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 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.
Good morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Ethiopia? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Ethiopia in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Calle Valencia, 39
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez