The Tug of Home

            As for the Rat, he was walking a little way ahead, as his habit was, his shoulders humped, his eyes fixed on the straight grey road in front of him; so he did not notice poor Mole when suddenly the summons reached him, and took him like an electric shock.

            We others, who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses, have not even proper terms to express an animal’s inter-communications with his surroundings, living or otherwise, and have only the word ‘smell,’ for instance, to include the whole range of delicate thrills which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day, summoning, warning, inciting, repelling. It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and with it this time came recollection in fullest flood.

            Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way!

—from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Daniel and I had been reading The Wind and the Willows aloud to each other. It was my turn to read when Home’s invisible hands started tugging at Mole. I stuttered through the passage, paused a heavy while, and had to back-track to read it again. And again. And highlight it some more. (If this annoyed my listener, he didn’t betray such sentiments). I rolled these words along my tongue and felt my ears becoming pointier, hands becoming paws, face becoming fuzzier—don’t worry for me; this is all figurative—my solidarity with Mole was materializing with great speed.

You can’t know how strong Home’s pull is, how weighty its reasons, how peculiar its scent, until you must leave it. And perhaps even leave it far enough behind that you can’t go back in a single afternoon, or even in a full day’s flight.

I’ve always been a homebody. Strange words coming from the one who makes a habit of going to Africa for long stretches of time. My elementary school crew (Elizabeth, Megan, Deidre, and I) were close; and we planned as many sleepovers as our parents would allow us—all of which were full of Backstreet Boys music video marathons, dance choreography, Truth or Dare, Nintendo, prank phone calls, the works. But there were various times I employed “the trick.” Whether it was the enticing, homey lighting in the kitchen the moment the phone rang, or the hovering probability of a thunder storm enjoyed indoors with Rootbeer floats, or the laughter thundering from the living room—I’d make the game-time decision to cover the receiver, shake my head violently, and whisper Say no, to my mom at the sink. She seemed to relish fulfilling this task, as I was choosing her and the gang over my friends at that moment. I was choosing the kitchen table, a holy place in the Steadman household, where I would spend the evening talking her ear off as she flipped through Rini Rego’s weekly ads, planning our meals for the next two weeks, clipping coupons, making grocery lists. If you could only see the lighting of the room when she did these things. You’d want to stay home too.

One of my first “spiritual obstacles” you could say, began the morning my Sunday School teacher Darlene fleshed out the first commandment for us seedlings: God must be number one in a person’s life. It seems obvious and second nature now, but to a 9 year old, what could be worse? This lovely woman who didn’t know my family the way I knew my family, was telling me it was physically possible to love someone more than those four particular individuals I adored. And an invisible someone, at that. No way, Jose. Not happening, says little Danielle. I had sleepless, tearful, angry, prayerful nights for awhile. I imagined a staggered Olympics medalist platform, shifting like an escalator. Mom and Dad on Gold, 11-year-old Christine and 4-year-old Charlie sharing Silver, God on Bronze. How could it be otherwise? Let’s pretend a moment. Escalator shift. God on top, then parents, then siblings. How how how. No way, Jose. Shift back! What gives him that privilege? His bedroom isn’t even near mine.

I wanted to just ignore Darlene, pretend she never said it. But it seemed that everything else she said on Sundays seemed to orbit around that tiny important “must.” And I couldn’t ignore it, because I liked God. I fancied him pretty important—just not quite important enough to oust my favorite people in his favor. My young life depended on the pecking order I had created, and that sort of thing doesn’t change in a day.

After six months, a year, two years (this 3^rd grade struggle is nowhere documented), my tearful prayers shifted one night, as did my medalist platform. Smiling ear to ear in my bottom bunk, nearly giggling myself to sleep, I was relieved I had reached the place Darlene described—and doubly relieved to find this didn’t mean I had to love my family any less. It turned out he couldn’t even share the same platform—but needed his own and separate one, a bit to the left; his importance was an over-arching kind that somehow even infiltrated the other pedestals.

I often think back to this moment and ponder God’s cleverness. More than once I’ve asked him, So is this why that had to happen? Did you need me to choose you over them early, to make this decision easier today? Like when I felt the call to fulltime missions and spent years preparing, when I studied in Uganda, when I spent my college breaks and summers (times I craved home) serving at summer camps and cleaning up after hurricanes. Like when we came to Ethiopia for two years, boarding the plane during my sister’s eighth month of pregnancy.

As much as I fell in love with Waco during Daniel’s Baylor years—and as often as I beg Daniel to agree to settle down there, I know that my connection with the city and the people doesn’t matter nearly as much as the location: Waco is in Texas, and Texas is an 18-hour drive from home. No way, Jose. Even in America where there are still grocery stores and paved roads and cheese and people speaking English, I found ways to pine for home: I constantly wanted to have our parents over for dinner. The summer sun melted me, and I missed fall weather almost as much as I miss it now. And it was far enough away to even miss my brother’s high school graduation. Even though Texas can be described as a “whole nother country,” you can imagine how much further home seems from Africa. Ya’ll.

Five or so years ago was the first time one of our extended family (maternal side) permanently moved outside of a 25-minute radius from my parents’ house, moving to Tennessee (Duquettes, you can still come back). And it was earth-shattering when it happened; we moped around like Zombies in disbelief. When we let ourselves think about their coming departure, we just assumed they’d change their minds. They didn’t. As a kid, I used to think about growing up and moving down the street from my parents, never leaving Willoughby. Today I’m jealous that Christine is a 5-minute drive from them. Instead, I married an Indiana boy who will be a professor in a few years—and Willoughby isn’t exactly brimming with universities. The chances of our fulfilling my childhood dream are slim, and I hate being the official second Distler to leave the 25-minute radius. Y tu, Brute? That’s what my mind spits at me when I overdramatize it.

Daniel is a homebody too. When we’re away from our roots, at least we can be homebodies together. Enter soundtrack, if you own the tune (Will Smith’s cover of Just the Two of Us). The crux of our entertainment is in the home, and with each other—after work, we rarely leave our house, and the best days are Sundays when we don’t leave at all. Scrabble and reading and podcasts and Chess and baseball catch and building castles in the sky. I smile back to our first days in Adwa, when we were the only volunteers (now there are 7 of us), and we knew no one. Most people don’t romanticize about being friendless (shame on me). But having nowhere to go and no obligations can be lovely for a homebody: it ensures indefinite at-home-ness. And homes—physical shelters—become even more tangibly crucial in a place where the moment you step outside your gate you have to steady your eyes to the ground and ignore every hello from a male, every “Hey Sugar,” “Come here, Sweet,” and “Do you love me?” Just this week a man in his forties, dressed in a nice suit, followed me down the mainroad, yelling “**** you! **** you!”—what many consider the worst word in the book. Why? Because I shook my head at this stranger when he said, “Anti! (You girl) Come here.” Homebody takes on a new definition here, with new reasons. Outside that gate, anything goes.

My fellow homebody misses his family too. Save that one element, I think Daniel could remain in Adwa indefinitely (perhaps if the town administration would create a more impressive public library, and begin airing ESPN). It’s me who turns my homebody-ness into an overarching speech bubble that contains too much.

For me, yes, home is the Steadmans and the Distlers and the Luttrulls. Home is those three separate kitchens, living rooms, and everything that goes on there. But it’s also autumn briskness, and night breezes particular to Willoughby, singing along to the car radio, Lake Erie and libraries, the English language, art museums and coffee shops (don’t tell Ethiopia I miss American coffee), college campuses and their trees, functional banks and police departments, the drive to my grandparents’ house in my bathing suit, the smell of citronella torches around my parents’ porch, Matter Park, softball fields and hiking trails, campsites and barbecues, Communion and sanitation and friends. Home has that scent of familiarity and comfort that exists nowhere else. And it’s a scent I need in my nostrils on a constant basis, or I am dissatisfied. Why is it that nowhere else can compare to home? There’s nothing the “somewhere else” can do about it—it’s just the fact that it isn’t home. Because the main thing home has going for it is that it is.

I imagine that, as mankind, we always want to be somewhere we’re not. When we leave here, I may grumble at the boredom of driving to work. This week I walked to school on a Thursday, and had to weave around two slow camels on the sidewalk. On the next day’s walk I met a newborn goat who had just done a somersault and was trying to muster enough leg-strength to stand. On yesterday’s walk, I passed 15 young boys turning a heap of future telephone poles into their very own teeter-totter. I already know I will someday romanticize and miss these Adwan common occurrences, maybe even wish I was back here. But if it is true that we always want to be somewhere we’re not, and if A=foreign place, and B=home, then B > A every time. Regardless of where we may be, B always always holds the pull far stronger than A.

As we walked back from church one night here, I saw an older woman stooping on her haunches, outside her door. There was light and activity within her house, and without there was a breeze and beautiful mess of stars. My mind jumped to an American family on their porch on a summer night. Our equivalent to her stooping. And I thought, “Is she happy here? Were she on a porch in America, would she be dreaming of this doorstep instead?” And I think she would.

And now (home) was sending out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in. Since his escape on that bright morning he had hardly given it a thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleasures, its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences. Now, with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him, in the darkness! Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too, evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there, and wanted him.

 

 Our countdown chain til June 19, when we board a plane to D.C., to Cleveland. Three weeks at our homes! (It is too long to fit in the photo frame, and wraps around in places unseen.)

*Please note the Peace Corps Challenge deadline is only 9 days away. Come on, we double dog dared you!*

Peace Corps Month

Peace Corps was founded on March 1^st 1961 by JFK. Think about it. March is the third month. If you subtract the date from it you get two. If you add that to 1961, you get 1963—the year Kennedy was assassinated! This has all been covered up in the larger cover up covering up the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was a disgruntled volunteer from Peace Corps France who left his post in Paris early because a local café refused to call their “French fries” freedom fries.

All that to say that March is National Peace Corps Month. Most volunteers celebrate by telling their friends back home about their host country. (Lee Harvey famously celebrated by burning a crepe in protest of all the people speaking French around him. There was a Youtube video of it, but it has long since been covered up.) We’re going to kick it up a notch. Below is a challenge of stuff you can do to make you feel like you are in Ethiopia. And there’s also a point system so you can compare yourself to your friends and even, just maybe, win a prize.

Maybe you’re feeling ascetic. Maybe you want to feel some solidarity with us. Or maybe you just want the prize. Whatever your reason, we hope you take part in our

Peace Corps Challenge!

For your ease, the challenges are listed in order of point value, least to highest (though some lower-point challenges include “For Advanced Players” opportunities):

Learn the greetings of a language that’s new to you for one week. And then greet people in that language. 5 points

For every day that you forego use of your personal vehicle, 5 points. Available options: hitching rides from others (spouses don’t count), bicycle, public transportation, “be igru” (by foot). Maximum 35 points (7 days) allowed.

Take a cold bath or shower. It’s March, you say. Okay, try it once the temps reach 50F. That was the approximate temperature of Sagure when we had to bathe cold. 10 points; for every 10 degree temperature drop below 50F, 1 point added. (Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Luttrull are not responsible for any illness incurred.)

Specialty vegetables are out! Spend one week with your only veggie options being carrots, tomatoes, onions, and potatoes—unless they come from your own garden. Think of it as opportunity to get creative. 10 points

No internet for one week. 10 points

As seen on TV: Get your own today! Try an Ethiopian Orthodox fast! For 2 weeks, be a vegan every Wednesday and Friday. No animal products whatsoever. (4 fast days total.) 10 points

Go at least three days without bathing. This must be the minimum, as it’s pretty normal and easy-peasy for us. If you want to beat our record of 11 days, we’ll be deeply impressed. And President Obama may even send you a Christmas card. (Washing of face and feet are allowed.) 10 points for 3 days; an additional 5 points for each day added. If you go the 11 days, 100 points.

Spend an entire evening after dark (minimum 5 hours) without electricity. Flashlights are allowed, but it and you are both cooler if you use candles. 15 points

For one week, you are allowed only 3 outfits. Creative rotation, my friends. We’re thinking of our Ethiopian friends and neighbors in this one. Pretend you don’t have closets full of options. 15 points

For every day that you live on a maximum of $3.50 USD per day, we’ll give you 15 points. Note that food already purchased beforehand that you consume on said day does not count against you. To make it easy, we’re just talking what you tangibly spend in one day. Maximum 3 days allowed. This particular challenge is only applicable to persons not living with their parents.

Wash an entire load of laundry by hand. (For extra points, dry them on a line in your yard). 20 points for wash; additional 5 points for dry

No television, other than the Spanish channel, for one week. 20 points

No canned foods, meat, or cheese for one week. 20 points

Use neither your oven (stove top is okay) nor your dishwasher for one week. 20 points

For one week, you can’t reap the benefits of your refrigerator (or freezer). You may indeed still fill it with groceries, if need be. But under no conditions can you eat or drink anything from its contents. (Again, we’re not asking you to turn it off. Just count it as useless furniture for 7 days.) Some tips: store foods/leftovers in a pot on a cold floor. If you want carrots or celery, keep them soaked in water to stay firm. 30 points

How would your daily life change if your water were shut off for 3 days? We’ve personally only gone 2 days. But our friend Rashad lives in a town called Wukro a few hours south of us in Tigray, and having no water is a pretty common occurrence. Ally, Thor, and Forrest in Abi Adi may have to go months without water (it’s been weeks, thus far), since the town’s new construction project has dug up all the water pipes. So how about this: For every day that you don’t use your indoor tap (no sinks, no washing machines, no shower/bath faucets) 40 points. This means collecting water in buckets/cans from your outdoor faucet, or other means. Fine, we’ll give you toilets, though know it’s a stretch. (Maximum 3 days allowed).

The Prize!

Half a pound of your choice: Ethiopian roasted coffee beans, shuro powder (a mixture of ground chickpeas and red pepper; just add water, and it's a bean paste), or mitmita (a very spicy spice blend).

Some of you may already be participating in Lenten fasts, and hence, you may start with a given 20 points if you’ve given up TV. You’re welcome. You should probably know that the above challenges don’t tend to be the “make or break it” points for the volunteers who go home early. We’ve lost 9 volunteers so far, and giving up amenities doesn’t seem to be what drives them to the airport for their return flight home; they knew they could handle these things coming in. The application process takes between 1-2 years (3 in an extreme case we know of). We sell our cars, pack up all our belongings, say our goodbyes, and pay our debts. (Let’s dispel the belief right now that Peace Corps pays off your college loans. It’s a myth.) After all these preparations, hard work, and gruesome waiting, it would have to be something major to make them give it all up.

The two main heartaches seem to be missing family and friends, and being harassed. But we realize that 1). We can’t separate you from all your loved ones and place you on an island alone for this challenge, and 2). We can’t hire people to follow you around, calling you by your skin color, calling you Money, grabbing your derrieres or breasts, catcalling, “flashing” you, cussing at you in English for the sake of practice, or speaking mock-Mandarin and mock-English at you for jokes. And there won’t be any adults feeding children offensive sexual lines in English to proposition you.

As you might guess, the points were decided upon our own educated judgment of difficulty, keeping other Peace Corps volunteers’ opinions in mind as well. For instance, our friend Tyler from Chena may say, “What? You’re letting them get tomatoes? Only vegetables that grow underground!” Many of our friends in remote towns may say, “Internet once a week would be beautiful.” Joel in Axum would call us crazy for giving you three whole outfits. And again, bathing every 3 days just makes sense—even in the dirtiest, dustiest town we’ll ever live in. What can we say? Peace Corps changes you. Are you up for the challenge?

Tally your points via the well-loved Honor System and get them into us by 11:59 PM your time April 8^th.

We not only want to know your tallied score by email (danielle.luttrull@gmail.com), but we want to know your story. Was it horrible? Do you hate us now? Or was it the easiest thing you’ve ever done and even came naturally (or were you already doing these things)? If it’s the latter two, we’ll send your Peace Corps application in the mail.

Also, we need not know the participants/winner. Tell your friends!

Here’s a Peace Corps-volunteer-original video for your enjoyment, disgust, and inspiration.

Not Quite Laketran

Coming Sequel: About a Boy and a Dog 

            There once was a girl who dreaded traveling in this country. Every time she stared fear-stricken out the window, watching the aloof driver attempt to pass another bus around a blind turn on a 2-lane road, without speeding up considerably—this girl was never comforted by the infamous statistic: Ethiopia is ranked number one in the amount of traffic deaths per year.

            So when the girl was told she had to travel an entire five hours up and down a mountain, with a limited number of guard rails, remembering horror stories from other volunteers who have traveled the same road, she feared her chances of survival. Death seemed likely. She thoughtfully considered emailing her boss, explaining her fears, and begging for a plane ticket in lieu of a bus ticket. She decided she was silly, and began praying for the trip one month in advance.

            Three days before the long-dreaded bus ride, her husband was bitten by their neighbor’s dog. He had to fly to Addis, according to Peace Corps precaution, to protect him against the slim possibility of Rabies. This left her to take this bus ride alone, her first time traveling alone in Ethiopia. And she had to take two different buses—transferring in another city. If only “bus transferring” were anything like you’re picturing. Anything American or close to it. Instead “bus transferring” means sitting on a rock in a dusty parking lot (these “bus stations” are where most thefts occur), and when you see a bus, pushing past swarms of people to dive into the bus, before the other passengers even leave it. Single-file lines and the logic of letting people exit a bus before more enter—neither exists here. It is a shocking, painful, embarrassing, and often unfruitful process, and in this case, located in a city where Peace Corps volunteers are not permitted to spend the night (so she better push hard to get a seat) because it is too near Eritrea and moderately unsafe.

            Because keeping up the third person is difficult, I’ll admit it: the she is me. I brought six plastic bags with me in my purse. I hadn’t yet been on a minibus for longer than two hours without vomiting, so I had to come prepared for these five hours. The ride to Mekele is notorious for its prolific vomit. And all Ethiopian buses are notorious for keeping all windows closed. The passengers will ask you to close your window if you insist on keeping it open—the superstition, according to culture, is that since sickness travels by air, you must not let air into the vehicle. So, put these two items into side-by-side frames in your mind: puke, and closed windows. Depending on the hour, add 90 degree heat to the mix.

            I summoned mind over matter, and lasted longer than I thought. The curves weren’t all that horrible, by Ethiopian standards—even though the driver propelled the van beyond its limit around every single mountain curve (at times, driving in the wrong lane around the blind turn). When others began vomiting, one by one, I kept my head down, and tried blocking my ears and reflexes. But I was forced to look up every five minutes, when a person tapped on my shoulder asking for a bag. And another. And another. I was the only one on the bus who brought bags (I don’t want to think what it would’ve been like if I hadn’t). Four bags later, it was my turn. I was the fifth to lose it, of six. Unfortunately, the first puker who began the domino effect was too involved in her Lamaze (she was hooing and howling into the shoulder of the man next to her—a stranger—the entire ride) to think straight. Instead of throwing her sagging plastic bags out the window like the rest of us, she set them on the floor, loosely tied. I didn’t realize the result of this until it was too late. As I exited the bus while refusing a young man’s invitation to breakfast, I grabbed the strap of my backpack to strap around my waist, grabbing a handful of vomit that coated the strap. “Ugh. Awesome,” I said, placing the bag on the ground, rubbing it into the dirt, and swiping the sick off with my shoe. I told myself it could only get better. (Don’t ask when was my next opportunity for hand-washing).²

            A few unsuccessful episodes of shoving-through-bus-doors later, I decided it was very likely I wouldn’t succeed. I’m too timid. Daniel is the designated pusher of this team. He’s like my Jenny Shimrock at concerts. So when the first puker of bus number one, head buried in her elbows, looked up at me in the parking lot when a bus arrived, and asked pleadingly, “Hada bota?” (one place/spot?), I pitied her choice to ally with such a weak person. It was unlikely I’d secure one seat, let alone two. “You need someone like Daniel,” I thought. When I returned to tell her, “Bota yallan” (there is no place), I felt a failure. I needed a new strategy. This became pouting as visibly and horribly as possible, purposely twisting my features into the ugliest form possible. “Looking ticked” is too soft a statement for the glares I was giving people, but we may have young readers; so let’s call it ticked. I was sending out the following brainwaves: I am a young girl, obviously a foreigner, traveling alone. Be hospitable. It is too dangerous for me to get stranded in this city. Just ask my boss; he won’t allow it. Give up your seat, or get me one. I’m the guest. Baka. (Enough).

            And it worked. I hear, “Madam, are you traveling alone, or with someone?” “Alone,” I say in half-real, half-forced desperation, the tear stains mostly real. “Where do you come from?” “Kab Adwa. Baal gazay ab Mekele, selazi ana nab Mekele ikad iya.” (From Adwa. My husband is in Mekele, so I am going to Mekele). At that moment I remembered my dad in Home Depot, telling the cashier that his daughter was Valedictorian, as the disinterested man rang up the paint. Dad’s arm on my shoulder, then patting my back, then contemplating a Noogie. Daniel wasn’t even there, but I felt I could and would tell everyone I saw that our four days apart were at an end, and that I wouldn’t sleep alone and afraid that night: “My husband is in Mekele! I will meet my husband in Mekele! And it doesn’t matter how many of you puke on my bags, today I will see Daniel.” The man looked pleadingly at the people in the bus, relaying the answer that I was alone. But his attempts to make room on the already-bursting bus failed, so he got into the front seat without looking back at me, and they drove away.

            Just as I felt compelled to tell this man about my husband, I did the same with Meron the day earlier, as she came over for her daily coloring session. As she drew much-improved stick figures on the page, I gushed in Tigrigna that there was a problem in my household—a phrase we’ve heard more than once here. Because I didn’t know how to say I was sad in Tigrigna, I told her, “Hagos yallan.” There is no happiness. My longest conversation with Meron in which we both understood each other (aside from greetings), then followed:

(Translated in English)

Where is Daniel? Daniel is in Addis. Daniel is so beautiful and good.

Who?

Daniel.

Yes. Looks at young woman with compassion and pity, saying so much.

            It was horrible being separated, without free mobile-to-mobile minutes. Rushed conversations at night and extremely long days that I prayed would go quickly. When the fourth day was done, I felt I was more anxious to see him in that brief time period than when I was awaiting our wedding. It is hard living alone in a foreign country, and I want a Girl Scout badge. For goodness sake, it took me five minutes to open the peanut butter jar without him. I had to dance around the living room to do it, finally prying it open with a spoon. I nearly walked over to the neighbors.

            But I was well taken care of. Girimkil informed me the first night that he would let the dog roam the compound free all night (she is normally tied to a tree all the time). There were lots of ajokis being said. (“Be strong”). They invited me for coffee. Sammy and Solomon walked me to the bus station at 5:30 in the morning in the dark, waited there with me for 45 minutes, and Solomon dove into the bus for me to save my seat. As I sat in the bus station parking lot, my counterpart, Vice Principal Haftay called me at 6 AM to tell me he was on his way to see me off. I had to convince him I was safe with Sammy and Solomon. On the second bus, when the best I could secure was a seat on the floor, on the tire hump, and another bus drove alongside us, the man next to me called out to the other bus driver, indicating me pathetically: “Bajaka. Ferengi.” (Please. Foreigner). I got to leave the least comfortable seat on that bus, for the front seat of another (seatbelt included)—making the second leg of the trip one of the most comfortable trips I’ve had in country.

            When people asked how the bus ride was, by reflex I said it was good. I was alive. And then I mentioned the vomit-coated bag strap.³

* * * *

            Post script. Before those four days, I really did respect the other 200-some single Peace Corps volunteers in this country. I knew I’d never do this without Daniel, and have always given them lots of credit for going it alone. But actually having to live out the boredom, the loneliness, and the fear that a man in town would ask me where Daniel was, and know I was alone—let’s just say the respect I have for my colleagues (especially the women) has grown by leagues. I work with some amazing, brave individuals. They trade two years of comfort for two years of being so very alone. For what? Pro bono.

            I like knowing such people.

Additional and miscellaneous funny things:

* Gorohead, the shopkeeper of our main shop, won’t let us buy bananas until they’re ripe. We tried explaining they could ripen in our house (and save us a trip), but he wouldn’t hear of it. We returned a few days later.

* Teacher Hailu referred to a funeral as a “sorry house.” I almost didn’t want to tell him the real word. He should go on saying “sorry house,” obviously.

* When a friend asked Daniel this week to seek God’s favor on his behalf for a job interview, the text read: “Pray to me.” Daniel didn’t.

* This week, Daniel had to remove a poster from the college’s “student center” window. It read, in honor of Reading Week: “Book bear him up a while, and make him try to swim with bladders of philosophy.” It will soon hang on our guest room wall—the benefit of removing offensive English.

Not funny, but important things:

* When we watched the movie Lincoln in our home on President’s Day, I nearly hyperventilated at every scene with a thunderstorm. It’s been 6 months since we’ve seen any form of rain. My internal Adwa rain-clock has been pining away for late May/June. And this week, my craziest week in Peace Corps to date, I count it a hand-delivered gift from God that He gave me rain and Zebra Cakes.⁴ (Thank you, Marcos and Christina for the best care package I’ve ever seen. It should last us until the next time it rains.)

* When we returned from Mekele (the beautiful Tigray capital that sells zucchini), we were welcomed by mouse droppings in our home. At least she knew well enough that those sorts of things are done in the bathroom. (However, she used the kitchen on her way out as well). It was a scary two days. But we’ve seen no sign of this being a permanent roommate situation. She must’ve been a squatter in transit. (If she had come to join me in Daniel’s absence, you can rest assured I’d be in Ohio at this moment. Or Addis on medical leave, i.e., counseling.)

* We’re coming home this summer! We bought the tickets today. It will be my 2^nd birthday home in a span of 8 birthdays. It’s about time, Mom.

Stay tuned in the next few days for our upcoming Peace Corps challenge, for a chance to win Ethiopian goods, delivered right to your door. It’s like a Tough Mudder scavenger hunt, in your country’s honor. We’re serious.

Footnote

¹Laketran is Lake County, Ohio’s public transportation system.

²I confess that when relaying this bus-nightmare-puke-on-the-bag anecdote with a more polished, cultured, and older volunteer whom I deeply respect, I changed the story. Staring at me in disgust, she asked, “What did you do? How did you wash your hands?” I stammered, “Hand sanitizer,” which I definitely didn’t have. I just couldn’t bear to disappoint her/make her believe I was helping this poor country spread more germs.

³Would you believe us if we told you how incredibly lovely the return trip was? We won’t gush romance all over you: it wasn’t just because we were together. But we rode back in a large bus, rather than a van. Physics forces the vehicle and driver to go slower, and hence safer. Because our heads didn’t need to be buried in our arms to remain stable, we were able to enjoy one of the most gorgeous views we’ve ever seen. Our first time seeing Adwa’s skyline distant mountains up-close-and-personal. And canyons.

⁴A grown woman’s confession: Zebra Cakes weren’t the only Little Debbie product on my documented birthday list. It’s like this lovely former boss and coworker of ours somehow knew. Legitimate tears when I got to that part of the overflowing package. (Before you judge our cravings, I double-dog-dare you to leave the U.S. for 9 months. You’d crave processed things too.)