COOKIE PARTY!

Upon hearing that I had access to an oven, my lovely mother instantly decided I needed to have all the fixin’s to make Christmas cookies. The care package arrived after forenji Christmas but before Ethiopian Christmas. The only thing to do was invite my favorite children and Lisa in the world to my house for a cookie party. What followed was adorable. 

It was oddly difficult to explain why we were cutting cookies into the shape of socks.  I think I am going to side with the kids on this one, that is a weird tradition.

Betty and Soliana, Tilahun's daughters. 

Taking this out of context, I guess it's just me threatening a kid with a knife. But frosting makes it OK!

Even Lisa got into the action. Not going to lie, she tried real hard. I guess we both did. And the girls' cookies still looked roughly 100% better.

Shalom really enjoyed making cookies and nothing was going to distract her from it. This was the only picture of her looking at the camera.

Shalom's older sister Yididia, aggressively sprinkling.

 I guess they tasted good too!

Lisa and I decided we had to leave something out for Ethiopian Santa.

Peace Corps: Goal 1

I was recently talking to my brother, Alex, on Skype and he said something like “Laura, you talk about travelling, activities, and other shenanigans, but how is the actual work going? How is teaching?” I think my first reaction may have been laughter but it did get me thinking about the work I do at my school, and more specifically, my lack of reporting about it on this here blog.

My official Peace Corps title is Primary School English Teacher Trainer. The idea is that if I work with teachers and improve their English and methodologies, that will trickle down to the students. In theory, I will have a wider reach teaching teachers than simply teaching a few classes of students. Peace Corps’ main goal is sustainability- my work should continue even when I am gone.

While this all sounds great, it does not work perfectly in practice. Already overworked teachers are not always motivated to do extra work when there is no tangible incentive. Furthermore, most of my teachers have other roles and responsibilities once they finish their day teaching. At first this was frustrating, but eventually I learned to respect the decisions these people have to make. If the choice is, come to my training or go cook dinner for your five children/work a second job to provide money for food, I’d expect their highest priority to be their family’s well-being every time.

The result of these circumstances is that I am not able to do as much work as I would like. But the work I do complete, I enjoy. A great example of this is a program my Ethiopian counterpart and I have started at my school called Grassroots Soccer. The program uses soccer as a vessel to teach students about HIV and its prevention. We are only halfway through the eleven sessions, but the students seem to be truly enjoying it. For me, one of my favorite parts has been to watch my counterpart begin to take the lead and become more confident in delivering the lessons. He has been able to lead discussions and talk with students about subjects normally not discussed in Ethiopian classrooms.

I brought my camera to a few sessions and here are some examples of the type of lesson in the Grassroots Soccer program:

The contract all student have to sign to participate in the program. Since sensitive topics are often discussed, it is important to have a safe environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing. Also, students are expected to go home and tell their family and friends some of the things they have learned. 

 In groups of 2-3, students had to decide if a statement was true or false. There are many misconceptions about HIV and this activity helped to get students thinking critically about things they hear, instead of blindly believing it.

 The papers in front of the students represent common risks for contracting HIV, "sex with older partners", "not using a condom", etc. Students had to dribble the soccer ball around the obstacle with certain consequences for hitting one. These consequences impacted themselves, their teammates, and everyone in the program.

Not only did this exercise teach students risks for getting HIV, but it put the impact of the virus into perspective. Your family, friends, and community are affected if you get HIV.

 My counterpart, Solomon, lead a discussion about the importance of being mutually faithful with your partner. The discussion took an interesting turn when a female student commented that being faithful never really works because how can you fully trust your partner? Without missing a beat, Solomon began discussing power dynamics in a relationship and whether or not you should really be with someone you cannot trust.

Chilalo Mountain

The town of Asella is nestled at the base of a large mountain called Chilalo. It is a beautiful beast that had been taunting Joe, Abel, and myself for some time, luring us to try to conquer it. And conquer it we did (kind of [not really {I'm genuinely surprised we lived}]). The mountain is ranked somewhere in the top ten tallest mountains in Ethiopia. The exact figure is unknown because measuring, turns out, isn't an exact science. I am going to say, because I jump while at the top (and I can jump fairly high), we were at the six highest elevation in Ethiopia. In actuality, I think the summit is around 13,000. I feel that is pretty solid for a day hike.

Our destination as seen from my house

Early in the morning, Joe and I left from my house to meet Abel at his. We arrive there at around 7:30am. It is worth noting, we arrived back at Abel's house at 7:30pm. It was a long day. But the weather was perfect. There were very few clouds about, giving us some spectacular views.

Here we are: clean, excited, and perhaps a little naive. We knew other people had done the same climb with success so it never occurred to us (or at least me), the day would be anything but a pleasant jaunt.

Apparently there is a forest in Asella where local runners train. The cool thing about living in this area is that local runners could actually be future Olympians. By the time we reached this forest, most of the runners were done for the morning. But I have watched people in Bekoji train the same way. They zigzag through these trees, up and down hills with speeds ranging from a light jog to sprinting. I tried to run with some of them and could not keep up. Going at what seemed like a snail's pace in comparison, I still fell over tree roots and had to stop to catch my breath before the actual runners seemed to be done with their warm up.

 

Once out of the forest, we came upon a path that people walk daily to get to the market in Asella. What to me was a fun novelty, was a daily routine to them. 

 

One thing that I love about Abel is his love of coffee. Because we left so early, he was not able to drink coffee. To an Ethiopian, this is obviously unacceptable.  We came upon a rural area that had some houses. While Joe and I were hoping that no one would stop us and tell us we were not allowed to climb the mountain, Abel was going to door to door to see if anyone would make us coffee. This nice woman was happy to prepared a full coffee ceremony for us. She built a fire, roasted the beans, pounded it into grinds, cooked the coffee, and served it to us.

In my opinion, the most amazing sight of the day (and possibly my service) took place in this woman's home. There is a common phrase here (at least among PCVs) called "habasha hands". It is an equivalent to "housewife hands" in America (I feel like maybe this terms is not appropriate to say anymore, houseperson?). It is the idea that a person works with hot objects so often that he or she can touch something that would burn a normal person.

This woman had the craziest set of habasha hands I have ever seen. To give some perspective, Abel went home and told his mom about this woman. Abel's mom raised five children, four of which are boys, and she was astounded. Our barista built the fire to boil the water on sticks. Once the fire as going, she balance the kettle on the sticks. The kettle literally became red hot because it was directly on the flame. Once the coffee was done, she grabbed the kettle from the bottom (the RED HOT bottom) and pour three glasses of coffee. She did not flinch or grimace. She felt nothing. As she held metal that would have melted my skin off, she just continued to smile and talk.

I think this was our rock band album cover photo

With a dose of caffeine in our system, Joe and I decided to do what any good American would do in this situation: play baseball. There were circular plants growing in this open area and we took the opportunity to have batting practice. This was Abel's first time taking a baseball swing and as you can see, from the fear in my position, he is a natural!

My best attempt at, "You shall not pass!"

Abel and Joe

The rock formations towards the top of the mountain were amazing. Chilalo used to be a volcano (or still is? when does a volcano stop being a volcano?). The result are these beautiful rocks that look just like lava rolling down hill.

Close to the top. Asella is somewhere down there. At a certain point we stopped trying to find it.

Joe at the top of the world. 

For anyone who is a regular reader of this blog (so basically just my mom), you will remember that Joe and I climb a mountain called Gelama together near his town of Bekoji. Once at the top, someone asked if we wanted our picture taken. Thinking that we were "too cool for school", we scoffed and said no. Later in the day we realized how dumb we were and that probably would have been a really nice picture. We did not make the same mistake twice, here is our photo: redemption! I would also like to state that Joe is noticeably taller than me, I have no idea why I look like an amazon woman in this photo.

And on the back side of Chilalo, there was ... drum roll... another mountain! Kind of. It turned out that Chilalo is crater-like. There are three walls of the crater, but since they are near the same height, you cannot see the others unless you are on the top. We were all blown away by this. Looking back now, it all makes sense. People from towns all over the region use Chilalo as a marker, but these markers always contradict each other. Knowing the actual geography of the mountain makes it obvious that people are just referencing different faces of the mountain.

I have never in my life seen anything as expansive and amazing as the view from the top. I honestly felt like I was on the top of the world. 

Group shot; we made it!

 

As I said earlier, the trip was 12 hours straight of walking. Joe had a fancy watch to tell us how far we went, but it ran out of batteries (telling of the day). Based on what the number was before it died, we walked somewhere between 15-18 miles. 

We got lost on the way down and that cost us a good hour or two. While in some places in the world this would not be a problem, it meant we were likely walking through hyena turf towards the end of the trek. A fairly scary idea at the end of a long day. We realize we were in trouble when we passed people on the road and they offered to let us all stay at their house for the night. They almost pleaded with us because they knew the path was unsafe at that hour. But when given the option of getting one hyena bite or one million bug bites, we all knew the best choice. Fortunately, we had no problems and all got home safe.

In my mind, the day was one of the best examples of everything I love about Peace Corps and Ethiopia. I went with two people who were strangers a year and a half ago, but are now family.  I saw some of the most beautiful sights I will ever see in my life. A woman we did not know and lives in conditions of such poverty that her bedroom, kitchen, and barn are all one room, treated us to coffee. Any time were were lost and someone was around, they were happy to help us. On the way back, strangers cared about our safety, perhaps more than we did, and offered us their home for a night. The day was perfect and exemplified all the forms of beauty in which this country is so rich.