From Beans to Beantown

So I’m officially announcing it here now: I’m moving to Boston. For at least three months, I’ll be an intern at a non-profit organization that is associated with the Catholic Social Worker movement. I’ll be cooking, working as an administrative assistant, and living in the community there. The political beliefs of the founders are a bit radical for my tastes, but I can stand behind their goal of helping others by providing food, housing, and emotional support and I think it will be a fascinating and fulfilling time.

This change in plans gives me about six weeks left in Ethiopia. In this time I plan on doing some amazing things: hitting a number of the items on my “Ethiopian Bucket List” if you will. I’ll try to keep updating this blog with my “adventures”.
As for now, this is my last day of work before I leave for Awassa, a lake town in Southern Ethiopia, for a few days’ Easter Break. I’m hoping to see a hippo!

I’ve been enjoying my time living on campus. I don’t have a maid here (a fact that my neighbors, even the poorer ones, don’t understand) so my day starts with collecting water at 6:30 in the morning and ends with the last round of dishes at 8:00 at night. Things like sorting rice and finding containers for grain storage take longer than expected but are amusing. I like knowing that all of the little details of my place: the sunny smells of the rug, the lousy taste of the beans, are my fault and responsibility. I’ve learned to like the quiet and the work of the upkeep. I think I’ll miss it.

Anyway, I’ve never been to Boston before but it sounds like as good a place as any to re-adjust to American life and I’m looking forward to living in community again. And of course, I’ll start another blog.

Because Home is Sometimes a Feeling

I am the only forenji and staff member here. The arms of the students rest heavily on my shoulders as the fifty of us form a moving ring of dancing and singing. Our heads are thrown back and we are bellowing out the words to, of all things, a remix of “Country Roads”.

Instead of ”West Virginia”, some of the students shout the names of their homelands: “Addis Ababa!” “Nazreet!” The music has been revamped with Ethiopic style saxophone and a heavy beat. I start a modified flat-foot and people follow my dance. For about three minutes, I am considered a good dancer for the first time in my life.

I shouldn’t have been at the party. I was there by accident. I may have to deal with the fall-out of being seen dancing (usually terribly) with students. Already, some of the women (who usually did NOT dance but sat in the chairs next to the dancers and whispered) laughed at me and called me something in Amharic. I don’t care. This was fun and I’ll hopefully remember it forever. For one song, I didn’t feel out of place here at all. In the middle of a crowd of strangers in a strange land, I was home.

Cross Cultural Contact (or lack thereof)

They are easily the most exotic people I have met here. I see them about once a day, climbing the hill up from the apartment complex towards the base of the campus. There's about a dozen of them, all women, mostly young. Their skin is sun-toughened and beautiful. It's the color of American coffee and glitters with the thin, gold bracelets and nose-rings they wear. The dress themselves in layer upon layer of brightly colored cloth. They don't speak English, Amharic, Oromo, or any other language I've heard anyone else here using.

All of these women seem to be related to the pastoralists that live right outside the campus. Once, I found a few of the grass huts out there, a hidden and camouflaged village. I was promptly shooed away.

Anyway, these women they walk West and I walk East and we pass within inches of each other every day. I say hello and they laugh and wave while we keep walking.

Two days ago, one of them stops and stares at me for a moment. I smile and nod. Suddenly, this young woman runs towards me for about two steps with her hand out.

I shake her hand and do the local shoulder bump with her (she initiated it) and she starts yelling in what sounds like shock. She grabs my hand and holds it up in the air, yelling words in her language. Within seconds we're surrounded by the rest of the young women. Many hands are reaching to shake my hand. They twirl my arm around, making remarks. They pressed their arms against mine, comparing thickness and color.

One girl tries to shake my hand but chickens out at the last moment. I think it was then that I realized that they had never touched a forenji before. This was something totally new for their community.

There's a shriek when they realize that my palms change color and have noticeable lines on them. They all press the skin to see it turn from pink to white. We are laughing about this when I hear someone yelling "Becka!" (Enough!) angerly. An older woman of their group had arrived. She was wearing a t-shirt (a sign of cultural adjustment) and looked angry. She shoved the young women away from me and then nudged me towards my home. "It's okay." I said. "Chigger yellem." (No problem.) but the woman was adamant.

Yesterday, when I passed the group of women the older woman was there too. When I tried to say hello, she clucked and shook her head sadly. I heard her hiss at the one woman who tried to wave.

Today, the young women were not there. Instead there were three new people and they did not greet me when I passed. They looked through me, like they couldn't see me. It was creepy.

I have no idea what has happened here. Someone broke a norm somewhere it seems. I miss my friends. I hope I didn't get them in trouble. I wish I understood.

UPDATE: They're back!

WAY LATER UPDATE:

About a week later, I'm carrying a heavy water basin on my head and I see one of these young women running behind me.  She's doing an impression of someone clumsily carrying a water basin. Her coworkers, watching her, burst out laughing and rush me from the bushes.  They take the bucket from me and we carry it together, chuckling and doing funny walks.  We must have looked like an Ethiopian edition of Monty Python for that quarter mile.  This happens again about a week later.

A week or so after the second time that they helped me carry something, I get invited to lunch. I'm walking towards my office and I hear a strange sound.  I see the older woman beckoning towards me.  She gestures that I should sit. I'm am grateful that I do not have a meeting I need to attend.

I am offered water from a large, cloudy, basin.  I thank them, but show them that I have a water bottle.  They give me spicy bread that seems to be a sort of injara, but not made from teff.  We sit and laugh and communicate semi-awkwardly in the grass about our clothing and hairstyles. The elder woman offers me a pull from a bag of chat and is surprised when I decline.

I go briefly to my house and bring back popcorn.  A cheer goes up.  We snack together.  Some men come and sit with us.  They ask me what I'm doing and seem confused by my answer of "eating". After about an hour we part ways.

These lunches (a second group of this culture started inviting me regularly as well) became a common thing.  I would bring popcorn or ground nuts.  They would give me the enjara, the same thing that they had to eat every lunch, feeding me until they sensed I was full.  Their level of generosity is something I hope to have some day.

I greatly enjoyed my time with these women although the staff and local residents couldn't understand why I would eat with them.  At one point, I was asked if "all this is for an anthropology experiment".  No, it wasn't. It was simply a joy.

Culture shock: What it Feesl Like

Everyone told me that it would take about six months for the culture shock to fully kick-in. For six months everyone has made comments like “You seem to be adjusting so well!” I’m not getting those comments lately.

The main part of what I’m feeling just seems to be an exhaustion to little details. I don’t want the strange foods, different people, and new languages to go away. I just want to press a “pause” button somehow; to take a commercial break. One day with running water and clean food would be enough to reset how I’m feeling, I’m pretty sure. As it is, all of the newness, which is no longer new, feels like a weight on my shoulders.

I’m in a good place here. This job has huge potential for growth. My coworkers are great people. But part of me just wants to curl-up and be in the United States for a little bit. I hope this passes soon.

How I Met the Forenji in Apartment A2

Disclaimer: I don’t know what goes on in other people’s minds, this I will fully admit. However, as I most likely leave my apartment in Harar for at least a while, I thought it would be fun to try to imagine what my zabanya (guard) thinks of my time there. I hope you enjoy the result.

We have lots of forenji in the apartment complex that I guard. Most of them are Indian and teach at the university. I am not sure what the strange woman does. I had seen here a few times before I met her, but we had never been introduced. She was always with her father, a fat older man who also worked at the university. He lived in one of the nicer apartments, one that always had water and usually had electricity all night. I can see their kitchen from my shelter. My shelter’s a sturdy little tent/hut made of strong tree branches and old blankets. I sit there for most of the afternoon and part of the night to guard the complex.

Ask the people who live here and they will tell you that I am almost always awake because I use a good portion of my money to buy chat, which is a stimulant. I am kind to the random dogs, cats, and goats that wander around the yard and I don’t let anyone: animal or human, start a fight in the backyard while I’m here. I’m a good guard.

Anyway, one day the old man moved out and his odd daughter moved in. I kept waiting for a husband to join her, but no one ever showed up, even though the lady is almost old. She seemed to have no children either. Even stranger, she sometimes dressed like a forenji man: in pants and a t-shirt. Other times though, she’d wear dresses even more rustic than the maids’. And, get this, these rural-style dresses left parts of her shoulders bare! And sometimes she didn’t wear a scarf over them. It was so hard not to stare! Then the next day she’d be dressed like a man again, with her hair wet even. Dressed like this, she’d purposefully walk around in the sun! Gross!

So the first day this woman first goes into the apartment by herself, I realize that her father still hasn’t paid me for the crate of Pepsi I bought him at his request. It was a cold a rainy night, very odd for our desert city, and I had wrapped myself in old towels and rags to keep warm. Also, I was chewing a whole lot of chat so that I would not fall asleep and get sick from the damp or bitten by the rats that seek shelter from the rain.

I got up and hailed the woman. “Good evening.” I shouted in my language.
“Good thank you.” The woman called back clumsily . She seemed a little alarmed at my presence.

I tucked a large clump of chat behind my ear, tightened my toga of towels and started to follow her towards the steps of the complex. Since she apparently didn’t speak my language, I tried hers.

“I take you.” I said.

The woman glanced over her shoulder and seemed surprised to see me standing only a couple of steps away. “What?” She asked.

“I take you to you house.” I say, and wave my arm towards the Pepsi in my tent. I could feel the chat making my movements jerky and my eyes hurt. They were probably quite large and red. “I bring you now.”

“Uh.”, Said the woman. “No thank you.”

“I take you! I like your father! Pepsi!” I was starting to shout. What didn’t this woman understand?

The woman began to walk up the stairs very quickly. She was holding her keys in her hand now. She seemed relieved to see that the hall lights were on.

I followed her long enough to see that she was going into her apartment, shouted “BAH!”, and then went back to my hut to get the soft drinks.

As I went up the stairs I could hear her locking the door. There was no way I had done all of this work for no pay. I was getting angry. I put the crate down in the hall and then beat on the frosted part of the door with my fists. “Pepsi! Money! Open door! Open door! I give! Money give me!” I shouted.

I could see the woman’s silhouette on the other side of the door. She was yelling “Go away!”, “Stop!”, and “Another day!” in my language with a terrible accent. Finally, in English, she yelled. “I DON’T WANT YOUR PEPSI GO AWAY!” so emphatically that I gave up.

“You father Tom say Pepsi!” I shouted at her one more time. Then I picked up the soda and went back out through the cold to my hut.

Later, she would tell me that she was sorry. She told me that she didn’t know the arrangement I had with her father. She didn’t even know that I was employed to look after the apartments. Her father had paid me well so I told her it was okay.

I saw her almost daily after that. She always said hello and seemed friendly enough. One time when I fell asleep, she woke me up and asked if I was feeling alright. She named one the stray cats “Patty It’s Short for Pathetic” and helped it survive by feeding it scraps.

One evening I was sitting on the steps with my wife and son. Even though my son is only four years old, he reads better than I can. He was reading me a story and the woman stopped to listen. She told me that my son was very smart and handsome. I was so proud of my family that I nearly cried.

She’s moving out this weekend. I will miss her since she was always interesting to watch. I was angry with her at first, but forenji are so strange that I guess it’s stupid to be too frustrated with them. Her father is apparently moving back but he seems boring in comparison. He doesn’t need a scarf for his shoulders! Either way, I’ll be here, chewing my chat, and waiting to see who walks by next.

My Daily Bread

The middle-aged man behind the ticket booth looks at up at me and asks “Dabo?” I nod and he smiles.

“How much?” Asks his assistant. She’s sitting behind the cake counter and I wonder if she’s related to the ticket cashier. She’s always here, and I wonder why she isn’t in school. I wonder if she has brothers in school. I wonder if she will go home this evening and have to work for several hours.

“Three.” I say, which is what I say almost every day. The ticket man throws three black plastic tabs under his counter and hails a teenager in a block smock. The young woman hands him a thin plastic bag and he goes running out of the back of the shop to get my bread. I don’t know where the bread originally comes from.

While the boy is gone, I pay the equivalent of eleven cents for the bread. I walk away with three relatively fresh bap rolls in the bag and head back towards my office. I like the swishing sound that the bag makes as I move. Also, for whatever reason, people make less comments about me when I’m carrying bread, which is nice.

This is what I eat during the day now. I eat roll for breakfast and one for lunch. At home, I’ll eat the simple but tasty meal prepared by my housekeeper and eat the third piece of bread with a little (precious) butter. With water and vitamin pills, it’s a plenty sufficient diet.

Now that this is my regular routine. It makes me think about the words “Give us this day our daily bread.” In the Lord’s Prayer. So much of life here is, for the average Ethiopian, filled with mundane tasks.

Every morning, right after dawn, I take a bus from the city of Harar to the main campus. We go through two major towns and about eight villages. I play a sort of “Bingo” during these trips. There is almost always a woman washing clothes in a large bucket full of dirty water. There’s almost always someone using the bathroom in public. People chewing chat with their eyes closed, pregnant goats, animals that have gotten loose, people deep frying things over coal braziers, cake sellers with a food trays on their heads, kids who have invented a new game or are fighting due to sheer boredom, and a confused looking police officer,laughing women....woman with a baby on her back while carrying something else, BINGO!

This place is always moving. People spend hours doing little manual things every day. If people can’t walk on their feet here, then they walk on their knees or hands to get to the store. But, dang it, they get to the store.

It’s humbling. I feel extremely privileged and lucky to get to go sit in a relatively clean and quiet office. When my housekeeper makes shero for me (a typical dish made out of boiled lentils) I know that she spent time picking through those beans so that I wouldn’t crack a tooth on a small rock. This is a task that I find so mind-numbingly monotonous that it can only do a small amount of beans at a time before my eyes hurt and I start to feel sleepy.

When I meet women who are my age but have three babies, keep their huts and children clean, and have to do all of the cooking and washing and fetching by themselves, I am in awe. Could I do it if I had to? Could I be happy if that was what my life looked like every single day?

I eat my breakfast bread at my desk. It doesn’t have much flavor, but it’s quick and filling. And I am incredibly grateful.

Timket (Ethiopian Orthodox Epiphany) Parade

Timket
There are some people who say that you aren’t really swimming if you just stick your legs in the pool. If you want to swim, jump in. I was thinking about that as the crowd swept me up into a mass of sound and hundreds of people dressed in white.
Ahead of us, a truck mounted with amplifiers and loud speakers blasted the voices of riders singing hymns in Ge’ez as we slowly moved down the street. Behind the truck ran athletic looking young men carrying large rolls of red carpet and women throwing grass. The priests were supposed to walk on this surface when carrying the icons. It reminded me of the afombras I had seen in Central America during the Holy Week processions.

After the carpet layers came the priests. These were big men in heavy-looking robes. Attendants held ornate umbrellas over them, shielding the icons the men carried from the sun. The icons were about three feet tall and showed an image of Mary, or Jesus, or a saint. People ululated as the pictures passed them, clapping joyously.
Behind the icons, a single man walked backwards, waving palms, to indicate that it was okay to walk in the middle of the path again.

We progressed this way for about a mile. We eventually got to an open area near a stadium. Everyone crossed themselves and looked at the ground for a second as we reached the entrance. One had to jump about two feet to get to the main area where people talked, sang, bought snacks, and stood around together. The whole place had kind of a low-key, high population density fair atmosphere about it.

I stayed for a while and spoke with some of the people there. Then I made the walk back. After the streets had emptied of crowds, people had brought their disabled relatives to beg. I saw a man twisted by polio. I saw an old woman who appeared to be blind. A filthy child approached me and told me she and her small brother had no money for food. I had no small bills to give her and told her so. I would have bought her an orange, but there were no venders nearby. I gave her a generic plastic bottle of water I have repeatedly used. It was nothing special, but she cradled it like I had just given her a nice baby doll. Then she asked for money again.
When I came home, my maid had cooked me an obscene amount of food. I’ll have leftovers for days. I sat there and ate my dinner thoughtfully. Outside, the day drew to a close, another experience to remember.

On Staying

A few hours ago, a plane left from Addis Ababa. People packed into the cushioned seats and readied themselves for the seventeen-hour-long flight back to the United States. Someone on that plane sat down next to an empty seat. The seat was reserved for me, back in September. I was not there.

I was five hundred miles away, near my apartment in Harar. I was having a frustrating morning. No one wanted to a give a ride to a unaccompanied woman who had wet hair, no shaw, AND was wearing pants. Eventually though, I was squished into a minivan with about fifteen other people and watching the dust-colored mountains fly past the windows.

"Any Way You Bless Me" by Fred Hammond and "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by WHAM! kept playing on my ipod and it made me smile. I've been here for three months but every now and then I get this rush of feeling accompanied by the thought "Holy crud! I'm in Ethi-frickin'-opia! I'm really here!" It made me smile at the strange faces of the other passengers who watched me closely, but not directly, as we rushed towards the town of Alemaya.

As we traveled, I could feel that staying is the right choice, at least for now. If I had left now, I would have always have wondered what would have happened if I had stayed. I miss home, sometimes a lot. But I still have a lot I want to do here, and I'm pretty excited to see what happens next. I hope following God's will and not missing too much of the lives of my friends and family. But hey, it's guava season and Ethiopian Christmas is in ten days. Hopefully, I'm going on a pilgrimage tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Merry Forenji Christmas!

So we didn't go to Dire Dawa or sing for the nuns. It turns out that December 24th is the day of one of Ethiopia's biggest holidays: Nations and People's Day. So there were no buses for my choir. Here's the thing though: Our concert still rocked.

First we sang on the steps of the Administration Building, right in the center of campus. A small crowd gathered, filming us. Then a guard told us we had to leave. We sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" as we quickly walked away. We kept singing as we moved. An old man behind us clapped in rhythm while a younger man held his hands over his ears.

We stopped at the steps of a building between the nearby village and the center of campus and started singing in earnest again. The pastoralists who live in huts in the tall grass and care for the campus sheep came to watch us. During the call and response songs a group of men called back phonetically at our choir in each turn, imitating us with big smiles on their faces. My favorite moment though, had to be when a group of finely dressed Oromic dancers walked behind us. They did their traditional dance to our rendition of "Jingle Bells", waving their spears in unison. Everybody had a good time.


On Christmas Eve, I drank mulled wine and danced at friend's house. The top part of the evening occurred when the men realized that they could mix the dance to "Thriller" with their own traditional dances. It was a sight I doubt I'll get to see again.

I had my Christmas feast at a professor friend's house. She's from Cornwall and an excellent cook so we had authentic Christmas pudding at the end, with Cornish cream brought directly from England on top. She invited a family from the village over and they had a blast.

Afterwards, I went to an Indian professors house where we sang carols and tried her deep-fried treats. Her eccentric artist of a husband appeared and played festive polka tunes on a harmonica.

The didn't get many tangible gifts from this holiday season, but I got a ridiculous amount of intangible ones. It was difficult being away from my family, but I'm glad I got to see the holiday here. Merry Christmas everybody. And a happy New Year.

Green Christmas

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." I sing while dancing around with Miriam, a tiny baby. She's still underweight and for some reason the staff insist on wrapping her in at least three thick layers of clothing and a blanket, but she smiles.

We went to Dire Dawa yesterday to purchase a Christmas Chicken only to find that the shops were totally out. We'll be having Nile Perch instead.

Back at my house, I improperly reheat the beans my cook/maid left for me and make an interesting soup. The internet is working. I start volunteering at a new office at the university tomorrow. Life is good.

I miss my family. It makes me sad that even as I swayed around the infant room today there was not one holiday decoration. In fact, I don't think I've seen ANY holiday celebrations. My grandmother very sweetly sent us Christmas presents via DHL so we learned what she had sent because of the mandatory paperwork.

It is different. But where else can I we sing for the order of Mother Teresa's on Christmas Eve or have everyone tell us "Happy Christmas" but mean January 6th? Still, it would be nice if one person said "merry".

Singing in a Foreign Land

Yip yip. Duuuu-op. Snarlyip! "If you lose your hand to this, I'll never forgive you!" I think to myself just before the hyena lunges forward and takes the strip of beef off the short stick I'm holding at about eye-level. Juice from the meat runs down my hand and worries me. I don't want the dogthings to get confused. I'm crouched on a tablecloth-like fabric next to the Christian Hyenaman of Harar. He pulls another piece of meat out of a gory wicker basket and holds it over my shoulder. Two full-grown hyenas lunge at it and ram into my collarbone. It's like being hit with two, heavy, hairy, sides of beef. Under their rough coats, the hyenas are solid muscle. Oddly, the don't smell nearly as much as I thought they would.

I stand and the animals circle around me, nonthreateningly. I watch the juvenile. He's even stranger looking than the others. His upper lip curls back and he "sings" constantly as the older ones inevitably fight their way to more of the food. He sounds almost like a baby shrilly cooing.

"This girl sing like that lady!" My friend Bethlehem says to the men laying in her living room. "Sing that lady!" Bethlehem says so I sing a few bars of a very popular, considered "new" here, Celine Dion song that she dared me to learn. I receive a spattering applause and two offers of chat. We drink strong coffee. Then one of the men that I thought had dozed off turns towards us and asks, "Sing again maybe?" and I get Bethlehem to sing an Oromo song instead. We sit there in the incense-filled air and clap along.

"We want to sing out there but we don't want to." One of my "unofficial choir" members says. I ask for a show of hands and everyone agrees. There are about twenty of us. Most of the choir consists of young women who have never done any kind of performance in public. In fact, it's probably pretty fair to say that many of the people in front of me have been given that old "seen not heard" line pretty effectively throughout their lives.

An idea, perhaps the Spirit's, comes to me and I smile. "Well I'm On My Way!" I sing. It is the first line of a call and response song that I taught them. They sing the line back with gusto. "Off to Canaan Land!" I sing back, moving towards the door. Soon we are marching towards the center of campus. People join in just to see what we are doing. We sing carols in front of the campus fountain. I direct them with a pen I had in my pocket.

A policeman comes and stands behind us, just watching. They keep singing. Class is dismissed and hundreds of people walk by. They keep singing. A whistle blows. And we stop along with everyone else while the flags are lowered. A whistle blows again and motion resumes. I realize that it is twilight. They still want to sing. I feel so proud of them, it's ridiculous. I can't wait to take them to sing for the nuns and patients in Dire Dawa on the 24th.

Children in Batti and the orphanage know my name now and they know it because I sing. I sing to shut them up when they keep asking for money. I sing with them because I have nothing else to do. When I hear them call "ee-i-ee-i-oh" from "Old McDonald Had a Zoo" ("farm" didn't really work here) to each other I hope that maybe I even managed to teach them an English word or two. Sometimes they beg for song now instead of candy or birr. It is an odd sort of begging, but I don't mind it. I'm just glad I got a chance to be part of all of the music. It's nice and it's maybe even something to write a blog entry about.

Beautiful Heartbreaks

Warning: This one's a little depressing.

"Yeah!" the child cheers as she knocks the spoon away for maybe the thirtieth time. "Yeah!" I sigh and gather more corn mush on the spoon. "Yeah!" Knock. Splat.

I am sitting in a plastic chair in Mother Teresa's again. I'm attempting to feed the disabled child I have been calling Celine. I call her this because she loves to sing. She also has a much better aim then I predicted. An attendant comes by and tells me that Celine will only allow herself to be fed by a person of her choosing. Clearly, I wasn't it for today. "Yeah!" yells Celine. Splat.

I'm reassigned to another child with special needs. He likes my feeding him a bit too much. He puts his feet in my face and bites the spoon with his oversized jaw. By the time we're done, the floor and my shoes have also gotten a fair share of the meal, but the kid is happy and fed.

Meanwhile, my professor friend is having no difficulties. The child she is feeding occasionally shouts at her angerly, but then gets back to the task at hand. It was an honnor to be able to show a friend of mine around this place. She told me it made her feel humble to be healthy and whole-minded. It's true. I still think that this facility is one of the saddest, but most beautiful, places I have ever volunteered.

I started volunteering at a new place this weekend, too. Abenezer state orphanage was started by a Candadian (also named Elizabeth)and is only about a mile from my home. The majority of the children who liver there were abandonned. All have legally been declared "orphans of the state". Adoptions are rare and only come from international sources.

There is one child there, Daniel, who is probably only two or three weeks old. When I pick him up I feel like I am holding the world's most delicate flower. It's like holding baby bird, he's so small and fragile. The attendent who speaks English told me that they named the boy Daniel because he was left out for the hyenas, but survived. I never wanted to let him go.

Afterwards, I was introduced to the older children. They all stood at attention waiting for me to shake their hands. "Hello, my name is ___________. It is very nice to meet you." They all did this well except for one smiley four-year-old who kept running around me yelling "Mommy! Mommy!" and laughing.

I spent a few minutes with a woman who has leporacy the other day. She was begging in the market. She seemed incredibly happy there in a sunny patch near a patato seller and another woman seeling bark for incense.

How these places can be both so beautiful and so sad is a mystery to me. I never know what will happen next, or what exactly I'm supposed to be doing, but I know it is a blessing to be able to meet the nuns, children, and just everyday people of this place. I'm glad I got to be here.

Things Fall Into Place, Maybe

"Hey lady, buy my potatoes!" I look at the woman shouting at me. She's half asleep under a parasol. Her brightly colored dress and hijab stand out like flower petals against the orange-colored sand. I tell her "another day" in Amharic and she cackles.

Meanwhile two little girls run by kicking a round object that may have been a soccer ball at some point in time. "Chineeese! Chineeese! You from China!" They yell at me in English. It's probably what they would yell at any foreigner. Then they disappear among the tin and mud houses along the street.

I'm only a mile from my apartment, but I'd never know it if I hadn't just walked here. That's one of the things I like about the city of Harar, it can rapidly change and feel like many places (and times) at once.

Life in Harar is challenging, but I like it. I have to buy vegetables almost daily in a market that has been running for hundreds of years. Every time I go, I feel like I have just dived into a pool of people whose lives are very different from my own. It's loud, colorful, easy to get lost in, fascinating. I have walked through filthy alleyways where chickens and goats run in front of my feet and old women sell tons of beans in burlap sacks. I got lost in the part of the "plastics market" where the shacks are so close together there is very little light. There is a market that stretches for at least a half mile where it seems like everyone just sells bug-infested used clothing.

If I take the early morning and evening buses, the forty minute commute to and from my work is uneventful. I stare out the windows and watch the villages, camels, and events of other people's lives go by.

If I take the "line taxi" to or from work, God knows what will happen. I have been blessed, cursed out, proposed to, spat upon, propositioned, made fun of, made friends with, offered drugs, and been begged from on line taxis.

The first time I was in a "mosque shakedown" (no offense intended) I was riding next to a window that does not close all the way and a large man rushed my car door yelling "Allu Akbar forengi! Allu Akbar!" He friends yelled the same thing and started beating their hands on the metal of the old 1960-something model car. It was all I could do not to yell back. Now I know that this is how they collect money for the multiple mosques that are being built in the Jugol area. If everyone gives them a birr or two, the men start blessing everyone in the car or singing. This procedure has come to seem almost normal.

What I actually do at work is still in question. I'm still not officially working yet and I'm beginning to wonder if I will sign a contract with the university. It takes three months to get out of a contract and I don't know if I want to stay that long in a place that doesn't really have a role for me, at least not yet. I'm planning on traveling some too. And I'm still slated to volunteer at an orphanage in Dire Dawa. At the moment, I'm keeping my options open.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. I am happy to have a steady place to cook, eat, and sleep. There's still a lot of downtime, but I still feel like I'm having an adventure. And now I need to get back to a place to stay before the hyenas come out and play.

Perpetual Adoration at Mother Theresa's

The newest member on my personal list of heroes (and heroines) asks my father and I to attend her convent's chapel of Perpetual Adoration for an hour. After a month of very limited church it feels so nice to just sit in a chapel and pray. We pray for the time, until a new shift of nuns comes in to replace the sari-wearing nun kneeling in front of us.

During prayer, I hear the sounds of the nearby alley. I hear families talking. Children laugh and the goats and donkeys make their sounds, but it seems quiet here somehow. In front of us, a starved looking Jesus hangs on a crucifix with the words "I thirst". He looks far more like the typical resident here then my father or I do.

The lead sister returned and asked if I could play with the children. They are having physical therapy today, but she needs someone to watch the rest of a specific group. They need to be constantly monitored.

On the way to children, a mute pregnant woman that I recalled from last time found us and gestured that she wanted to show us her other baby. I remembered her older child from my previous visit. The toddler whose crib she lead us to was not her baby. She proudly showed us this and three other sleeping children. "They are mine!" She gestured. "I love them."

"These are not your children." Said the lead nun. "But I am sure that you do love them."

The pregnant woman beamed and then wished us adieu. She had just wanted to show off the children.

Laughing, the lead sister took me to a poorly-lit room with seven children with profound developmental disabilities. They sat in plastic chairs and strollers, often tied into place with a white band of fabric under their arms. One child, who appeared to have Downs Syndrome as well as other difficulties, shrieked rhythmically and banged on his chair. The lead sister went over and started banging the rhythm with him and turning it into a song. The boy calmed down. "He's a great drummer." She said, "And look at this girl's smile!" The girl she led me to had cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and a great laugh.

"Their mothers leave these children at our gate." The nun said. "We raise them from infants. They are the true children of God. Comfort them for an hour. Be Christ to them. Come back any time you want to. God bless." and then she left me.

Immediately, a small, drooling child slipped out of his cloth band and nearly fell out of his stroller. I caught him, dried him, and retied him into place. He "slipped" again, to the same cramped and nearly out of stroller position, about every seven minutes while I was there.

The laughing girl spoke gibberish to me. I realized at one point that she was spoke in the regular lilts of iambic pentameter. "You're creating poetry for God." I said, and she laughed at life.

Every now and then one of the children would start shrieking or crying and I would go over and rub their heads, hold their hands, sing songs. When nothing else was happening, I would circle them and wave off the ever-present waves of flies.

Mentally "normal" children soon came by to listen to me sing and prattle to the kids in the dim room. We practiced English greetings. They kissed my hands.

There were cribs in the corner and a baby awoke and stood in one of them. I picked him up and walked with him while I helped the other children. When one of the attendants came by I asked who was supposed to take care of the little one. "You." She said. "He happy when you carry. You stay him." So I carried the baby too.

By the time the hour was up, I was tired. It was worth it though.

Later, we went shopping and got delicacies like butter, cheese, bread that isn't flat, and fruit juice. Beggars on the way back told me that they were hungry. I handed out small bills to them. I just couldn't walk around with a bag of fancy food while they asked for help. I didn't give them any of the food, and I'll probably (guiltily) ignore them next time, but hopefully I helped a little today.

When I gave an old, old woman one of the bills she pointed to Heaven and smiled. There was an infant tied to her back. I wondered what her story was.

On the way back to campus and my home here, I thought about the children at the hospital and the nuns who constantly pray and watch over them; how all of us are true children of God. All of us are perpetually seen and adored.

What a world. I'm glad I got to see this part of it.

Adventures in African Health Care

Disclaimer: Okay, so I'm recording this here because I'm trying to keep this blog at least somewhat accurate in recalling my time here and this was a somewhat important event. That being said, I got sick. So if you don't want to hear about it, go watch this clip of a kitten fighting a watermelon. Awww, so cute!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vmoZEaN_-o&feature=feedrec_grec_index

So yeah, I got food severe poisoning. I know what caused it. It set in over the course of about three hours. At five on Halloween, I'm making jokes about not having brought a decent costume. At eight I was ill. I declared myself unable to stay conscious and breathe properly at about eleven.

I paged my father, who knows people in the emergency clinic. He came to get me to take me to the facility only to find that I was having difficulty walking. We managed to get to the clinic and wake up a guard. They got me settled on the one bed that they have in the emergency room while a health officer showed up. The officer was one of the more exotic looking people I have met here. He was tall, had tribal scaring, and wore what looked like a tablecloth around his head. He was also kind, competent, and very good at managing a complex situation.

The officer prescribed a huge IV, a few shots in the IV connector thing of something polysyllabic, and glucose. My father left with an interpreter to go to the pharmacy for the supplies since there was no medicine in the health center. They woke up the pharmacist who sleeps there and came back with the materials very quickly. The IV didn't hurt, but felt very chilly.

I was very cold so a blanket was found for me. The blanket had fleas, but I didn't care. Everything else was very sanitary. I started to feel better after about fifteen minutes. I went home about two hours later.

I was completely dehydrated and still very actively ill when I went to the clinic. I don't like to think about what would have happened if such a good system wasn't in place. I am extremely thankful for all of the people who assisted me.

My health is almost back to normal now, although I will have to make some pretty important decision regarding my diet, at least in the immediate future. I know what made me sick ( a special "holiday treat" from the staff here) so at least I can avoid that. It blows my mind that the price of the medicine used to re-route what my body was doing and rehydrate it to a working level cost a total of US$5. What an adventure! I hope I never, ever, do it again.

Irony Tastes Like Frustration Flavored Candy

Six months ago I was telling immigrants that they needed to get worker's permits to legally work in the United States. Now I have to apply for a worker's permit to legally work in Ethiopia. I feel like this calls for some Alantis Morissette.

(and yeah, I realize that 90% of the situations in this song do not actually qualify as "ironic", but that's ironic in itself, don'tcha think?)




UPDATE: Barring some completely unforeseen event, the Ethiopian government has granted me a "green card" that is good for the next ten months. Thanks Ethiopia!

Mother Teresa's Home

It was one of those things that couldn't have been planned. Dad and I were in Dire Dawa, a hard-times desert city near the Somalian border where we frequently have work.

We went to mass, but Dad couldn't enter the church because of all of the incense and I couldn't properly wrap my hair for worship. So we stood outside and listened to the beautiful singing and chanting. I stared into the darkened sanctuary and saw that Mary had been wrapped in white cloth too.

We left when the people left. On the way out, we passed two very short nuns. We asked them were they worked and they said "Mother Teresa's with our 500 patients". We couldn't imagine a 500 patient facility within walking distance, but then nuns assured us that it was there. We should come visit some time. So we did, about three hours later.

By this point, we had picked up a family friend, I'll call him Ali, who is a very devout Muslim. He had been to the compound before and helped direct our driver there. "But please be careful." He told us "There are mad people there."

We arrived near the compound and the driver said he wasn't going farther, so we got out and walked to the big, steel doors that said "Mother Teresa's No Photographs of Video Filming." A guard opened the doors and then closed them behind us. We were standing in a sunny courtyard. A few people, obviously mentally-ill, wandered around talking to themselves or shaking. A couple of people wandered towards us. The guard went to find the nuns while we talked to the men.

I remember one boy, they don't do birthdays here so I can't tell you his age, but I'd guess about sixteen, who was very friendly. He would say something to use and then his gaze would wander off and he would stare at the air around us like it was suddenly full of dancing lights, a big smile on his face. Then, a moment later, he would be pleasantly surprised to see us there, still speaking with him.

"What do the nuns do?" Ask Ali
"They clothe me, they feed me, they take care of me." The boy said slowly. And then he smiled at the sky.

The nuns arrived, led by a European nun who I think was the convent leader. She talked about the compound as a hospital for the cases no one else would take. They come from all over the country. They come from off the streets.

She told Ali that they were looking for a health officer, Ali's field, and he immediately said he would help find someone for them. The head nun assigned us a guide, a large man in scrubs, who lead us from room to room.

Walking by the open door rooms, It was immediately clear that all of the patients here were men, that they were sorted by age and illness, and that everyone was clean and given their own bed. Different categories wore different pajamas. We were lead almost immediately into a room where the men where wearing red pajamas. "This is our
room for any type of multiple drug resistant TB" said our guide and mentally I was screaming "Eeeeek! Don't breathe!" but I nodded and stood next to a few of the patients. We also saw the Type 1 and Type 2 TB rooms and then I discretely used enough hand sanitizer to smell like alcohol all day.

We were shown the area where the violently mentally ill are kept. One ill man attempted to shake my hand and the guard very roughly shoved him away.

We went to the the HIV room and sat with the people there for a while. We went to a room full of old men where they all reached out their hands to us and we went from bed to bed, "Hello, how are you? Are you peaceful? Thank you. I am peaceful." as is the Ethiopian way, shaking warm fingers that felt like sinewed twigs.

I asked to see where the women where housed. The guard explained that normally he did not show this part of the compound, but since I was female, he would. He took Ali, Dad, and myself across the road to another compound. Here we first found a massive kitchen filled with gas-powered injera cookers and USAID grain bags. Then we saw the smaller facilities for the women. These were not quite as nice as the men's quarters, but they weren't terrible. Two male guards talked near the gate.

Again, we went through a jandice wards (geriatric and regular) and TB wards. We were shown the location for mental ill women but were not taken there. We glimpsed the ward for women who are mentally ill, TB positive, AND pregnant simultaneously. I closed my eyes for a second of prayer.

"And of course" Our guide said with a shrug, "We have children."

They did have children. Physically disabled and mentally ill children lay in large cribs. But the kids that got to me the most were the, for lack of a better term, "normal" children. These kids were children of the female patients. They didn't have enough clothing. There were no educational activities for them. They seemed bored out of their minds and I don't blame them. But it was better than being a street orphan.

On the way back, we walked through another geriatric ward. An incredibly thin woman grabbed my hand with a startling amount of strength and said something to me earnestly. All I understood was "thank you".

We were shown a garden before we left. It was a new project. It had a professional gardener who had done his job well and now the desert was blooming with vegetables and fruit trees. I walked through the garden and thought about the women and there children. I remember how many of the patients were washing clothing, or talking to each other, often without words. I thought about the old, old woman who had grabbed my hand. This place was hardly a ghetto, but "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" was playing in my head.

"Is this not a beautiful plac?" Said our guide, breathing in the garden air.
"When we die." Said Ali "God will ask us 'What did you do with my blessed ones, the ones I sent you to care for?' He will mean people like this. I will come back if only for that."

I know I'll go back to volunteer too. It is a beautiful place. There's so much sunlight and air there, among the dying people. The children were so happy to see us that I was afraid one child would have a seizure she was laughing and cheering so hard. Just sitting next to people made a difference. The nuns say they look forward to my going back. So do I.


If I Never Saw Another Butterfly
Attr. Celeste Raspanti

So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps, if the sun’s tears
Could sing against a white stone…
Such a yellow is carried lightly
way up high.
It went away.
I’m sure, because it looked to kiss
The world goodbye.

For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Pent up inside this ghetto.
But I have found my people here,
The dandelions care for me,
And the white chestnut branches in the yard.
Only I never saw another butterfly.

That was the last one.
Butterflies don’t live in here,
In the ghetto.

Unique Solutions from a Unique Place

Disclaimer: These are not meant to be cruel, ethnocentric, etc. They are simply actual situations I've seen here and find interesting. Enjoy

PROBLEM: You lost the key to a lock.

SOLUTION: Try every key you own on the lock, even the ones bigger than the lock itself. Sigh when none of them work. Physically locate the maintenance person. He'll be an older man in a greasy blue coverall. He'll have a hammer in his shirt pocket and prefer to speak a tribal language you don't speak. Have the guy hit the lock with the hammer multiple times. Cheer when the lock disappears, then forget about said lock. Maintenance guy will then hammer a nail about five centimeters above the door at an angle. Turn this nail to the left to close the door, to the right to open. Hope that any potential thieves are really short.

PROBLEM: You, the campus cooks,have left over vegetables.

SOLUTION: This happens almost every day, so do what you do every time. Mix this vegetable matter, whatever it is, with white rice. Serve it cold as a salad for lunch. Consider how you can use left-over salad in supper's salad by adding more vegetables. Serve whatever left as part of an omlette for breakfast. By the way, when those white women don't show up for dinner, it's because they have the runs. Don't worry, it's probably not your fault.

PROBLEM: There's an intoxicated goat pissing on that stash you were planning to sell here.

SOLUTION: Yeah, common problem. Stupid goats. Growing and selling chat (drug grown in eastern Africa. The leaves are slowly chewed. Not considered illegal.) is hard work. Especially when you'd rather, you know, sit around chewing chat.
Make kicking gestures at the goat and yell until he leaves. If he's had a lot of beer and chat today, this may take some effort. Once the goat leaves, gather your chat in the burlap cloth you were sitting on. Hail a line taxi (minibus). Throw the chat on top of the line taxi rather insecurely and ride to the next town with a decent market. Look dramatically out the window every time the driver takes a sharp turn. Sigh when you see loose strands of chat go flying.

PROBLEM: You've managed to get a very hungry lion into a very small cage.

SOLUTION: Contact the agricultural college. Get them to sell you bull heads, the ones with the really big horns that would give Spanish people nightmares. Fling this at the lion. Train the lion to trust you. Learn to pet the lion and have it lick your face. Keep flinging bull heads. Laugh when that foreigner refuses to pet the lion, but congratulates you on keeping all of your fingers. By the way, that foreigner, she blames you for the reason she's vegetarian again.

PROBLEM: You want to be friends with foreigners.

SOLUTION: Yell "Forenji, Forenji!" at them and chase them. That always seems to get some sort of reaction. Failing that, grab their elbow briefly and say "You, you, you!" with a meaningful look in your eye. The common response to this seems to be "Oh, um, hello!".

First Sunday at Haramaya

I got lost this morning. There is nothing surprising in that statement. Haramaya University is a big campus and I simply turned left when I should have turned right. Still, I'm glad I made my mistake.


I wound up among the student dorms. I found the tucked away place where undergraduates pump water out of the ground and into cement sinks where they beat their colorful robes until the dust is worked out. I found huts made out of sticks and undergowth, smoking with the smells of cooking coffee, injera and rice.



Lunch was lovely. Dad and I joined two of the VSO volunteers in their apartment home for pot roast, rice, roasted potatoes, and plum wine. Despite the fact that there was no running water in the house, everything was clean, well-prepared, and delicious.

After lunch, I walked the half-mile road to the gate where the University ends and the town of Bati begins. My tutor was waiting there with her sister. I had walked through the immediately adjacent town of Bati before, but I had stuck to the main roads. My tutor quickly led me off them.

We passed really old walled streets where boys wrestled and little girls cheered them on. Herds of donkeys twitched their ears as we passed. People yelled greetings in at least three languages from their doorways. Everywhere we passed, the word "forenji" (foreigner)was muttered, whispered, shouted, or called.

Finally, we were at a bright blue house with a pile of shoes and broken stone in front of it. There was some confusion here(Forenjis never seem to take off their shoes, but clearly cleanliness called for it.) as I took of my Tevas. The inside of the room was so smoky that it stung my eyes. An old woman, two middle aged women, a teenager, and two todlers all stared at me as I entered the one-bedroom house. There was no water, but music videos were playing in the corner.

I was sat, leaning, against cushions in the front of the room, clearly the guest of honor. I was presented with a soda, a bottle of water, and cookies. As we spoke, I wrote down new words and the four year old kept throwing a 1 Birr note at me to see if I'd throw it back.

The other baby woke up and clammored around while I learned to count to ten and say the days of the week. The videos showed the same women dancing with the same men to songs that sounded quite a bit like each other. The coffee was cooked over charcoal and ground with a three-foot piece of rebarb. It was strong, thick, and sweetened by sugar from a paper cone.

Walking back to the campus, several of the boys yelled "forenji" at me and I surprised all of them by yelling back "habersha!" (local). It got a great laugh. So now I'm the funny one.

Yeah, I'm still as foreign as the day is long. I can crack a joke now, and I've got my flea bites, and I've had coffee ceremony, and I can apparently (albeit mistakenly) climb the hills without gasping from the altitude. So maybe, maybe, I'm just starting to fit in. A little. Possibly. Sort of. We'll see.

A moment of suspension, but not suspense

A few of the children of Haramaya's matenance staff and some kids from the near-by village of Batti have lined up against a fence to confirm a rummor. Yep, it's true, the white people float. Down below them, in the swimming pool, I and two VSO (like an international Peace Corps) volunteers splash and swim from side to side of the uncrowded deep end. I do a cannonball to gasps. Soon after a young Etiopian man copys the act, only his is much more impressive because he has to work up his courage. He dives in and stays under the water until he's reached the shallow end, since I don't think he can tread. I can barely hold my breath underwater here at all. I blame it on the altitute. So I float on my back as Ethiopian music blasts and people chatter.

I am officially in a state of "sitting pretty". I have my housing, food (to a degree. Hmm, cold injera and egg.), toliet, shower (to a degree. Yeay, cold water in the middle of the bathroom), telivision, and internet provided to me for free. Essentially, my schedule looks like I'm retired. It is unknown what job I will have, but for now, I'm allowed to go and do what I want. I'm certainly not complaining. I'm unpacked and happy.

On the other side of the fence, women stand. In my bathing suite, I walk past a woman dressed in several layers of cloth and holding an old metal jar. She fills this jar again and again from the public outdoor pre-pool shower that some rather beautiful men are *ahem* actually using as a shower.

She hands her jar to the women who fill a jerrycan. It's a reminder that the water is not working or available on all or even most of the campus. Somewhere, these women will use the water to cook rice over hidden fires. The kids will ask me for money and play tag around the statues instead of going to school.

They smile a lot, these women who cook and clean for us and then have their children ramble around the university because they can't afford to educate them. It's not ideal by far, but I hear them laughing and I'd like to think that they are happy too. Floating in their own way.