Pinch me.
Somebody freaking pinch me.
I am currently sitting
in Addis Ababa the capital of Ethiopia writing about my first week in the Peace
Corps.
Is this real life?
Seriously though I cannot believe this is my life
right now.
So lets start at the beginning. I landed right around a week
ago in this beautiful country. The first few days were spent drinking copious
amounts of buna (coffee for those who didn’t become fluent in Amharic over
night….aka me) and learning the framework for our projects. The majority of the
time we spend in lecture at the hotel. The first venture out was to walk to the
Peace Corps office but it wasn’t too noteworthy. Friday night was the first
night we were given the chance to go out to dinner with a few of the current
volunteers. We were broken down into groups and given a choice where we wanted
to go. Naturally I picked the group that when the farthest and required the use
of public transportation. Now let me just clarify something real fast for you.
Public transportation has no comparison in the states. The only way I can think
to describe it is 20 people piled into a minivan that was made to seat 8-9
people at most. In Ethiopia it is an urban legend that opening the windows in a
moving vehicle spreads TB. In the western world we know the opposite to be
true. So just imagine your first time riding a bus where someone is sitting on
your lap, its 70+ degrees, you only know how to say the word for coffee in the
language, and the bus driver is yelling at the only Amharic speaking member of
your group trying to charge her 3x the amount it should cost for the trip
because we are all Ferenji. It was just a situation that you have to sit back
and laugh. To make this trip even more adventurous the restaurant where a reservation was made for the group of us to eat decided to do a Valentines day special, meaning we couldn't eat there. So we moved on and got some food. The next morning we had to be up at the crack of dawn. THE CRACK OF DAWN is not an understatement. around 4:30 am we were eating and getting ready to head off to our demistification trip.
My group was one of the lucky groups that were sent to a region that was far enough away that we had to fly. A 45 minute plane ride got us to the city of Bahar Dar. In Bahar Dar we meet up with the girl whose site we would be visiting. We stopped for lunch at a local restaurant.
This is where we will pause for a slight lesson on things that could happen in Ethiopia.
Although the people of Ethiopia are extremely kind and generous they also tend to be a bit shale we say..explosive. It wasn't until Kirsten (whose site we were visiting) was blocking my head from a chair that almost smacked me that I truly understood this. Our waitress had gotten in a fight with her boyfriend that went from yelling to a chair being picked up and swung in a matter of 45 seconds. Shortly after this fight broke out it was over and everything was normal again. A short 3 hour bus trip later and we were in the city of Gimjabet. This is the town that we would be demistified about the Peace Corps experience in. Shortly upon arriving in the town I quickly grew to love it. The people were kind and there was virtually zero harassment. After eating some dinner we walked to the top of this hill side to watch the sunset. It was absolutely breath taking.
The next morning we woke up and had some delicious pancakes. After that we ventured off to Lake Zengena for a hike. Lake Zangena is said to have the devil living in the water. All I can say is damn the devil picked an amazing spot.
The first picture is of the lake that we hiked around. The second picture is the view from the hill of the lake looking into town. We spent the rest of the day returning to town eating some dinner, drink some Ethiopian beer and sleep. Breakfast the next morning was an interesting start to the day. We had breakfast at the restaurant next to our hotel. The owner came out and insisted on taking our picture. After taking a group picture of the 6 of us he insisted that he be in a picture and then walked around and room individual pictures of each of us. In Ethiopia ferenjis are movie stars. All ferenjis.
The last day of demist was spent visitng the ag office and a small NGO the was increasing fruit production in farms by means of using plants that will not only benefit the farmer but also the soil. After visiting the ag office it was interesting to see the effects or lack there of that NGOs have on a community. They often drop off expensive equipment without training anyone in the community to use it. After these quick visits we returned to Bahar dar. Spent the afternoon sitting by the famous Lake Tana with other voluteers from the area.
This coming weekend we will meet our host families and prepare to move on with them.