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 6th
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 2nd
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.
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