Salvador Dali Could Paint This

Sometimes it seems as if my life is a surrealist painting. The reality of my past and the reality of my present are constantly colliding. When I'm in a room, just outside the doors I can almost believe America is living and breathing. If I walk out the door I'll find myself on Tennyson Street, ready to go to my favorite coffee shop and then head to my parents to play with their puppy. Like in a dream, travel home is easy and instant. And then, when I wake up, I'm scared Peace Corps will kick me out because I'm not allowed to leave the country without their permission.

Please Send Letters Addressed to Julia

Dear Friends and Family,

It has come to my attention that my fellow volunteers have used this forum to request care packages. I think this is an excellent idea so I think I'll go for it.

As much as I would like to receive lots of tasty goodies, what I really want from all of you are letters. I really enjoy reading about your news, however mundane or old you might think it is. It is the best way for me to feel connected to home. I just went through a whole 3 weeks without receiving a single letter and it left me rather blue. I thought to myself, if I have 20 or so pen pals that won't happen again.

So be my pen pals, please!

If this post sounds rather desperate to you, well then, you are an excellent reader because that's exactly what I am.

Send letters to P.O. Box 08, North Shewa, Deneba, Ethiopia

Love, Julia, your anxiously awaiting correspondent

Swear-in Ceremony

Swear-in for the Peace Corps happened on September 20 so I apologize for the long delay in this obligatory blog post that I'm sure my fellow volunteers put up a long time ago. It was great, probably the most expensive birthday present I have ever received. So thank you, People of the United States of America for a wonderful party.

"Swear-in was like graduation, we, sat in rows and walked up on stage to shake the director's, Ethiopian and American Ambassador's hand, and receive our diploma, I'm sorry, 'certificate.'"

"This is me in traditional Habasha garb. My host mother gave me this dress just a couple of days before we left. She is so nice."

This is my favorite picture from the evening. That is Christine. She was my roommate whenever we were in Addis during training.

Everybody wanted a picture in front of the seal and flags.

Abubeker being cool. He was one of the many Ethiopians who taught us Language and Culture.

Tekaling, my language teacher.

My language class.

The neighbor compounds.

I'm in Peace Corps!!

A Battle For the Ages

Last night a great battle raged. I had heard spiders were timid, easily defeated creatures. All one need do is make a movement towards them and they scurry away. I had heard that they don't like people, because people are big and spiders are little and any living creature worth anything runs away from something a billion times its size!! Well, last night I encountered a spider, a fierce and brave warrior. A legend among spiders. It was roughly the size of my eyeball. It was cowering in a corner having invaded my space looking for warmth . . . and maybe some morsels of tender flesh? God knows how it got in, probably through the eyeball sized gap just under my door. I quickly grabbed my Peace Corps issued bug spray and shot a spray of exoskeleton dissolving acid at it. It scampered right back outside and good riddance.
    Or so I thought.
    The spider had merely ducked behind a box to gather its forces. It then charged at me with all its spidery speed. Keeping my head in battle, I managed to shoot another volley of bug spray. At which point the spider once again scampered to hide under some more of my stuff.
    After our second encounter I thought it wise to retreat to the safety of base camp and ducked into my bed where I quickly secured my fortress against invaders. Every little end of the bug net was tucked in and I was safe.
    However, the spider was not finished with his attack. He slowly crept out from his hold, knowing full well that as much as I had secured him out, I had secured myself in. I was a sitting duck. To my horror I noticed that in my haste to regroup, I had left my bug spray in the middle of the floor. The spider must have noticed this as well. Not only was I a sitting duck but I was also defenseless!
    Slowly, deliberately, the spider crawled toward me. If he kept at that speed I could possibly leave the fortress and grab my bug spray. Should I risk it? He could rush me again. Or I could grab my shoe? It was closer to the bed but I knew my skill in close, hand-to-hand combat and it wasn't great. And then the spider stopped.
    He had taken two sprays from the bug poison, was it starting to take effect? Was he dead? No! He stuck out a leg, with great effort he willed himself another inch further before he stopped again. Just when I thought him defeated, he stirred. I gave a gasp. Again he moved another inch before he stopped. And again he moved and stopped. And again, until, finally, he had made it to the edge of my fortifications. Finally defeated, the spider curled up and stirred no more.
   

My Humble Abode

This is the view from my front gate. Those buildings on the left are the Woreda Office buildings. The Woreda is basically the school district so my big boss works there.

This is my front gate. The house behind it is not mine. I live on a compound.

To get to my part of the compound you have to walk around the house.

Down this little pathway.

And voila, my house. The door that is open is mine. The other door is the kitchen (I don't use their kitchen). There is another door on the other side of the tiny window that is hiding behind the drain. Both window and door belong to my neighbor, Tigist. Directly across from my door is the back entrance to the larger house. The bathroom is round the corner from the kitchen.

This is my bed, which doubles as office space.

It's hard to see the epicness that is my bedspread so here is a picture pre-bed net.

My closet.

My medicine cabinet and vanity.

My little kitchen.

And we must not forget my one cute little window way up high. I have to use my water bottle to open it because I am not tall enough.

152 Words

A picture is worth a thousand words
    Yet,
It doesn't do justice to the continuous hypnotic ripple of the lake.
    A hypnosis all the more potent that you stare down a deep crater.
It doesn't do justice to the dancing wild grass.
    A movement that tickles your ankles.
It tells you nothing of the sun beating down and the light breeze cooling you off.
    It forgets that the sun has been missing for weeks.
There is nothing of the smell of flowers.
    Strange flowers that don't live at home,
    Or their strange but beautiful smells.
You can't hear the tinkle of cow bells in the distance,
And children chatting
    Words indistinguishable for their language
It forgets that your friends were there.
    Silently enjoying the same thrills
    Yet giving you this napkin and pen.
It doesn't do justice to the calming peace of all this combined
    Or the need to write a poem.

Butajira Konjono!

Konjono. No, it is not Italian. It is Amharic for "It is beautiful."

Walking Through Town

Moon!

Brittany

From left, Sandy, Helena, Amanda and Brittany (She won't be too happy with me about that face).

Footbaaaal!!!

Monkeys!

Center of Attention Part 2

Dear Friends and Family,

Hopefully you read the previous post, because that is the set up for this post.
    Last time I wrote about being the only blonde haired, freckles on white skin fish in a fishbowl. Because of this, it takes a lot of convincing to actually get me to leave my comfortable little abode (incidentally, I was curious about this word and it turns out to come from Germanic origin, of the Old English variety). If I don't have a specific task to accomplish I will probably not leave.
    A couple of days ago was one such day. My hair was greasy, having been unwashed for a week and a day. I missed my hair washing appointment because, "eh." I didn't leave the house until 12:30. I watched a lot of T.V. Played a lot of solitaire and only left the house because there was no food and I was hungry.
    The first thing that happened was my shoe broke. My beautiful Eddie Bauer flip flop. And it's not like it was right out of the gate. I had already reached the top of the hill and was more than halfway to the restaurant. It meant I would have to bring out my brand new, unsoiled pair. It also meant that I had to hobble back to my house to get the shoes, and where there was no food, or say "fuck it" and hobble to lunch.
    I hobbled to lunch. I was immediately accosted by a group of boys. They sat me in a chair, one pulling out this awesome shoe repair needle fused to makeshift, melted-wad-of-plastic handle. And then he repaired my shoe. Get this, his name is Tesefaye. Of course his name is Tesefaye. For my fellow G9ers you get this, for those listening reading at home, Tesefaye was the training coordinator. Think of Santa Clause but as a skinny Ethiopian. His name also means hope.
    With this positive experience urging me forward, I braved market for the first time. I bought a 1/4 (rub) kilo of bananas and a rub kilo of carrots. I ate like a queen that day. It was awesome.
    Maybe I should wait to leave the house until 12:30 everyday.

For Deborah

Touching Satan's Lake (Ara Shatan) Dun dun dun!

Center of Attention

    If you know anything about me you know that the whole "only fish in a fish bowl" is really starting to get to me.
    Walking down the street I constantly have people staring at me. And not just children.
Grown-ass adults are staring at me. I have children and adults yell at me from all the way down the street. Things like "ferenjwa" (foreigner), "you" both in their language and mine, as well as "where are you go?" People demand to know my name without so much as a "hello, how are you." Which, by the way, is incredibly rude in Ethiopian culture. Greetings are supposed to take like 5 minutes before inquiries/business begins. There are times when all I want to do is slap the children and scold them, cuss-out the adults and scream at everybody "None of your GOD damn business." But I don't because I am a good PCV . . . I might say "nonya" under my breath but that's the extent of my verbal vent. 
    Now, calmly listening to Frank Sinatra in my own room, I can rationally explain this behavior. I live in a little town. Deneba. It is so small that I can't find Dabo Kolo, which is a delicious Ethiopian snack very similar to cereal. And I would eat it as such but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.
    Anyway, Deneba is small, so the sight of my blonde hair and bleached face is not a sight that often comes here. The people are curious about me, and since I make it a point to leave the house at least once a day so they know that I am actually a resident and not a passing NGO, they want me to say hi. Even though I tell the kids my name they don't remember, which I can't blame them because I don't remember theirs. So they haven't started yelling "Julia Julia" over and over again. Which will be just as annoying as the "you you" if not more so. But the point is, they are always in my face because I am novel and make funny Englishy noises with my mouth.
    It's not that people are rude here; the staring is not because curiosity has gotten the better of manners. Deneba, and Ethiopia in general, is not a place where mothers grab children's upper arms and sharply whisper "don't stare." Because in Ethiopia it is perfectly acceptable to be up in each other's business, even complete strangers. It is ok to demand interaction between people you barely know. Passing people in the streets without catching their eye, sitting silently on the bus and generally going about your business silently and alone is not a thing here.
    I'm not knocking my own culture with that last sentence. I personally prefer it that way because well, duh. I sometimes just need to explain to myself that my community members aren't, in fact, being rude. They're just being Ethiopian.

My Inner Child

I have never considered myself a picky eater. Quite the opposite, I have always thought I was a rather adventurous eater. But, after two months of eating another person's cooking, cooking that is drenched in oil and/or Ethiopian butter (read "lard"), I have had just about enough. I would kill for a raw carrot. It would be nice to eat my own cooking. Losing control over something as intimate as choosing what nutrients go into my body has made me the very opposite of a happy camper.
    At this point I want to mention how much I love my host family. They are amazing. They put up with my wily American ways. They understand I need my space and just generally treat me well. My host mother would do anything I asked her to. However, I can't ask her to change a lifetime of knowledge. Even if it were possible, I wouldn't want her to. So that means I am stuck.
    I am stuck eating very little. I can force myself to eat but day by day it is less and less. I am so hungry and I swear I am losing weight. (I am NOT happy about that last fact so don't congratulate me.)
    Yesterday it all came to a head. In front of visiting family, one person who has lived in Seattle for 10 years so no language barriers prevented him from understanding what was happening, I exploded. And when I say I exploded I mean I threw a temper tantrum. Apart from lying on my stomach and banging my fists on the floor, it was a full on embarrassment of childish rage.
    Let's start at the beginning. My host mother calls me in to eat. Sitting on the table is a bowl of oily dorro wat. Now, before I go further there is something I need to explain. The whole "less is more" concept does not exist in Ethiopian cooking. Subtlety of flavor does not exist. Oil tastes good? Let's put five glugs worth from the bottle. Burburay tastes good? Let's use it as a base instead of as a spice. You like onions? Well, it'll be the only vegetable we add.
    Well, this dorro wat was placed in front of me and I almost started to cry, I was so hungry but I could not bring myself to eat this food.
    I snap.
    I stand up.
    I simply say "I can't eat this" to the room at large.
    I walk to the kitchen and grab some difo dabo (a kind of flat bread).
    Walk back into the living room, go to the refrigerator and pull out peanut butter and a banana."
    Everybody wants to help me. Everybody won't shut up and keeps asking me what I need. I keep telling them that I know what I am doing. Seriously, at this point it is ok to picture a little girl in a flouncy, bouncy pink dress, pigtail bows and her screaming at her bear-armed dad, "I can do what I want, I'm a big girl." Just make sure you picture it all in cartoon.
    Kali tries to take the peanut butter jar from me to open it. I snap just a little further. She is thirteen. I am a grown, 24 year old, highly educated adult. Seriously, she didn't think I could open the jar of peanut butter?! Do you still have the cartoon image from before in your head? Now imagine the little girl straining to open the peanut butter, that little 4 pointed muscle spasm star going off on her forehead.
    I deflated. I couldn't open the peanut butter jar. I gave it to Kali. My pride wasn't hurt so bad because she still couldn't open it and had to give it to her uncle who had to use a knife to jimmy it open. Anyway, I finished my little peanut butter and banana sandwich in silence and went to my room to fume and listen to teenage rage music.
    The next day I apologized for my behavior. My Host mother was very gracious, "It's ok. You are my daughter. I still love you." Very Gracious and then . . . "Just like I still love Kali when she acts like that." Oh great, I am just like a 13 year old.