Another Day in Paradise

I realize that it has been two months since my last entry. So featured above is some traditional Awi zone music as a token of my apology.

Let's start at the finish line. I have just finished celebrating the Ethiopian New Year or Addees amet, but also referred to as inkutata, with my former host family in Butajira on September 12th. They made me promise to come back and celebrate the New Year with them or else we would no longer be friends. Pretty high stakes.

So some fellow volunteers and I made plans to meet up there and celebrate together. My host family wasn't really having that, they essentially held me and another volunteer hostage. Instead of using armed weaponry they used delicious food and drinks to force me to stay. I even got my old room back.

Here is the evidence:

What you see here is iyb (cheese), doro wat (chicken 'stew' but not really stew), kay wat (lit. red stew, but once again not actually stew, made with meat and spices), kitfo (the most famous Ethiopian food, which is raw meat, butter, and burbere), and tibs (meat slices, in this case sheep). 

They are such cruel hostage takers that they even forced us to smile for this photo. We are wearing habesha libs or traditional, hand made Ethiopian clothes. My shirt is a gift they gave me before I left for site. Alex (the person in the photo who is not me) was given her dress by my host sister Hiwot to wear since she hadn't her own habesha libs. 

We had originally booked bus tickets back to Bahir Dar for Sunday with Selam Bus, which is a very comfortable coach bus that goes very quickly. But because this would mean we would have left Butajira Saturday, before the festivities ended, my host brother Thomas cancelled our tickets. 

You might think that would have made us angry. Maybe even demand an apology. Nope, that's thinking like a Westerner. Thomas cancelled our tickets and made us celebrate with the family, because us being there meant something to them. My friends Alex and Christine helped my sisters make bunna, chop tomatoes, garlic, and a BAJILLION onions (approximately). I aided and abetted the killings and carvings of two perfectly innocent chickens, and a large long horned sheep. 

Do you know how difficult it is to lift a 90 pound long horned sheep by his hooves onto a branch in order to carve it? Well, it's difficult.

Then the next morning my brother Thomas, who cancelled the tickets, got us a ride with Mario Andretti from Butajira to Addis, then another ticket towards home, and a bag of cookies and mango juice for the ride. We used this bag to make many friends in the spirit of the Ethiopian New Year.

Pictured here is Hayme and Tejiba, the Health Officer and coffee house seratenya. Many people have asked me about my actual work, so I will try to give an account of that here. The role of a health volunteer in Ethiopia requires a lot of patience. The consensus from Africa-based Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) is that Ethiopia has (perhaps) the best food, the worst harassment, and has the least busy schedules.

This is a bit of a hasty generalization, because there are many Ethiopia PCVs who have sites with only potatoes, no harassment, and they work constantly. For me, it has certainly been a struggle to get projects started. My role is to find out ways and means for my community to improve its health status. 

Primarily, my town has issues with sanitation, hygiene, malaria, and nutrition. Consequent on the sanitation issues there is many febrile illnesses and gastrointestinal issues. So on paper my goals are easy:

1. Make my town open defecation free (ODF) 
2. Conduct nutrition and WaSH (Water Sanitation and Hygiene) sessions with mothers in the rural health posts
3. Ensure use of Long Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLINs), especially for households with kids 5 and under. Children 5 and under account for roughly 90% of malaria mortalities

All these goals require actual community members to own and implement the solutions themselves. Thus I have been trying to convince members of my health center to work on these things on top of their existing workload. It is tough to sell, since I am not offering them funding or the possibility of promotions within the Ministry of Health. 

Thus far I have conducted one nutrition session with recent mothers in a rural health post, started a permagarden in the health center as a platform for future sessions, and worked with the health center on ensuring distribution and utilization of bed nets. Work has been slow and I hope for things to pick up soon. Hayme has promised to help me conduct more sessions in more health posts once summer and the rain stops, and it becomes more manageable to access these remote locations. 

Another way for volunteers to be active is camps. I was a part of Camp GROW in Addis Kidam two weeks ago. I brought three students (2 female, 1 male) to the camp. Camps can be an incredible opportunity for students. Mine came from a rural area and where able to share ideas with each other, learn about nutrition, leadership, English, soil science, and simple hygienic tools like tippy taps (see my Facebook cover photo). 

Above, students learned urban gardening, or using waste materials to provide plants with a great environment for living and thriving. 

Since I have already written y'all a book, I will fast forward by providing a few more photos and short descriptions.

My late mother's 51st birthday was August 27th. Last year I ran 50 miles and this year I was not going to run 51. Instead I made a list of 51 memories of her. It was one of the tougher days to be alone, but making this list made me feel connected with her in a very real way. And as was the case during her cancer treatments, I allowed myself less than 15 minutes of crying.

 Lawz shay or hot, sugary peanut butter in a glass. This treat is perhaps my favorite thing in Ethiopia. I go to Gimjabet, my woreda town, once a week and go to a small shay bet (tea house) for it every week. I am certainly a dembenya or regular customer.

My health center's shay bet. A great place for staff and patients to hang out and relax at an otherwise stressful place. Above is (from left to right) ?, Lamrot, and Wasihun. I'm sorry I don't know the lady on the left's name, she's a new midwife, and I'm constantly learning new names and words, SO BACK OFF!

Bahir Dar, or The City of Dreams as no one other than my blog readers know it as. This is a great, beautiful place for respite when times at site get hard. Honestly though, I spent about 2 months without leaving my site and became very comfortable there. Drinking plenty of bunna (coffee), lawz shays, and tachewat'ing (lit. playing, meaning joking or conversating with the people in front of you) helped me maintain whatever semblance of sanity it is that I have left.

Thanks for reading!