Starting to Settle In

*Note: this is going to be a long one! My life has just begun, as a PCV, so I feel it’s justified to tell you all about the many aspects (read: all) of my life that have changed:

The day after our lovely swearing-in ceremony, the Peace Corps transported each of us brand-new volunteers and our rather impressive piles of luggage to our new home towns. We were treated to private vehicles with Peace Corps drivers, to help us transport said piles of luggage, without having to face the possibility of theft. This was a wonderful treat, and we’re all very grateful to Peace Corps for helping decrease the amount of stress involved in such a big transition day in our lives. Is this a shameless paragraph of brown-nosing? Why yes, yes it is. But I’m writing it all the same, because truth be told, I may have panicked that day when we arrived, faced with the enormity of the task of the next two years ahead of me, and having that Peace Corps vehicle drop me off at my door at least kept me functional. And don’t worry, I recovered from my panic by the next morning, and have since come to be grateful for a number of wonderful aspects of my new home.

Fincha is a town of less than 10,000 people, located in the region of Oromia, west of Addis via 3 hours on the paved main road and 5-7 hours north on a dirt road. I’ve posted a map on this blog so that you can see where I live; See the Maps page. The people’s mother tongue is Afan Oromo (also referred to as Oromiffa), and it is spoken in a hybrid form, mixed with Amharic, the national language. The town is on a hill above Lake Fincha, which is man-made via a hydro-electric dam and power station. Fincha is also home to a satellite sugar factory, about 40 km outside of town, and its main road is paved, all of which the residents of Fincha are extremely proud.

Fincha’s brother town is Shambu. Shambu is about an hour away, has a population of about 35,000 people, and is a mud hole. It’s in the middle of a long process of getting its roads paved, so it’s a big mess at the moment. Why am I telling you about Shambu? Because 1. There are two fellow PCVs living there, and they are my closest (read: only) neighbors (and thus friends) aside from my site mate, and 2. The residents of Fincha are prone to comparing the two towns, and telling me at frequent intervals how lucky I am to have been placed in Fincha.

My new home in Fincha is on a compound on the main road, near the bottom of the town, close to the school I’ll be working at. The compound has a main house in the front, where my landlord, his wife, and his niece live: 

The main house

They have all three been very welcoming and helpful. My landlord has been quick to help me with housing issues, and his wife and niece have invited me inside for coffee every afternoon so far. They persist in trying to speak to me in Oromiffa, which I’m grateful for. Already I’ve solidified the basics of what I learned in training, and I’ve added a few words to my repertoire, despite most of our conversations falling flat with me saying, “hingallee” – “I don’t understand,” and both of us laughing at me.

Behind the main house is a newly built second building that is divided into 3 one-room homes:

The rest of the compound, directly behind the main house.
The small building on the right is the latrine; The blue building is where we renters live. 

A closer view of our doors and shared porch

Mine is the middle one, and it measures 4 meters by 2.5 meters, or roughly 13 feet by 8 feet. It features cement walls and floor, a door with a frosted glass window for letting in natural light, and a window next to it that will open once we get the glass replaced. The building has a corrugated metal roof, but underneath it the ceiling is a tarp nailed to crossboards, laid over the top of the cement walls. When I moved in the floor was bare and the walls were yellow, but I’ve laid down plastic flooring on a roll that looks like gray and black tiles, and I’ve had the walls painted (can anybody guess??) bright blue, so it’s feeling more like home already:

My new little home, with the flooring and paint colors I chose,.
Next comes furniture!

The rooms on either side of me are being rented by bachelors who work at the bank up the street. One of them has a TV, but through negotiation the volume has been turned down to a tolerable level, and is off when he’s at work. Our shared tarp ceiling allows us to hear each other’s every single shuffle, snort, and word, but they’ve been respectful enough.

My amenities situation is quite good, and I have no complaints on that front. Our shared squat latrine has a porcelain cover and is kept remarkably clean in comparison to other latrines I’ve used here. Score! Our compound has a water spigot, and the water has worked continuously these first 10 days, which bodes well. Our electricity is supplied by that hydro-electic power station, and is quite steady. Our cell network was down for two days this week, but when it’s functioning, the service is very strong, which also means that my internet connection is strong. Internet is expensive though, which I’m grateful for, because it won’t allow me to afford video streaming, endless facebook stalking, or aimless internet surfing. Thus, I’m able to stay connected to you lovely people at home, without getting lost in cyber world and forgetting why I’m here.   

These first two weeks that I’m here, my site mate (in PC-speak, this means fellow PCV who also lives in Fincha) has been in Addis for her mid-service conference, so I’ve been “on my own” as I settle in. That’s in quotation marks because my counterpart (an English teacher here who received a small amount of money from PC to help me settle in) has been very attentive, and helped me find a mattress on the first day, and paint, a curtain, and a broom on subsequent days. He also went with me to the head of the Education Office and to the Mayor’s office to drop off my official letters of introduction. Another young man in town who is friends with my site mate went with me to the carpenter’s, and helped me order my first piece of furniture. I started with a kitchen counter, and it should be ready in a couple days! As a side note, the money that we receive from Peace Corps is an amount that makes it necessary for me to choose a piece of furniture per month (aside from that it meets all my needs); September is coming soon, which means I’ll be able to order my bed frame!

The rest of my shopping I’ve done by wandering into and out of little shops. In America, shops are organized by type – clothing stores, hardware stores, food stores – here in small-town Ethiopia, that also occurs to a certain extent – tailors and hardware stores pretty much stick to their category of merchandise – but then there are any number of family-owned little shops that sell whatever they can, and so it’s always a hunt to find what you want. I’ve found three shops so far with shopkeepers who automatically give me a fair price, speak slowly in Oromiffa, and seem genuinely happy to see me when I come in, which has been so nice. I’ll be frequenting those shops often, for sure. In addition to shops there’s the market, where farmers sell their produce. I haven’t braved that one yet – I’m working up to it.

So far I’ve spent the majority of my time working on making my room into a home, and on figuring out where I can buy what I need. There are two victories of which I am most proud, and they are:

1. Cooking: While in Addis I purchased a gas stove and a propane tank, having heard that after the initial expense and hassle of moving with the tank, it was the best way to cook. I now believe that is true, but for about 4 days, I ran into roadblock after roadblock while trying to get it to work, not the least of which being my terror that I was going to explode myself and my new compound family. Oh, and I had never learned how to consistently strike a match. However, Wednesday was my day of triumph. I lit two matches in a row on the first strike, the hose was finally snugly attached to the stove connector, and a crowd of 15 Ethiopian men had shown me how to light it. Thus, victory of victories, I successfully lit my stove without dying, and have since cooked pasta, lentils, potatoes, and rice. Woo!! 

2. Children on the street: This victory is the first in what I hope will be a continuous, step-by-step road to ultimate triumph. Children here have somehow learned that when a foreigner walks by, it is advisable to shout “ferenje!” (foreigner!) “you!” “China!” “money!” at you. They also sometimes come running up to you to shake your hand, which I find adorable. One particularly bold group of kids hangs out on the back road, on the way to two of the shops with the nice shopkeepers. I stopped one day and used my language skills to explain that my name is not “ferenje!” or “you!” – it is Kristen. I went on my merry way, hoping against hope that they would remember. Sure enough, two days later I strolled down the road, and was thrilled to hear behind me: “Kristen! Kristen!” It’s only about 5 children, but it’s a magnificent start!

School here begins after the New Year, which on our Gregorian calendar is September 11, so I have a couple more weeks of down time. Once school starts, I’ll be spending the first 2-3 months working on a Community Education Needs Assessment, which means I’ll be interviewing and observing teachers for the most part, and using the assessment to determine what projects and programs I will start. For now though, life is about the ‘soft’ goals – language acquisition, cultural exchange, integration, and home decorating.