Moving

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.

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!! 

The big room of my new home, day one

The bedroom of my new home, day one