On the Road Again

During the first two weeks of May I went on the first G8 site identification trip for the next intake of Health volunteers. We began in the dreaded Jimma, a dusty, rough and unfriendly city that I’m sure I have mentioned more than a few times over the past 2 ½ years. It’s the city that I used to have to overnight in on the way to Masha. Because of its reputation, Peace Corps is not considering it for a volunteer site, but we have started to look within the Jimma Zone and therefore were based in the city for 6 nights. Site identification is done in three rounds; the first is to meet with potential host organizations (generally town health offices) and the police to get an idea of the work and safety situation. So that’s what we did for 10 days straight. We drove from town to town and had meetings with these health officers. Meetings in Ethiopia are interesting. There is no phone book or database so we can’t schedule meetings ahead of time, so we drive hours and hours hoping that someone will be available to talk to us. This is made more difficult by the workplace culture. Often there are week long or multi-day meetings that are mandatory for entire offices, sometimes every town office is in attendance. When that happens, there’s just nothing you can do. Even if there is someone in the office during those long meetings he or she probably isn’t the head and therefore cannot talk to you or doesn’t want to have the responsibility of talking to you or, God forbid, signing a paper without supervision. Despite the setbacks and challenges we were able to visit 6 towns, of which only one has previously had a health volunteer, and deemed 5 viable options for volunteer sites. Most of the last health group was placed in towns that had previously had a volunteer (the aim is to have 6 years of Peace Corps presence in a town before withdrawing). It’s really exciting that we’re finally moving into new towns and spreading our knowledge and friendship to new places in the country. And this time we’re going a little more rural. Because PC Ethiopia is a young post and the infrastructure/communications leave much to be desired we’ve been hesitant to go too far off the main roads and haven’t been able to offer all volunteers the “real Peace Corps I-walked-15km-to-buy-bread experience”. We’re still not there yet, but our reach is getting further.

Other than sitting in meetings conducted in Amharic (I understood most but didn’t contribute a whole lot) and walking around towns to see how much harassment I got I was able to spend a lot of time with a couple staff members. The staff at the PC office is terrific, and we had a really fun time together. On the weekend we went to the former king of Jimma’s “palace” and shared a few meals. The funniest moment was a cultural exchange that I think you’d all find amusing. I was with two men, one an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian and the other Muslim. The Orthodox man was telling the Muslim man about his daughter’s 14th day celebration. In Orthodox culture children have a celebration on their 14th day and it is said that their fate is decided by God on that day (will they be rich, successful, a doctor, a merchant etc…). To ensure that the child will be fortunate and never go hungry they wrap the child in a piece of injera. Now remember, injera is the staple food here that is like a huge, flat, sour pancake. It’s like a real live Anne Geddes photo! This was the first time the Muslim man had heard of this tradition, and he thought it was the funniest thing in the world (so did I the first time I saw it). He couldn’t get over the idea of a baby wrapped in injera. And then he started asking why not just surround the baby in money? Then he really lost it when he learned that the injera is eaten after. It was the funniest culture exchange I have ever witnessed. And even though there was laughter and disbelief, there was also an air of genuine curiosity and tolerance. That is one of the best things about Ethiopia, there are so many different people, ethnic groups, religions and people, but they all coexist peacefully and care to learn about each others’ cultures. That is something that America can learn from Ethiopia.