The end ???

How do I begin to tell the end, when it doesn't really feel like its ended just morphed into another very different chapter. In a way Ethiopia feels worlds away but it is very much entrenched in who I am now. Actually it is at least a continent away…I now find myself in southern India. Walking back from dinner just now (a luscious cashew masala with buttery roti bread), I was reflecting on my life in Ethiopia. I had the thought that right now being in India feels like the final exam of my past two years. It has many of the same challenges (being seen as a dollar figure, men staring with creepy looks, pollution, overpopulation and a completely foreign culture), but I also find it wonderfully civil in many ways (speaking English, fast internet, organized tour groups - mostly catering to Indian tourists, and things that just make sense - like meters for the rickshaws (Bajaj’s)).

Before I jump into describing my newest adventure in India I want to try to summarize my departure from Ethiopia. My last week in Goba was bitter sweet. I was ready to go but sad to leave. I really did make some good friends, like Wynshet and Demanich with whom I celebrated my first Timket holiday and ate my last doro wat meal with. Who cried when I left and loaded me down with gifts of a jebana (coffee pot), scarf, and baso (barley powder). Such dear sweet women. Others I will always remember are Meski and Emabet, my neighbors; Elias, Gobezie and Hasan, my counterparts who really worked with me and were dependable; and Kabadich my dear “habasha mother” who always gave me milk and listened so well. And there are many others that I will always remember with a smile.

Towards the end I struggled with not getting weighted down with so many “I should have’s”.  It took a lot of basic acceptance to see that even though I felt like my work was just getting started I did my best given an array of  many different factors. The weeks leading up to my departure went quicker than expected - a fun backroad adventure into the Harenna forest and wild coffee lands, the celebration of my PC friend Bre Anne getting engaged to her Ethiopian boyfriend Atota with his huge Muslim family, and a mad dash up to Addis to apply for my India visa.

Leaving Goba felt kind of surreal, like a dream that I just had to follow but was acutely aware of at each moment. I had a nice going away party/garage sale with all my Bale fereji friends, and the Agriculture office put on a little buna ceremony for me as well. The weather didn’t help and instead started pouring the day after I sold my rain boots and umbrella- ha of course! My last night my walls were bare (exposing all the giant spiders that had been hiding) but I felt I had completed all my tasks. Except maybe saying good bye to a few more people (like my friend Megdes who ran the suk shop next door). With two bags and a market basket full of pottery I was lucky that my landlord Afork drove me to the bus station at 5am and  both he and Gobezie helped to send me off. My heart felt full and grateful knowing that I had met so many wonderful people and for having had such a unique experience these past two years.

And now fast forward two weeks and you find me in my little air conditioned room smelling of sandalwood and  playing with my newly purchased smartphone. India isn’t nearly as crazy as I expected yet it still is crazy. Mostly due to insane drivers who love to blast their horns at everything. But today I splurged and hired a guide to take me to the Bandipore National Park where I saw elephants, spotted deer (aka tiger food) and all sorts of other cool birds and animals. Nature really is my sanctuary. Today is my 6^th day here and for the most part I have been taking it easy. Like I said at the beginning I feel like this is my final exam. I’m doing this adventure solo, without the support of Peace Corps, a 24 hour on call doctor , or my fellow PCV’s. Oddly enough I haven’t met any other travelers, just seen them in passing like ships in the night. Thankfully I feel confident in bartering and asking questions to clarify the ambiguous, which seems to happen when speaking various forms of English. In a way I’m still waiting for the next chapter to begin, a chapter that I have no idea what the title is. But in this unsettling limbo time of change I again rely on what I have learned, how to take it one day at a time without getting too caught up in worry and to simply be present and open to whatever happens.  In keeping this state of mind I have had some wonderful moments that make me smile both inside and out. And isn’t that what life is about?

Wishing you many smiles. Thanks for listening. 

Finally a few new photos of what I've been up too...

Can I take one home with me? 

Getting henna painted on my hand from a very sweet Muslim girl at the market in Harar

A traditional "Harari home", now a wonderful B&B

Inde!!! This mamma was big!! Later I fed her meat with the stick in my mouth. So cool!

Beautiful Somoli bridal party also having fun with wild hyenas

My new favorite hat

New Years song and celebration

The mighty Awash falls

Friendly Afar guide 

The oasis hot springs lake

Celebrating at Lake Langono

At the Meskal "burning of the cross" celebration with my happy neighbor

More chickens, men in skirts, and camels oh my!

Monday October 6- Ah yay for a good day! It is such a great feeling to see all my efforts of the past two years starting to show some benefit, in small tiny ways I never imagined. The past few days I have been buying materials with my two closest guy friends Gobezie and Elias to build a small portable chicken coop. This is a project that has been evolving for the past several months and its finally coming together. Today we build the majority of it at Elias’s house, me taking notes on how to build it and playing with the cute neighbor girl, while Elias and two friends did the “man” work. I took them to lunch (54 birr, so about $2.70) and in the afternoon we were having fun joking around feeling good about the work we had done. Earlier in the morning I went to the Ag office and had fun saying hi to people hearing them complement me on how fat I am (I don’t think I’ve changed in the past year) and how “perfect” my Amharic is (I still feel like I speak like a five year old).

Later in the afternoon, just before the rain started I stopped by my favorite ladies coffee shop and helped them to make dabo kolo, a tiny little bread ball thing colored red, green and white, in preparation for my friend Wynshet’s giving birth- who is due in 1 week. (This is so they will have a nice snack to give to people who stop by to wish congratulations). It felt so good to just hang out and chat and cut little chunks of green dough.

Wednesday, market day, will be the teaching of how to build the chicken coop and we will sell lottery tickets to auction off the chicken coop. The money will then be donated to some charity, which I have yet to decide on. It should be fun and I am glad to be working with my friends who have provided great input on the project of ways to improve it. The past two years have simply been building a foundation of friendship, respect and trust which is what has enabled this project to happen. It’s still a simple project but feels so good to have such strong support.

And now for a quick glimpse of what I have been up to for the past 2 months since I last wrote on this blog….

Harar- I went to this ancient walled city, the 6^th most holy Muslim place in the world, with three of my Peace Corps girlfriends. We stayed at an amazing “Harari house”, a private family’s home that had a huge living room lined with cushions and brightly decorated baskets. In the morning they served us fluffy crepe type things with honey and strong coffee. In the two day’s that we were there we fed hyena’s meat from a stick in our mouth, ate camel meat and delicious Somali flavored rice with our hands, got our hands decorated with henna by beautiful Somali women, bought colorful scarfs, saw a camel market, ate yummy street food like potato and garlic samosas and falafel, and wandered the narrow streets of the ancient city feeling like we were in a foreign mid-east country. This was a really fun mini vacation and a good glimpse of some different, wonderful cultures. It made me feel for the Somali people who are so forgotten but were so kind and friendly.

Afar and the Awash Falls Lodge- So I had been entertaining the idea of staying another year in Ethiopia to work at a tourist lodge in the heart of the Rift Valley, where archeologists continue to find ancient human remains, some now older than Lucy! The lodge is inside the Awash National Park, a hot, classic African landscape with Acacia trees, hyenas and dust. The lodge itself sits perched on the edge of the Awash river overlooking the mighty Awash falls that were a raging torrent of brown water since it is now rainy season. I had fun drinking a cold beer and watching the falls, especially when I saw three crocodiles hanging out in the eddies catching fish.

The next day the kind Dr. Yirmed (owner of the lodge) and I went out to visit their newest project – a second lodge perched on the edge of a hot springs lake. Yes it is a big lake of hot water, fringed by very tall grass and palm trees (and hosts hippos and crocodiles). Quite an amazing oasis in the middle of the desert. Unfortunately it was roasting hot so I didn’t really feel like soaking in the hot water but it sure was pretty. This place was located right on the boarder of the park but is owned by the Afar people who are notorious for being aggressive. I can kind of understand because they live in such harsh hot conditions barely surviving by grazing sheep and cattle. The men wear colorful skirts that come to their knees and no shirt but lots of armband decorations and all carry some sort of ancient rifle type gun. Dr. Yirmed had a long, Afar-Oromifia-Amharic conversation with some of the elders trying to buy sand and settle on a price to charge tourists for swimming in the lake. As I watched I realized how slow and complicated everything is, even for a respected Ethiopian male. Finally we drove the 26km bumpy dirt road back to the main lodge and I happily fell asleep listening to the waterfalls from my lovely little thatched hut room.

The lodge and staff were are wonderful and Dr. Yirmed is a smart, motivated, conservation minded person but after much deliberation I decided that I did not want to stay another year. I realized I was hoping to make up for the past two years by trying to do similar work- rallying local people to work on creating alternative incomes- except this time it would be in an extremely hot, through beautiful, isolated place.

COS Conference- The day after I returned to Addis from Afar my whole G8 group went to a fancy lodge on Lake Longano to celebrate our “Close of Service” conference. For two days we talked about how to summarize our past two years on a resume, to try to see all of the skills and growth we have made, to try to see how much of an impact we have made (though most we will never see), and all the details of how to return to the States, including learning that returning is way harder that it was to leave in the first place.  It was a powerful, meaningful, enriching two days where I realized I have formed some life- long friendships and have a lot to feel good about. And now I officially have an end date of December 2^nd where I will become a “Returned Peace Corps Volunteer” which is quite a badge of honor. It is kind of humbling and very nice to feel like I have spent the past two years working for peace rather than war.

Ok so now I have two months to bust out this chicken coop project, spend time with my close friends, seize the moment and start thinking about what the heck comes next…eeek.

A few photos...

Typical Orthodox church celebration- love the colors!

Sweet Muslim kids hanging out

Goba Muslim men praying at the Ramadan celebration

Goba Muslim women praying at the same celebration.

Sweet Muslim girls. I loved the little one in white!

Teaching gardening under a lovely Ficus tree at camp GROW

My future job as a bee keeper?

Happy in the jungle!

My dear teacher friend Damanich

My new best friend George who now hangs out in a fern in my yard. Chameleons are so cool!

GROW, growing, gone.

Ah yay for rainy season! It has returned full force and as it pours outside I am totally content to be inside with my cup of tea and cheery candle. I got back to Goba last Friday after spending a week in the paradise university campus of Wando Ganet. It is paradise because it is surrounded by Jurassic Park like mountains, ancient tropical forest, flowers and monkeys galore. I was there to help with a second summer camp this one called GROW (Growing and Renewing Our World), focusing on different environment and agricultural activities. I didn’t teach any sessions but instead was the finance person, in charge of purchasing all the random supplies needed to build two composting toilets, make different herbal salves, and feed snacks to fifty people.

The day before camp started I was feeling really worried because the grant money still had not been deposited in my account, but later in the afternoon when I took out 130,000 birr I left like an elephant had been lifted off my chest. Hallaluha just in the nick of time! It was quite odd to take out that much money- the bank even ran out of 100’s so gave me 50,000 in 50’s! Talk about bundles of birr! The next few days were actually kind of fun as I got to drive around with Endale, a great Peace Corps driver, and purchase all our supplies- including 100 kg of oranges! The fruit vendors were falling over themselves handing me slices of oranges trying to show that they had the best fruit.  The week went by in a flash and once again all the kids had a great time and learned a lot. I was able to bring four kids from Goba and a wonderful woman counterpart named Damanich who teaches cooking at the technical school.  Yay for tiny little positive influences.

The weekend before camp I had fun on Saturday going to an Orthodox Christian celebration with Gobezie and watching all the people dressed in their finest traditional clothes- white scarves and embroidered dresses. At his home later in the afternoon his wife Tigist gave me a traditional cloth called a gabi that is worn as a blanket. I was very touched at her kindness and am now bundled up in it enjoying its warmth and the fresh smell is has from being dried in the sun.

Two day’s later was the Muslim holiday Eid Al Fitr celebrating the end of their fast from Ramadan. I am truly impressed how for over a month Muslim’s don’t eat or drink anything from sunrise till sunset, only eating when it is dark and again at 3am. My friend Elias invited me to attend the main ceremony where all the Muslim’s gathered at the town’s soccer field to pray. It was beautiful to see all the men in their white robes and the women in their brightly colored dresses and head scarves. Seeing hundreds, if not thousands of people bowing, kneeling and praying in unison really is a precious powerful thing.

Later in the day I went to my other friend Hasan’s house were I got to eat the Ethiopian traditional dish Doro wat (a spicy chicken sauce) which I totally love. Hasan, his wife and their adorable one year old twin daughters live in a very small simple two room mud home but were very generous with their food. It was a fun experience to see a different side culture (Muslim Oromia).  His wife’s father came to visit, and though he was a rural farmer who only spoke Oromifa performed the universal action of bringing sweets to his granddaughters. Again I wish I spoke this language beyond hello and thank you but it was neat being a part of the celebration.

So now that I am finally finished with my summer camps I can start to focus on doing one more little project – building a portable chicken coop and simply hanging out and spending time with my Ethiopian friends and family. As of today I have officially 4 months left!!! And as always I still miss and think about all my American friends and family- please write if you can! Warm wishes to all!!! 

Bale Brits

Yay for another full circle. This time I had nothing to do with actually helping it come about but feel happy that I was able to observe. First, a little background refresher. Since I have been in Goba I have been trying to work with the Bale Beauty Nature Club which consists of 2.4 hectare of pristine land and a library/study room in town. Ayoub, the original leader and inspiration for the club “disappeared” in America last year and has yet to return. I have spent the past year, unsuccessfully, trying to find a way to keep the club going in a sustainable way that doesn’t just depend on dwindling local NGO donations. The main thing that is lacking is a person who will take leadership for the club and reinvigorate the community members. Or so I think.

But today I learned that the Ethiopian way of last minute planning can work out. A week ago Ayoub randomly called me saying that another group of students from England would be arriving soon to do a “volunteer vacation” to work with the club. (The same company that organizes this trip came last year and the work largely fell onto my sitemates and I, (see old blog post)). As much as I want to see this club survive I decided to not change my plans but to simply observe and help out a few days into the trip.

So I stuck with my plans and had a fabulous weekend climbing a mountain outside of Goba that I have been looking at since living here. I went with my friends Marit and Jan from Holland who work in Robe and who, like me, love outdoor adventures. The mountain had stunning views and it was so nice to camp, relax and hang out viewing Goba from a new perspective.

Anyway, back to today when I finally met the group from England and helped them plant some trees at the club property. The rest of the day I mostly just chatted with the leaders and helped them buy food, preparing for a trek into the Senetti and Bale Park. For me it was so refreshing to hear their positive views on Ethiopians and in particular the club members who stepped up and made their visit such a success. Out of thin air emerged three smart, motivated, English speaking Ethiopians who were very kind and were great guides in organizing good activities. I say emerged because like I said I have been trying to find guys like this for the past year to work with.

But long story short it was great to see how successful they pulled off this trip for the “Brits” and now I have some hope that the future of the club will continue due to this short one week event that will hopefully bring in enough foreign money to keep the club running. The “Brits” had a great visit and will encourage their company to continue bringing school groups to Goba and working with the nature club. For me it was also nice to see Ethiopia through their eyes for a day. They were so positive about the kindness of Ethiopians and how well they were treated by strangers. It’s sad that sometimes I forget to see this quality on a daily basis.

So again I am happy and humbled to see that things do work out without me. Life prevails and continues in ever unfolding and mysterious ways. Maybe not as planned or intended but nonetheless it moves forward.  

A few Bekoji Camp photos...

My homeroom girls "team Nigeria!"

Guiding the group through crazy tall bushes

My Goba "girls"

Jib bet, INDE!!! (Hyena den, oh my)

Team Nigeria classroom!

Glad to be home safe- this is such a sad common scene- supposedly everyone survived....

The finally finished doro bet- nice fence and happy chickens= yay!