On The Homefront

I recently just passed my one year anniversary mark here in country on June 6th.  I've been wanting to write a blog post, or more of a public thank you note, to all of the people who have been so supportive of me back home.  This support comes in many different forms, but it all matters.

Keep in mind that if I don't mention you by name, it's not because I don't value the support you give me.  I have a lot of friends and family that have expressed positive thoughts and well-wishes about my service, and I appreciate each and every source of encouragement.  However, the people I name here have gone above and beyond in their support, which is why I wanted to honor them specifically.

It's easy to forget that a friend or loved one is going through a hard time.  And regardless of everything else that the Peace Corps is, it is certainly a hard time.  I have more bad days in Ethiopia than I ever had in Seattle - but the thing is, I also have more awesome days, too.  High risk, high reward, as they say, but it's the high risk that causes trouble with morale sometimes.  And it's easy to forget that a friend is in a high stress environment for two years, because, I mean, hey, you have your own lives, your own problems, your own stresses.

This is why I think it's super important to recognize the people who go out of their way to tell me that they know what I'm doing, they know it's hard, and they appreciate it and they support me.  There are a few people on this list, like my parents, who are an obvious given.  But there are some people on this list that may surprise you.  I know that they surprised me.

So let's start with the obvious: My parents.

Both of my parents at one time worked for the State Department, and my mother still does.  As a result of that, I spent the first eighteen years of my life growing up in seven other countries, and none of them was the United States.  When I first started applying to Peace Corps, I thought this would help me adjust, but then my father wisely pointed out that it wouldn't.  He explained that when I was overseas, I got to live in my little embassy bubble.  I got to see the high poverty and development problems from behind the glass in my ivory four-runner.  And he was absolutely right.  I remember bringing this up with my Country Director when he interviewed me before swear-in to see if I was ready for service.  A former ambassador himself, he sympathized, saying that even administratively, Peace Corps was way different from the foreign service.

Since coming to country, my mother has been a typical mother, always wanting to know how I'm doing and what's going on and what's Ethiopia like and am I making friends and all that other stuff.  And she Skypes me all the time and they even sent me a care package in the summer.  My dad is often with her when we talk on Skype, asking his questions and stuff, and even if he's not, I'm sure she tells him.

I have never spent a Christmas away from my parents before, not in twenty-five years of life.  Not even the fact that my family members often live in different countries on different continents can keep me away from them at Christmas.  When my mother was posted in Tunisia, and my father was still wrapping things up in DC, and I was up in Seattle, he flew both me and him all the way to Tunis so we could spend Christmas with my Mom, and then the next year, he flew both of them out from Tunis and me from Seattle down to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with my brother.  I don't know if it's as big a deal to them as it is to me, but spending Christmas with my parents matters a lot to me at this point in my life, and I was really nervous that this might actually be the first Christmas I have to spend without them.  But from the very beginning, my parents just acted like they expected to come, and again they bought me a plane ticket from Ethiopia to go spend the holidays with them in Belgium.  Not only this, but they opened their door and their home to a fellow PCV who couldn't go home for Christmas, and I know that he is still grateful for their hospitality.  What's more, my parents are going a step further for Christmas 2013 by allowing me to bring not one, not two, but three other guest PCVs, who must have heard how great the vacation was for my other friend and want to see what it's like.  And they did it with open hearts and not a hint of hesitation.

And if that weren't enough, my father decided that the best birthday present he could give me this year was flying down to Addis Ababa to see where I live for himself, and of course he brought all sorts of delicious goodies with him, including all the ingredients required to make my traditional birthday cake since I was twelve years old - dirt cake.  Oreos, cream cheese, vanilla budding, and I don't even know all of what else, but it was delicious.  So I took him on a tour of this beautiful country in which I serve.  Hawassa, Arba Minch, up through Hossana, and then back to Addis Ababa.  Afterwards, he commented that he understood a lot better how I live now, and that he finally realized the need (as opposed to want) for an external hard drive.

So this is what I believe is "above and beyond" as far as support goes.  And maybe some people think, "Well, yeah, sure, but your parents are expected to be supportive."  Well, yeah.  But consider this - I am one of seventy volunteers in my group who have been here for a year now, and I am only one of a handful who have had anyone, let alone a parent come visit me.  And everyone's parents are supportive, but I think that says a lot.

Next on the list: Layne

Layne herself will probably be surprised to see her name on this list.  She was a friend of mine I met when I was in high school in Cairo, and while we don't see each other much anymore (on account of we lived in different states, and now different countries) we talk rather frequently, and I attended her wedding almost two years ago now.  Wow, has it really been almost two years?  Congrats to Layne and her husband, Chris, on that.  Still, since moving to Ethiopia, I have noticed a marked increase in my communication with Layne.  She messages me all the time, Skypes me a lot, likes almost all of the photos and posts I make on Facebook about Ethiopia, and she was really supportive in my first ten weeks in country, arguable the most difficult ten weeks of my service as I readjusted.  Layne hasn't done anything like fly out on a plane to visit me, or even send me a care package (although she says she's putting one together).  Her support is much simpler, and that is that she frequently takes time out of her day to check in with me.  It's simple, and it doesn't sound like much, but it can really go a long way, especially when you're out at site on your own and a friendly message from an old friend can really mean a lot.

And then, there's Laura.

Laura is probably the only person out of all of my friends in Seattle who seems actively interested in what I am doing and continuously supportive.  We have chats on Facebook, and she always seems genuinely curious about my life and how I'm doing.  Meanwhile, she had to go and get herself pregnant and now I don't get to see that stick figure of hers swell into a balloon shape, at least not until this July.  She's due in July, too, so I hope I can still recognize her!  I was so sad I had to miss this big event in her and her husband's life.  Still, I comfort myself with the knowledge that at least I'll get to meet the little squirt when I come back for good in 2014.  Sure, the kid will be a year old by then, but that's not too bad, when you think about it.  Still, she's pregnant, such a big life adventure, and yet she still finds time to be interested in me and my crazy life.  That's pretty awesome.  Laura is also one of the people who seems most excited about seeing me when I visit this summer.  She has also been a doll, agreeing to accept all packages of supplies that we need for our summer camp.  In fact, she just told me today that she was beginning to get shipments in, and how that made her excited because it meant that I would be in Seattle soon.  It's sweet comments like that, that, like Layne's simple support, can really go a long way to making a PCV smile.

And last but not least, I'd like to recognize Tod and Linda.

Tod and Linda are very old friends of my parents, being old college chums of my mother way back in the day.  They are rather like my aunt and uncle, regardless of blood relation.  Tod was the one who even taught me how to drive.  They, along with two other old friends of my parents in Seattle, served as surrogate parents for me when I was living in Washington and my folks were off gallivanting all over the world.  Since I've been here, Tod and Linda win the contest for sending me the most stuff through the mail.  I will never forget the day when I arrived at the post office in November and there was not just one care package there waiting for me, but two humongous boxes full of American goodies and all for me.  I was so excited I went home and photographed everything to mark the occasion.  And being as this was really the only time I received care packages other than one that my parents sent, that alone earns them a spot on this list.  It is expensive to send care packages, and I appreciate all the time and effort (and money!) that goes into putting them together.  It's one reason why they are so rare for me, I believe.  So thanks so much, to this wonderful couple, who put so much effort into bringing a little piece of America to Ethiopia for me.

I go on vacation in two and a half weeks to Seattle.  I look forward to seeing all of my old friends and family in the area while I'm there.  And I do want to give a general thank you to all of you for the support you do manage to give.  As I said, I know you have your own busy and interesting lives, but I really do appreciate it when you drop me a line.  It gets lonely out here in the rural highlands.

Much love and gratitude,
Carlin

Top Thirty Things They Don't Tell You About Being a PCV

So I am coming up on my one year anniversary here in Ethiopia.  It's not my one year of service, just my one year of being in country, but it's important nevertheless.  To celebrate, I have asked my PCV and RPCV friends to confess at least one brutally honest no-holds-barred truth about serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Most of these come from current or COSing volunteers in Ethiopia (G5-G8), but some come from a friend I met before Peace Corps, who served in Ghana.  Despite the fact that these have been contributed by mostly PCVs in Ethiopia, I feel that there is a certain universality to their confessions.

This is the challenge I gave my fellow PCVs:

"I was just thinking of writing a blog post (with your input) about all the things they don't tell you about being a PCV. You know, the nitty gritty, dirty, embarrassing, frustrating, make-you-wanna-cry moments, but also the funny stuff, things you never thought you'd get used to but have, things you never thought you'd miss but do, that stuff. So, name all the things no one told you about being a PCV that you learned the hard way. Aaaaand go."

So here they are, presented to you with some minor editing and additions on my part, so if you are a contributor to this list and weren't quoted directly, please don't take it personally.  From my comrades in arms to your monitor, here are:

Thirty Things They Don't Tell You About Being a PCV

1) You have an 85% chance of shitting your pants. How bad you have to shit versus the distance to the bathroom will become like a math problem you don't always know how to solve. Especially when you're on a bus and the distance has to factor in km/h, rain, likelihood of an accident or detour, probability of cow traffic, etc... - Nora, Debra and Dan, Ethiopia

2) It’s almost impossible to escape PST without getting bed bugs or fleas. - Ashley, Ethiopia

3) If you are a woman, integration with people your own age is nearly impossible. The men will hit on you and because of that, the women will mostly keep a good distance from you. - Ashley, Ethiopia

4) If you are a female education sector volunteer, you will have to plan your days strategically so as to handle the bathroom situation. What do I mean about bathroom situation? Well, there may be no bathroom, or there may be the most frightening bathroom you have ever seen, which explains why College and University students prefer to use the woods. I'm not joking. - Anonymous, Ethiopia 

5) You will eat dirt, rock and/or bone and you will tell yourself that it is salt. You will be so accustomed to terrible food that you will eat something, bite on something hard, spit it out, and find that you had almost ingested a bolt. (The screw, not the crossbow ammunition.) Then you will continue to eat after you return the bolt to the waiter (it probably held something important together, after all.) - Chad and Dustin, Ethiopia

6) You will have a cockroach crawl across your food and you wont care.  It's also possible that someone will be murdered the same night in the restaurant, but you'll still go back. - Carla, Ethiopia

7) You will boil rice with bugs in the grains and try to pick them out as they float to the top. - Karley, Ghana

8) Peace Corps medical staff will tell you that the best food is off-limits, but you are definitely going to eat/drink it anyway, and wind up naming your tapeworm. - Dan, Ethiopia 

9) You will be terrified to search your house for what is making that mysterious sound.  Your heart starts to pound as you search and search. You are terrified to pick anything up, so you poke everything with a stick or a shoe. As anticipation climbs, you become more and more jumpy.  Sometimes, it turns out to be a mouse or a rat (worst case scenario), sometimes, a cricket, sometimes a roach, and sometimes your stupid water filter dripping water on your plastic floor (best case scenario).  But even if it turns out to be nothing too bad, it will still keep you up at night, like the monsters under your bed you feared as a child. - Breanna, Ethiopia

10) You will get awful cravings for things you can't have, like crab dip, and this will haunt you for months at a time until you try and find away to send crab dip, or other perishables like a whole roast turkey for Thanksgiving, through the mail from America despite your friends and family telling you how impossible this is. - Jenny and Carlin, Ethiopia

11) Restaurant signs advertise everything they don't have. Don't be fooled! - AJ, Ethiopia

12) Rats can climb walls and often live in the ceiling, and some nights you'll wake up to a bump in the ceiling hoping and praying they don't fall through... Also, they can jump surprisingly high. - Lacy and Trudie, Ethiopia

13) You will become so used to days and weeks on end without power that you will find really creative ways to entertain yourself, like playing solitaire by yourself by candle light which quickly becomes more fun than any movie or video game.  Or even simply staring off into nothing for hours will become a casual pastime. - Jenny and Carlin, Ethiopia and Karley, Ghana

14) You will have no water at your site for a long stretch of time and have to resort to catching water in a rain bucket to use for cooking and bathing.  This is all well and good, until the wet season ends and you still have no water, and mosquitos start breeding in your wain bucket. - Karley, Ghana and Carlin, Ethiopia

15) Sleeping under mosquito net will be comforting and feel like a princess canopy, a fort, or a hypoallerginic bubble that nothing can penetrate - until a bug breaches your netted security. - Karley, Ghana and Carlin, Ethiopia

16) You will have a full on deep conversation with a local while they are knuckle deep in their nose and/or scratching their balls. - Sham, Ethiopia

17) Nobody in your host community will really want to work with you and they will make up a thousand and one reasons which are supposed to explain why they are so uninspired. They will hide a key from you for a year so you can't get in the room where you are supposed to work, and once they do finally give you the key, they will then start writing official letters about you accusing you of stealing a broken laminator and giving it to orphans or other such nonsense (without evidence, just because they feel like it). - Anonymous, Ethiopia

18) If you are a male volunteer, you become a secret agent in the boys' club which is both good and bad, because you will find out that local men will apparently tell you things about their sex lives that they don't tell each other. - Joel, Ethiopia

19) Most weeks, the closest you will come to showering or bathing is wiping your body down with baby wipes, and you will learn to be OK with that. - Jackie, Ethiopia

20) You will be stared at, followed and photographed, and become famous in your town, developing sudden empathy for celebrities fighting against paparazzi.  Sometimes, they will shout very rude things, sometimes they will shout things that they mean to be friendly but sound rude anyway.  You will also learn to let all of it roll off your back (most days) or imagine how you will kill them all (on bad days). - Karley, Ghana and Carlin, Ethiopia

21) You will not be be listened to. You will have an experience that wouldn't ever happen to a local, and then they're like "Aw, be strong, don't worry about it." But if the same thing happened to them as often as it happens to you, it'd be different. If that were to happen, they would probably understand that the advice "don't worry" or "ignore it" just doesn't make you feel supported. - Joel, Ethiopia

22) Something good: Your co-workers will eventually finally start to realize that you experience a lot of things that they don't. People have this cursory understanding of people being equal, but they don't factor in that our experiences are different. Sometimes, explaining that no, you can't just ignore them yelling at you because you don't feel safe, a few lights will turn on. In a nutshell, something they don't tell you about being a PCV: how much you need your alliances. - Joel, Ethiopia

23) Once you pee in a bucket, there's no going back. You break that barrier one time and it becomes a lifestyle choice. Hole-in-the-ground latrines will become obsolete for situations other than numero dos... Well unless you have a stash of plastic bags for that job. - Lesley, Ethiopia 

24) Your bus will break down.  Your bus will get a flat tire.  You will be sitting next to a vomiting person.  That vomiting person will vomit on your bag.  They will not apologize. - Jackie, Ethiopia

25) You could shake out all ants that have gotten into your things (or created full-on colonies) and reuse them still. This includes book bags, linoleum floors, bag of Fritos sent from the states. - Karley, Ghana

26) You will have worn down skin on knuckles from washing clothes, because it's a high possibility that skin is dissolved after constant contact with the detergent in your host country. - Karley, Ghana

27) You will become a fan of terrible local music, and learn all the words to all the songs in the local language. - Karley, Ghana and Carlin, Ethiopia

28) You will be forced to eat organic for two years, and when I say organic, I mean you will look your meal in the eye and say, "I am going to eat you tonight."  You will know exactly where all of your food comes from. - Karley, Ghana and Carlin, Ethiopia

29) You will come to doubt the intentions of any local who wants to be your friend, wondering if they just want a visa, or if they want to marry you, or worse.  But you will also find locals who do not have these ulterior motives.  They may be hard to find, but they are worth searching for. - Carlin, Ethiopia

30) You will become so comfortable discussing your grossest illnesses and bodily functions with fellow PCVs, you will almost forget how to talk about anything else in more polite social circles. - Carlin, Ethiopia