Host family & settling in to Menagesha

My host mom Yementwork...looks like my late grandma.

Dancing w/ host families & language instructors

PCV Ryan to my right w/ my host sis Hilina

Walking down to the "soccer field"

The kids we played soccer w/ in Menagesha on the 1st day in town

Ryan & the gang posing on the river rocks

Kids swimming naked in the river

My view walking to language class every day

Some kids that want a look at the "Ferengie"

My host sis Rahel

My little host bro Metesenot

Shint bet entrance

Shint bet

The "toilet"

Local women walking to market

nice view behind me

More kids

My tiny room

A shepard boy

Hiking across a river

Our guide Benny

The Menagesha PCVs

Cool tree

Beautiful landscape from hike

local transportation

He actually has a cell phone & a hut

Kids we saw while hiking

Going up

 An old Menagesha church

Find the monkey

little monkey

close up of monkey

awesome view from hike

cool tree w/ hole in center

tree

nice waterfall

posing w/ Benny in front of waterfall

market in Menagesha

more market

Kids being shy...kind of

My language instructor Ayu

posing w/ Ayu in class







Sorry for the long gap between post, but finding good internet access is pretty tough here. So, here is some of what you've missed. I’ve said a few times in previous posts that it hasn’t really hit me yet that I’m in the Peace Corps & I’m going to be living in a foreign country for the next 27 months. Even the 1^st few days in Ethiopia it had more of a trip abroad, vacation type feel. Well, it finally hit me when I moved in w/ my host family. When I say hit me, I mean like a Mike Tyson uppercut to the jaw. I’m staying w/ my host family in Menegesha, pronounced Min-NEG-ashaw. The very first thing I noticed when I met my host mom is she looks so much like my late grandmother on my father’s side, Mamo, same size & everything. She doesn’t speak much English, so communication is a challenge, but she’s really good about helping me w/ my Amharic. Also living in the compound are her 20 yr old daughter Rahel, 15 yr old niece Hilina, & 2 yr old son named Metesenot, pronounced mit-tez-e-note. He loves writing all over the furniture w/ my pens. Another 12 year old boy named Etanet is here all the time & helps out a lot around the house & tries to look out for me. I’m supposed to have a host dad named Alemu & host brother named Biruk. Alemu hasn’t been home in the 2 weeks I’ve been here & I met Biruk about 10 days after being in Menegesha. There are 5 other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) w/ me in town. We all met our families at the same time. We had a really nice welcome lunch w/ buna, Ahmaric for coffee. Then an Ethiopian soul train line broke out & the host families, PCVs, language instructors, & myself were doing traditional Ethiopian dances…very cool. After about an hour or so each PCV went home w/ their families. This is where the REAL Ethiopian experience began. The first obvious difference is the toilet is outside. When I say toilet, I mean a shed w/ a hole in the ground. The Amharic term for it a shint bet. There isn’t a light, so at night I have to wear a head lamp to see what I’m aiming at. If you have to do the dirty, that’s where it gets tricky. You basically have to squat, put one hand on the wall behind you & another squeezing your pants between your ankles…& pray to god you have good aim. I have a pretty small target, about the size of a golf hole. I’ve had nothing but hole in ones so far. There isn’t a shower or hot water either, which I found out the hard way when I tried to wash the 1^st morning. It was probably in the high 40’s & my host mom gave me a bucket of cold water & a small pitcher. You’re supposed to stand in the bucket & pour the water on you. I did NOT stand in the bucket. I washed in the shint bet, where it was cold enough to see my breath, or it could‘ve just been shint bet vapors. It took me a few minutes to get my courage up. I was standing naked trying to decide what body parts I could skip & why I joined the Peace Corps. I poured some water on me to lather & the shock made holler like a little school girl. I’m pretty sure my host mom heard me cursing in English. I wish I could say I got used to it, but the last pour was just as cold as the 1^st. I had so much shrinkage my penis went inside my body. That was the 1^st & last time I bathed in the morning. I just wash my face in the mornings & bath like twice a week in the evenings. The water is still one degree from ice, but at least it’s warmer outside. Yes, I know bathing twice a week is not up to typical American standards, but I guarantee under the same conditions you wouldn’t be taking ice baths daily either. Put a bucket of water in the fridge tonight, then go outside in the morning & pour it all over yourself, then ask yourself if you could do that every day. I’m adapting to my environment, meaning I smell a whole lot like Africa right now. The food is ok, it really depends on who’s cooking. At first I really liked my host mom’s food, then she started giving me the same thing for lunch AND dinner every day. Shiro & potatoes. Shiro is the texture of tomato soup & brown in color, & it’s spread on this spongy bread called injera. You scoop it w/ the injera & eat it w/ your hands. I get it daily & she serves it cold, so now it just makes me nauseous. Inhera is served w/ EVERY meal. It’s a spongy like bread that comes in rolls & the food is served on top of it. Injera is basically your spoon & fork. You wrap it around the food w/ your hand & eat that way. It’s almost flavorless, but it’s supposed to be super rich in almost all essential nutrients & protein. Breakfast is ok. I get scrambled eggs w/ meat sometimes. If you’ve never eaten eggs w/ your hands, it’s definitely a challenge. I know the eggs are organic b/c I live w/ the chickens. I like Ethiopian food in general. Talking to the other volunteers, I just seemed to have gotten the short end of the stick w/ host mom cooks. My room is small & took a while to get used to, having so many bags didn‘t help. Also, it doesn’t help that trash cans haven’t been introduced here yet. Trying to find somewhere to throw away all my empty water bottles is a chore. I finally got organized a few days ago & now seem to be getting into a nice daily routine. We do language training 6 days a week, over 6 hours a day. That doesn’t count the time spent trying to communicate when I get home. Language training is really 24/7. I’ve learned a ton in just a few days. My strategy is when I learn a word in Amharic, to say it in Amharic every time so I get used to it & I don’t forget it. My language instructor’s name is Ayu. She’s been great so far & has been very patient w/ us. It’s 3 of us for 1 instructor, so we get a lot of attention. The absolute best part of the day is when me & another volunteer named Ryan play soccer w/ the kids every day after training. The first day we played was by far my best day in Ethiopia so far. After we layed our bags down out first day here w/ the host families Ryan took out his soccer ball & all the kids in the area took us by the hand & led us down this VERY steep hill & we started playing on this little field about half the size of half a basketball court. Out of bounds is the mountain on one side & the cliff where the river is on the other. The field is uneven & rocky, kids are playing barefoot or in sandals, but the skill of some of these kids are amazing. You can see why soccer is the #1 sport on the planet, all you need is a ball & the ground. We’re like celebrities in town, especially the white volunteers. I look more like a local so I don‘t get quite as much attention, but I get plenty just the same. The white volunteers are A list celebrities. They’re Brad Pitt & J-Lo. I’m more like Paulie Shore. The scenery is amazing. I try not to take for granted what I see every day walking to training. We went on a hike, which was absolutely phenomenal. We saw waterfalls, huts, monkeys, mountainous landscapes, & some other incredible sites. I took tons of pictures & will upload as many as I can. Walking around & seeing the country, playing soccer w/ the Ethiopian children is when it really hits home why I’m here. All the challenges are forgotten & all the small things are appreciated. There is so much more I want to talk about, but I’ll save it for next time. I only have internet access every 10 days or so & it’s slow, so post will be spotty, but I’ll post anytime I can. Dena Ideru (Good night)!!

Ethiopian facts & cultural differences

Walking back from mall, landscape view

Another landscape pic

Ethiopian people on the streets

statue at museum

Another statue

statue

Posing in front of stairs w/ some meaning I totally forgot

Kenya, me, Andrew, & Bre

Landscape view from inside museum

Addis Ababa from a distance

Museum painting

English version

Amharic version

Cool monument

I’m a little tired at the moment, but I wanted to post tonight b/c I don’t think I’ll have internet access next week.  We’re going to meet out host families tomorrow, who we’ll be staying w/ for the next 3 months.  The areas we’ll be in are more remote.  We started language training today, which I’ve been looking forward too.  Ethiopians speak Amharic, which is a difficult language to speak.  It has similarities to Arabic when pronouncing the words, while the characters look like Hebrew, almost like hieroglyphics.  We just learned some basic survival phrases.  You greet someone by saying “teng yistiling” pronounced “teng eastiling” which means “how do you do?”  That’s only for the 1st time you meet someone.  There is another greeting for when you meet someone you already know, and it differs for males & females.  This can cause problems if you’re not sure is a person is a male or female.  Starting next week language training is going to get very intense, 8 hrs a day, 6 days a week.  We also took a tour through Addis Ababa today, which was really cool.  We visited a few museums, one of which was one of Haile Selassie’s old homes.  Ethiopia has a lot of history.  It’s the only African country to never be successfully colonized.  The other museum has some of the ancient evolutionary man fossils found in archeological digs done in Ethiopia.  One of the staff in the museum asked me if I was our groups tour leader.  Evidently I look like a native.  It’s quite different being part of a majority w/ other people of color.

I said in my last post I’d share some Ethiopian facts we’ve picked up.  First there is a 7hr time difference from the eastern US.  They don’t use the normal 12 month Gregorian calendar.  Their calendar year has 13 months so they are behind in years.  It’s actually 2004 here, so I’ve successfully traveled back in time.  What’s REALLY messed up is I got my host family a couple of U.S. calendars as gifts, I had no idea.  They have 2 seasons here, wet & dry.  Right now the high gets in the high 60’s - low 70’s, while the low gets in the mid 40’s.  People here where coats regardless.  It was about 70 today & I saw people wearing darn near bubble gooses.  Coffee is huge here.  Buna is  coffee in Amharic.  It’s one of the largest & most lucrative exports.  I don’t drink coffee, & have been able to avoid it so far, but there’s no way I hold out the entire time I’m here.  Ethiopian also has the largest number of traffic fatalities in the world, mostly pedestrians.  Needless to say I walk waaaaay in on the sidewalk, like shoulder to shoulder w/ buildings.  Also, men are VERY affectionate towards each other here.  It’s normal in their custom to see 2 men walking holding hands, stroking each others face, or with their hand on each other’s thigh.  What makes this even more unique is homosexuality is illegal here.  They just don’t have the same concepts of masculinity  or personal space.  I know I’m supposed to conform to customs, but I aint touching some dude’s thigh.  There is tons of other stuff I’ll talk about in later post.  So far it’s been great.  I’m looking forward to moving in w/ the host family tomorrow, to be thrown into Ethiopian culture 100%.