June is karan

Karan is the Amharic word for crazy, and I can't think of anything better to use to describe this month.

The first weekend was my local Camp GLOW. It's a PC worldwide activity that stands for Girls Leading Our World and is a program that focuses on teaching life skills.  For Huruta, I really specialize it and use it as a university prep camp. Last year I invited 20 girls, but this year it got expanded to 35 campers and included boys and girls. So GLOW stood for Guiding the Leaders of Our World.

It was a hectic three days (that unexpectedly turned into four with a student program that took hours to get started) that included human knots, bus races down dirt roads, a field trip, and lots of nervous giggling. But the last is to be expected when you introduce 12th graders to condoms and pull out penile models.

I worked with a local counterpart, but also had other help with individual sessions. A PCV from another town to teach safe sex to the boys and a female health office to assist me. Recent grads who work for the government to explain their time in university.  We taught them how to set goals, resist peer pressure, resolve group conflict, how to stay healthy, and did a lot of leadership and communication exercises. Originally we were going to visit a university to give the students an idea what to expect when they start in the Fall, but plans had to change and instead we visited a farm in Assella that focuses on sustainable farming. If I wasn't leaving so soon, I'd try to make one of the solar ovens they have.

It was great fun, and then this past weekend I went up to Bekoji for a TOT (training of trainers) for a massive, week long camp that I'm going to do with several other volunteers.  Schedule planning, rule making, checking out the facility.  This camp will also be June, starting the 28th, but with a younger target than my own. 8th graders, and all girls.

I'm looking forward to it, I loved doing the big camp last year. Camps in general are great, I feel like I'm teaching skills that are needed by everyone and for everything, not just something specific like tests or preparing Ethiopians for the rare encounters they'd have with English speakers.

And then, back to Huruta on July 4th and then leaving it 20 days later!  

Daenerys would be an awful Peace Corps Volunteer

PCVs have lots of free time and as such we consume a lot of media.  A country wide favorite? A Song of Ice and Fire (or Game of Thrones if you discovered the show before the books).  I read all the books early on in my service, and now that season four is out am slowly devouring them.

But I have to say, Daenerys would be an awful Peace Corps Volunteer.

Seriously, marching into a city and forcing it to abide with your personal views is just not how it goes. No wonder she has problems in Meereen, even with an army at her back.

Things here work slowly and many times invisibly. Especially when you're not just hoping to teach kids how to read, but change a cultural outlook.  And even if you're looking to teach technical skills, it still has to be done right in accordance with the culture here.

For example, a full day training involves feeding people here three times. Not just lunch. And if it's more than one day, you have to have a closing ceremony and invite all these people who had very little to do with the program just because they're important.

You get lots of headaches here. Not just because planning things is a hassle but because it's hard to see if what you do has any impact. Ethiopians never say when they don't understand something. So you do your post assessments and learn that no one learned from you.

Or they learned something trivial, like 'torch' is UK lingo for 'flashlight'.

Peace Corps tells us to look at the small things we do to keep us sane.  The kid who smiles when you give him a book and settles down next to you to read it aloud. The girl who enjoys your English club so much she brings a friend.

Throw a stone in a pond and watch the ripples grow.

But it always seems to escape notice that ripples are temporary. They grow and spread out, but eventually disappear. I know my milklady's son, who I've known from womb to walking, will forget me.  I know the girls in my English club who slowly started speaking out more and gaining confidence, will revert back when surrounded by the Ethiopian culture that oppresses them. The girls on my soccer team might remember how to do a give-and-go, and I'm pretty sure that my teachers will remember my name only.

And that's all kinda depressing.

I'm leaving soon, 50 some days. Is all I'm leaving behind memories of my face and name, a two year span of memory that says 'a foreigner worked here for a while' ? Have I actually taught people lessons and skills that they will still have in one year? Five?

I want to say yes.  That kids now have a better grasp of English, that they now know a bit more about other cultures, that they have better self-esteem if they've attended any of my GLOW camps.  And all that's probably, most likely true, so there's that.

But Ethiopia isn't just where I work. It's where I live, and I can't help but want to make life better for everyone here.  To install ideas of gender equality, to show people how to analyze an issue to see where is the problem and how can it be fixed, to foster self-improvement.  I want Ethiopia as a whole to be better.  Or maybe just Huruta. My school. My compound family.

I'm not Daenerys, marching into a city and declaring all the slaves are free.  I can't change the education system so that those in the teacher colleges aren't those who failed 10th grade. I can't make every child born get a birth certificate, so the 'must be 18 to be married' law can be enforced. I can't force parents to have their sons help their sisters with chores instead letting them play in the street.

It doesn't work that way.

I wish it did.

No, all I can do is live my life here. Teach small, easily digestible skills, and live in a way that merges my culture with the Ethiopian one and hope some of my progressive thoughts and actions serve as a model for those around me. That yes women can go to a cafe alone. That yes they can say no to sexual advances. That they can give orders to men. That reading is a good thing. That one should always be doing something at work, not just skipping a lesson to stand in line for sugar.  That problems shouldn't just be complained about, but solved.

Maybe it works ( I hope so) or maybe it doesn't (as I suspect).

(Or maybe the end of my service had turned me maudlin.)

Still, I'm glad I came and served. 

Toothless

I am now the proud co-owner of Toothless.

No, not that one. This one.

I have finally, finally, gotten my hands on a kitten. The last time there was a batch, I knew three families with kittens but they were all claimed by other people. And so when a cat had kittens I made it very apparently to the daughter that I wanted one before they even opened their eyes.

Getting Toothless home was an interesting trial. There are no cat carriers here. So I wrapped her in a piece of an old curtain. Gotta protect myself from all four sets of claws! Beti insisted on carrying her as a sorta goodbye from her house to the school and Toothless was rather reluctant to leave her for her classes. She wasn't so happy with me when I took her. I got several stares as Toothless climbed up my chest to my shoulder and then when I tried to bring her back to my chest found myself holding her around the middle over my shoulder with her claws not detaching from my shirt.

Poor kitty. It was a good twenty minute walk through strange, cold territory and the rain did not help at all.

I had a moment of panic when I stepped into the compound. Originally I had been scheduled to take a calico cat from Beti's family, but in the last week she's disappeared. So I was given a black one and Dani freaked when she saw Toothless. She wanted nothing to do with a black cat, saying she didn't like them.

People here can be very set in their ways and while I don't want to say superstitious, do believe in absurd things.

I was very worried Dani would tell me to give Toothless back.

So I took Toothless into my pair of rooms and made some lunch, eggs to share, and eventually Dani came in to see more of Toothless's body then a head sticking out from the curtain wrap.

As I'm pre-writing this, Toothless is sleeping on the top of Dani's couch, so I think they'll get along well despite first impressions. I'm glad. I'll be away for a while to start the process of leaving (med appointments and trainings on what needs to be done before I hop on the plane) and it will be good for Dani to have some company.

I can't help but liken Toothless's process of getting used to the compound to my similar one of getting used to Huruta. There's the oh-yes-the-traveling-is-over-let's-explore phase. Followed by the pitiful mewlings that come with the I'm-so-far-away-from-everyone-and-can't-talk-to-them-and-can't-stop-crying phase. And then you turn all lethargic as you hit the I'm-depressed-and-have-no-one-to-talk-to-and-don't-want-to-visit-this-new-world phase. I spent a weekend laying on a couch or my bed with a book, not talking to Dani and Tadeck at all. Toothless just sleeps everywhere. Yes, she's a cat, but she was always more active at her house when I was over.

Still, she'll get over it. I did.

It's kinda funny how the process works in reverse too. The first three months are the hard because family and friends are always on your mind. The last three months are hard too because again you're thinking of your family and friends back home (though with anticipation this time, but you still can't call to bounce giddy beams off each other) and the ones you've adopted here (and it's a million times harder than saying goodbye to your mom at the airport cuz I knew I'd see her in 27 months but when will I ever see Dani and everyone else here again?).

I can't wait to go home, yet at the same time don't want to think about it because there's still much to do here. I have camps I'm planning, a few more English club lessons, and a trip to Harrar. I don't want to think of America, cuz then I wouldn't really be here and I have to be for the next three months. It's my last chance to experience it all, to commit things to memory and try to describe perfectly the smell of rain as it fills my house or to record the birds outside my window. And yet I have to think of America cuz I gotta find a house for grad school before I actually leave this country.

Nothing, apparently, is easy.

Unless you're Toothless because then people just bring food and stoke your back all day. Ah, the life.

X,Y,Z as promised!

X - Xeric 

Yes, I had to look in the dictionary for today. I'm sure many others did too.

Xeric means a dry environment, and Ethiopia definitely has some of those. The northern parts are reminiscent of the American Southwest, complete with rock formations, dry air, limited rain, and lots of Christmas tourists. There was a volunteer there who went six months without water at her site.

Which is why when asked what type of site I wanted during my training, I totally said I want one near water. Huruta might be surrounded by rivers (only one of which doesn't dry up) and not be very far from a series of lakes (Ziway being the closest and man is the fish there tasty), but it does also butt up against the Great Rift Valley. 9 km to the northwest, the town Dera sits in the valley. As does the city Adama/Nazerat (depending on the language).

It's usually crazy hot when I visit Adama, but there's also ice cream, fans, and a hotel with a pool. Not to mention American hamburgers, supermarkets, and wifi in hotel rooms. Not a bad place.

Y- You 

In the States, shouting 'you' at someone usually gets ignored. It's rude, and is pointless if you want to get someone's attention. Names are much better.

Not here. You, or rather anta/anci for male and female is a common form of address. And if there needs to be more a more specific address it can be amended to anta (name) or anci ferengi. People like to shout the last one to me a lot, meaning you foreigner. Again, not very polite in English but in Amharic it's the norm.

It took me forever to teach the local children I only respond to hi, hello, are you fine?, and good morning/afternoon. And my name of course. Correctly pronounced, cuz that's a sure sign I actually know the person and they didn't just pick it up.

Z- Zenab

Zenab means rain, and we're just getting into the rainy season here. There's technically two, a light one that hits in April/May and then we get roughly two to three weeks of dryness until the big rainy season hits and it lasts pretty much through to September. I'm talking lots of rain, with dirt roads becoming muddy rivers and hours of it every day.

In Eteya, where I did my training, whole intersections would be flooded into ponds large enough where if frozen kids could ice skate. Aka bigger than my entire compound.

Huruta's a good place though, its on top of a hill surrounded by three rivers so all the water goes there instead of staying around to creating boot sucking mud, impassible crossroads, and mosquito breeding farms. Two of the rivers, including the waterfall, dry up around Christmas so this is when they start rushing again. Which means locals taking river baths and stretching sheets out to try on rocks.

The rainy season is the coldest season of the year and so a lot of locals refer to it as winter to me in English. Of course, Ethiopia is in the northern hemisphere so technically it's summer, but Ethiopia is a strange, unique country who just does things it's own way.


I'm not complaining.