Leisure Activities

One of the basic truths about life as a Peace Corps Volunteer is that no matter how many activities you take on, you will have an excess of free time. This is due to a combination of being one of the only Americans in town, being home, alone, for the night every day by 7pm at the latest, and the need for a increased alone time to maintain mental health.

Filling this free time is a big part of a PCV’s service, and we each do it differently. Here’s a list of all the at-home activities I’ve engaged in so far (but I’m not telling you how big of a proportion of my time each activity takes. A girl needs some secrets, after all!):

Reading books

Crocheting

Basket weaving

Watching movies

Watching old TV shows

Doing home-decorating projects

Cooking

Playing freecell with real cards

Playing card games on my computer

Playing complete, solo games of bananagrams, adding one at a time until all 144 are used

Reorganizing thousands of Kindle books by last name, and then by genre

Drawing (you’ll never see a single drawing I’ve done here, because every single one looks like it was done by a 4^th grader, but it’s therapeutic nonetheless.)

Designing a wall-hanging I hope to sew in the near future

Religious study

Dancing around my room to hip-hop music

Exercising

Painting my nails and braiding my hair in weird ways

Taking pictures of the baby cows on the compound – yup, that’s a leisure activity for me!

Writing overly long emails to my friends and family

Writing in my journal

Writing these lovely blog posts

It’s a pretty good list, huh? I’ve managed to even impress myself, seeing it all listed out here like that. One thing's for sure: you can’t be a Peace Corps Volunteer and not enjoy your own company!

My food-themed bananagrams creation: a solid two-hours' work.

Getting a Classroom: A Case Example of How Nothing is Easy

“Nothing is easy.”

It’s not the most inspiring of slogans, nor is it one that Peace Corps would ever endorse, but it’s one that I personally use on a weekly basis. I’m not sure who coined it, but they were spot on, and somehow reminding myself that nothing is easy here helps to keep me from being discouraged when things go wrong or take three times as long as I think they should. Take, for example, my model classroom.

The Ethiopian Ministry of Education, USAID, and Peace Corps all encourage us Education PCVs to get the schools we work in to work with us to create a model classroom. The model classroom would be in good structural condition, be visually attractive, have desks arranged in a way that facilitates group work and teacher circulation, and have a number of teaching aids on the walls. The room would serve as a model for how classrooms can be a teaching tool themselves when used properly, and the idea is that the PCV would teach model lessons in the room and would train teachers on how to use desk arrangements and visual aids to their advantage.

My school has known since before I arrived in Fincha that giving me a classroom was something they were expected to do, but I just got the key to the room a week ago, almost seven months after I arrived, and it’s still far from being something I would label a model classroom. So what took so long?

One major roadblock has been the shifting of leadership and contact points in the school. My first counterpart left the school to go work in the county-equivalent administration office just before I arrived in Fincha, making it so that I had no known contact in the school from the start. I slowly got to know the school director, but he was transferred to the high school about two months into the school year. Right about that time I finally found a new counterpart, and felt like I had gainful working relationships with him and the new school director.

Another major roadblock was finding a room that would work for me. We went through three different plans in as many months, because my school is in very poor shape, structurally. Most of the buildings are made of mud and sticks, and are nearing the end of their expected lifetime. Finally we found a solution: there’s one building that was built only a couple years ago, out of cement blocks, and is in good shape structurally. It was full, of course, but they decided to shift one class of students to a mud room, to give me the nice room. So after all that, the solution is one that comes with not a little guilt.

The exterior of my new classroom

Inside my new classroom, breaking it in with our English club!

A more typical example of the classrooms at my school

So now, I have this classroom. Victory! But as you can see, I have some work to do, to make this classroom worthy of its purpose. And this brings us to the third major roadblock: money. I told them that I needed to paint the walls, but the answer was that there aren’t sufficient funds for paint this year. I asked them for real desks, the same as are present in all the classrooms, and luckily they say they can find money for them, but it will be at least a month before they’re finished being built, and I haven’t yet gotten a straight answer about whether they’ve even been ordered. At this point I’m planning to foot the bill for the paint myself, because my patience is starting to wear thin. I want this classroom finished by the end of the school year, so that I can use it in earnest next year.

Through it all, there are the minor obstacles that contribute to the usefulness of our unofficial slogan. For example, when I first toured my new classroom, there were a number of desks and benches in it, but a few days later, they had all disappeared. I asked the director if I could have some benches for my classroom, and the answer was yes, but the man with the key to the storage room wouldn’t be present until next week. I returned the next Monday and camped out in the director’s office until he had called the man, the man had arrived, and a horde of students had been found to carry the benches into my room. Phew!

Nothing is easy, but knowing that going into each meeting or request helps me adjust my expectations and keep my cool when yet another roadblock appears. I hope in a month or two to be able to write a follow-up post, showing pictures of a beautifully painted classroom, full of real desks and with teaching aids covering the walls, and I hope to be able to say that I’m tackling arranging some trainings to teach the teachers and administrators about how the classroom, used properly, can make the teacher’s job easier and can help the students learn more effectively. 

American Culture, Its Invisible Influence, and the Complexity of Cultural Exchange

Most Ethiopians I’ve encountered are very proud of their culture, so they’re often curious about my own culture. They ask seemingly simple questions, such as what my cultural foods and cultural clothing are, for which I just don’t have simple answers. As an American I’ve grown up learning about how America is the great melting pot of all cultures, and that’s especially true when it comes to food in America, where it’s normal and even valued to frequently eat foods that come from cultures across the globe. Clothing is different, but still results in a lack of cultural clothing. Americans wear “Western” clothing, a style that’s much the same as European clothing and that’s slowly permeating the whole world’s fashion, including Ethiopian day-to-day wear.

Because of this emphasis in America on mixing and matching elements of many countries’ food, music, and clothing, it makes answering well-meaning Ethiopians quite difficult. Explaining that we don’t have cultural foods or cultural dress, or even a single genre of American music can leave the Ethiopian enquirer with the impression that America doesn’t have culture.  But after participating in an activity a couple months ago at my in-service training, I’ve re-discovered that there really is such a thing as American culture, and it goes a heck of a lot deeper than those easily seen and easily shared aspects.

The activity was an exercise called “Rude or Not Rude,” in which we would go stand under either a “Rude” sign or a “Not Rude” sign after an action that’s common in Ethiopian culture was read out. Some of the things that were read were:

• Playing your TV or music at high volumes so everyone in the vicinity can hear it
• Shoving your way onto the bus or up to the counter
• Using the command form: “get in, sit, come on.”
• Urging your guest to “play,” when she’s gone quiet
• Urging your guest, “eat!” at frequent intervals, including when she’s chewing and has the next bite in her hand
• Picking your nose in public

I (and many of my fellow PCVs) found that I still consider these things rude, and it was a wake-up call that forced me to see how much I really do view my experiences through the lens of my American upbringing, which most certainly included training on what was proper behavior and what was rude. In America we’re taught to keep our speakers’ volume low, to wait our turn, to use indirect language when inviting people in or making requests, to never, ever pick our noses in public.

These rules about proper behavior are uncompromising, and give individuals a straight and narrow path to help navigate social interactions. It’s only when you travel to a nation with a very different (and in many ways opposite) culture that it becomes a problem, because you can bet that the door swings both ways , such that while I find some Ethiopian ways of interacting rude, they also find some of my actions rude.

For instance, frequently dropping in on your neighbors is a big part of Ethiopian culture, but try as I might, I still haven’t managed to overcome my cultural training and drop in unannounced on my neighbors. And the sad thing is that I come across as rude by not going! I seem weirdly reserved and send the message that I’ve forgotten about them. In addition to not being able to drop in on my neighbors, I’ve also found it hard (read: impossible, at least so far) to stop valuing alone time, independence, privacy, and work.  

The vast difference in what I value creates a distance between me and the Ethiopians I live among, and it makes me wonder: In what ways can I meaningfully share American culture? How much will I adjust to Ethiopian cultural values and practices in the next 18 ½ months, such as letting go of my need for alone time and embracing interdependence, shoving my own way onto the bus, or no longer being upset by blaring speakers? If I never drastically adjust my values, does that diminish the value of my service or mean that I’ve failed in some way?

These questions are what occupy much of my thinking time, and what constitute, to me, the meat of my service. Cultural exchange, as it turns out, is a lot more complicated than celebrating each other’s holidays and eating each other’s food, and when negotiated successfully, is at the very heart of achieving international and intercultural peace. Thus, since I’m in the Peace Corps, I feel justified in allowing cultural exchange to occupy the forefront of my thought!

Me and my fellow PCVs, wearing traditional Ethiopian clothing that had been
given to us by our host families, taken in August just before swearing in. 

Starting to Work

I realized recently that I haven’t explained very much about my job, and that that might be rather confusing for everyone back home. As you’ve probably already gathered from this blog, a large portion of being a Peace Corps Volunteer takes places outside of the workplace. The lessons, experiences, and mutual giving are most definitely not confined to the workplace. We’re Americans though, so it comes back around to the job eventually: “But what is she doing over there??” Well, I’ll tell you:

My official job title as an Education PCV in Ethiopia is English Teacher Trainer. This means that unlike most Education PCVs in most countries, we don’t have a class of our own. Instead, we’re in more of a consulting and training position. Our first goal is to help English teachers in primary schools (grades 1-8) improve their English and adopt more interactive/communicative teaching techniques. Our second goal is to help students via extracurriculars  which means that it falls within our job scope if we start an English club for students.

This past month I’ve finally started making headway on both of those goals. Now, the key word there is started. What I’ve accomplished with the teachers would hardly be considered an accomplishment in America, but bear with me.

As part of our teacher-focused goal, we’re encouraged to establish a model classroom that would be spruced up with visual aids, to be used for teaching model lessons and training teachers on how to better use the classroom space itself. My school is struggling financially, so finding an appropriate space was quite difficult, but one day a storage room happened to be open, and I saw that if renovated, it would be the perfect space for such a classroom. And after a two hour meeting, my school director and his supervisor agreed with me! So the room is slowly being cleared out for me, and I hope to begin using it in the next month. Renovating it will be another story, since they don’t have funding for such an endeavor. My one funding option would be to post my project on the Peace Corps website and ask all of you wonderful people to donate to my cause… so stay tuned, I may be asking for your help!

In addition to the classroom quest, last week I taught a model lesson for 8^th graders on how to read for understanding, and I think the teacher really like the ideas I presented, and will be asking me to help him continue to help students with reading comprehension. I also observed the 6^th grade English teacher and gave him some constructive feedback afterwards, which he took gracefully, saying he’d try to implement my suggestion in the future. I’m hoping to repeat that process with him maybe next week. So I’m taking baby steps toward working directly with the teachers, and I hope beyond hope that it will continue to build as I go. In the meantime, I’ve committed to being at the school for a minimum of an hour each day, during which I chat with the teachers in English, to help them with their own conversation skills, and to build rapport.  

With the students, I have a weekly English club that my site mate and I co-started. She’s traveling in India this month though, so it’s just me. Last week we did Christmas, and before that we did parts of the body and weather. Mixed in with these fun lesson topics we’ll be inserting mini lessons on English instruction words, so that they’ll start to be able to follow along better in their classes. The students we’ve chosen are about 30 4^th – 6^th graders, most of whom are known to be OVCs – orphans or vulnerable children. They’re a very rewarding group to work with. They’re eager to learn and energetic, despite our meeting taking place after the school day.

It’s slow going, to be sure. The amount of time that I’ve been here and the amount of work I’ve been able to do that can be quantified and reported is a frustrating comparison, but Peace Corps isn’t solely about the measurable outcomes or the quick successes. They say that most PCVs don’t feel that they really get a lot of work done until the second year, and I’m starting to understand not only why that is, but why that’s good. Every day that I go to school and chat with the teachers, I piece together another bit of the puzzle of the way things work here, and understanding how things work is key to doing work that will actually fit their needs. For instance, only a few weeks ago I learned that the teachers are required to cover every single page of the textbook. For me, that means that any teaching methods I encourage have to be able to jive with the textbook lessons,and can’t significantly take time away from time they would have spent teaching from the book, so that they don’t fall behind.

I’m starting to feel like I really am learning the virtue of patience, and I’m happy that we’re encouraged to work with students while we slowly, ever so slowly try to work with teachers. And of course, there’s always everything outside of work to keep me on my toes.

Fincha Elementary School - the buildings on the right house the offices,
the buildings on the left are classrooms.

Two teachers working on their lesson plans during a free period.

The gazebo of sorts where teachers can enjoy tea and bread during the breaks. 

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

American Christmas

The Christmas season is hands down my favorite month of the year. I mean, come on: the music, the tree, the decorations, the planning and the secrets, the cookies, (hopefully) the snow, and the final culmination, complete with family, friends, and even more delicious goodies. There’s just no end to the wonderfulness! Thus, I was determined to make this Christmas season – my first away from home – as festive as possible.

The day after Thanksgiving, I spent hours listening to Christmas music and cutting out paper snowflakes, to Christmas-ize my home. Strangely, that was all I did for a couple weeks, but it was enough to put me in the mood. Then my site mate and I began to prepare for our upcoming celebration with the 2 PCVs the next town over. We spent three whole afternoons making decorations, including fancy Christmas cards, more snowflakes, a TP-roll snowman, and TP-roll “Christmas lights.”

The snowflakes, TP-roll "lights", and even the TP-roll snowman!

The highlight of my preparations though was the stockings. I wanted to make stockings for the four of us, so I drew out a template and went to one of the tailors in town to see about buying fabric. He had some great shiny and stretchy burgundy fabric, so I was happy. But when I pulled out the template, he thought I was asking him to make them, so he took it, and that’s when the magic happened: he made me four wonderful stockings, in under 45 minutes. I kid you not, it was the fastest I’ve ever seen someone cut, sew, and iron fabric. And if that wasn’t enough, he wanted to know why I wanted such enormous socks made, so I happily explained to him in the local language about stockings. I told him that for American Christmas, when the children are sleeping, the parents put candy in these very big socks, and that when the children wake up and see the candy, they are very excited. Not a perfect explanation, but I was proud of myself for how close I got in Oromiffa. And the stockings were beautiful to boot!

The stockings!

 Our celebration took place two weekends early, and included many games, much laughter, small gift exchanges, and an out-of-this –world delicious meal. In other words, exactly what Christmas should be. It was enough for me, to satisfy my mission to be festive despite 7,500 miles from home, but it wasn’t the end.

On Christmas Eve, my sister’s care package arrived! She had deliberately set out to send me Rosen Christmas in a box, and boy did she succeed:

Yep, she sent me a lighted and decorated tree, a Christmas mug and hot chocolate, a stocking with my favorite Christmas chocolate, Christmas socks, Christmas pj pants, a real, physical book, snow, and a cat - everything I love about Christmas at home that would fit in a box! 

Since I now had a Christmas tree, mini candy canes, and a real Christmas stocking, I decided to make use of them in a Christmas lesson at my English club that afternoon. I had a blast with the kids, explaining to them the Christmas tree, the stockings, and the candy, and being able to show them real examples of all of it! We started out by comparing Ethiopian Christmas and American Christmas, and we determined that both involve special food, family and friends coming together, and church-going. We finished by opening the present I had wrapped for them and opening the stocking, both of which contained candy for them. Seeing their eyes light up at the sight of the candy, and watching their reactions to the taste of the candy canes was priceless, and will be a lifelong memory.

My kids, with the tree, stocking, and present. :)

 As my sister wrote to me, “We have so many years to celebrate Christmas together…you only get two in Ethiopia, so make them count!” She’s exactly right. So, how do you think I did?

In-Service Training

The stereotypical image of a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) is of a dirty hippie-American living in a remote village in a developing country with no other Americans in sight. This vision isn’t far off, but as I discovered once I’d arrived in Ethiopia, Peace Corps doesn’t actually drop you off and say “see you in two years,” and leave you to your own devices. Back in the early days, that’s exactly what happened, but there was a disturbingly large amount of PCVs who didn’t finish the two years, so a study was done, and it was discovered that PCVs overall feel depressed and want to go home at the 3 month mark, the midway mark, and just before the end of service. In response, Peace Corps created conferences and trainings to bring volunteers together at those periods in their service.

So for the last two weeks, that’s what I’ve been up to. This first one is called IST: in-service training, and they brought us all to a town called Ambo about two hours outside of Addis for the duration of the training. Despite the hotel’s poor building plan that placed the conference room at the top of a 7-story building (that’s 120 steps, folks, not that we’ve been counting or complaining), it’s been just what I imagine the original creators of these conferences imagined: encouraging, reassuring, and arming us with the tools we need to go forward more effectively. 

The view of Ambo from the top of our hotel

I have many highlights, three  of which will signal big changes to my life as a PCV when I return to Fincha:

1. New Counterpart: A key component to this training involves bringing an Ethiopian counterpart from our educational communities, and developing an action plan with him, detailing what projects and programs we want to start after my return. I changed my counterpart for this one, and brought the supervisor of Fincha’s cluster of 6 primary schools (a big wig, in other words, with lots of local power). It worked out great, because his position of power will allow him to make it much easier to get things off the ground. In addition, I was thrilled to observe over the two days he was here that he’s completely professional in his interactions with me, and seems excited about working together with me on a regular basis. We’re hoping to start both a monthly training series and an individual mentorship program for the English teachers, so stay tuned for how that goes…

2. Peer Support Network (PSN): Peace Corps Volunteers have created 5 committees to serve the PCVs’ collective needs during their service, one of which is the peer support network, designed to support PCVs’ mental and emotional needs. I was elected to serve on PSN, which means I’ll be responsible for checking in on 8 of my fellow Education PCVs and sending them letters and gifts. In addition, I’ll help facilitate some trainings for the next group that arrives, and lead a demystification trip like the one I went on just after arriving in country. Being on PSN means I’ll be traveling out of Fincha a lot more than I thought I would (about 5 times each year), but I’m very excited to help support my fellow PCVs in this way.

3. Housing: I’ve been unhappy with the noise pollution that is present in my current home since day one of arriving in Fincha, and bearing it as well as I could while seeking out an alternative place to live in town. I found that place about a month ago, but have been trying to work out funding for moving there ever since. Finally, Peace Corps has agreed to supplement my monthly allowance so that I can move when the new place is finished being constructed. This is a huge victory, and I’m so excited that I can’t even describe it in words. Again, stay tuned, but I’m hoping to be able to move by New Year’s. Yay!!

4. Fun times with New Friends: This one doesn’t necessarily affect my future, but it’s wonderful all the same. The two weeks of training also afforded the opportunity to bond with my fellow PCVs, and I had a fantastic time. Our leisure activities included word games, a paper football tournament, big-screen movie-watching using the projector, and swapping stories. It was great to compare our experiences and find out how similar they were, and to laugh about the aspects of life as a PCV in Ethiopia that may be slowly driving us bonkers…

Me and my opponent in the paper football tournament.
We PCVs are nothing if not innovative in finding ways to pass our time...

5. Hiking around Lake Wenchi: Along those veins, on the Sunday in the middle of IST, 38 of us went on a hike aaround Lake Wenchi, one of only two crater lakes in all of Africa, located about a 45 minute drive outside of Ambo. It was stunningly beautiful, and great fun to hike with so many friends. We hiked for about 7 hours in a circle around the lake, but we cut part of it off by taking the row boat ferry over to an island in the middle where there is an Ethiopian Orthodox church. Legend has it that when an attacker was traveling the country and burning Orthodox churches, the Lake Wenchi church was where the arks of the covenant were taken, to protect them. I may or may not have been the 38^th PCV to finish the hike, and I may or may not have been incredibly sore for a few days afterwards, but it was definitely worth it.

Lake Wenchi, at the beginning of our hike

One of the wonderful views as we hiked down to the lake

6. Thanksgiving: Our IST finished Thankgiving morning, and we were bused back to Addis midday, so we were able to split into smaller groups and find somewhere to celebrate. The Sheraton hotel offers a true Thanksgiving buffet for a whopping 800 birr (that’s 1/3 of my monthly allowance, and a primary school teacher’s entire monthly salary), so I skipped that and instead went with some wonderful people to a French restaurant, where I had cheese and spinach ravioli and a dessert that was called pumpkin pie but tasted not remotely like pumpkin (It’s the thought that counts, right??). The place was elegantly decorated, and we created gratitude hand turkeys and shared what we were grateful for while we waited, and it felt very much like Thanksgiving should.

Thanksgiving dinner!

 I just returned to Fincha today, and I’m pleased to say that I’m happy to be back. When the bus drove over the dam at the base of town, I felt a similar feeling that I feel when I go back to my family’s summer cabin – it’s a feeling of coming home, and it was a thrill to realize that I felt that way about Fincha. I’m going to count that as a victory of sorts, as I enter the next phase of my life as a PCV.