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.