Midway Reflections

Midway reflection

Hi all,

I haven’t written any blogs in a long time. Part of that was because I was approaching them in a different way, trying to tell everything that had happened and exhausting myself in the process.

In summary, I’ve completed the last of my in-service trainings and have now branched out into my second year. I have about 9-10 months left in my service. I’ve been told that the second year of service is far more active than the first. This in part is because the first year is dedicated to learning your environment, the people, language and culture, as well as how things get done. Also because the people get to know you, what you’re capable of, and the way we work.

In a country where aid work is high, often people don’t believe that you will stay. Many organizations come for a short time do what they set out for (build a well, distribute food etc.) than leave. Peace corps is not like that, in part because we take the time to get to know who we are serving, and in part because we don’t come simply to give them something. We come instead to teach them when they are willing, how to do it themselves.

So far I have found truth in more work being available in the second year. I have in recent month finished a GRS training (teaching girls about gender, HIV, sex, and self-esteem through soccer program), a perma garden training with students, and have painted a world map on the side of the library (with an accompanying geography and brief history lesson at the school about America). These are things I’m very proud of and hope that I am able to continue in such work.

At the beginning of May we celebrated Ethiopian orthodox Easter (called Fasika). This particular holiday was special to me, because last year it was the first holiday I experienced in my town. It was a day full of family, music, and meat. It gave me a sense of “full circle”, to come back to the beginning and see how much I’ve changed.

I remember my first day in country being inwardly nervous to so much as walk outside. I hated the food and didn’t understand even the most basic greeting. The people who then were strangers are now my family, things that at first shocked me like how many bodies they fit on transportation, or having guns just casually carried around is now not odd at all. Things that were hard, like eating a vegan diet 90% of the time, no longer bothers me. I don’t mind dancing for strangers and being stared at anymore, I go shopping on my own, travel to new places alone and feel comfortable wandering the streets. To be sure I still struggle at times with harassment, feel the need for company of Americans, miss the foods of home, daily conveniences, and above all - hot showers! But, at the same time… I’m comfortable here.

I still struggle with language and somethings still scare me, but this place has also become beautiful to me. I enjoy the awkward jerking the shoulders they call dancing, and recognize their music sometimes, even singing along to words I don’t always know the meanings, and when I travel I see sprawling farm land and breathtaking mountains. I see a people working to find a place in the world of giants, and yet fiercely proud of the lives they have. They are a people who take a minimum of an hour a day just for coffee and community. People who will call you out for not enjoying yourself and talking. And if you’re not eating enough they are likely to feed you with their own hands. These people who are hospitable and don’t take “no, thank you” as an answer. A people who will call you off the side of the street to drink some tea and ask why they haven’t seen you for a few days. The children run after me on the street just to shake my hand and always ask to carry whatever is in my hands. And if I start talking about any topic of interest to one person, I soon have a crowd listening in.

I miss my home, I miss my family, I miss the food… I miss a lot. But faster than I think, this last year will be gone, and I’ll have all that back and this time now will be like a dream. So for now I live the dream, the rise and falls of an emotional roller-coaster of success, failure, and confusion, of utter boredom and mad rush, of sudden sickness and days in bed reading, of washing my clothes by hand, of cooking the same 5 foods over and over, of coffee right before bed and waking up to the sounds of roosters and baying bulls… and in the end, I’ll miss it all.

Here is to the year ahead and all it will bring.

Spring programs:

GRS

I had a week long training with my counterpart Turuwerk Wodage back in early December. She was a new counterpart due to my need of a female for this particular training. The GRS program is normally focused around a combination of soccer and HIV training for youth, this particular training I attended was also about gender equality and female health.

In the following months me and my female counterpart we able to teach 20 young girls in the 6^th and 7^th grade. They named themselves the Walia group after a mountain Ibex well known in this country. Though we were defiantly not the best soccer players we had a lot of fun and at the end we all got tested for HIV and passed. I hope the things I taught will help them stay clear.

Permagarden

My original plans to do a large permagarden training in the school failed utterly. Long story short I decided instead to do a small group training with my English teaching friend Brehanu Chekola. I went to his class and got 13 children interested.

We meet once a week on Wednesdays and though we had many delays and hiccups 7 children stuck through to the end. The learned about nutrition, water management, soil amendments and intercropping.

English workshop

I also helped Brehanu as a guest speaker in his after school extra English classes. I was a guest speaker 3 times and taught a few nursery songs, common greetings, and family trees.

Murals

People in Ethiopia sometimes ask me where I’m from, I answer “im American” to which they then ask “north or south?”… Now though I can understand where the confusion comes from I thought it a good opportunity to teach a bit. I spent a day in the school going room to room teaching briefly about where the USA is and how it was settled, emphasizing the fact that white man was actually a foreigner, and that people lived in America prior to settlement. The day was a resounding success and I was asked if I could provide world maps as teaching aid. As a counter proposal I offered to paint a mural instead.

The school offered to provide the supplies if I did the work. We chose a spot on the outside wall of the library and used fresh cement to smooth the stuccoed surface. Two close buy PCVs Alben and Elain came to help make the map. It was a fun 3 days and I have been asked to do a follow-up map of Ethiopia specifically in the next few weeks.

Touring Amhara

I was blesses to be able to take to in country vacations this last spring, one was a tour of historical sites in Amhara with two other volunteers Sadiya and Natanya who are based in Tigray. They first visited my site and I showed them a local hike and introduced them to my compound dog Charlie J then we went to Bahir Dar for a day to see other volunteers. We then made a trip to Gondar which I had not seen before and did a day hike to see some wild life and saw the castle where the emperors once lived. Finally we traveled up to Lalibela, and though I’ve been to the town before this was my first time seeing all 12 churches carved from stone.

Recently I took a trip to the simian mountain for a rigorous three day hike. I accompanied nearly 30 other volunteers as we hiked through staggeringly beautiful mountains and witnessed wild life rarely seen elsewhere in the country. The trip finalized in the second highest peak in Ethiopia over 14500ft. it was a great trip thought the hike down was miserable due to exhaustion, rain and hail. Good story though lol J

Trainings Galore: Fall

Trainings Galore

I apologise for not having updated my blog properly in a while. I’ve been intending too, but the last few months have been jam-packed with trainings, holidays, work, power outages, and vacations. But enough excuses... it's time to bite the bullet and make the update. It’s incredibly long, so I’ll make it in two parts.

QGIS

My first training was back in September directly following the Ethiopian New Year. The holiday was on Sep 12th, a Saturday. On Sunday I traveled to Bahir Dar (not an easy feat when everyone is returning from visiting family on the holiday). The training was locally conducted for each of the regions that Peace Corps works within Ethiopia (Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and SNNPR). My region of Amhara had about 12 participants, most of whom were from my orientation training group, with a few who had been here longer.

The week-long training in Bahir Dar was on a computer-mapping program called QGIS (Quantum Geographic Information System). This is a free downloadable software version of the better known and far more expensive version ArcGIS. Back in college I took a semester long training in ArcGIS, so I have something to compare this training and software to.

First off, QGIS is free ... bonus! As that may be, certain features were not as streamlined as ArcGI, such as the printable map function (which was difficult to adjust). It also didn’t have as wide a selection of symbols. However, I found the system more than sufficient for most mapping needs. ArcGIS however has a wide variety of training manuals designed specifically for their program, QGIS does not. Our trainer had actually spent the better part of a year creating a manual for this program, along with many sample map creation exercises for this training. She is still going through final adjustments and edits, but when she is done she intends to make the manual a free online source. Personally, I felt the training was very good, and clearer than my original training in college on ArcGIS. However, that could be due to it being my second time around.  :)

Each training participant had to do a final project creating a reference map for their town and a project map. My map was a color-coded slope map to help inform areas at high risk of erosion. I also used the two maps and a Google Earth Pro-derived image map of my town in my CNA (Community Needs Assessment)

CNA (Community Needs Assessment)

After getting back from my QGIS training, I had one month to complete a Community Needs Assessment. This was a technical document reporting statistics and interview information on my town. The purpose of the document was to assess the strengths and weaknesses of my town to better inform possible projects for the volunteer to later conduct. The first few months in town is supposed to be dedicated to learning about infrastructure, programs, and the people. I had conducted interviews with each of the main institutions in town getting an understanding of history and where the people of Debre Zebit wanted to go. Simultaneously, I learned about a variety of helpful programs I did not know existed, as well as issues I did not know people were facing. (The CNA was previously posted, if anyone is inclined to read it on my blog). It was due at the start of my PDM workshop. On top of that, I also had the Quarterly Reporting due, which is all the statistics on trainings and development work I had conducted each quarter.

PDM (Project Design Management)

The PDM workshop was in October, one month after my QGIS training. This training was originally supposed to take place 3 months after I originally got to site. However, due to the turmoil of elections it was postponed to October.

The PDM workshop was designed to help facilitate a mutual understanding of program expectations between PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) and local CP (Counterpart). My CP is a man named Endawke Yohanes who works in the FTC (Farmers Training Center) as the plant science expert. In fact, he is considered among the best workers in the Amhara region as I recently found out. Our Debre Zebit FTC got an award this year for having the most successful projects and my CP Endawke got a reward as being among the best trainers. Most of the time he is very busy with his own work and has little time to plan new projects with me. As a result this PDM workshop was very fruitful in facilitating conversation about starting new programs that I can participate in.

It was decided between me and my Counterpart that a garden project in the school would be easiest to accomplish as a start program, and might foster interest in the community via the children to the parents. Upon returning to the town we set up meetings with the school director and it was agreed that the space behind the school could be used for school gardens as long as we waited for the wheat field to be harvested in December... It didn’t really turn out that way, but more on that later.

English Cinema Club

In the weeks following the PDM, I had several meetings with the school over the school Permagarden project. I also had to find a female counterpart for the GRS program before I left on vacation. On top of that I finally started my English Cinema program… which is a fancy name for watching movies with kids.

The idea behind the program was to find an interactive way for children to practice English comprehension skills. Though English films are popular here, they are all dubbed over with Amharic making exposure to English low. The original idea was that children would come and I would give an oral introduction to the film (mostly Disney): when was it made, was it based on a book, what are the cultural origins, etc… then they would watch the movie taking note of words of English they recognize in order to make sure they are actively trying to comprehend the language. After they would write a paragraph summary of what the film was about, thus working on writing skills, and I would ask them to share what they wrote, working on verbal skills.

Right off the bat I hit snags (of course). The first week we had a power outage, resulting in a very boring class on name introductions. The following week I found my computer speakers weren’t loud enough, forcing me to borrow from my host brother Binium (I bought my own a few weeks later). The children showed up an hour late resulting in either missing the film or me starting the film late. When I have to start late I end up not getting around to the after film portion. As a result they only really do the word list. The first week they just wrote down any random word they thought of, having no relation to the film whatsoever. Also students would come in to watch the film, and then I would find out later that they were supposed to be in class and all but two would up and leave… I’m working out the kinks, but I want to keep at it. I think it has potential.

I also started getting Amharic tutoring lessons from the school English teacher Brehano Chekola. It only lasted a month though, now I’m back to no tutor. He’s become a good friend and supporter, but working out a schedule to suit both our needs is a challenge. He asked me to help teach an English class once, handed me a book and left me in front of the children for half an hour. Teachers have done that to me a number of times. The Biology teacher asked if I would want to teach some time. I said, “Sure, if you tell me what on, and give me a translator.” He said,“ok” and then dragged me in front of his class right then! I ended up teaching on crop rotation and soil nutrition.

For a while I was just hanging out at the school and the 2^nd graders started just circling around me and staring, so I ended up looking at their level 1 and 2 English books and helping them out. Mostly we were going over colors, I ended up with a small following but then I got busy with other projects.

Safety Net

The week before I left for Germany my counterpart told me last minute that he is going to the Woreda (district) office for a week-long training. It put a kink in my plans, but I figured that I could spend a week packing and cleaning before I left to Germany. On Tuesday I got a call from my neighbor PCV who asked why I wasn’t at the training. So he convinced me to drop what I was doing and go to a training for the rest of the week.

Travel was an utter nightmare! My town being close enough to the training site to travel meant we took a Bajaj each morning and afternoon, but the drivers caught on that there was a training and doubled the prices, which we had no choice to pay because we could not walk and get there on time. Getting back home at night was worse because we were let out late and all the drivers were done with work for the day and we ended up paying double for a Bajaj that should only fit 4 people and ended up stuffing 9 into it! Needless to say I thought this dangerous, so I got permission to have work-leave and spend the remaining nights in a hotel.

The training was on the federal Safety Net Program (SNP). This program was developed by the government to provide a reliable income for the most at risk families in exchange for public services. The program must be applied to and preference is given to women- led households and landless children. Each participant works 5 days a month on government programs like hillside terracing, watershed management, building fences, and more. The rest of the time they can use to find other work. At the end of the month, they are paid with either a small sum of cash or food.

Despite all the trainings being in Amharic they did on occasion have English slide shows which I ascertained valuable insight into the program which I previously didn’t understand. For example, the participants can skip work days if they are attending certain development classes, like business planning. These at-risk families tend not to be able to get loans from banks, unless a group is going in together. These classes, if completed, help them draw up a business model and will give them a loan recommendation to the bank. Though the program as a whole has kinks and doesn’t always work the way it does on paper, I have respect for all the Ethiopian government is trying to do.

On Thursday night all the FTC workers from all the district towns got together and had a bonfire. An ox was killed and raw meat was passed around while waiting for the cooked sauces, a live band played with professional dancers dancing the cultural dances. Some of the people were having trouble starting the bonfire and threw some liter fluid on it, but it threw the flames and landed on the person standing on the other side who then started running around on fire! No "stop, drop, and roll". Luckily, it went out and he was only mildly singed. The rest of the night was dedicated to eating and dancing. The Ethiopians took particular pleasure making the forenj (foreigner) get up and dance. I think I killed it.  :)

Germany

I took half of the final training day off and visited my host sister instead. Hayminot (Haymi for short) runs a hair styling salon, specializing in braids and curl sets. Since I was going to visit my sister in Germany she wanted to do my hair in a very traditional style. It took much longer than I expected. Since my hair doesn’t match any of the braiding hair colors she had to basically turn my head into a wig, took a total of 6 hours but the result was certainly attention grabbing. If I ever do it again, I’ll probably skip the yellow and stick with the brown.

On Saturday I traveled all the way to Addis, spent the night in a far too expensive hotel, and got on the plane to Germany the next day. The people at the airport were all shocked and pleased when they saw me in full Ethiopian regalia. I had a layover in Dubai and struck up a conversation with an Ethiopian native that is living in Australia for work. He noticed my clothes and hair and couldn’t help himself. He ended up treating me to dinner. When I finally arrived in Germany it was early morning. My sister,  AnnDee and her husband, Jeff met me at the airport and were properly surprised at my attire (point!!!) and though they had jackets with them for the colder German weather, my hand-made cotton outfit was more than enough to keep me warm. We didn’t have a chance to explore Frankfurt because they had taken the train so we all just headed back to base, just stopping for sandwiches (appreciating how odd I looked, lol) and getting my first glimpse of the countryside. Germany is a lovely country with lots of open spaces between quaint towns. By the time we got home in the early afternoon we simply crashed. I was introduced to the two rambunctious puppies, Izzy and Sadie, and I’m happy to say they accepted me into their pack.

The first week in Germany was mainly spent getting ready for my sister's vegan Harvest Feast. We did a lot of shopping while I stocked up on 1^st world goodies! Oreos and a giant bag of Doritos were the first to go in the cart! Evenings were spent cleaning the house and watching Netflix. I was able to try some German dishes, as well as the German version of sushi and Mexican food, which I had been missing.

The vegan Harvest Feast was held the week before Thanksgiving, and was delectable. We had an engaged couple over for the celebration and spent all day cooking. We tried out a Sa’taan roast (wheat protein meat substitute) with roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, vegan gravy, pumpkin rolls and pumpkin pie with absolutely delectable coconut whipped cream (highly recommended).

The following week's highlight was the Rhine River cruise, where we got to see a bunch of lovely German towns along the Rhine River. We started out at sunrise by climbing onto a bus and dozing for the next hour or so. We were awakened as the bus proceeded to back up a huge hill on a narrow street, cars on either side. When we finally reached the top we all cheered for the bus driver's daring feat. We were all terrified AND impressed.

At the top of the hill was the first part of our tour - a castle tour. The castle was part of a long chain of castles along the river that all were owned by different individuals demanding a toll tax. This was because back in the day Germany was not a single country but rather a smattering of settlements. The castle was home to an overwhelming and gaudy display of hunting trophies, though it also had a quaint chapel, lovely paintings, and a library. There were a few suits of armor around, including child-sized armor and model suits. We were allowed to try on a helmet, which I found to be very fun. My favorite though was the view from the top of the walls. I felt very much the "high Lady". :P

We broke for breakfast at the castle and then drove to another town up the river. Here we stopped at a local wine and cuckoo clock shop and were allowed to try the local ice wine and some selections of brandy. It was my first time trying any brandy, and I instantly fell in love with the peach brandy. We just had to buy a bottle. ;)

From there we jumped on the boat and floated down the Rhine River looking at all the castles, statues, churches and just the German architecture while sipping on some macchiato. They hosted a small raffle and Jeff won a lovely Christmas ornament. At the end we stopped at a town which hosts a Christmas market. We ate a complimentary German meal and then explored the town decked out in lights and decorations. The stalls sold many delectable foods including bratwurst, fried mushrooms, chestnuts, soups, and crepes. Also the German specialty of gluwein, which is a hot spiced-wine served in special mugs. Everywhere there were special crafts and knickknacks to peruse. After that, we climbed back on the bus to head home.

AnnDee and I went off to get our hair done before I went back to Ethiopia. She got pink put on the bottom half of her hair and put a few pink streaks in mine too. I also got my hair trimmed, which was much needed after a year in country. The next morning she gave my hair a blowout and we headed out to the Frankfurt airport to say goodbye.