Epiphanies, Holy Water, and Wrestling? Yes, please.

Dehan Dikum!!!

How is everyone doing? Good, I hope. It’s that time for another update of life here in Ethiopia, and what a week it has been!

Last time we chatted (or more accurately, I chatted at you), was last Monday afternoon. Tuesday started like any other day. I went to the office, sat around for a little while before I got bored and decided to work on my CNA at home. As I may have mentioned before, my primary objective for the first three months of my time here at site is to conduct a CNA, or Community Needs Assessment. This is a report where I do a lot of research and interview community members in order to assess the environmental needs of the community and come up with potential projects for the next two years. The report is very important for helping me integrate into my community and to get an idea of what I’ll be doing in the future. On my way home, I decided to check my P.O. Box, but, as usual, it was empty. Imagine my surprise then, when I got home and my friend called to tell me I had a package! I almost ran back to the Post Office in my excitement and, sure enough, there was a package from my parents that hadn’t been processed yet. Including stuff in the second package I got from them yesterday, I got candy (skittles, sour punch straws, gushers, fruit snacks, air heads), chips, seasonings, and much more. You can imagine how excited I was to finally be receiving mail!

After my high finally wore off, I felt inspired and got to work on my CNA. I’m still in the research phase, so I wrote up the interview I was going to use to gather my information. I brought the questions to the office the next day and went over them with my counterpart and supervisor, who both thought the questions were thorough and comprehensive. I proceeded to interview my counterpart that same day and just like that my data collection had started. That afternoon I also visited the prepatory school again. It felt good to have accomplished something since the week would be cut short by the holiday celebrated most in this area: Timkat.

“Timkat” means epiphany. The holiday celebrates the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, where the dove descended from heaven and a voice from the heavens exclaimed, “This is my beloved son, in who I am well pleased” and everyone around realized that Jesus was more than an ordinary man. It is an important holiday all over Ethiopia, but it seems to be especially important and celebrated in Southern Tigray. Celebrations began late Thursday for some, and by Friday the holiday was in full swing with the biggest celebrations on Saturday. Andrew, the volunteer just south of me in the small town of Endodo came up for the holiday. Friday celebrations consisted mostly of a trip down to the church for service in the morning, where we listened to the priests preach in the spiritual language of Ge’ez and were sprayed with blessed water (to celebrate the baptism). The rest of the day was taken up by lots of socializing and, of course, lots of eating. A big topic of conversation was Saturday, which promised dancing in the streets, lots of celebrating, and traditional wrestling. Saturday did not disappoint.

I woke up Saturday morning super excited about what was to come. I had decided I wanted some Ethiopian clothes to blend in better for the holiday, so I decided to buy the traditional Raya outfit (Raya is this area of Southern Tigray) which consists of a gildim and boffet… The outfit is awesome and I will upload pictures of it to my Facebook soon. After dressing in my traditional clothing, I met my friend Getachew and began heading down the main road to the church at the northern end of town to begin celebrating…. We didn’t get very far. Everyone in Maychew was coming up from that church in a huge dancing procession on their way to St. Mikael’s church on the other end of town. Everyone was dancing, singing, and otherwise having a good time. It was the biggest celebration I’d seen so far in Ethiopia and it was amazing fun. I took videos and pictures, which will, of course, be uploaded to Facebook as well. The rest of the day was just spent dancing, eating, celebrating, and religious celebrations. I didn’t get a chance to see the traditional wrestling, unfortunately, but there’s always next year for that. By 6 in the evening I was exhausted and decided to skip the concert and hang out with some of the fam at home.

I thought I’d be able to rest up on Sunday, but then I remembered that I had a wedding to attend! I’d been invited to one by a friend and of course I wanted to go. The wedding ceremonies here are more of a celebration than a solemn ceremony like in the US. On the morning of the wedding, two parties are prepared, one at the house of the bride and the other at the house of the groom. The bride is in her house until the groom comes to pick her up in a huge procession of cars sometimes that day. When the groom arrives to pick up the bride, they have the first party complete with dancing, food, and celebrations. Once they have had enough there, they all pile in the cars and proceed to drive to the grooms’ house. They drive all through the town, honking the cars and letting as many people as possible know they are wedding. From there, they arrive at the grooms’ house for the second party, where they eat more, dance more, and celebrate even more. A short and private ceremony is held where the rings are exchanged and the promises made, and then it’s back to celebrating. Interestingly, the bride looks very glum and upset the entire day. In Ethiopia the bride is expected to be sad at her wedding, because while she is indeed starting a new life, she is also leaving her family behind and is expecting to mourn for this loss accordingly. Whenever the happy new couple has had enough, they head out for their wedding night. Traditionally, there are more customs associated with this part of the wedding, but those are a little graphic for this blog. If you’re interested in what happens there, ask me about it sometime.

And that just about brings us to today. Work has been a little slow because my counterpart is in the field, so I have just been preparing for more interviews and exploring more of Maychew. I seem to find a new corner of the city every day. As always, I miss and love everyone back in the states terribly. Hit me up whenever you have time and thanks for reading!

Ciao!

Celebrations, Trials, and More Celebrations

Hello again!

So I apologize for missing last week, but honestly it’s not a big deal. Besides a couple major events, the past two weeks have been relatively calm.

I last left you on the week of Ethiopian Christmas. Wednesday through Friday were pretty uneventful. I went to the office every morning where I prepared for my installation meeting the following week. A couple of representatives from Peace Corps were coming to “install” me into my community, which is where they give an hour long presentation that explained why I was here and how I fit into the community. It was an important meeting, because, since the counterpart Peace Corps had trained left before I got to my site, no one in the office really understood what I was doing. After a couple of arguments over both minor and major details, we managed to secure a venue and invited most of the people we wanted to come and I deemed my work week successful. On Friday I had some stomach issues, but those cleared up by that afternoon (I blew chunks) and I went to bed excited for the next day.

Ethiopian Christmas did not disappoint. While there were no extravagant gifts given or crazy parties (at least in my compound), the food and socializing was just as elaborate as in the states. A chicken and sheep that were bought the day before had disappeared almost overnight (I only caught the end of the sheep slaughter), and so I ate durowot (chicken), dulet, (sheep intestines/stomach), and tibs (rest of the sheep meat) until I thought I would burst. These are dishes that are served almost exclusively on special occasions, and as you can expect they were quite delicious. While chicken was a regular part of my diet in the states, I rarely get it here since I’d have to buy and slaughter a whole chicken if I wanted some. As I mentioned, the meat is special here and so it isn’t regularly served in any restaurants or sold at the butcher. Besides eating, we relaxed in the compound and went out a few times for juice and a delicious peanut butter tea. Overall a very enjoyable holiday, without stress or struggle…. Except for the nosebleeds that is. I forgot to mention that I also contracted some sort of upper respiratory tract infection that caused me to have a super bloody nose that would occasionally bleed profusely for a few minutes at a time.

The next few days went just as relaxing. I finished preparations for the meeting and my infection cleared up by Monday, so by Wednesday I was in high spirits. I woke up Thursday morning ready for my big meeting, dressed up nicely, headed to the office and called my counterpart…. Only to discover that he was 18km away and wasn’t going to make the meeting. To make matters worse over half of the people I invited were also abroad and couldn’t come, and the room we had set aside for the meeting was never officially set up. 10 minutes before the meeting was going to start I had no room, only a handful of people, and only very light control over the extreme frustration bubbling inside of me. Just as I gave up and resigned myself to disaster, however, my supervisor came to the rescue and secured a completely different room and invited extra people to the meeting. The meeting went extremely successfully and the lunch Peace Corps paid for afterward was delicious. Later on that day, two of my Peace Corps friends who were on their way elsewhere stopped in my town for the night, and so Thursday turned out to be a good day indeed.

The rest of the weekend was very relaxing, and so I decided to try my hand at cooking. While I didn’t fail miserably, the meals definitely left something to be desired. I don’t have very many spices, so most of what I cooked turned out good, but boring. I tried though, and I am determined to be a good cook once I leave Ethiopia. After my pitiful attempts at cooking all weekend, I was extremely excited about my invitation from the VSO volunteer in my town to a campfire where they would be roasting two sheep. I was really looking forward to this event all weekend, and it definitely did not disappoint. We ate, talked, danced, and just had a really good time for hours. I got the chance to meet a lot of the VSO volunteer’s colleagues on the campus he works at, plus a few surprise ferenjis! These four were from the Philippines, and while most of them were leaving after a few days there was one that would be staying for about a year. I also learned of a German girl working at the Catholic school in town, and just like that I discovered more ferenjis than I ever new existed in my little town of Maychew. It’s always exciting to meet people from all over the world when you’re travelling, and I suspect we will all get along great. Overall, it was a VERY good wrap-up to a great weekend.

That’s all I have for now, but be looking out for another update next week! …Or if I’m being honest, maybe the week after. Love and miss you all, and leave a comment below. Also, if you have a skype account send me a message on faceboook and maybe we can chat sometime!

Happy New Year! What Will 2012 Bring? Stay Tuned to Find Out!

Happy New Year!!!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it is now 2012 and the wonderfulness that was 2011 has come to a close. 2011 was full of many important changes in my life, the most dramatic of which included graduating college and then leaving my friends and family to come live in Ethiopia. It’s weird to think it, but with my two year commitment here I probably won’t live in America at all this entire year. It’s not like I’ve never gone a whole year without America (considering I lived in Germany for 7 seven years), but it’s been a long time and I never really considered the idea before.

At any rate, another not busy week has gone by in Ethiopia with adventures and free time galore. Last week was my first attempt at starting to settle in and it went…. Interestingly. Setting up my house is something I have been taking my time with, buying one or two necessities every day, and my pantry is slowly starting to fill. Of course, that doesn’t mean much since I didn’t have a clue what to cook with the few things I’ve managed to assemble. I’ve been doing pretty well off of bananas, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, eating out a little, and every once in a while braving the kitchen. I haven’t gotten most of the supplies needed to really cook until recently, so last week I decided to make spaghetti. That went ok, except that I didn’t make enough to really cover the pasta so it was a little dry. Either way I was pretty proud of myself.

Things on the work front have been even slower, but I’m definitely starting to make progress. I visited the preparatory school last Wednesday where I met the environmental club teachers and practiced English with some of the schools. Thursday I was assigned a new counterpart (yay!) and we came up with an action plan and got to know each other a little bit. Tomorrow, I plan on returning to the school and starting the prep for my installation meeting (which is where Peace Corps comes and explains what I’m doing here) next Thursday. Overall, not too bad.

The big events of the week were this past weekend and today actually. This past weekend was New Year’s obviously, and I joined up with volunteers Alamatta to the south of here to celebrate. I actually left Thursday afternoon and spent the night in Korem before heading to Alamatta on Friday, and it was a really great time. We cooked together a lot, and they gave me my first real cooking lessons here. I learned how to make tortillas from scratch, stir fry, French fries and shiro (a local Ethiopian food). Not too impressive to most people, but this was a major accomplishment for a guy who spent most of his college career living off of Chef Boyardee, box dinners, and takeout. The few things I did know how to make (mostly just chili, tacos, spaghetti) are much tougher to cook here considering the difficulty in getting meat (and by that I mean I am still terrified to go to the butcher) and the fact I don’t have a meat grinder. I used to be irked by the corporate America Wal-Mart symbolizes… Now I find myself wondering what it would be like to walk down those hallowed aisles again, picking out my favorite artery clogging junk foods and drooling over the heart-stopping, greasy packaged delicacies…

But I digress. New Year’s was great fun nonetheless and me and my four other volunteers brought in the New Year with poker and some delicious beverages. After the countdown we all promptly fell asleep in a very anti-climactic moment but relaxing welcome to the new year.

Today, was anything but anti-climactic. It was a small holiday here in Ethiopia (one of the many days dedicated to saints) and I celebrated with a friend. We watched the processional full of dancing and singing people on the way to the church and then joined them there. We listened to the pastor talk, watched people wash in water believed to have special healing powers, and laughed at the ferenjis (foreigners) who were so much more obvious than me and my Peace Corps friend visiting. Afterwards, we ate lunch and talked for a little while before I decided to mosey on over to the school. I was intercepted by a coworker I thought was going to give me a ride, but instead drove with me and a few others along an incredibly scary dirt road (Ethiopian version of the roller coaster) where I had ANOTHER lunch and more talking. By the time I got home an hour or so later I was pretty tired from my day and just relaxed for the next few hours.

It’s only Tuesday, but there’s a lot to look forward to this week. Work is steadily picking up and this Saturday is actually the Ethiopian Christmas, which is sure to mean a very interesting and crazy weekend for me. Look for my update next week to see how my first major Ethiopian holiday goes! Until then, love and miss you guys as always and feel free to drop me comments here, Facebook, or e-mail at any time! I have lots of free time to respond. See ya later!