First Three Months At Site

JANUARY PREFACE: I managed to salvage this much from the wreckage of my hard drive of my original "Three Month" entry, which was drafted in October, when Jackie was visiting.  For a more concise version of my first four months at site, please see  this entry here.  I am posting this for a more expanded view of August and September.  I had written October as well, but lost that when I lost my computer.

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So I have learned a lot about myself in these first three months.  Namely, that while I had absolutely no problem updating the world on every mundane detail of my teenage life, for some reason I seem incapable of updating a blog about moderately interesting things on a regular basis.  But I felt in a big update mood today, so as I write this I am also uploading a couple hundred photos to Facebook, taking advantage of my free wireless.  We'll see how many actually get posted.

I am going to reflect on my first three months here month by month:

August

I arrived in Hossana on August 17th, where I road down with several PCVs in my group, most notably Jackie, who is my nearest site neighbor (and bringing me pumpkin bread!  But we'll get to that when I get to October).  My goal was to take a week to relax and get some things in my house together before jumping in with both feet the following Monday and going to the college every day, if only so I could be seen every day by the folks at the college.  My counterpart, Elfineh, advised me against this, because summer school was still going on.  So he told me to wait until the next school year started up, and I took his advice.  I spent the rest of the month ordering and obtaining furniture for my room.  All the furniture I have now, I got in my first few weeks.  And "all" the furniture includes a bed, complete with mattress, and a cabinet.

The first impression I had of my house was one of surprise and relief.  On the way down to Hossana from Addis, we dropped off several PCVs along the way, and I got to see their living quarters.  I'd also seen living quarters for PCVs when I visited Kemise, and the compound where I lived in Bekoji is also what a PCV can expect.  In fact, there's a PCV from my group currently living on my compound, with my host family as his landlord family.  Yeah, I'm kinda jealous, because I love them so much, but it's also nice to be here.  Also why it's nice to be here?  My house is beautiful.  Most PCVs have one room, maybe two if they are lucky, unless they are married.  They'll probably have a shared shintebet and a showerbet that's basically a concrete room to splash around in.  I have three rooms, plus a private porch with a beautiful vegetable garden, and a private shintebet.  I also have a showerbet with an actual shower in it, hooked up to the pipes.  Of course, upon arrival, there was no water in the pipes at all, but hey, it was rainy season, and I was used to bucket bathing after living in Bekoji for two and a half months.  I got by just fine.

There was one minor problem.  There was a beehive on my front porch.  Filled with honest-to-God bees.  After typing about this story for a while, I've decided it warrants its own blog post.  So I'll tell you the tale of the bees and what became of them (and me) in a follow-up to be posted very soon (I promise!)

September

In early September, I had my site mate Deanna help me hang my mosquito net over my bed.  In reality, she did most of the hanging, and I did most of the delegating.  When I went to sleep that night and tried to close the curtains over my windows/door, I realized a problem.  Deanna and I had placed the nail holding my net up right in the path of the curtain, so I couldn't close it all the way.  Never one to do anything by myself (even when I am perfectly capable) I had my landlord fix it with a hammer the next day by moving it to the center where the curtains met.  And now, I'm protected from mosquitoes, and I can close my curtains.  Happy day!

September 11th is Ethiopia's equivalent of January 1st.  So I celebrated the New Year at my site mate, Christina's compound.  Christina wasn't actually there, but Deanna and I spent time with her landlord family.  Dorowat is the traditional meal of choice on Ethiopian New Year, so I ate a lot of that.  It's basically chicken in a red sauce with berbere that you eat (like everything else) with injera.  The next day, I went over to Deanna's house with my new egg boiler and made deviled eggs.  It was my first taste of legitimate Americana in Ethiopia and it was delicious. She also made this peanut sauce that we had over rice - also delicious.  The next day, Elfineh invited me over and I had more dorowat.  He said he didn't invite me for the new year because he thought I was in Addis.  I don't know why he was under that impression, but I didn't ask.  We talked a lot about all sorts of things, particularly current events which, at the time, revolved around the attack on the American embassy in Libya and the protests and riots across Muslim countries.  I've noticed Ethiopians like to talk international politics and news with ferenge, and they keep asking me when we'll know if Obama is president again.

Life moved on for the most part (excluding the bee situation, which you'll hear about later) until September 27th, which is the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian celebration of Meskel, particularly big where I am in the Southern Nations.  Meskel is the celebration of the discovery of the True Cross by Queen Eleni.  Legend has it that she was told how to find the cross in a dream, and that the smoke from a great fire would tell her.  So they built this massive bonfire with frankincense and wood and stuff, and the smoke blew in the direction of where the cross was buried, and supposedly touched down right on top of it.  Queen Eleni ordered her people to dig and discovered this holy artifact.  To commemorate this moment, every year Ethiopians have massive bonfires and dance around them and eat a lot of food.  Good times had by all.

Unless by "all" you mean Carlin, in which case, no, Meskel night was not a great celebration for me.  I mean, I had an awesome time and all watching the ceremony and got some great photos that you can find on my Facebook.  I'd like to share photos here, but they'll have to be edited in later.  Interwebz is misbehaving.  Anyway, the ceremony itself was fantastic, but I must not have drank a lot of water that day, or maybe my blood sugar was low, or maybe the temperature changes from hot day to cool evening to hot fire to cool night were just too much for my body to handle.  I tried to revive myself in a cafe with a soda and water (to cover all my bases), but drinking these things just made me feel worse.  Inevitably, I told Deanna I was going home.  She was going to walk with me, so I stood up, turned around, and collapsed in the middle of the cafe.  Apparently, I fell right on some Habesha man's lap and freaked him out before hitting the floor.  I woke up a few seconds later, completely confused.  I sat down and recovered while Deanna called her then-boyfriend to take me home in his car.  After I got home, I felt much better, but that's the first time I've actually fainted in my life.  I have almost fainted before, been on the verge of it and everything, but never actually done it.  It was exciting times indeed, that Meskel.

October

[Missing...]

Hossana - The First Five Months

So I guess I am awful at blogging.  Thankfully, most of you follow me on Facebook and notice my small triumphs as status updates.

This blog entry was initially titled "The First Three Months At Site" back when I was drafting it in November.  And then, my computer did a face plant on the concrete and I lost the (at the time, unsaved) word document with the very long update, which detailed, month by month from August through October, my exploits.  Here, you will find the short version of that in bullet points, plus two extra months (December and January).  December was so eventful, it's possible it will warrant its own post.

Highlights From August

• For the first few weeks, I slept in my sleeping bag on a mattress on the floor.  This month involved adjusting to life in town and figuring things out at my house.
• I ordered a bed frame for my mattress and a cabinet to store some stuff, mostly food.  To this day, this is all the furniture I have in my house, excluding some plastic chairs.
• I wandered aimlessly, wondering what to do.
• I battled spiders and other creepy crawlies in my mattress bed which brings me to my last and most important point about August -
• The bees.  My house, beautiful and big as it is, had one tiny flaw.  Or rather, hundreds of tiny flaws.  Bees.  There was a domesticated beehive perched on my front porch that my landlord was using to make honey.  This was all well and good, and I didn't think it would be a problem, until for some reason the bees found their way into my house every time the light was on at night.  My temporary solution?  Don't turn on my lights at night.
• On August 26th, my landlord came over to check on the bees, shining a flashlight directly in the hive.  Because he is good-natured and he wanted me to feel included, he asked me to look at all the honey he was going to get.  I obliged, stepping out on my porch, leaving my door ajar.  This was a bad idea.  Because he had awoken the bees at night, they were all up and buzzing - and swarming to the light in my house, which I had turned on to see where I was going before I went outside.  This is the second time this has happened, but it's significant because this time, I tried to rid them myself.  Before, my landlord helped.  This was a bad idea.  A bee got caught in my hair.  I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off batting at it.  This was also a bad idea.  So I got stung in the scalp, and my landlord, a nurse, spent a good ten minutes digging out the stinger for me.  This was the day I put my foot down and told him to move the bees.

Welcome to Hossana!


Highlights from September

• September in Ethiopia is kind of like December in the United States and Europe.  There are two big cultural celebrations, one of which is the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one.
• September 11th, the Ethiopian New Year, saw me at my site mate, Christina's house with her landlord's family eating dorowot.  Wonderful, but uneventful.
• I finally got the furniture I ordered.  My bed and cabinet are set up.  A few weeks later, my site mate, Deanna, helped me hang my mosquito net.  Goodbye, creepy crawlies in my bed!  (For the most part)
• September 27th marked Meskel, the Orthodox Christian celebration of the discovery of the True Cross by Queen Elena.  Legend has it, she burned incense and followed the smoke to its location.  So the Orthodox Christians always have a large bonfire with a cross in the center to commemorate this miracle.  I had fun, watching the celebration where the market generally was.  Although, all in all, it wasn't a good day for me.  I was feeling dizzy, either from low blood sugar or dehydration or both, but when I tried to hydrate with water and a soda, it didn't go so well.  Deanna was taking me home in her then boyfriend's car.  I stood up, turned around and passed out, right in the lap of another diner, who was horrified!  It was my first time fainting ever, so it should be commemorated.
• Meskel was also the day I met the new VSO volunteer at the college in our town, Victoria.  What a crazy first impression I must have made! 

Here is a photo from Meskel. Note the preparation for the giant bonfire later. The choir is in the background, and this holy man seems to be leading the service.


Highlights from October

• The eighth group of Peace Corps Volunteers since the program reopened in 2007 arrived in the first week of October.  G8, as they are known, are a combination group of health and environment volunteers and went on their site demystification that week.  You remember my trip to Kemise?  Well, a handful of them came to Hossana, so I got to meet them.  That was strange.  G7 wasn't the newbies anymore.  It was sort of like passing the torch.  I expect it will feel similar when the next education group comes in June.
• I asked when school started.  Technically, most of the schools start after the New Year, but no one really goes until after Meskel.  Even so, this was when the college begins to begin to think of starting.  Elfineh, my counterpart, said that they needed to do things first, like recruit freshmen.  School didn't really start until the end of October.
• I had my installation meeting in October.  Basically, it's a meeting where you invite everyone in town with whom you want to work to introduce yourself and your purpose, with the help of a Program Assistant, which was Zebib.  No one came to my installation at first, but Zebib called everyone and made them come in the afternoon (it was suppose to happen in the morning).  She was also shocked that I was living with bees.  She put on her puppy dog eyes and told my landlord that our Safety and Security officer was all on her case about these bees (he wasn't) and that they were blaming her for placing me here (they weren't) and couldn't he help her out by moving them, because if he didn't, she would be forced to move ME (that one may or may not have been true...)  Whatever her amusing tactics, they certainly worked, and my landlord finally moved my bees the next night.  She's better than I am at putting her foot down, I guess.
• Moving the hive was all well and good... if the bees had gotten the memo.  They didn't.  On the first day it was gone, they buzzed around my porch in a frenzy.  I thought they were going to charge my house and murder me for stealing their hive.  But then they began to mellow out a bit, and they darting and buzzing seemed less angry and more sad and confused.  Where is our home? it seemed to say.  We are lost.  I felt kind of bad.  Until I got worried they were just building a new one on my porch (see picture below).  But eventually, even those bees died or went away.  The hive, which wasn't moved all that far, just to the other side of the house (my landlord's porch instead of mine) wasn't as active for a while, having left their workers behind, but I think they've birthed a new generation by now and are doing fine.
• Jackie, the closest G7 volunteer in Durame, came up to celebrate Halloween with me.  She was a delight, and so were the home-baked treats she brought!  We spent the weekend sharing ghost stories under the night sky, eating candy from care packages, munching on her pumpkin bread, and watching the Walking Dead.  It was a fantastic time.

The homeless bees, the insanity from the loss of their hive driving them to the delusion that it still exists around this pole and no one can see them or hurt them, despite how exposed they really are.


Highlights from November

• The day after Halloween, I'm informed I'm teaching three classes, and I was supposed to have started a week ago.  Oh, Ethiopia.
• November was also the month that marked my laptop's debilitating accident.  It had a fight with the ground and the ground one.  I left it in Simon's capable hands, as I had to go off to IST.  Simon is a VSO at the college who specializes in technology.  He told me my hard drive was shot, but luckily, he had a spare he was willing to sell me and install for free.  Basically, he patched up my poor Stanley (the laptop's name) as best he could, all at no cost to me (except for the hard drive.)  That kind of labor would have cost me an arm and a leg in the States, and I thanked him profusely.  Unfortunately, Stanley was never the same after that.  He was running Windows XP now, for one, so I had flashbacks of 2006 when I logged on.  Also, sometimes, weird things would happen.  Stanley had survived the fall, but he was permanently damaged and there was nothing I could do.
• Onto happier times!  November was also IST - In Service Training.  I got to travel to Ambo to see all my wonderful G7 friends.  We went to dinner, we had trainings, we played Resistance, we hung out.  Good times had by all, and definitely the morale booster I sorely needed after my poor laptop's accident. 
• One activity we did was hike down to a crater lake called Lake Wenchi.  That was a beautiful, beautiful hike, and I thoroughly enjoyed both the journey and the company.  And normally, I am NOT a hiker!
• I spent Thanksgiving in Addis Ababa with some of the closest members of my Peace Corps family.  We dined like kings at a buffet at the Hilton and it was delicious.
• After IST, I went on a tour of the Colleges of Teacher Education with other G7 volunteers in CTEs.  We started at Hawassa.  On the way, our car got a flat tire.  We tried to replace it, only to realize that one of our spares was also flat, and the second had a nail in it, and it would be flat soon.  We waited on the side of the road as our driver hitchhiked to the next town to get help.  Gete (bless her), who along with Zebib was chaperoning this little outing, said to us that it was no big deal, that he would be back in ten minutes, tops, and we'd be on the road.  When Ashley pointed out that this was a little more than a ten minute problem, she looked genuinely surprised and said, "Really?"  I learned yesterday that Gete unfortunately passed away.  She was a great program manager.  She was also the first person who tried to teach me Amharic.  Godspeed, Gete, and God bless.
• Hawassa is beautiful.  We met up with G5 retiree volunteer Priscilla, who made us tacos, the sweet dear!  She was very hospitable to us, and we had a great time.  I also went on a boat ride and saw hippos and ate fish.  Delightful.  The CTE there was awesome, too.  Very on the ball.  I understand why their ELIC (English Language Improvement Center) is the best in the country.
• From Hawassa, we went to Hossana and I got to play hostess and show people my town.  I took them up to the college and was heartened to know that my CTE is farther along than a lot of their CTEs.  I was proud, even though I had nothing to do with it.
• From Hossana, we went to Jima, by way of Wolkite.  Jima is a very interesting town, to say the least.  Fellow PCVs Ashley and Chandler describe it as "The land where the zombie apocalypse happened, and people just kept living their lives."  We saw the Jima CTE, which was on the "struggling" end of the spectrum.  We were supposed to go down and see the Bonga CTE, but it rained the night before, and it was a dirt road.  We opted instead to stay in Jima and not sink in the mud.

Here's a beautiful view of Lake Hawassa from the shore. I took this on our second day in Hawassa on the CTE tour.

December

I won't say much of December now.  I'll save that for a later update.  Let's just say, I was only in Hossana for two weeks out of the month, and this is called "Hossana - the First Five Months".  I was really busy trying to get my class in order.  We did all right.

January

I suppose that brings us up to present day!  Life goes on in Ethiopia.  January 7th was their Christmas, which they call Genna.  I spent it recovering from a bus ride from Addis.  Why was I in Addis?  That's a story for another time.

I'll try and be better with my blog updates.  I'm hoping the fact that this has pictures will help.  Here is some more, because one per month just doesn't do it justice!

This little girl is the sweet daughter of my furniture maker. For the life of me, I can't remember her name (this photo was taken at the end of October), but I taught her "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes."


Below, you will see a beautiful shot of a valley near Lake Wenchi. Notice the little wooden aqueduct bringing water to the structure.


My good friend, Jenny and me in front of the beautiful vista tat is the crater lake, Wenchi.


Adorable local kids who live in the village by Lake Wenchi.

A weird-looking stork in front of Lake Hawassa!


The deadliest animals in Africa, not ten feet away from our boat in Hawassa.


Locals frying and selling freshly caught tilapia near Lake Hawassa.