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| My first home in Fincha |
Home. For a PCV, it’s somewhere that’s
thousands of miles away, that tugs at your heart and at times makes you wish
you could by some miracle be there, just for a little while. However, it is
also your new home, in your new town, and it’s your haven. PCVs are guaranteed
their own room, with a door that locks, ensuring that at the end of the day,
you can shut the door and retreat into your own space to recharge.
Or at least, that’s the idea. My home in
Fincha was indeed a room with a door that locked, so I did have a space to call
my own, where I could wear shorts, listen to American music, and cook
American-style food. Unfortunately, there was one fatal problem: my ceiling was
a tarp. Don’t worry, there was a corrugated metal roof above that, so I was
dry. But think about the nature of sound for a second – the little waves travel
right through that tarp, and hit a metal roof, bounce off, and oh, what do you
know, they can come right back down through the tarp… into my room. Add to that
the fact that my room was between two other rooms, both of which were being
rented by young men who worked at the nearby bank. Add the fact that they were
friends, and had figured out that they could talk to each other from their
respective rooms if they shouted, and add a TV in one room and there you have
it – a noise problem. Suddenly, instead of my home being the one place where I
could retreat from the difficulties of life as a PCV, it was one of the
difficulties itself.
Almost immediately, I determined that
moving would be the only way to solve the problem, but as I’ve learned over the
past 4 months, nothing is that easy here. I spent the first month convincing my
counterpart and the education administration office (which pays my rent) that I
really did need to move. I spent the second month searching for a new home,
which on one wonderful day, was found with the help of 3 other PCVs by going
door-to-door asking if there were any homes for rent. I spent the third month
trying to reconcile the price of the new home and the available budget at the
admin. office, which was solved by the gracious staff at the PC/Ethiopia office
adding a housing supplement to my living allowance (bless them). And I spent
the last month waiting for my new home to be finished (it was under construction
when we found it) and for the money to run out on my first home.
At last, the day arrived! How did I move
all my stuff, you ask? Why, by a horse cart, of course. Wait, that’s not normal
in the U.S.? Oh. Maybe I really have been here for a while after all… Well,
that’s how it’s done here – you find a horse and cart and man, and hire them by
the trip. I also had the selfless and dedicated help of both my counterpart and
one of the PCVs from the next town over. Together we were able to move all my
stuff in just three trips, and it was much less stressful than I anticipated.
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| Trip #2, with my kitchen table/shelf, bookshelf, stools, mattress, and suitcases. The poor horse had to lug it all uphill... |
The day was not without its eye-opening
moments, either (what day is?). My counterpart saw how much stuff I had (3
suitcases, 9 small boxes, 4 shopping bags, my water buckets, my stove/tank
combo, and my furniture), and told me in multiple ways how much stuff I had, and that having as much as I have qualifies me as
a very rich person, and that it usually takes years to accumulate this much
stuff. Ouch. So, a lesson for us all – we Americans have too much stuff!
I’m writing this blog entry on my first
night in my new home, and already I can tell it’s going to be better. I have
one neighbor now, and he has a TV, but he watches it at a low volume, and when
I go into the bedroom and close the door – wait for it – I can’t hear it AT
ALL. Praise all that is holy!!
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| The big room of my new home, day one |
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| The bedroom of my new home, day one |
