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.