I had a long and productive day at the college on Wednesday,
working through lunch and staying for our ELIC Clubs meeting where students
learned about available clubs and signed up for the ones they wanted to
take. I spent most of my time
pre-meeting developing a “unit plan” or curriculum for my culture club so I
could give students a more detailed outline of what they would be learning
about.
For the past two weeks, students have been coming to the
ELIC (English Language Improvement Center) to sign up for English clubs. We offer six: drama, debate, reading,
creative writing, film and (as of this year, thanks to yours truly) world
cultures.
I’ve taken to abbreviating the “World Cultures Club” to
simply “Culture Club,” a club of my own design that uses the self-to-world
approach to social studies learning by exploring first local and then
international cultures. Treating it as
more of an optional class than a club, I’ve developed a curriculum in the form
of a social studies unit of ten lessons, culminating in a final project where
they research and present the culture of their choice (a culture different from
their own). I hope to turn this day into
a sort of “International Fair,” maybe even have booths – but this may be a
little too ambitious. My counterpart
does, at least, want me to have my students present their project to the whole
college during English week, which may be more feasible than an all-out
fair. There are three super objectives
for this club or course: the first is social studies/geography oriented, the
second is English oriented, and the third is focused on research and citation
skills. Students will learn geography
and cultural studies while practicing English in all four domains and building
good research and citation habits.
I’ve posted fliers for the new club all over the school,
which resulted in four students signing up for the club before the
meeting. During the meeting, I made it
clear that I had high expectations, it would be a lot of work but a lot of fun,
and at the end they’d get a nifty Hossana CTE certificate that was also *fingers
crossed* signed by the Peace Corps Country Director (but I haven’t asked him
yet – it might just be signed by me). By
the end of the meeting, seventeen students had signed up for the club, which
officially begins on Monday with our first lesson: What is Culture?
Feeling pretty darn good about myself and my recruiting
abilities (and ignoring the possibility that these students just signed up when
they discovered that the ferenge was leading it), I packed up my things at 5:30
and got ready to get on the bus home.
Snug in my seat and preparing for the short walk home after my stop, I
plugged in my headphones and started listening to the Stuff You Missed In History Class podcast and listened to the
ladies talk about Archimedes’ Death Ray.
But then the bus turned around and I made a Scooby Doo-esque “Ruh?”
sound. The bus did a U-turn in the
middle of the dirt road and started heading back to the college, then turned
again down a dirt side street that led to the VSO Victoria’s old house (which
now belongs to the new VSO at the hospital here). We went down this road a bit when the bus
stopped and everyone got off. I turned
off my podcast and dumbly followed like a sheep (which is what I always do when
I have no idea what’s going on).
I caught up with a friendly face, a man I’d met last year
named Hassen, and asked him what in the world was going on. He explained that a colleague had just lost
her mother, and it was expected “in our culture” that they go and pay their
respects.
“But… Whose mother?”
He told me a name I didn’t recognize and promptly
forgot. I blinked stupidly, and wondered
if this woman would even want me there, but followed the parade of colleagues
up the road to her house. When my
landlord’s father died last year, he had invited me to stop by, but I felt
uncomfortable about even doing that. And
I love my landlord! I guess how we deal
with grief is a cultural difference that’s difficult for me to adjust to. In America, if an acquaintance loses someone,
you might bring them a casserole, but you also don’t want to impose and you
want to give them the space they need to grieve. But your entire office coming over to your
house and having you serve them tea, coffee and snacks just after you’ve lost a
family member? Well, if it were me,
heaven forbid, I think that would be my worst nightmare. The last thing I’d want to worry about is being
a good hostess after losing someone close to me.
Still. Ethiopia is a
very communal culture. They celebrate
together, and they mourn together, as a community. They call acquaintances “brother” or “sister”
or if they’re older, “mother” or “father,” even though they don’t know them
very well. As Ethiopians are fond of
telling me whenever I ask “Why?” about something they do, “It is just our
culture.” There is no why, it’s just how
things are.
I was worried I would have to greet the grieving daughter,
but I followed Hassen to a bench outside of the main house, where we sat and
waited until the k’olo and chickpeas made their way over to us. Hassen pretty much hoarded the whole plate
and gobbled it down. “You certainly like
k’olo,” I said, and the other man with us must have gotten the joke because he
laughed. Hassen smiled at me, too. “Yes,” he said with a shameless grin. “I do.” Sarcasm, or any form of communication that
relies on tone, are difficult to get across in this culture, but that one
definitely landed.
We talked for a while, about all sorts of things. I mentioned the age-old American tradition of
bringing food to express condolences. I
tried to explain what a casserole was and now I think they believe it’s like lasagna. Which, I added, people also give to
mourners. Casseroles, lasagna, and baked
goods. The staples of American cuisine. Eventually I had to ask how long we were
going to stay. I was hoping that the bus
would wait and take us all home again when we were done. Hassen assured me it wouldn’t be longer than
twenty minutes, and for once it was true.
After one cup of coffee and a few handfuls of k’olo, he told me it was
time. I never even saw the lady of the
house, but I did play with the two toddlers bumbling around the compound.
I followed Hassen out of the compound and looked skeptically
at the darkening sky. Akin to
Cinderella, or a reverse vampire, I am inclined to get home before sundown for
fear of turning into a pumpkin, or dust, or, more accurately, running into a
hyena. Now, that seemed impossible. This wasn’t as serious as it would be for
Cinderella or vampires though. I’ve
walked home at night in the past, I could do it again, I just prefer to avoid
it when I can. And anyway, Hassen walked
with me. At first, towards the bus, but
then he backtracked and told me to go the opposite direction instead. That’s when I realized my hope of catching
the bus home was dashed. But Hassen was
with me, so at least I had company.
We continued talking, about many things. A few kids yelled some things at me as usual,
and I complained about it. He said it’s
because they don’t understand, and I resisted the urge to say “Tell me
something I don’t know.” That led me to talking
about my culture club, and how cultural ignorance was one reason I had created
it. Hassen was fascinated. He’s a history teacher, that’s his specialty
you see, and so he wanted to hear all about my club. I told him about how I had opened up a book
during the meeting today. It was a book
called “America 24/7” and was given to me by USAID (I think). I got a whole bunch of them. Nathan says that they couldn’t have given him
a more useless or propaganda-filled book, but with my culture club I may have
found a place for them. I had opened up
a page at random and showed them, and it just happened to be a photo of a
cowboy. I had laughed at the time,
because I had been trying to show them a less stereotypical photo of American
life, but that was the one I had randomly turned to. I asked if he knew what a cowboy was, and he
laughed and said he did.
“In Ethiopia,” Hassen explained, “we think there is no rural
land in America. We think it is covered
in big cities only.”
“If we were just big cities,” I returned, “there’d be no
room for the cowboys.”
I talked about how the majority of the US was actually
rural, the same as most other countries in the world. I talked about our spacious skies and amber
waves of grain. Not in those words,
though. I explained that was another
reason I’d started this club. I wanted
to share my culture with them, but also have them share their cultures with
each other. Even within Ethiopia, there
are some grave misunderstandings about people from other zones and
regions. Hassen agreed with me that
culture sharing was the best way of building empathy and tolerance towards
people who are different.
He invited me for coffee.
The sun was just about gone now, so I was definitely going to get home
after dark now. I agreed, and impressed
him with my bunabet (coffee house) Amharic skills, asking for “t’ena adem” (Adam’s
Health) in my coffee.
“You drink buna ba t’ena adem?” Hassen asked, chortling.
“It is my favorite,” I said.
T’ena adem is a plant known in the English-speaking world as
“rue.” It’s the same plant that the
character of Rue in the Hunger Games
was named for. In Ethiopia, they grow it
as a potted plant, then pluck off a sprig of it and add it to the coffee in the
same way we might add a sprig of mint to our tea, or a cinnamon stick to our
cider. It adds a unique flavor to the
coffee that I can’t describe but is so delicious that I am definitely growing
my own rue plant when I get back home.
We talked some more
about American history, about which Hassen was surprisingly knowledgeable. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He is, after all, a history teacher. When I mentioned the thirteen original
colonies, he said, “I actually have a list of them in my briefcase. I could name them all, if you like.” Laughing, I told him that wouldn’t be
necessary.
He enthused some more about my culture club. He asked if he could participate and I
delightfully said, “Of course!” I told him that if he liked it enough, maybe he
could continue the club next year in my absence, in partnership with the next
Peace Corps Volunteer and he liked that thought as well.
He walked me almost all the way home, so I didn’t have to
worry about hyenas. It was a long,
strange day, but it ended with me feeling optimistic about starting a brand new
club.
