Question and Answer Session #1 And My Wish List

I have received a few emails with people who have specific questions about life in Ethiopia so I thought I would stop trying to be clever and give the people what they want (I hope that is the most arrogant thing I will ever write in this blog). Whenever I get a few emails or comments with questions, I will try to answer them so ask away (schicklingla@sbcglobal.net). Also, at the bottom is my new mailing address and a wish list in case any of you kind folks feel like sending me something. But as always, a letter is $1.05 and awesome! Here we go:

Explain how you wash your clothes.

            Let me preface this with I am awful at washing clothes. Especially when my arms get tired, they only end up slightly cleaner than they began. The most important part of doing laundry is the weather. If it is a bright, sunny day, the clothes will dry by the end of the day. But since it is the rainy season, this is harder than it sounds (like today, I washed 3 pairs of jeans and my PJs only to have it start pouring rain 30 minutes later. Darn you rainy season!!!!). It'll often take two days for clothes to be dry so you must be proactive with laundry. If you wait until you have no clean underoos, you will likely be going commando for a day or two. 

                Here are the items I use to wash my clothes: a big bucket filled with clean(ish) water, two wide mouth buckets, a pitcher, and soap.

                 With the pitcher, scope some of the clean water into one of the wide mouth buckets. Put the article of clothing you want to wash in the water. I use bar soap so rub the bar on the article of clothing and then use that soapy area to scrub other parts of the article of clothing. Continue to do this until every inch of the garment is soapy. For pants, this will take 3-5 minutes, for shirts 2-3 minutes, socks and underwear 1-2 minutes and sweatshirt/fleeces take forever. The key is to really scrub the clothes and rub hard. There is a lot of mud here now so you have to do this to the outside and then flip it inside out.

            Next, you wring out the soapy clothes and put it in the second wide mouth bucket. Add a little water. Repeat those steps for every article of clothing you have the courage to wash. At certain points, you have to dump out the water and replace it with clean water. The dirtier the water gets after each piece of clothing, the better it is getting cleaned. Once you are done washing, you rinse clothes in the second bucket, trying to get soap off. Wring the article of clothing and then put it back in the other wide mouth bucket, which has new clean water. You go back and forth between buckets until there is no soap left on the clothing. That can take between 2-4 transfers. Each time you have to wring it out to get soap out. Once you are satisfied (this does not mean clean/soapless, it just means you think it is good enough) you hang the clothes up on a line to dry. 

By the end of laundry, my forearms are on fire. It is like giving wrist burns for two hours straight. Yep, washing clothes takes about 1-2 hours, if you do not have a ton to do. If you procrastinate and have a lot to wash, it can be an all day thing. When I finish laundry, I always think to myself, “no matter what happens in the next two weeks, there is not a single thing that could make me go home because there is no way I just went through that torture for nothing”. Washing clothes is easily the worst part of this whole experience (that was 557 words on washing clothes, sorry).

Explain what a bucket bath is.

            A monthly tradition! Not really, I am not that bad, yet. Some people are lucky enough to have a shower room, which makes the whole process a lot easier. You can splash around to your hearts content. I am not so lucky so I have to take a bucket bath in my room. I do have an electric kettle now so I can take warm bucket baths; it is amazing. To take a bucket bath while not in a shower room, you nude up and stand in a wide mouth bucket. With a pitcher of water (hopefully a cold/hot water mix) you get your body wet. Soap up. Get another pitcher of water and rinse off. It is best to do it section by section. So wash you hair and then rinse out the shampoo. Wash your face then rinse off the soap. Wash your arms then rinse off the soap etc. I have started laying out a tarp underneath the bucket so I don’t have to worry about flooding my room, but you do have to be careful otherwise you can make a huge mess. I think the hardest part is the armpits. You have to angle yourself weirdly so the water falls into the bucket, not on the floor. My strategy is pour water with hand that corresponds to the armpit. So use the right hand to rinse off the right pit. It sounds complicated. It kind of is at first. Once you are done, dry off and clean the mess you have made. The advantage of the tarp is that I can just put to outside to dry and then I am done. I am still not very good at bucket baths; maybe it is a lack of practice. Yeah, two years of this, that should be fun… Here is a picture of how much water it actually takes

(the shampoo discolored it, swear!)

Describe the food you eat.

            Delicious. I feel really fortunate to have ended up in a country that has such great food. Many PCVs would disagree with me. I love the food. Others hate the food. The main source of division is with injerra. I can eat it multiple times a day and have no problems. But I once heard it described as, “Every time I finish my plate full of injerra, it is like I won a battle that cost me a little bit of my soul”. Regardless, if you have never had Ethiopian food, I’d really recommend finding a place and trying it out. There is actually a Little Ethiopia in LA. You should go; it will be like we’re together.

            With the exception of one dish, I am pretty much a vegetarian when it comes to Ethiopian food. Orthodox Christians fast by not eating meat every Wednesday and Friday plus before random holidays throughout the year (the fasting periods add up to something like 5 months out of the year) so it is really easy to not eat meat. As previously mentioned, the staple is injerra. It is a spongy textured “flatbread”. You eat everything by scooping it up with injerra. There are some common Ethiopian dishes. Lentils are very popular so they will be seasoned with all different spices and it is called messierwot. It is one of my favorites. Chickpea powder is mixed with a little water, onions, oil and spices and it is called shirowot. Also tasty. Potatoes mixed with carrots, onions, garlic and oil is common. Also, kale-like cabbage sautéed in oil and garlic is great. One of the best little items are hallowed out green peppers filled with onion, tomatoes, garlic and a little oil. Spicy and delicious.

            The one meat dish I do eat is called t’ibs. It is meat (there no way to be sure what kind) cooked with onions and peppers. There are different kinds based on how you cook it but the best kind is chokla t’ibs. It is as close to BBQ has you can get. If you threw guacamole on it, it would pass as solid carne asada. The chokla t’ibs have a nice char on it that has become something of a legend. Rumor has it; if there is enough of a char you can get “t’ibs dreams”. They are amazingly wonderful dreams that are a result of your belly being so happy. There has only been one confirmed case of “t’ibs dreams” (if Aaron Arnold is to be believed), but it involved breaking world records by street luging on a pillow while being interviewed on a talk show about being so awesome. I have not had one, but I am waiting.

 Grandma, I don’t know whose beer that is!

What Asella is like?

            Right now, it is cold and rainy and that’s a bummer. The rainy season should end in the next few weeks (it takes place during our summer) and it cannot come soon enough. I actually like the rain but it makes everything muddy and, as mentioned, washing clothes difficult. When it is not the rainy season, I am told the weather is pretty nice. It is 70-80 degrees so I should feel like at home.

            The city itself is pretty big. There are around 100,000 people living here, but many in the outskirts of town. There are kind of two parts of town. The main part where I live, and a second part that is down a big hill. I have not really been down the hill and anticipate spending a majority of my time in the main part of the city. My home is about a 10-minute walk from the main road (all uphill, in the rain, with a nail in my foot?), which is nice. I am close to everything but still far enough away that I feel like I am not in a huge city. To walk from one end of the town (from now on, I shall not be counting the part of the town that is down the hill as part of the town at all) to the other takes about 25 minutes. In the town, there is just about everything I could want. There is an Internet café, tons of good places to eat, three “forengi” stores and lots of places to kill time. There are even a couple places where I can get “forengi” food like burgers or pizza. So while I really wanted a smaller town, I cannot really complain too much.

            One thing I really like about Asella is that it is a good mix of urban and rural. On the main road, it feels like a big city. There are people and bajajs everywhere. There is a huge market and rows of people selling things. It is nice to be able to walk around and feel like I am in a big town. I can get everything I need and then some. But the area I live is very different. I live on a dirt road, well away from traffic. There are a few tiny shops (suks) where I can buy small necessities; but overall, my area feels like a small town in the middle of nowhere. It is really great to have two such different places to satisfy whatever mood I am in. Again, I don’t have a lot to complain about. Soon, I will take some pictures around town and post them.

Are you close to the Sudans? Somalia? Have you seen a pirate?

            No, no and not to my knowledge. The Peace Corps is really serious when it comes to safety. As such, no volunteer is placed near a border and we are not permitted to travel within 60 km of a border at any time (I should probably learn the metric system before I travel the country). As a result, there are some neat cities that we are not allowed to go to, but ultimately, safety first is not such a bad thing. Ethiopia is nestled in what has been a pretty volatile area.  To the east is Somalia. Yeah. It is Somalia. To the north is Eritrea and while things are stable, there was a civil war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and things can still be a bit tense. To the west are the Sudans, which recently had their own civil war. Finally to the south is Kenya. While the two countries are friends, there are tribes along Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia that have a centuries old habit of fighting over lives stock and such. To summarize, I am ok with not venturing out too far.  On top of that, there are a lot more restriction of where we can and cannot travel. As a PCV, I am held to a higher standard of safety than tourists. So, ironically, if you came out and visited, you could actually see more of the country than I can. But again, I would much rather have these restrictions and be safe than accidentally end up in an unsavory area. Here is a map they showed us in regards to where we can and cannot go. Ethiopia is a big country, but all the red is out of bounds. When this came on the screen, there was a pretty loud laugh

What is an average day like?

            There is no average day here. Everyday is something new. During pre-service training (PST) things were a little more stable. Monday through Saturday, I would get up at 7:00am (1:00 Ethiopian time). I would eat breakfast, which normally consisted of bread with peanut butter and the greatest tea I will ever have in my life. At 8:00, language class started. During the course of the day, we got a 90 minute lunch break and two half an hour coffee breaks (good old shay/buna time [tea/coffee]) but class did not end until 5:00. Once the classes were over, myself and some of the other trainees would go to a café. We would stay for an hour or two playing bananagrams, monopoly deal, or just relaxing. At about 6:30, it would start to get dark so we would head back to our family’s houses. Once there, I would usually play with the kids for a bit and then go to my room to mellow out and rest my brain. At around 9:00, I would eat dinner and then go to bed. Throughout this, there were days we went to Asella for training, went on field trips through the market and even practiced teaching in a local school for two weeks.

            Now that I am in Asella, I have no idea what an average day is. School starts in a few weeks and once that begins, I will likely have more structure in my day. But for now, I wake up at around 8:00-8:30 and have to think really hard about what I am going to do. Our only responsibility during this time, before school starts, is to get to know the town and get settled in. I walk around the town a lot, get coffee and use the Internet at an Internet café. I have also been getting my house in order but now I have to wait for furniture to be ready before I can really do anything else. All of this makes my average day pretty boring. I have plenty of time to read or write blogs, letter and emails. I am also watching movies and TV shows at a pretty quick pace. So if you have some free time, send me an email!

What is it like being a PCV?

            Have you ever had to give a really important presentation? Like the kind you prepare for weeks ahead of time and have down perfectly? Now imagine, 15 minutes before this presentation, the meeting place is changed so you have no idea where to go; you just wander around aimlessly hoping you are going to the right place. And say when you finally get there, you realize you left your note cards, which contain the heart of your presentation, at home. In this moment, you only have one choice: put your head down, do the best you can with what you have, and just trust that, somehow, you will come out ok on the other side. That is pretty much what it feels like every moment of every day.

Are you crazy?

Wait, that is the question I ask myself everyday and still don’t have an answer to.

My Wish List and New Address

Kitchen Items:

Absorbent dishtowels

Wooden mixing spoons

Plastic spatula

Fly Swatter

Ziplock bags

Odds and Sods:

Cocoa powder

Vanilla

Online, you can order powdered cheese (like Mac N’ Cheese style)

Lights weight sweaters/cardigans that would cover tattoos (or nik’isatoch as they are called here)

Comfy and warm PJ pants

Seeds for an herb garden

Food:

Canned tuna or chicken
Hillshire Farms sausage (prepackaged sort that does not rot)
Parmesan cheese

Baby belt cheese

Mac N’ Cheese

Seasonings

            -Premixed (i.e. Italian, Mexican etc.)

            -Stir-fry packets of seasoning (that’s a thing right?)

            -Any container of seasoning you feel like sending, with really simple recipes

Trail Mix!

Nature Valley Bars (the super crunchy kind where two come in a pack)

Instant oatmeal in any tasty flavor (just not banana please)

Grape Jelly

Individual serving mayo packets

Fruit snacks

Rice crispy treats

Candy (tootsie roll pops hold up well, last a while, and are amazingly delicious)

Toiletries:

Hand sanitizer and baby wipes

Deodorant

Toothbrush

Pumice stone for the two things that used to be my feet

Lotion

Required!

Letters, pictures, love, etc.

Laura Schickling

PO Box 986

Asella, Ethiopia

If you made it this far down, you deserve a prize! Keep the questions coming! Miss you all!