23 December 2007

I met with my supervisor for the first time since coming back to Debremarkos. Ironically, while I have been free all week, Sunday has proven to be a workday for me (in a highly religious country, nonetheless).

On my way to the office this morning, Ato Amoro intercepted me in the street, loaded me into a vehicle with two other men I had never met before, and off we went – toward what, I had no idea, not only due to language barriers but also because Ato Amoro tends to be the gentle, quiet type. His constant smile and kind manner, though, never fail in assuring me to follow trustingly. As it turns out, this morning's program involved visiting kebele (the smallest administrative level of local government) meetings to introduce me and my mission. This, in turn, involved walking with Amoro into the middle of large assemblies, interrupting meetings already in progress, being stared at curiously by innumerable pairs of curious and amused eyes, and hoping to summon at least the coherency of an Ethiopian five-year-old in introducing myself to my new community. We visited three different kebeles. At the last one, Amoro stepped away for a bit and, in doing so, unknowingly left me to run through the entire production by myself. I was ushered inside a packed wooden house, seated at the front of a gathered crowd that spilled outside the structure and stared in through the windows and doorway, and asked in halting English, "Do you now have any idea?" What I wanted to say was, Not usually, no, not at all, and especially not now. What I did instead was greet the crowd, give my name and background, pull out my notebook, and run through the Peace Corps' purpose and goals in Amharic (the one language lesson I actually wrote into my notebook – Igziabher yimesgen! [Praise God!])

After surviving my first job-related Amharic trial and while waiting for Ato Amoro to return, I found myself discussing globalization with the head of the woreda (the next administrative level of government above the kebeles) education office. The conversation began in the same way as all my dialogues with English-speaking Ethiopians, with him asking me, "How do you get Ethiopia?" I gave my usual answer about Ethiopia being a beautiful country with very hospitable people, and then I added a bit about its having a rich culture and history, having never been colonized (and only briefly occupied by the Italians during World War II). He agreed with me but pointed out that Ethiopian culture has been profoundly impacted recently by trends of globalization.

It is not difficult to see the marks of globalization upon Ethiopian culture. Just this morning, as I sat in the courtyard of Debremarkos Hospital, waiting for Amoro to take care of some HAPCO business there, I saw two Arsenal jerseys (knock-offs, of course), one New York Yankees ball cap, and a Disneyworld sweatshirt. A rerun of Kids Incorporated – an American TV show from he 1980s in which small children in all their frizzy-haired, side-ponytailed, sequin-belted, spandex-leotarded glory stand on a fog-covered stage under glittering pink and blue lights and sing popular songs of the day – aired on Ethiopian TV on the set in the waiting area. From the back page of the Amharic newspaper being read by the man sitting next to me, Wayne Rooney's sharply dressed figure smiled out from an advertisement for "International Fashion" in Addis Ababa.

I asked the education official if he thought globalization had been good or bad for Ethiopia. He smiled and said, "I think no one escapes globalization. We all have to live together."

22 December 2007

This morning, KB and I accompanied my landlady to experience our first Saturday market. The local market runs every day except Sunday, but on Saturdays countless people from all of the surrounding villages and countryside stream into town, hauling straw baskets and plastic sacks on their backs, hoping to sell whatever goods they have grown, made, or collected. Invariably, it seems, there are more hopeful sellers than potential buyers. Maneuvering through the market on a Saturday involves forcibly clearing a way through a dense sea of humanity. With years of precedent to guide them, vendors organize themselves spatially by the good they are selling. We walked through the fruit aisle and were disappointed to find the same bananas, jackfruit, and green lemons and oranges – only in greater quantity than usual. We walked down butcher shop alley along the gulley strewn with jawbones, hooves, and horns, bleached and dry from the harsh sun. As we entered berbere row, the crushed red pepper dust was so thick in the air that we began immediately and uncontrollably sneezing. We were slightly embarrassed by our farenji weakness in the face of hot Ethiopian spice, until in brief moments of recovery from our sinus distress, we noticed that the entire passageway of stalls was echoing with sneezes. We bought woven straw baskets from a vast yard of them, different forms and sizes all arrayed in the straw-blanketed earth, so many that the ground beneath was hardly visible. It all felt slightly like shopping in the world of Harry Potter, and some of the items – yellow and orange powders, purple grainy dust, mounds of oddly shaped seeds, gnarly roots – seemed no less enchanted.

21 December 2007

KB and I were sitting together in the living room, I writing, she organizing some photos on her laptop, Rosie Thomas singing sweetly into the evening from her place in KB's ITunes repertoire, when all of a sudden I put down my journal and pen, sat up in my chair, turned to KB and said, "Do you hear water going through the pipes?" KB laughed at me. After just two weeks of living in water deprivation, I am so in tune with the beautiful sound of running water – and so desperately longing to hear it – I swear I could pick it out from 50 kilometers away.

19 December 2007

I cooked my first authentic Ethiopian meal: shiro wot, a mixture of chickpea flour, water, oil, and spices. My version definitely had a farenji's touch, meaning that the flour was the main constituent instead of the oil, olive oil was substituted in place of solid palm oil, and the flavors of ginger and garlic tempered the predominance of berbere. I ate a healthy serving for lunch, then KB and I both ate it for dinner, but we were still left in the end with at least another generous helping. Having yet no means of overnight storage, I brought it to my landlady, thinking she might offer it to her two dogs. Instead, she took the pot from me and exclaimed, "You made shiro!" Now, I had been fairly nervous about bringing my concoction before a seasoned veteran of wot-cooking, and now that she had the pot in her hands, I was mortified. I became even more so when she dabbed a finger into the mixture and touched it to her tongue. After some moments of pensive lip-smacking, another finger dab, and a series of shifting and ambiguous facial expressions, she rendered her verdict: "K'onjo nouw." I laughed out loud; I didn't believe her. "Bewnet?" (Really?) "Bewnet. Bat'am k'onjo nouw." But she didn't stop at verbal affirmation. She would eat the remainder, she said. Now I was really laughing, and she along with me. I had just made my landlady dinner. The question was, was she really enjoying it, or was this all an elaborate program to protect my fragile farenji dignity? Either way, my immediate problem of food disposal was solved, so I was content. There would be time to confront self-esteem issues later.

But the shiro issue was not to be dropped so easily. About twenty minutes later, I heard the familiar, "Kristeeee…" and found my landlady standing in my kitchen, clean wot pot in hand. She wanted to know everything I had put into my shiro wot. I'd like to think she was asking for my recipe, but it is also distinctly possible that her inquiries were more along the lines of, "What on earth did I just eat?" In any case, she reaffirmed that it was "bat'am k'onjo," we laughed together a bit more, and she was out the door. But she was not done yet. I was in the bathroom when I heard KB laughingly call to me, "Christen, you're going to want to come out here." I walked out into the dining room area to see my landlady hovering over my makeshift pantry, examining each item that KB and I had bought earlier in the week. She tasted the shiro flour. She tasted the berbere. She scrutinized the liter bottle of olive oil for which I dropped 100 birr in Addis. She rattled my Tupperware container of dry lentils. She tasted the shiro flour again. She asked about everything: from where did we buy it, how much did we pay for it, in what quantity did we purchase it, in what form did it come to us? When her investigation was over, she told us that we would all go to the market together, we would buy everything we needed in its rawest (cheapest) form, and she would teach us how to prepare each individual ingredient for use.

I imagine that over the course of two years, I will be regularly willing to pay an extra seven birr (US $ 0.78) to have my chickpeas washed, dried, and ground for me. But now at the "honeymoon phase" of my Debremarkos experience, the thought of taking days to convert a bag of dry peas and a mound of hot red peppers into a pot of thick, spicy sludge (looking, quite frankly, like it's already a few steps down the digestive process, and a process taking place under some significant environmental stress, at that)…seems like good wholesome fun. Plus, I feel as if I've passed my first culinary test and have now been deemed worthy to be initiated into the next higher order of Ethiopian cooking.

18 December 2007

This morning, KB and I walked into the countryside with my landlady, who volunteered to help us get fair prices on some food items we wanted to buy. We walked along the road leading northwest out of town until asphalt gave way to dirt. As we strolled down the dry, dusty roads, leaving town behind us, we were passed by steady streams of people making their way in the opposite direction, laden down with goods they hoped to sell in the day's market. As we met them, my landlady would ask, "Inkoolal allesh?" (Do you have eggs?), hoping to intercept some eggs on their way to the market. The question was repeated over and over to each passing individual, but none of the various bags and baskets that they or their donkeys toted seemed to carry eggs. At one point, I spotted a wire basket of eggs hanging in a small wooden store's front window and asked my landlady if we might buy them there. She insisted, though, that market eggs were cheaper – 50 santeem as opposed to 75 santeem in the store, or a difference of 0.0278 US cents. After she finished explaining that we should never buy eggs from the store because they are too expensive, she called out a warm greeting to the shopkeeper. "She is my sister," she explained. Family loyalties cannot stand in the face of the need to afford food.

Eventually my landlady's inquiries yielded a success, and we bought six eggs, nestled together within a plastic bag full of grass like an African Easter basket. When I handed over three birr, conversation ensued between my landlady and our traveling egg vendor, and then I watched as my bag of eggs – and the three birr I had just paid for them – continued walking down the road. KB and I shot each other perplexed glances, and my landlady cleared up minimal confusion by telling us, "He will bring to sister's store. We carry, no.” Presumably, the sister was able to find room for the eggs next to the overpriced ones we refused to buy from her.

We continued our walk further and further into the countryside, our surroundings growing greener and more serene with each step. It was a rejuvenating change of scenery from the garishly artificial colors and structures of Debremarkos town. I didn't realize how much I loved trees, or how starved I was to see one, until I saw a whole line of them, tall, emerald, and lush, dancing in the gentle breeze. Passing vast expenses of golden-green grassland, dotted sporadically by grazing cattle and assiduous farmers at work, we arrived finally at an Ethiopian Orthodox church secluded in a stand of evergreen trees. Gaudy decorations adorned the rooftops, round flying-saucers painted in proud Ethiopian green, yellow, and red, topped with metallic crosses and fringed with dangling tin bells that clamored in the wind. An old man entered the church compound, wearing a faded plum-colored overcoat and a neon, construction-site orange baseball cap. He solemnly approached the church's intricate doors and crossed himself repeatedly while standing on the shaded concrete porch. The printed paper icons hanging on the outside of the building stared expressionlessly back at him with their disproportionately large eyes, seemingly unmoved by his piety. We sat for some time beneath the cool shade of the evergreen trees, savoring the tranquility, before starting our journey back into town under the intensity of the late morning sun.

When we stopped back at the sister's store to pick up our eggs (which we refused to by from her), we were invited in for coffee. In honor of her unusual visitors, the sister went through all the pageantry of the full Ethiopian coffee ceremony: the scattering of grasses on the floor, the burning of incense, the hand-washing of the coffee beans and their slow roasting over the charcoal burner, the crushing of the roasted beans with persistent blows from a solid metal pestle inside a cylindrical mortar, the boiling in the gourd-shaped wooden jebena, and the drinking of the requisite three cups per person. At each step of the process, a small, tiger-striped, pointy-eared housecat interposed itself in the midst of the action. Bunkering down in each stage at exactly the point of greatest activity, it stared coolly at KB and me as if to remind us that, though the show and ceremony might be on behalf of us, the foreigners, IT was ultimately the owner of the house, the proud king of his domain, the real point of significance. I think I often see the same look in the eyes of people in Debremarkos.

16 December 2007

I had begun to think it was only a myth, but now I have seen it with my own eyes: running water in Debremarkos. KB and I woke up at 6:00 this morning to shouting and commotion outside in the street. Shortly afterward, we heard insistent banging on the back door of the house. I dragged myself out of bed to answer the door and found my landlady, wrapped in a white netella against the morning chill, reporting to me excitedly, "Wuha alleh!" (There is water!). For the next 45 minutes, KB and I rushed around the house, filling up any empty container we could find: buckets, basins, barrels, pitchers, pots, and even my teakettle. Inside my bathroom was chaos. We turned on the shower faucet to fill our bathroom buckets, to find that doing so caused water to pour onto the floor from an open pipe exiting the opposite wall. We solved this quandary by positioning a laundry basin underneath the confusing new stream, but five minutes later a new cascade began from an open pipe in the wall to the right. It was like a cartoon. Thoroughly perplexed, we called in my landlady for assistance. She slid a lever on the shower faucet fixture from left to right, and the open pipes stopped running. Obviously, it was the flood-the-bathroom lever. Now that we know how to turn the bathroom flooding setting on and off, we should be much better at this whole process in the future.

15 December 2007

Early this morning, we boarded our respective contract buses – some going north to Amhara, some going south to Oromiya – and headed out to our sites. As I have already written at length about the incredible ordeal of Ethiopian transportation, there is no need to relive those experiences here and now. As an exercise in laughing at myself, though, I feel I have to recount one incident from this most recent trip.

I was sitting on the next to last row of our Addis-to-Gonder bus, the last row being filled with our bags and miscellaneous items purchased from the capital. As we began the infamous descent into the Blue Nile Gorge and left the asphalt paving for the rough and painfully long stretch of gravel, a large shopping bag of mine, sitting on the seat behind me, toppled over in the consequent jostling. I turned around, kneeling on my seat, and leaned over the seat back to try to right the overturned bag and restore its contents. As I was in the process of doing so, however, the bus rolled over a particularly punishing patch of gravel. The back of the bus bounced wildly as the wheels hurtled over the rocks, and I bounced wildly with it. I was tossed upward, the back of my head slammed into the luggage rack above me, and then my face crashed into the back of my seat upon my landing. Blood poured from my nose. My head pounded, and my eyes watered from the pain and shock of the impact. After a cursory inspection found my nose unbroken and my skill still intact, though, it was the sort of thing I could only laugh at. My fellow PCVs sprang to my assistance, shoving precious toilet paper in my direction. (It was also a blessed coincidence that the row in front of me contained the three people on our bus with clinical experience.) Some offered to take pictures to capture the moment, but I politely declined. I knew the true extent my friends' love for me when the girls, half-jokingly, began offering tampons – an extremely rare commodity in Ethiopia – to stop the torrent of blood flowing from my nostrils. In the end, there was no permanent damage (apart from blood stains on my jeans that will hopefully come out with some vigorous scrubbing), and I earned a bit of Peace Corps immortality by being written into the chronicle we had been keeping of our ride:

7:42 AM – Departure from the hotel

7:53 AM – First stop

8:05 AM – Wrong turn in Addis Ababa Saturday morning merkato traffic

8:15 AM – Second stop

8:19 AM – Sideswiped a donkey

9:40 AM – Pulled over. Driver ticketed 40 birr for neglecting to wear a seatbelt.

9:42, 10:27, 10:58, and 11:16 AM – More stops. Reasons unknown.

11:27 AM – Entry into the gorge

11:49 AM – Violent bump in the unpaved road results in Smith's bloody nose. The gorge claims another victim.

The rest of the trip passed without major incident or injury until we arrived in Debremarkos, where the driver dropped KB and I at a random point along the road toward Bahirdar. The luggage men climbed up on top of the bus and began pointing out bags one-by-one in the large pile amassed from the 16 of us, asking if they belonged to KB and me. Growing tired of this tediously inefficient system, I climbed to the roof of the bus myself and began handing things down. Quite a crowd gathered to see the little blonde American girl throwing luggage around on top of an Ethiopian bus. By the time I got back down on the ground, at least twenty young Ethiopian men were waiting to offer their assistance in carrying things to my house – and to overcharge us afterward. At that point, KB's World Learning counterpart had arrived on the scene to help us, and he began excited negotiations with the gathered pack of males. I was so fed up with the traveling process and so ready to finally be settled in my house, that I strapped on my hiking backpack, shouldered a duffel on each side, picked up some shopping bags in my free hands, and began walking. We ended up shoving our luggage with KB in a bajaj (a little three-wheeled taxi, always painted blue) and sending it home, while I pedaled after on my sweet new ride: a bright green, Chinese-imported, Addis-purchased, 18-speed Alpine bicycle (wearing, of course, my required Peace Corps issued helmet). It was quite a homecoming.

13 December 2007

We left early this morning from Welisso. My mama cried. It was probably a blessing that I was too frazzled over the ridiculous quantity of miscellaneous items I was trying to tote with me – acquired from Christmas packages, as well as my mama's attempts to provide her motherly support for the next two years – to feel sadness over leaving.

Upon arriving in Addis, we hit the ground running. We had just enough time to unload our luggage and carry it to our rooms before our scheduled meeting with the worldwide director of Peace Corps, who, due to the importance of Peace Corps' reentry to Ethiopia, would be attending our swearing-in ceremony later in the day. (And whose last name sounds exactly and tantalizingly similar to a certain kind of cheese, definitely unavailable in Ethiopia, which we have all been missing terribly.) It was a nice gathering in which we presented our training staff with certificates, spent time reminiscing by viewing a photo slideshow we compiled from our ten weeks together, and listened to some motivational pep-talks from Peace Corps administrators – which, while admittedly cheesy, are honestly reassuring here in a situation so full of uncertainty and so prone to doubts.

In the afternoon, we officially swore in as volunteers. Swear-in was a rather incredible affair. 120 invitations were sent out; 235 attendance confirmations were received. Attendees included Peace Corps administrators, our pre-service training staff, former PCVs in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Minister of Health, representatives of local non-profit agencies, and press officials, both local and international. The American Embassy was astounding. Three different fortified, mechanized gates – along with a handful of armed guards – protected the compound. We entered into an oasis of manicured lawns and pristine white buildings; we were on American soil again. Many of we trainees-becoming-volunteers wore traditional Ethiopian dresses given to us by our Welisso host families. Mine was long and white, adorned in gold stitching on the skirt and brightly colored embroidery on the bodice. As I walked across the grassy lawn of the embassy, African afternoon sun shining on my long blonde hair worn down and uncovered for the first time in Ethiopia, white flowing dress swishing around me, I was told by several friends that I looked like a seventies flower child attending a peace rally. The ceremony itself went smoothly, aside from the fact that the Peace Corps flag, which had been set up in the background of the proceedings alongside the American and Ethiopian flags, fell over three times in the evening breeze. Our country director joked that it represented the three different times Peace Corps has entered Ethiopia. We all wondered if it was a portent of things to come.

Peace Corps makes a concerted effort to reserve the title of Peace Corps VOLUNTEER for those who have sworn in, and some people were very emotional at having made the significant step from Peace Corps Trainee. I have to admit personally feeling no different after swear-in from how I felt before, but then again, I've never really been one for ceremonies. Many people likened swear-in to their college graduation ceremonies. I wouldn't know; I didn't go to mine. In any case, there were warm congratulations all around. Partly, it made me realize how much we had accomplished in making it this far. (It should be noted that out of 43 of us accepting the invitation to serve on the project, 42 swore in, which is highly unusual. The returning PCVs on this project all report swear-in rates of around 75 percent in their previous assignments.) Mostly, though, it made me realize that this journey is only just beginning.

11 December 2007

For the few days leading up to my site visit, my host mama couldn't speak to me without breaking into tears, so she would just sit and stare at me for extended periods with heart-wrenchingly despondent eyes and offer up an occasional "Igziabher yawkal" (God knows). Now, it seems she doesn't trust herself to STOP speaking. All through breakfast, she kept up a constant stream of mothering chatter about my impending departure: Here is the form I had to fill out for the Peace Corps. 'How is Christen?' Christen is a very, very, very good child. Christen is my child. There is no problem. I love her very, very, very much. 'Would you like to host another Peace Corps volunteer in the future?' I don't know. I only want Christen. You can take away the host stipend money if you want, but only let Christen stay in Welisso for her two years. Christen, you will have to leave us soon. But you will call us at the house, and we will write letters. Rebkah will give you our address. Will you have a post office box in Debremarkos? Maybe one day you will come back and visit us in Welisso. This is your house. You will come here for days when you need to rest. You can stay for a whole week, and you can rest here, and I will cook for you, and there will be no problem. And when your friends come to visit, you must bring them here, and they will meet your Ethiopian family and see that things are beautiful here with us. And you will bring your mother and father and sister and grandparents, and they will all stay here in the house, and you will have two families, an American family and an Ethiopian family. You are habesha [Ethiopian ethnicity] now. And I know that Debremarkos doesn't have much water, so you can bring your clothes here in a bag, and we will wash them. And I will make you shuro and berbere and tea cumim and dabo kolo to take with you to eat, and whenever you need anything in Debremarkos, you can call me and tell me, and I will send you whatever you need…

I eventually excused myself. I gathered my things and walked to language class. I entered the classroom (40 minutes late now), sat down, and broke down into the tears I had been fighting back throughout breakfast. My family is so incredibly good to me, giving out of their limited means and far above and beyond their Peace Corps dictated obligations. I entered their home as a stranger, and they have loved me like their own family. I cannot even begin to express how special they are to me, how much I have learned from them, and how much the unconditional and seemingly limitless love they have shown me during my ten weeks with them has impacted my life. And what absolutely breaks my heart about leaving is not so much the thought of how much I will miss them, though that certainly weighs heavily upon my mind. But I've moved around all my life, I've left more people behind than I can possible count…perhaps sadly, I have gotten used to this drill. No, what really breaks my heart about leaving is knowing what a positive thing I've shared here with this family, realizing how much they love me, and seeing all too clearly how much I am hurting them in going away. I am starting to get sick and tired of leaving people.

Lately, too, I can't shake this nagging feeling that the best thing I will accomplish in my two years here, the most meaningful and lasting change, the most untaintedly good work, has already been done here, with this family, in relating with them and sharing life with them. At this point, I just can't imagine anything else I encounter, experience, or do during my service to be as profoundly beautiful as the relationship we've built together over these ten weeks of training. On the one hand, what a testament this feeling is to the value of my time here and the good that has already come from this incredible journey. On the other hand, it is at the very least a peculiar way to be entering into two years of Peace Corps service, thinking it possible that the best has already come and gone.

5 December 2007

One of my neighbors died today, a high school aged boy, in a car accident in Addis. Mourners filled the street outside his house throughout the day and night, wailing at the tops of their voices. My mama tells me that his family has no parents, both having died years ago from illness. It is likely that this boy was the main breadwinner for the family of five children – now four.

2 December 2007

After spending a day of rest in Addis Ababa, we all returned back to Welisso from our respective assignment sites. We got off the bus and walked into the familiar compound of our training center. We entered the building and joyfully greeted our training director and the few language and culture instructors who were working inside. We collected all the mail that had accumulated for us over the course of two weeks without a mail call, and we sat down at the patio tables to commence the traditional mass opening and sharing of our new treasures. We ordered wetet be buna (coffee and milk). After the packing debris had settled, the letters laughed and cried over, and the packages plundered, I walked home down the familiar dirt road to my house. Along the way, I greeted all my neighborhood children, who, after my week-long absence, exuded even more enthusiasm than usual in yelling and running after me to shake my hand. I passed my bashful, grinning little boys next door as they stood in their doorway, the shorter one directly in front to create the visual effect of a gleeful Ethiopian totem pole. As they greeted me by name, I flashed them the broadest smile I could physically muster, trying desperately to match theirs. I opened my gate to see my beautiful little host siblings out in the yard (with new haircuts! I missed so much in just a week!). I entered the house to be embraced warmly by my mama and Rebkah, and I spent the rest of the evening sitting at the dining room table with the family, telling stories about Debremarkos, receiving their familial advice, and hearing soccer updates from Malike. It felt just like coming HOME.

29 November 2007

We visited a school today that had recently benefited from five new classrooms gifted by a German donor couple. The missionary couple who provided the funds specified that the classrooms must be used only in the instruction of blind students. There are five blind students at the school and an unknown number of various ages in the larger woreda area. At the time we saw the new classrooms, one was packed full with a class of (seeing) students, and the other four were locked and vacant. The school has no materials to use in teaching blind students – though the German couple has promised to provide these at a later date. The school used to have a teacher trained in the education of blind and visually impaired students, but she won the lottery for an American diversity visa and now resides in the U.S. The school is waiting on a new teacher to complete training in Welisso. Until then, and likely for some time afterward, the classrooms sit idle outside the greatly overcrowded main school building.

28 November 2007

(I feel I should warn readers that this post is rather depressing. It contains no fun stories and is mostly a technical and philosophical discussion of some of the many dilemmas inherent to working in international development. I debated as to whether or not to post this, but this blog would feel dishonest to me without it.)

Yesterday, KB and I met a young girl from Germany who is here in Debremarkos volunteering for the Mother Theresa Mission of Charity Sisters, an international nonprofit working with orphans and vulnerable children. Today we ran into her at the Red Cross café, and she told us that she is leaving, three weeks into her three-month commitment. She told us, “It’s terrible. The charity ‘hospital’ is not a hospital at all. There is no real doctor. Babies die in your arms. I can’t handle it.” It is a sobering moment on the brink of two years here.

It comes as no great surprise that the needs here are many, the challenges are complex, and the work is difficult. It is more than enough to send a young compassionate volunteer packing her bags. Theoretically, the difficulties and emotional strain should be offset by the satisfaction of having helped people and touched lives. This realm of international development and foreign assistance is especially demanding, though, and potentially depleting, because you rarely have full assurance of having done a good thing.

To begin with, the problems are multifaceted, involving innumerable closely intertwined issues. I have been told by my supervisor that I will be working especially with the local PLWHA group. When KB and I were introduced to this group two days ago, one man spoke up to relate to us what he considered their biggest problem: We have no money to buy the food we must have in order to take our antiretroviral drugs. It is a common challenge in administering ARVs in low-income countries. Food is needed in order to take ARVs. Money is needed in order to buy food. Without money (though the drugs themselves are free), ARVs cannot be taken. But without taking ARVs, HIV-positive people become too sick to work and earn money. The poor become sick; the sick become poor. It is a vicious cycle of illness and poverty that is not easily broken. And this doesn’t even include the political, legal, social, and environmental spheres in which this cycle exists. In the case of PLWHA, for example: Government policy may fail to make HIV/AIDS control and prevention a priority, possibly even denying its existence. Government leaders may squander, misallocate, or embezzle funds designated to address HIV/AIDS and support PLWHA. Unsound economic policy may stymie growth and limit opportunities for individual wealth accumulation. Legal structures (or lack thereof) may hinder entrepreneurship and reliable income generation. Social stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS may ostracize PLWHA and disallow them from holding stable jobs within the community. Furthermore, stigma may prevent people from coming forth for testing and treatment services altogether, making the ART-nutrition issue a moot point. Finally, a lack of natural resources, or a failure to properly take advantage of natural resources, may hinder the economic growth of a nation as a whole and limit options for income generation. And even THIS discussion fails to address how gender inequality, harmful cultural practices, and lack of economic opportunities contribute to the SPREAD of HIV/AIDS, thus adding to the number of PLWHA and perpetuating the problem. When faced with the immensity and complexity of this tangled web of issues, how do you even decide where to start? And how do you confidently address one aspect of the problem, knowing that roadblocks in other aspects may render your efforts ineffectual?

I have been asked by the PLWHA group to assist them with “income generation.” The term makes it sound as if I will wave my magical B.A. in Economics to conjure money out of thin air. The reality, though, is that most of the local business ventures I would help design would ultimately succeed in shuffling money from one group of people with greatly limited resources, to another group of people with greatly limited resources. Of course, the more accurate description of what I am expected to do is that I will wave my magical U.S. citizenship to call forth money from rich foreigners. While the concept of people who have too much giving to those who have too little sounds reasonable and good, this practice, too, is fraught with difficult questions.

The extent of foreign assistance in Debremarkos is absolutely astounding. If you inquire deeply enough into ANYTHING in this town, you will discover the hands of foreign donors. USAID stickers adorn copy machines, computers, overhead projectors, and covers of intimidating stacks of record books in local schools, NGO offices, and government administration buildings. Large trucks rattling down the Italian-funded paved road carry USAID-provided bags of wheat to market. The brand new eye center at the local hospital displays a plaque bearing the names of German Rotary members. Four new classrooms at a local school were funded by a rich German missionary couple. And this all discovered in just my first four days here – I am sure I have only scratched the surface. The remarkable extent of this foreign presence, while enabling noble results in the short run, leads me to wonder about the long run. What will this do for Ethiopia’s future? Will it provide the means by which a vibrant country and a proud people will lift themselves out of poverty, or will it only entrench a system of dependency that will prohibit the nation from ever standing on its own? Will I do well in helping to increase Debremarkos’ access to this system? And where does my very presence here fit into this system? I don’t have the answers.

I know these are not new questions, and I know I am not the only one to ask them. I suppose all of us stumble forward as best we can, but sometimes the uncertainty, for me, is enough to be crippling. Undecided as to the right course of action and knowing the potential for great harm resulting from a wrong course, I fear to take any action at all. I came here, though, which was an action in and of itself. Now I must choose what to do with it. Igziabher yat’inagn. (May God give me courage.)

26 November 2007

It is too early to make any real judgments about Debremarkos. Our experience so far has been a series of vignettes that do not yet form a coherent anthology. Here, though, are a few of those vignettes:

As we search for housing for KB along with our supervisors, we meet Tirssaw, or “tooth man” as it translates to English. The name is impossible to forget once you see him, as his front four teeth protrude nearly perpendicularly from his gray gums, with enough space between them to drive an Ethiopian minibus. In our first sighting of him, he is sitting on the side of the road having his shoes shined. He sits on a small wooden stool underneath a tent made of bright blue tarp, looking much like a king surveying the passing peasants under his rule. When he sees us, he leaps up from his throne and chases us down, talking excitedly. KB’s bilingual supervisor is conspicuously not translating the Toothman’s words for our benefit, but judging from the slimy, snaggle-toothed, leering grin in my direction with which he punctuates his speech, I am better off left in ignorance.

We are introduced to 65 members of the local PLWHA (People Living With HIV/AIDS) association, all draped in white for the occasion of their Sunday morning Orthodox worship service. They tell us that they have no money to buy the nutritious diet necessary for taking ARVs. They want us to help them generate income. I wonder what miracles they expect me to work with my shiny American economics degree and how much I will disappoint them.

I chat with KB’s supervisor about soccer while we enjoy coffee and tea at a local café. When we ask him about his normal Sunday routine, he tells us, “If there is soccer on television, I must always watch it. Sometimes I go to church.”

KB and I learn a new English word: “respection”. It is a favorite of KB’s supervisor, who has used it at least four different times in translating his introductions of us to the community – as in, “I am telling them that you are professional who need respection.” We should probably correct him, but I think we will rather start using the word ourselves, as that is sure to be more amusing.

At each introduction, my supervisor pulls out his notebook and conveys to the community and organization leaders what he has gathered from the Peace Corps’ workshop on American office culture and communication. Translated though one of KB’s World Learning counterparts, this is: “Americans like privacy…Also, don’t touch them.”

KB and I discover a great restaurant in town that serves a wide selection of both Ethiopian and farenji food. It also offers satellite TV, which, at the time of our meal there, is showing a melodramatic made-for-TV American movie based on the Lacey Petersen trial, starring Dean Cain and Roy from “The Office”. We ask for an Amharic menu, and after some time spent interpreting the Ge’ez script, we realize that the prices are half those listed in the English menu. It comes as no surprise that farenji are overcharged, but it is funny to see how formalized the practice is.

It takes about 14 minutes, extended through bouts of laughter, for me to inquire in Amharic about the bed in my room and for my landlady to communicate that I may use the frame but should buy a new mattress. I learn the Amharic word for “mattress”.

KB and I eat dinner at the newest hotel in town, on its second night of business. Someone has tethered his sheep to the fence inside the front patio area.

As I walk down the main road in the evening, a young Ethiopian man approaches me and tells me, “I saw you this morning. You walked to the blue store and bought bananas, and then you went into the Shebel Hotel.” It is my first real (and rather unnerving) encounter with the reality that my every move is being watched.

KB and I, lacking the string and hook we need, hang my mosquito net above the bed using two nails, duct tape, and dental floss.

25 November 2007

It is Sunday afternoon, and I am sitting in the living room of my new Ethiopian house in Debremarkos. KB is napping, our supervisors have gone home for the day, the stores are closed, and my landlady insists that I must not go walking on my own…so I will take this time to recount yesterday’s travels, a task that was far too daunting last night in my wearied state.

We arrived at the bus station in Addis Ababa at 5:00 in the morning, with our site supervisors and the bulk of our worldly possessions for the next two years. Even in the early morning, the bus station yard was already crawling with people. Buses traveling to destinations all over Ethiopia cleared their ways through a pulsing sea of people to line themselves up in one of four constantly shifting rows. As each bus parked, they closed in around it, with little swells closest to the vehicle. A ticket seller would emerge, shouting, “GonderGonderGonder!” or, “JimmaJimmaJimma!” or another one of seemingly infinite varieties of this chorus – and then take off RUNNING at a full clip as all of his would-be passengers shoved, grappled, and swarmed after him, too numerous by far for even three buses to hold. Each new call brought a new current swirling into existence, so that the entire station yard ebbed, flowed, and surged like an angry ocean in some terrible storm. In almost the exact center of this frenetic whirlpool, we stood, three light-skinned farenji, three blue-green eyed, straw-haired Americans, three Ch/Kristens headed up the main road toward Debremarkos and Finote Selam. We formed the one eddy in that churning sea, anchored down by our collective 240 pounds of luggage and three gigantic Peace Corps issued metal chests. Needless to say, we were quite a spectacle standing there with out site supervisors – KB and her no-nonsense director, who darted back and forth between neighboring groups trying to solicit information; Straw, usually standing alone as her timid counterpart was frequently swept away in current of nearby activity; and me with my gentle giant of a supervisor, his graying head towering nearly a foot and a half above mine.

Eventually, we heard our call: “MarkosMarkosMarkos!” At that cue, the three supervisors sprang into action, rushing in the direction of the beckoning voice. Shoving, grabbing, and all other manner of minor scuffling broke out as people fought for position in the semblance of a line that began to form. Our prizefighter, my towering giant, was sent into the fray. After an initial push to breach the perimeter, the scrambling mass swallowed him. For some time, we caught only glimpses of the silvery top of his head, but then our champion emerged victorious with six tickets. Having finally secured the right to enter the bus, we began the next ordeal of actually boarding. Our supervisors entered into heated negotiations with the luggage men over the fee for loading our mountain of unwieldy baggage. Not for the first time, I wondered if our future colleagues were beginning to thing that this whole Peace Corps volunteer thing was proving more trouble than it was worth. After a lengthy exchange – our supervisors repeatedly lifting my metal box (containing a pillow and an empty plastic bucket) to demonstrate its lightness, and the luggage men thumping KB’s (packed full) to indicate its cumbersome weight – the price was settled at 120 Ethiopian birr (about US$13). One by one, our massive bags and boxes ascended the metal ladder to the roof of the bus, perched precariously (and, I regret to say, probably rather painfully) on the neck and shoulders of the luggage men.

Once we were all seated on the bus – three Ch/Kristens to one bench seat – a new uproar arose when the passengers, having now had time to examine their tickets more closely, realized that they had each been overcharged by 15 birr. The whole crowded bus erupted into noise. Indignant passengers demanded change. The hassled ticket taker fetched some sort of managing authority figure, and arguments commenced in earnest. The engine was turned off. The power of the angry mob eventually prevailed, though, and the green-jacketted money man was forced to make his way slowly down the aisle, distributing birr to each of the bus’s 60 passengers.

The engines were restarted, and the bus finally lurched forward, leaving a cloud of rancid black exhaust in its wake. Passengers bought newspapers, tissues, and snacks through the windows from vendors running alongside the moving vehicle. We maneuvered our way through a now greatly depleted sea of waiting people, to the station gate, and out onto the main road. We were on our way.

The trip to Debremarkos was long and trying. We had laughed when the bus made its first pit stop just outside Addis, about 20 minutes into its journey. We were no longer laughing when, three hours later, bladders full and stomachs empty, we were told that the second stop would not be made until after we had passed through the Blue Nile Gorge stretching in front of us – a feat which, in and of itself, takes two to three hours by public bus. The Blue Nile Gorge is beautiful, cutting through the rugged Ethiopian terrain like a wide and verdant Grand Canyon. As we descended down into the gorge on the winding, now (thanks to the Japanese) partly paved road, we passed the circular, thatched-roof mud huts and the corn fields on the people who call the Abbay Gorge home. One home supported a satellite dish. We passed the people themselves, hauling grasses and herbs in large straw baskets on their backs, making the laborious climb uphill alongside their flocks of sheep and goats. We twisted and turned and snaked out way downward on the large public bus. The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly on the vehicle, which, windows closed against the dust billowing from the rolling tires, heated up quickly. Reaching the bottom, I had my first glimpse of the Nile, as well as the bridge that would carry me across it. There was a large construction project underway. KB’s supervisor informed us, “They are building a new bridge. This one is cracking.”

Our large public bus, with its 60 passengers and our 240 pounds of luggage, rattled its way safely across the bridge and began its ascent out of the gorge. If the way down was slow, the way up was excruciating. Once out, though, the bus made its way without incident. We finally made our long-sought stop in the town of Dejen, and an hour and a half later – six and a half hours after our departure from Addis – we were driving into Debremarkos. Tired, sweaty, and stiff, KB and I stepped off of the bus to greet our new home for the first time. Poor, exhausted Straw had yet another two hours to travel to Finote Selam.

20 November 2007

The anticipated day has come, the day that has been boxed and highlighted in my calendar since the day we arrived here in Welisso, the day of site announcements. I have been assigned to work in Debremarkos, a large town of about 120,000 people located halfway between Addis Ababa and Bahirdar on the main highway. Debremarkos used to serve as the regional capital of Amhara and is now one of the four major cities in the region. Situated around the Choke Mountains and just beyond the Blue Nile Gorge, it sits at about 2300 meters elevation and enjoys relatively temperate weather.


I have been assigned to Debremarkos along with another volunteer named KB, a physical therapist with now ten years of clinical work experience. She will be placed with an organization called World Learning that works mainly to provide support to orphans and vulnerable children. Meanwhile (in theory, at least), I will be working with the regional and zonal HAPCOs (HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Offices), as well as local NGOs, to identify gaps and coordinate services for the creation of a seamless network of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and support.

And that’s all I have for the time being: a name, a map dot, and some basic site survey information collected by Peace Corps. I will spend next week in Debremarkos, however, making initial contacts and taking care of some housekeeping tasks, and I will be able to paint a better picture after that. Until that time, I cannot really know how to feel about my assignment, and so, as is always the drill in Peace Corps, I remain flexible.

12 November 2007

Training is halfway over, and fortunately, I think I have successfully passed through what can only been described as midterm slump. It is almost amusing to see all the stereotypical stressors explained in the Peace Corps literature spring to reality in my daily life: the tedium of the training routine; the lack of control over my schedule; the regression back to a world of classrooms and curfews,and the yearning for all the freedoms of adulthood that I formerly enjoyed; the constant annoyance of children in the streets yelling,"Youyouyou!" and, "Moneymoneymoney!"; the feeling of isolation from family and friends and a former life; the frustration of language barriers; and the need to be socially and culturally "on" at all times. It all seemed to come to a head this past week for some reason– it's just that time, I suppose – but I suspect that a free weekend and a fairly relaxed week to come will do wonders.

The family continues to be wonderful, and we are growing closer everyday. I also find myself growing closer to the group of friends I have made within our training class, and as the weeks remaining in Welisso begin to dissolve, I realize how much I will miss having their company and support immediately at hand. The pre-service training process isa rather strange experience. You are taken to a foreign country with forty-some obviously somewhat like-minded people, placed together in a small community where you share common experiences and undergo common trials, given time to grow accustomed to relying on each other for support and encouragement, and then distributed individually all across the country for the next two years. It is a bizarre thing we are doing, you can't help but think sometimes.

Meanwhile, though, life in Welisso has settled into a comfortable routine. Days are spent in trying to survive hours upon hours inside the classroom. Nights are spent with the family. Saturday afternoons are spent hanging out with my little brother, playing or watching soccer. Sundays are spent with my girls. Free time distributed sporadically throughout the week is filled with errands and small housekeeping tasks, reading, writing, visiting the Internet café to check in on things at home, watching movies in groups of volunteers, and exploring Welisso. I have even started back up with my morning distance runs, with some of the other volunteers. As we run through the streets in the early morning, the few people out and about cheer us on, either in Amharic or in broken English phrases. My favorites so far have been, "Yes. Proud. Continue," and one morning, "No worry!You be happy-fat!" Many aspects of life in Welisso that initially seemed outlandish have become simply mundane: walking to class alongside cattle, donkeys, and goats; eating hot pepper first thing in the morning in my breakfast; relieving myself in basically a sheltered hole in the back yard… All have become part of our acculturation.

This second half of training will surely pass more quickly than the first. In the coming weeks, we will finally learn the answers to the questions that have dominated our thoughts: Where will I be for the next two years? What will I be doing? What will be my living conditions? Will I be near the people to whom I've grown the closest? Things are beginning to get more real for us. Some of our infinite list of "what ifs" are on the verge of becoming "what nows". I am excited to move on to the next step of this adventure, but it will also be difficult to leave this place and these people with which I have grown so very comfortable.

23 October 2007

We have been training for the past two weeks in Welisso, a mid-sized town outside of Addis which will serve as our base for ten weeks of community-based pre-service training. We began the first day with a crash course in "survival Amharic," including such useful phrases as,"Where is the bathroom?" and, "I am full" (i.e. please stop your incessant efforts to force more food upon me). Then came the hilariously awkward and dramatic process of matching each of the 42 of us with our Ethiopian host families. The families sat crowded together in a covered pavilion as we were shuffled en masse in front of them. Each family representative, one by one, would come to the front of the pavilion, just at the top of the stairs leading down to the flock of waiting "farenji" (foreigners), and present to our training director the piece of paper that served as his or her PeaceCorps Volunteer claim ticket. The director would pause dramatically for effect before reading out the printed name, and the lucky volunteer would emerge from the crowd to thunderous applause. Newly adopted PCV and claimant Welissoan would meet at the foot of the stairs, embrace and exchange a seemingly ever-increasing number of cheek-kisses, and walk arm-in-arm down the aisle created by the parting of the crowd, eager to begin a beautiful new life together. It was a bizarre combination of game show, dog show, wedding, and adopt-a-thon, and the overall effect was incredibly amusing.

My host family consists of a grandmother, her 25-year-old daughter, her sister's 12-year-old son, and another sister's four-year-old daughter. They have been absolutely incredible to me; I honestly could not have asked for better. They took me in as a stranger and have loved me with an intensity that is demonstrated every single day in word and action.

The grandmother, my host mama, is a Protestant missionary. I am not sure what this means practically – except that, as she says, she was too old to and physically worn down to continue her former job making injera for a local hotel, and, as I surmise, she is almost entirely supported by money sent back from family living in the U.S. Her story becomes more complex and intriguing with every new discovery my improving Amharic allows me to make. She married in her twenties and had one child, my host sister Rebkah. Shortly afterward, her husband became Muslim, and she converted along with him. During that time, though, she gave birth to two sons who both died in infancy, and she became convinced that God was punishing her for a sort of unfaithfulness to Him. She divorced her husband and rejoined the Christian church, leaving herself largely without financial means. Her parents died very early in her life, and her two brothers died later in a motor vehicle accident, leaving only her and her sisters –one of whom is living in the States, and one of whom left Ethiopia to find work as a housemaid in "an Arab country" (the specific name of which my mama has forgotten). At one point in her missionary career, my mama spent time living with a host family in Germany, which I think helps her in understanding and being sensitive to my needs. She thanks God for everything, and she believes that He sent me to her as an answer to her prayers. I suppose this should make me feel special, but most of the time I just feel unworthy to be so considered. She loves me, though, undoubtedly.

Rebkah has also been incredible to me, constantly giving and serving. I love making her laugh – which is not difficult as a goofy and rather uninhibited American who speaks Amharic on the level of a two-year-old (and a rather slow one at that). My little host sister, Hannah, is one of the most beautiful little girls I have ever seen, and she adores me in that unquestioning way that only children are capable of. She has also become quite a ham, largely, I have observed, as a result of competing for attention with her comical brother. Malik has become my favorite in many ways. (Maybe it's some sort of "brother I never had" syndrome?) In addition to being outgoing and full of hysterical, off-the-wall antics, he is generous, kind, and caring. He is a bright student and a diligent son. His father died when he was younger, and it is obvious that he tries his hardest to fill that role of man of the house. My heart really goes out to him because as a twelve-year-old boy living in a household of females, I think he is absolutely desperate for someone to play with, for the chance to just be a little boy. I think I would do just about anything to make him happy. One evening, walking home from the local tourist lodge where we had spent the day watching English Premier League soccer and drinking Mirindas, he said to me, "Today – very,very, very good." I think I could have ended my Peace Corps service right then and been satisfied with having done good in the world.

9 October 2007

I woke up early this morning to hear the call to prayer. I stood out on the balcony of my eighth-story hotel room and heard the chanted prayers rise up from the city to join the other choruses of Addis Ababa: the roar of jet engines, the rumbling of trucks, and the barking of dogs. When the prayers finished, even the dogs observed a brief moment of respectful silence. The engines, however, silence themselves for no one.

Our arrival in Ethiopia two days ago was a blur of jet lag, sleep deprivation, and bombardment with unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells. Even four hours after landing – after passing through customs, checking into our hotel, and dragging eighty pounds of luggage up to my room – the reality of my finally being in Ethiopia still hadn't really made its impact. Until, that is, my roommate and I stepped out onto our balcony for the first time. We stood eight stories above the city sprawl in the mild October night, staring out at a scene so reminiscent of those nighttime cities we had observed at home and yet so distinctly and undeniably different. It was the same city through which we had driven on out way from the airport to the hotel; yet, only standing on that balcony, breathing in the cool albeit exhaust-laden air, looking out over a thousand city lights dotting a seemingly endless black canvas – only then did I truly realize the step I had taken and the place to which it had brought me. I felt a twinge of pity, just at that moment, for my friends working and studying back at home – then laughed at the irony that they will undoubtedly and often feel a very different sort of pity for me for the next two years.

Forty-two of us have come as volunteers to Ethiopia, and, if the motivational speakers can be believed, we have each been hand-selected to be a part of the Peace Corps group that will reenter the country after a ten-year hiatus. There are eight men and thirty-four women, including two married couples. There are seven Masters International volunteers (performing their Peace Corps service as the culmination to earning their masters degrees) and several others who already hold a graduate degree. There are two physical therapists, two nurses, one registered dietician, one dental hygienist, two former military servicewomen, and one aspiring Secret Service officer. There are six volunteers who are here serving their second Peace Corps tour in Africa. There are four Kristin/Kristen/Christens, two Christinas, and one Chris. We came from all across the States and draw from a diversity of backgrounds. Most are in the range of ages from twenty-four to thirty-five; three are older. Then, I am one of a handful of twenty-two-year-olds fresh out of undergraduate studies, shiny new degrees in hand, trying just to START a career, assigned to this program most likely to fill a quota for naïve, youthful optimism required by all Peace Corps projects.

Our introduction to Peace Corps training has thus far been intense. We are driven by a full-day schedule. We are exhausted from traveling, disoriented by a seven-hour time shift, and left depleted after frustrating nights of sleeplessness. We are suffering from the stresses and anxieties of cultural acclimation, compounded the neurological side effects of malaria prophylaxis. We are half a world away from family, friends, and all other usual sources of comfort.But we hold out hope that when we finally crest the hill of this initial adjustment, what we will see stretching out before us will have been well worth the arduous climb.

As for me, the greatest strain on my emotions and test of my mental toughness has come in dwelling on the immensity of TWO YEARS. Standing here at the beginning of it all with the end nowhere in sight, the slightest hardship brings insidious doubts creeping into my mind. I find it is better to fix my mind upon one day at a time, striving to gain all that is offered by the day just before me. I know that I will waste this opportunity if I live it like a countdown, rather than a brilliant daily adventure with boundless potential.

6 October 2007

I am on the plane. I am sitting in row 27 of the plane that will bear me to Ethiopia, where I will spend the next 27 months of my life. I am surrounded by people – by a beautiful, foreign people speaking a beautiful and, for now, inscrutable language. Exotic music pours insistently from the plane's overhead speakers, harrying an already chaotic scene on a plane rapidly filling to capacity. An old Ethiopian woman with decorative tattoos on her chin and neck takes the seat to my left. We exchange a wordless greeting as I help her to sit down. I can say nothing. I know only a handful of meager phrases in her language. I search desperately for words that are simply not there. I can summon only an awkward smile.

The week that has brought me to this point has been one filled with emotion: the anxiety of entering into the unknown, the thrill of anticipated adventures, and the sadness of leaving behind the familiar and beloved. I cannot describe the excitement I feel for these next two years in Ethiopia. It is a breathless anticipation. I have high expectations for what will come out of this, for how I will come out of this. Being in a new country and a new culture is revealing. It strips away family, friends, church, community, popular society, and all other familiar influences formerly relied upon for identity and ideology, until all that is left is YOU. It points you toward who you really are and forces you to confront difficult questions about what you believe and what you value. The prospect, quite honestly, can be terrifying. But the opportunity shines forth like never before to,"First, know thyself," and so to live more truly, fully, and beautifully. Many people, commenting on my decision to join Peace Corps, have been compelled to use the word "sacrifice". I cannot deny now – and I am sure I will be reminded continually over the course of two years far from home – how much I have left behind in coming to Ethiopia. Far from laying these things upon the altar of sacrifice, however, I hold them close to me as I go, with every expectation that what I will experience and learn in Ethiopia will deepen my understanding of those things and thus enhance the life of which they are a part.

I have spent the past hour of the flight playing language games with the Ethiopian businessman sitting across the aisle from me. Mostly, these games consist of the gentleman trying to teach me Amharic phrases, me trying to decipher their meaning and mimic their pronunciation, and the old tattooed woman laughing at my clumsy attempts. I let the old woman borrow my headphones to watch the in-flight movie, and she laughs in surprise at the noise being channeled into her ears. She and I watch the rest of Mr. Bean's Holiday together, though I spend more time watching her giggle and shriek "Oy!" at Mr. Bean's antics. I think everything will be okay.

Finally online in Ethiopia!

By the time this post makes it out to the information superhighway, I will have been in Ethiopia for almost two months. I've obviously got some catching up to do, so I've included below a few general, fairly representative journal entries from my time thus far.