June 26th, 2013
Ah the intricacies of learning about a different culture.
Today I taught my little English class (8 students) words relating to family.
What I thought would be an easy peezy class turned into a comical interesting
discussion. We ran out of time talking about the complexities relating to the
word “step” (step-mother, step-father, step-brother etc.) due to the fact that
though divorce is not too common here, marrying again or having multiple wives
is. What do you call the child of your fathers’ 3rd wives
grandchild? Naively I thought teaching them to do a family tree would be a fun
easy activity. Yeesh, not when you have 8 brothers and sisters who are married
and your parents came from families of more than 6 siblings each! Complicated
trees! But we all had fun and enjoyed learning the differences. They couldn't
believe how tiny my family is compared to theirs! I feel good that I am getting
better at teaching and can see that they are learning and enjoying it.
Next I am gearing up to take two 9th grade girls
to our summer camp in Bekoji. It is called camp GLOW- Girls Leading Our World
and all about promoting leadership and self-confidence in young women. It was
tough selecting only two girls and I finally narrowed down the 20 essays to 5
and interviewed the top girls. I then met
with their parents and explained how it would be safe and they could trust this
ferengi to take their daughters away from them for the first time ever. Again
luckily they spoke enough English to communicate all the details.
I’v spent the last several days working on a handbook for
the camp that has all the lessons, schedule, and activities listed. It should
be a lot of fun. Today I went to get it printed and was very glad to have a
bike. My regular printing “dembenya” (favored shop keeper), was having printing
troubles so I rode up to another shop. There they would not accept flash drives
due to the rampant computer viruses here so I bought a CD from them and rode
back to my dembenya where I put the document on the CD. Then I rode back to the
2nd shop and had it printed out. For some reason he printed it out
one page at a time, so 51 pages later I finally had my document. Next I had to
make 25 copies so I rode to another print shop where for some reason (my
language skills failed me) she printed one copy then took it next door to have
them print the rest. I knew it would take forever so I told them I would come
back tomorrow so cross yer fingers that the handbooks turn out as intended. Nothing
is easy here….but thank goodness for my bike!
Well I take that back. Another success of the day was that
my landlord helped me immensely by having a driver friend of his take my empty
propane tank to Addis to have it exchanged for a full one. This would have been
a hugely pain in the ass process of lugging it on 3 different buses, paying
extra each time to change it in Hawassa, then lugging it back to Goba. But all
I had to do was give it to him, wait a few days and whalla new propane tank!
Now I can happily keep baking and cooking for at least the next six months. So
yay for kind, helpful people! They abound in this country!
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