while trying to get an education and dreaming of bright futures beyond their current circumstances.  Unfortunately gender inequality is a major issue facing Ethiopian girls.  Females, in general, are often treated as second class citizens.  I have witnessed and personally experienced this gender inequality countless times over my past 16 months in Ethiopia.  On the bright side, Ethiopia is aware of these issues, and there are many people working within society to bring awareness and equality for females.

One very common practice here is that of the seretanya.  A seretanya is a female servant.  Typically this servant is a young girl who leaves her very poor family to live with and work for another family, usually this other family is some sort of relative.  She is responsible for all the household duties including cooking meals, preparing coffee and tea, cleaning, hand-washing clothes, and caring for children.  In exchange for her work, she is given room and board and usually gets to go to school.  I have seen seretanyas as young as 8 or 9 years old.  Sometimes her mother has passed away and her father cannot care for her, so she goes to live with relatives.  Sometimes she may be a complete orphan or sometimes she may have both parents and siblings, but her family is just too poor to care for all of the children.  Seretanyas are generally not treated as one of the family.  They may not be mistreated exactly, but they are definitely considered to be "the help".  Often these girls struggle in school because with their household responsibilities, they do not have enough time for homework and studying.  As you can imagine, not doing well in school will greatly limit their futures. 

Despite all of the hardships facing girls in Ethiopia, they are incredibly resilient.  In society, girls are encouraged to be shy, to defer to men, and they often lack confidence.  As a volunteer, the work that I have done with girls has been among the most rewarding.  In encouraging girls to give opinions and by providing a safe environment for them to speak their minds, I have seen their confidence grow.  I am always amazed by the potential they show when they are just given a chance.  I hope the future holds great things for the girls of this country.

In honor of International Day of the Girl, my site mates and I worked together on an interview project to bring you the stories of 3 girls from our community.  If you want to read more, check out their blog at jenandjoshinethiopia.blogspot.com  I hope that these stories will help you to better understand what life is like here in Ethiopia, especially for girls.

Meskele

My name is Meskele, and I am an 11 year old girl.  I was born in a rural town called Wenchi which is about 45 minutes south of Ambo.  My family is very poor.  My parents are farmers.  I have one older sister, one younger sister, and two younger brothers.  Several months ago, I left my family in Wenchi and moved to Ambo to live with my cousin, his wife, and their baby daughter.  Now I work for them and help take care of the baby.  My parents told me that life was better in Ambo because the town is bigger and more things are available, and I would learn in a better school.  I miss my family, but it is not too difficult because I can talk with them on the phone sometimes and go visit them on holidays.

My day begins at 6:00am.  After I wake up, I wash up and start cooking breakfast for myself and my cousin’s family.  My school schedule switches each month.  For one month, I go to school in the morning from 8:00am-12:15pm.  The next month, I go from 12:30pm-4:45pm.  When my classes are in the morning, after eating breakfast and cleaning up, I go to school.  This year I am in 4^th grade.  My favorite subjects are language, math, and science.  After school I eat a snack and then do my chores around the house, like cleaning the house, washing dishes, fetching milk and water, cooking, preparing coffee and tea, and sometimes washing clothes.  My cousin works all day and his wife attends University, so I take care of their 3-year old daughter.  I feed her, change her, and play with her.  When I have free time, I like to study.  I try to spend about 2 hours a day studying and doing homework, but it can be difficult to find time for school work because of my responsibilities at home.

I dream of becoming a doctor someday.  My cousin’s family will support me to go to University.  After becoming a doctor, I hope to get married and have children of my own.   I want to complete school and become a good woman.  I want to help my family.  

 Megnot

My name is Megnot, and I am 17 years old. I just started 10^th grade at the public high school. I either go to school in the morning or the afternoon, depending on the day. I started school when I was 6 years old, and I was able to attend kindergarten, which not all children in Ethiopia are able to do. My favorite subject is civics because it is easy for me! 

My parents died when I was very young, but I don’t remember how old I was or how they died. After they died, my brother and I went to live with my grandparents. My grandfather is a truck driver who transports materials in the town. My brother is 23 years old; he went through 4^th grade but stopped because it was too difficult for him. Now he works at the local bread factory. My brother doesn’t like to do housework, so I wash all his clothes and cook for the whole family by myself. 

Every summer, I take a bus to visit my aunt in a rural town a few hours away, and I stay for 2 months. She has a husband and children, but she still supports me and buys me clothes and school supplies; sometimes my grandfather also buys these things for me. 

Every day, I wake up at 6am. First, I wash my face, then I clean the house, make the beds, and sometimes I make breakfast for the family. When I go to school in the morning, I don’t have to make breakfast – I just go to school. When I return home from school, I eat a snack, then clean the house, wash the dishes, fetch the water, wash the family’s clothes by hand, and do my homework. Sometimes my school offers tutoring sessions for girls, and I attend those in the late afternoon.  I try to study for 3 or 4 hours per day, which means I usually go to bed at 10 or 11pm.

If I have free time, I like watching television - especially Indian films! I also love American hip hop music, like Rihanna, Chris Brown, and Jennifer Lopez. I watch them on satellite television or listen to their music on my mobile phone. My dream is to become a singer/dancer, but since my family is poor, the dream is impossible.

I don’t like the traditional gender roles in Ethiopia, and I will help to change them by giving advice to others, like my brother. In our house, I am the only one who cooks and cleans, and my brother helps with very little. I will change his opinion about these gender roles and convince him to help with the housework. 

Since I cannot be a singer/dancer, my goal is to be a doctor.  My aunt will support me if I am accepted into university. I would like to go to Addis Ababa University, and then I would like to study in America. After that, I would like to return to Ethiopia. I will get to America and achieve my dreams by studying hard and prioritizing my education. Then I may get a scholarship to study in the U.S.  I also want to help girls who have to leave their families or who have no family, like me. This is important to me because I want to see them fulfill their dreams.

 Mahlet

My name is Mahlet and I am 16 years old. I live with my father, my mother, my older brother, and my three younger sisters. My father is a secretary at the power company, and my mother is a cleaner at the university. My older brother works in construction. Together, they provide the family’s income. My mother completed the 8^th grade, and she was about 20 years old when she had her first child. My father is a very hard worker and he advises us to be kind to others and to help people like beggars or stray (orphaned) children. My life is not very different from my siblings’ lives, since my mother and father decided that there would be gender equality in our house. Everyone helps with the household chores. 

I just started 10^th grade at the public high school. I started school when I was 5 years old, and my family sent me to a private Adventist kindergarten for 2 years before I started at the public elementary school. My parents prioritize my education, so they make time for me to study. Over the summer break, I studied ahead using the 10^th grade textbooks. On average, I spend about 5-6 hours a day studying.  My favorite subjects are biology and English. Biology is great because I can learn more about nature and about myself. English is very important because it is an international language. 

Every day, I wake up at 7am. Sometimes I cook breakfast for my family, then I get ready for school. After school, I do household chores, like cleaning and caring for my younger sisters. I usually go to bed around 9 or 10 pm. When I have free time, I like to watch films and study. I love studying and I often help my younger sisters with their homework, since I want them to be clever students.  

In Ethiopia, women usually work in the house, and they can’t do anything outside of the house, like plowing the field or expressing their ideas in a community meeting. In our society, women have no place. They don’t count as a male. Men do work outside of the house, such as farming the land or being a merchant. I would like to see these roles change in the future, and I think they can change if all girls have an awareness of the issue and convince themselves that they are important. They can even teach their families about their value. The government can also give women more importance in society.  

My dream is to be a scientist and to discover the cure for HIV. It is important to me because HIV is a dangerous, deadly disease that is killing productive citizens in Ethiopia. If I discover a cure, then every person can be free of HIV.

3 Weeks, No Naps

Camp GLOW

I can honestly say that the past three weeks have been some of the busiest and most stressful of my Peace Corps experience.  They have also been among the best and most unique.  It all started the day after I arrived back in Ambo from my annual leave to America.  Nothing like hitting the ground running after a nice, leisurely vacation!  My site mates and I were planning a girls leadership camp for 9^th grade girls in Ambo.  We had originally planned the camp for the end of August, but due to my site mates’ award-winning blog, they won a trip back to the U.S. which conflicted with our camp schedule.   So, we bumped up camp by three weeks, which meant instead of relaxing and re-adjusting to life back in Ethiopia, I spent my first few days back running around town gathering supplies and making arrangements for camp.

Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) is an event run by Peace Corps Volunteers for girls all around the world.  In Ethiopia, PCVs gather by region to hold week-long camps, where each volunteer brings girls from their local community.  My site mates and I interviewed about 100 female 9^th graders from Ambo High School, and chose just 8 girls to attend Camp GLOW in a town called Nekempte.  My site mates, along with an amazing local counterpart from the high school, took the girls to camp.  Since this camp in Nekempte was planned during my already scheduled trip home, I decided to hold a local camp just for girls in Ambo.  Luckily my site mates were completely game for holding our own camp.  Our plan was to have the 8 girls who attended camp in Nekempte to act as junior counselors, and to invite 17 additional girls from the high school, for a total of 25 girls.  

Junior counselor, Meskerem (in orange) leading hand washing demo

I spent the weeks leading up to my trip to the U.S. writing a grant to pay for our camp.  Camp GLOW is funded by PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief), so that means that half of the camp programming needs to relate to HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.  Throughout the week, the girls learned about leadership, personal and sexual health, gender equality, confidence building, volunteerism, nutrition, and disabilities awareness.  The camp was fun and interactive, and it was so wonderful to see the girls learning and growing over the 5 days.  The 8 junior counselors all took active leadership roles during this camp by helping to lead sessions.  So many people worked hard to make this camp possible.  We had 2 other PCVs come to Ambo to help out, plus several local volunteers, which was really great.  My site mates and I plan to have a weekly GLOW Club at the high school once school starts to reach out to even more local girls. 

Volunteerism- making a craft to be donated to local health center

As busy and sometimes hectic as running this camp was, it was definitely the best thing I have done yet in Ambo.  For the first time in a year, I really felt like something I did made a positive impact on someone here.  In Ethiopia, it is considered a positive attribute for girls to be shy and reserved.  Females rarely hold leadership positions.  These girls who attended camp have such potential to break the social norms for women in this society.  They are creative and thoughtful young women who have dreams for their futures, and I hope they will push through whatever barriers may block their way to attaining those dreams.  Maybe, just maybe, something they learned during Camp GLOW will help them along the way.

Field Day- cabbage bowling

Finding direction

The day after Camp GLOW ended, it was time to start planning for a visit from 25 members of U.S. Congress.  My site mates and I were told about the possibility of this visit several months ago before anything was definite.  The plan was that the Congress members would be visiting Ethiopia for a few days.  Part of that visit would have a Peace Corps focus, and they would be visiting a Peace Corps site.  Since Ambo is close to Addis Ababa, and since my site mates and I are awesome (obviously) the powers that be chose to visit Ambo for a few hours.  My site mates and I were instructed to prepare a 40 minute presentation about our work.  The Congress members and guests would spend 40 minutes at my school and 40 minutes at my site mates’ workplace- the local health center.  Then we would go back to Addis with them, along with 9 other PCVs, for dinner.

Before school ended for summer break, I had gotten phone numbers for several of my students.  My counterpart and I arranged for them to come to school last Monday to start preparing for our VIPs who were coming on Friday.  I ended up with about 25 students, and they came every day for a couple hours to practice our program.  13 students recited a Shel Silverstein poem entitled “One Inch Tall”.  They also illustrated the poem, and each held up their drawing while they recited their line.  Then, 3 students read pieces that they had written.  One student read his essay, “Kings of Ethiopia, another read his poem, “Taste Ethiopian Dishes”, and the third student read her short story “The Eagle’s Mother”.  Then, the Camp GLOW girls led a game they learned during camp called Lions & Elephants which teaches about HIV/AIDS.  Finally the GLOW girls handed out friendship bracelets that they had made for our guests.  Everything went really great!   I was so proud of all the kids! They did such a fantastic job, and really wowed the crowd!

Meeting and interacting with the members of Congress and their spouses, children, and other guests was such an unforgettable experience.  They seemed genuinely interested in our work here as volunteers, and asked interesting and thought provoking questions.  The experience was a bit surreal, sitting on a big, comfy bus with a bunch of Americans isn’t how I usually travel to Addis.  My typical travel experience is uncomfortable, sometimes painful, and I’m usually just praying nobody pukes near me.  Having an American fire questions at me so quickly that I can barely think straight, then interrupt me as I tried to answer is also something I don’t regularly experience.  Conversations are much slower here.  This Congressional visit was a once in a lifetime event, and I was so honored to be a part of it.

GLOW girls leading Congress in a game

I am so grateful for everything that has happed over the past 3 weeks.  Each event has exceeded my expectations.  Now it’s time to catch back up on my naps before the next thing comes along

!