Choose Your Own Adventure!

Loosely based on real events

A. You have spent a year and a half applying for Peace Corps. You’ve had your fingerprints taken at the local police station, your teeth have been X-rayed (twice), you've started an admirable collection of vaccinations, have made copies of every important document you own, have been interviewed various times, have written essays, have begun attending weekly Spanish TESOL classes at your church and were even caught in the language lab during a tornado as you studied Español with Rosetta Stone. After weeks of running to the mailbox every day, you return from dinner with friends one night to find the FedEx package at your doorstep. You scream frantically, jumping in the driveway with your spouse—setting off the barks of the neighbor’s awful dog—and rush into your apartment. You’ve since learned South America is out. You’re crossing your fingers for Africa. Tearing open the letter, you read Congratulations! You are invited to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia.

Choose your own adventure! If you decide to accept the invitation, move onto section B. If you decline the invitation, your adventure ends here.

B. For the past year you’ve worked odd jobs (thanks to temp agencies, daycares, churches, and adjunct professor openings) and have lived with your parents. You’ve sold your beloved trusty car, packed your belongings into two attics and garages in two different states, and have advance paid over $5,600 on student loans, grants, and child sponsorships—taking care of every financial commitment for the next two years. You’ve bought and wrapped and hidden birthday gifts for family members to last the rest of the year. You’ve bought two year supplies of deodorant, wet wipes, and other hygiene products. You’ve spent a month typing up all your favorite Africa-proof recipes into one Word document. But your family and friends often cry when you excitedly gush about your upcoming departure. And you’ve been longing to expand your family for the past year. It’s a week before departure, and Peace Corps still hasn’t told you whether or not you’ll be with your spouse or alone for the first three months of training and living with an Ethiopian family. You’ve seen the 150-some-character Amharic alphabet online: it’s as foreign as it can be. You look at calendars that don’t even reach so far as your return. You swallow hard, and try to figure out the best way to fit those new rainboots into the hiker’s backpack.

Choose your own adventure! If you still want to board that plane, move onto section C. If your doubts outweigh your excitement and foolhardiness, your adventure ends here.

C. You’ve arrived! You’re getting used to injera and living with strangers who speak another language. You’re halfway through the three months of Pre-Service Training: 8 hour days of flipcharts and dry erase boards full of foreign alphabets, cultural norms, and diseases to avoid. It’s Field Day, the last day of your 2-week teaching practicum, and you’re leading Simon Says (or, Solomon Says). You faintly hear your phone ringing from your bag somewhere in the field. You answer to hear your mother crying: The baby is fine. But your sister is being rushed to another hospital. The epidural went wrong. She can’t feel anything from her waist down. Months go by, not knowing if you’ll see your sister walk again. And knowing you can’t see her anytime soon. Family and friends are filling her freezer with meals, taking turns with the baby, and she’s slowly recovering in the hospital. You don’t get the full story, or speak with her yourself, until a month later, as you listen and cry outside of a cupcake shop in the capital. The next time your sister calls you, it’s her turn to cry. Your younger cousin—and you’re so close to your mother’s family that this cousin is more like a brother—has been in a motorcycle accident. The helmet saved his life. He’s in a month-long coma with brain trauma. You want to visit him, to call your aunt and uncle and grandparents to cry with them, and you want hourly updates. You want to babysit for your sister and brother-in-law, drive her to Rehab, and freeze casseroles. Instead, you just hear bits and pieces. Being oceans apart, it’s inevitable that you only hear the big news—big progresses, big disappointments. But what are your loved ones’ daily challenges and small achievements as they slowly rehabilitate? What is going on? You have no idea. And no one remembers what they have or haven’t told you.

Choose your own adventure! If you decide to press on, you’re in this for the long haul, and your best option is to pray from afar, move onto section D. If you decide enough is enough, you have two beloved family members in dire need and you need to be with them, move onto section W.

D. After months of summer and then forced observation, you finally feel like a real working individual. It’s the first time you’ve felt busy in Ethiopia. Your schedule looks like this:

Monday: Soloda School English Club

Tuesday: Soloda School 8^th grade National-Exam-Prep

Wednesday: Adwa School English Club

Thursday: Maria Luwiza School for the Blind English Club

Friday: Adi-Mahleka English Club

*Additionally, for two weeks at a time, you work alongside English teachers at Soloda School, in the Teacher Mentoring Program, observing their classes and giving feedback, teaching their classes while they observe you, teaching together, then more observation and feedback. You also have trainings scattered throughout the months, to teach methodology.

Your spouse’s schedule looks like this:

Monday: English Class for 3^rd year college students

Tuesday: English Class for 1^st year college students

Wednesday: English Class for 2^nd year college students; Professional Development meeting with English teachers

Thursday: English Class for 1^st year students; English Class for 3^rd year students

Friday: English Class for 2^nd year students; English Club

*Additionally, he is organizing and recording native English speakers for a Listening Manual he created, to accompany the English textbooks.

You are “busy as beaver,” to quote an Adwa friend, but you find yourself wondering what sort of good Beaver is doing. Is he making a dent? In the abstract, you know why you came, why you’re staying: to carve for the suffering world a nice slice from your life’s pie. It’s the least you can do. But is the pie helping? Does its flavor and nutritional value even meet the needs of the world? Realistically, your pie has become English clubs. English, English, and more English. And yet you quiz a 7^th grader with 8 years of English behind him, on his colors, and he can’t even name red or blue. Can I still say that what I’m doing is worthwhile? you ask yourself. You know that in order for the people of Adwa, of Ethiopia, to be properly educated, the entire school system has to be reworked from the bottom up; and it could take decades. The problem is too big to solve anytime soon. You decide the only tangible good you are doing shows itself in who you’re employing and what causes you’re donating to with your Peace Corps allowance: the financial and relational difference you’re making for your neighbors. But couldn’t you do this from the states with a wire transfer?

Choose your own adventure! If you decide to discuss this dilemma with your spouse, seeking his wise counsel, move onto section E. If you decide your time is too valuable, and your single drop in this colossal sea of dysfunction is doing no good, move onto section X.

E. Over tea you prod your spouse: Do you think we’re making a difference? An important, legitimate difference? Is our teaching the poor grammar, grammar, and more grammar actually improving their lives? He doesn’t hesitate. Of course, he tells you. English is their ticket to a career, their route out of impoverishment. Think about it. If a kid doesn’t want to be a bajaj driver, a souk-keeper, or a farmer—if he wants to be a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer: what sort of textbooks for those fields would be written in Tigrigna? They need to know English if they want a good job. And we’re helping them get there. He makes sense; he always does. You realize you’re not just blowing hot air: you actually are a humanitarian, and what you’re doing is worthwhile.

You press on. Move onto section F.

F. You now have two gorgeous nephews to meet: Zachary Alexander and Samuel James. Likewise you have two gorgeous tomatoes sprouting from your garden kas bi kas (step by step). One morning both tomatoes—the only vegetable evidence in your garden—are missing. You find one on the ground nearby, with what looks like either a stab from a beak, (or a stab from Meron’s pointy teeth), in its side. “Elementary,” your spouse says, eyeing the neighbors’ chickens.

Choose your own adventure! If you decide to kill the chicken in revenge and retribution, move onto section G. If you decide to be passive-aggressive and eventually ask your neighbors to keep the chickens out of your yard, move onto section Y.

G. The chicken was delicious, the best doro watt you’ve ever tasted. But two days later you’re doubled over with a bacterial infection. Turns out, you were unaware that the chicken you thought you cooked for 3 hours only cooked for 1—the electricity, on its daily cycle, was turned off (and, hence, your stove as well), and you didn’t notice.

You must seek medical help. Move onto section H.

H. You take a bumper-car-like taxi to the nearest health center. When the bajaj comes to a stop, you assume the driver misunderstood. This is a…health center? you wonder. You approach the towering metal sign that lists all the offices. There is not a single English character printed on the sign, but your spouse can read the foreign alphabet. When he pronounces one of the lines, it sounds vaguely similar to something your neighbor said to you before you left. So you try that one. After waiting in various lines until you figure out the proper one, the doctor finally sees you. You mime to each other and use a translator (your Peace Corps doctor) via cell phone. The doctor prescribes Claritin and a Rabies shot. You refuse the needle—Really, sir, I don’t see how Rabies comes into all this—but the Claritin somehow works. You feel well enough to go back to work. As you walk on the school’s campus, one of your favorite teachers flags you down. She’s a sweet girl, younger than you, and she does a great job teaching the preschoolers. She begins crying, telling you she gives most of her salary to her parents, and asks you to give her money so she can quit teaching and begin her singing career.

Choose your own adventure! If you decide to become her financial sponsor and agent, move onto section I. If you kindly explain to her, Salary yallan; fakadana iya (There is no salary; I am a volunteer), move onto section Z.

I.  Funding the ex-preschool teacher’s singing career worked out better than you thought. You get a lifetime supply of the latest Tigrigna jams, along with bonus tracks of the ABC song. While overseeing the production of one of her new music videos (which involves four men in matching bright blue shirts and white pants shaking their shoulders in a grassy field), Ethiopia’s most beloved pop start spots you. It’s Teddy Afro! He says, Hey ferengi. Be in my music video.

Choose your own adventure! If you shrug and say Ishy (okay), move onto section J. If you’d rather have no part in this, your adventure ends here.

J. Teddy Afro’s music video that has you cameoing on a camel beneath a waterfall is a huge hit. It’s not only played in various cafes throughout Ethiopia, but it’s also playing in Indy’s Major Restaurant and Cleveland’s Empress Taytu. Your family is so proud of the talents that have brought you this far. Even prouder is the Ministry of Education, who views the video during a tea break. The Minister calls up the government, and one month later, you are elected the first American Prime Minister of Ethiopia. The only condition is you must rule from atop the famous camel.

Your unforgettable adventure ends here—for the time being.

W.  You’ve met your nephew and your name is on the all-nighter-swap schedule while your sister is in the hospital. You’re babysitting and cooking and helping them in every way you can. And it’s lovely. But you’re also homeless, jobless, carless, and wiping away tears whenever you get distracted enough to think about it. A dream deferred. In your cramped childhood bedroom, you’re missing your 3-bedroom villa with its expansive, tropical, and parrot-type-bird-filled yard. You crave injera and watt for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and this surprises you. You have few people to speak Tigrigna with—your spouse, and the staff of Indy’s Major Restaurant. The nighttime sounds of ambulances don’t quite compare to the hyenas. Your next item on the life plan is your spouse finishing his doctoral degree, but he hasn’t been in country to renew his GRE tests; neither has he begun applying to schools. You’ll have to tread water together for at least another year, doing something you never planned on or wanted. But at least you’re home, with family.

Your adventure ends here.

X. You are home in the USA’s comfortable embrace, drinking apple cider and eating green beans and everything else you’ve missed. Today you washed and dried your clothes in a machine. Immediately following your shower, when you scratch your wet arms, your fingernails no longer come away black (a sign that you’re living on paved roads). But five times a day your mind and heart feel sick. You’ve never started something you didn’t finish, with the exception of one batch of gingerbread cookies in ninth grade: the first time your pubescent nose met that unbearable scent of molasses. (You gagged into a scarf and turtleneck and called your best friend Elizabeth to come over and finish baking for you.) You’ve always been stubborn, reluctant to give up. How could you have left the grandest adventure of your life unfinished? You blew it. Hopefully you’ll forgive yourself—eventually.

Your adventure ends here.

Y. You never do get around to giving the neighbors an ultimatum: either they keep their chickens out of your yard, or they help you build a fence. Hereafter, your garden with its compost soil and fertilizer (thanks to your spouse’s newly-acquired composting skills) yields no fruit. There are no cucumbers—and hence, no pickles—or radishes, or snow peas, or zucchini, or dill, or mint, or cilantro in your future. Your gums start bleeding, and Where There is No Doctor tells you it may be scurvy, from lack of vitamins.

You must seek medical help. Move onto section H.

Z. She looks stunned and the tears stop. Did you—a ferenji—just say you had no money? Is it possible? She looks up at the sky. Is it falling? Yes, it is. The sky is falling on top of you, and you smile with relish—Henny Penny’s cousins who stole your tomatoes are getting their just desserts.

Your adventure ends here.

EASTER COMES TO ADWA

It was a holiday to remember. Sunday, May 5^th,  2013 meant more than Cinco de Mayo for American couple Daniel and Danielle Luttrull. A few years ago the couple celebrated Cinco de Mayo in Waco, Texas, by taking their dinner to-go from a sketchy but delicious “taco truck” on the side of the road. Last year the wife was helping to throw a Mexican-themed baby shower for her sister. This year their bedroom was filled with the unmelodic chanting of the neighborhood churches, broadcasted by loudspeaker throughout the town; chickens squawked and goats bleated for their lives at 4 AM, as all the neighbors awoke and began sharpening their knives. They were celebrating Ethiopian Orthodox Easter.

“Christmas morning is the closest thing—American—that I can compare it to,” Danielle said. “But there’s really nothing else like it.” Imagine a town where 93% of the population has fasted from meat and every other animal product for 55 days. They have eaten nothing since Maundy Thursday. And so, in the wee hours of the eve of Easter, sleep was nearly impossible. It wasn’t Santa who was coming—it was the delicious doro watt, kay watt, dulet, and tibbs (four beloved Ethiopian meat dishes). Saturday night Orthodox and Catholic Easter services alike began at 11 PM, and lasted until 4 AM—the release from mass signaling permission to break fast. No girls in flowered dresses would head to any Adwa church at 8 or 10 AM Easter morning; keep church for the night—Easter Sunday was for eating.

Hours before Easter, the Luttrulls received a text from another Peace Corps volunteer, Laura from Assela: “Twas the night before Fasika (Easter) and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, because they were all killed and cooked.” The Luttrulls were surprised, while planning a joint Easter meal with their neighbors, when the man of the house—Girimkil Mebratom—asked, “What time? One o’clock? Two o’clock?” Had Mr. Mebratom been referring to what the Ethiopians call “the foreigners’ clock,” this would have been more of what the American couple had in mind: the menu was calling for spicy chicken and goat stews, after all. But on the Ethiopian clock, one o’clock is 7 AM; two o’clock is 8. Danielle requested 8 AM, which was readily agreed to. With evening came Mr. Mebratom and his 13-year-old son to the Luttrulls’ door, holding two of their own chickens. Mebratom indicated the one under his son’s left arm. “Better. Fat. Daniel, test.” Daniel held the chicken, testing its weight. “Nay Teddy. ‘Ajoka, yikerta, ajoka,’ illu,” Mebratom laughed. (“Teddy’s chicken. ‘Be strong, I’m sorry, be strong,’ Teddy told the chicken.”) As the neighbors bid goodbye until morning, the Luttrulls verified the time. “Two o’clock?”

Mebratom: “One o’clock.” The breakfast hour for spicy stew had been changed: 7 AM it was. But for the neighbors who hadn’t eaten in days, and hadn’t tasted meat or eggs or yogurt or butter in two months—it only made sense that they would celebrate their Easter meal as soon as was possible.

Teddy’s egg-laying pet wasn’t the only animal doomed to an ill fate this Fasika. Thousands of goats were led by rope from market to homes Saturday, thousands of chickens carried upside down by their tied-together talons. The Luttrulls witnessed two rogue sheep bullet past them, tied together by the neck, like two children wildly escaping a dreaded three-legged race. Every family in Adwa would be preparing various kinds of meat Easter morning—most probably, at least one of the stews would come from a live animal, slaughtered in the family’s own yard. “Do you think there is a goat shortage after Easter?” asked Lauren, another Adwa PCV. Lauren’s Easter plans consisted of visits to four different houses, where she would be expected to eat a full meal at each home. The Luttrulls limited themselves to various meals with one family. Too many times the couple has been stuffed beyond Thanksgiving style, their hosts ignoring their protests and insisting they eat at least two plates of food. (Ethiopian definition of insisting: as the guest moves his plate away from the host, begging, “No! No! I’m so full!”, the host pulls the plate back towards herself and indignantly scoops heaping piles of seconds onto the injera. This provides conflict for the young Americans, whose culture had its share in saying, “Clean your plate! There are people starving in Ethiopia.”) While Lauren claims to not have perfected the art of refusing food, she’s discovered how to refuse seconds of the locally-made beer, sewa: “I put the cup under my chin, and block the opening with my hand, shaking my head no. It works.”

The second of the three core goals of Peace Corps’ mission is “To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.” Official goals aside, it’s only natural that proud Americans would want to share their culture with their neighbors. So while the Luttrulls contributed to the Easter feast in Ethiopian ways—the coffee ceremony, monetary contribution for goat meat, making yogurt, supplying special Ethiopian liquor—they also added some American flare, making brownies in their makeshift oven, and guacamole (it was Cinco de Mayo, after all). If the brownies weren’t enough (according to Daniel, “They loved them! We’ll have to make them more often”), Danielle’s family sent them plastic Easter eggs from America. This resulted in what was most probably Adwa’s very first Easter egg hunt. It was at least a first for the seven participants, which is ironic given that as Daniel noted, “Easter egg hunts make more sense here. They haven’t eaten eggs in eight weeks. Also, since many of these children raise hens they have actually hunted for eggs before.”

The hunt was a definite success. According to Danielle, “The moment we said, ‘Go!’, they shot like bats out of hell. It was hilarious to see: even the 16-year-old dashed about the yard in a frenzy.”  The children appeared to love every minute of it. Within the plastic eggs were hard candies, fake tattoos, and coins. After each child collected their five, they cheered, “Hamushta!” (Five!), sat in the grass, and immediately took to their loot. “Hanti kirshi allani!” said Luam (I have one birr!), counting the coins from her eggs. It was evident that this birr held more value to her than if the Luttrulls had just handed her 5 birr, the approximate cost of the candy and coins in Luam’s eggs. Welcome to the fun and excitement of the beloved Easter egg hunt.

Mr. Mebratom had something to say of the matter. “Elly,” he repeated, demonstrating with his hands twisted together, and one hand emerging from within the other. “Elly and…rabbit,” he concluded, with the help of the 18-year-old. “Competition.” Daniel, watching Mebratom’s hands, hearing him say, “Under stone,” suddenly realized “elly” is “turtle.” “The tortoise and the hare!” Daniel said. “Yes, yes,” said Mebratom. “Meron, rabbit, the same. All children go, go, go. She sleeps. After five minutes, she go. She to find.” Meron, Mebratom’s 4-year-old daughter, had been napping at the start of the hunt, despite her brothers’ efforts to wake her by putting brownies in her mouth. A few minutes into the race, the bustle had woken her, and she sheepishly watched from the side of the house. When Meron, confused, wouldn’t agree to follow the others, Danielle picked her up to find the eggs together. After Meron’s first reach into tree branches for a green egg, her smile showed compliance. She was ready to hunt. The tale of the tortoise and the hare was being revived in Ethiopia.

As it turns out, when you set up camp in a place whose mother tongue is not your own—miscommunication is bound to occur, continually. Holidays are no exception. Danielle was making brownies at 4:30 AM (not because they bake for 2 ½ hours; but because one too many mic checks from the church stopped her sleep cycle at 3 AM). Daniel was awake making guacamole at 6. But when Misilal—Mr. Mebratom’s wife who speaks not a word of English—arrived with the main entrée that morning, she arrived alone. She held a plate of injera for two, and a bowl of doro watt. It looked more like a strange pizza delivery than an Easter party. The Luttrulls indicated all the seating, the pile of plates, the row of cups, and the dishes they made, saying, “Your family. We eat together,” and for reasons unknown, she insisted otherwise. The feast they had planned on suddenly became a quiet and disappointing breakfast for two. When Misilal brought them a bag of fresh raw meat, the Luttrulls realized this was the goat stew they had paid for.

“It was like an awful M. Night Shyamalan movie,” Danielle said. “Once it all went down, we started realizing how they had been interpreting everything all along—and awful interpretations. When Girimkil asked, ‘Our house or yours?’ and we said, ‘Our house,’ we thought we were inviting them. They thought we preferred to eat their food in our own home without them. A breakfast delivery. When we gave Girimkil a 100 birr note, and said, ‘For the meat tomorrow,’ we thought we were ensuring them a great Easter feast. They thought we were having them fetch us goods. We felt awful.”

But when the family showed up at the Luttrulls for lunch, the Shyamalan film theory quickly deflated. “So, was this the plan all along?” the Luttrulls wondered, experiencing yet another rollercoaster of misunderstanding that has become a weekly occurrence for them in Adwa. Instantly everything was perfect. Daniel and Luam (Girimkil’s oldest daughter, in the sixth grade) prepared “tibbs” together: goat meat, onions, and jalapenos sautéed and served over injera. For the first time the Luttrulls could feel the role reversal: they provided the meal, they served the meal, they ate last and little so their neighbors could feast—and it was their first Ethiopian holiday that no one had to roll them home for. “Unbelievably, I was even a little hungry,” Danielle said. “A few times I walked past the plate of extra injera in the empty house, and I tore off pieces, sprinkled them with salt and mitmita (hot pepper), and snacked on it. That’s when you know you’ve been here awhile. You eat plain injera with salt.”

To the untrained eye, the holiday bustle and happenings were evident in every corner of the town. Throughout all of Holy Week several people have been wearing rings weaved from palm branches. On Saturday thousands wore a single piece of grass tied around their heads like crowns. The streets were deserted on Good Friday, as several Orthodox Christians stayed at church from 6 AM until 6 PM. Colombian Sister Ruth of Don Bosco Catholic Mission claims that one of their volunteers mistook an invitation to an Orthodox service as an invitation to another Catholic church. Laughing, she said, “Ricardo thought that because the church has the same name as our school—Kidane Mariam—it must be Catholic. He did not stay the whole day. When he returned, we laughed. He did not know that there was only one Catholic church in Adwa.” But when asked how long her own Catholic Good Friday service lasted, she said, “It was 9 AM until 4 in the afternoon.”

It was certainly an Easter the Luttrulls will experience only one more time—in 2014. Everything was different, down to the Easter vigil. “St. John Vianni, pray for us,” was sung for them in Italian this year. There was no ham to be seen (Americans find themselves explaining what a pig is to Ethiopians). While they heard no “Happy Easters!”, they heard several “Melkam Fasikas!” (and one “Merry Christmas”). And there certainly weren’t any milk chocolate bunnies. But there was an Easter egg hunt this year in Adwa, Ethiopia—one so delightful and new for the children that the Luttrulls are already planning to introduce them to Christmas stockings this year, perhaps via old socks nailed to trees. “If there’s anytime for someone to visit us here, it’s Easter,” Daniel said. “It’s definitely worth seeing; and you don’t even have to miss your own Easter to see it.”

A look-see.

Hidden Pictures: Find the injured leg. The swelling is almost completely gone; the ankle is still getting there. This was our first visit to the hospital. We sat in what we thought was round one, the waiting room, for 25 minutes, before we realized the others who were waiting held pieces of paper. So we went to get our own piece of paper (i.e. register), and they saw us in no time.

My very first X-ray. I was ecstatic upon seeing my insides for the first time, and even moreso when the price came to one dollar. If it weren't so sketchy, we could make return trips and hang our assembled skeletons in our living room. But when I sat on the X-ray table, and the two techs ushered themselves and Daniel out of the room, with no word of instruction to me, and I looked up at the machine, alone and thinking: "Should they cover me? Should I close my eyes?", I immediately squinted hard and assumed I was probably becoming cancerous by the second. (But isn't that a beautiful tibia? I displayed it to the neighbors like a trophy, saying, "Sinus! Sinus!"--how they pronounce Science.)

Hidden Pictures II: Can you find the places where the Ethiopians normally eat/lean? I am tempted to break in one night and scrub their walls for them. Though Degna Cafe is one of our favorite weekly restaurants and milk supplier, we never sit against the wall.

We borrowed this letting-household-decorations-teach-English-to-neighbors idea from another volunteer. Once it's been hanging for a month, we'll rearrange them, test the kids, and give them candy once they get them all right.

Daniel trusted me with scissors. This is the Before picture. I giggled and gasped and "Sorry!"-ed my way through it, making him quite nervous. (Note the background: remember when our grass was green and flowing? This is what happens when rain checks out with no goodbye.)

After! Here is proof that it's in the blood. I come from barbers and hair dressers on both sides of my parents' family: all told, six. Though upon close examination, you'd find I'm not quite a worthy seventh.

 Last Saturday we hosted a Les Mis birthday party for Daniel (he's blowing out the candles on his brownies at this moment on camera). We made delicious French Onion soup with the works in honor of the French story, along with pizza and deviled eggs. We borrowed a projector from the college and watched the glorious new film on our wall. Pictured from left: Todd (PC volunteer, Axum), Christine (PC, Axum), Tirsit (Ethiopian friend, Axum), Lauren (PC, Adwa), Richelle (VSO volunteer from Philippines, Adwa), Sid (VSO volunteer from India/fiance of Adwa VSO volunteer Uziel, Addis Ababa).

Meron in her glory. This photo was taken this morning, as we shared breakfast and coffee with the Girimkils in honor of St. George's holiday. Meron--assumably warm--removed all her clothes and wrapped herself in this scarf of her mother's (later worn as a toga). At one point, she kept pulling the scarf off, revealing her naked self, to sing melodically, "Kidan aybilain, kidan aybilain": I have no clothes, I have no clothes. 

Tomorrow is Daniel's birthday! After my third small cup of locally-made Ethiopian beer today (they really don't take no for an answer; you should visit us and then try to refuse food or drink from our neighbors. Your stomach grows uncomfortable, and you begin to think your voice doesn't work--no one listens to your ardent protests), I thought, "This water isn't purified. If I get sick on his birthday, this would complete an awful tradition," thinking back to my birthday last year, Daniel sleeping off a horrible case of hives in a hotel room while I sat through an awful all-day training. But tomorrow is bound to be better. Daniel shares a birthday with our smallest neighbor Rhodas; she will turn one, but she is smaller than our 5-month-old nephew Samuel. We will host a combined birthday party for them. It's quite the eventful week: St. George's today, birthdays tomorrow, Easter on Sunday!

Want to see a photo of a six-year-old drinking the locally-made beer too? We think it weird that mothers give their babies breast milk and coffee in the same breath here (and that it's a for-everyone's-eyes affair). This is far stranger. You can see the cups of beer at their feet.

See Daniel's blog below, in case you mistake this one for the only new one. A twofer!

(Congratulations to Cameron & Wendy Moore of Waco, for winning our Peace Corps challenge! We'll be sending them half a pound of coffee for their various sacrifices of solidarity. Well done!)

Palm Sunday

 I’m often reminded of how developmental work is a conglomerate of cultures. Take Doug and Bahera Smith, two other volunteers at the college. His people came to America on the Mayflower, and he grew up in Boston. Her people came from Russia to Iran, where she grew up. They met, married, and raised their two children all over West Africa. Uziel, another volunteer at the college, is a Filipino who met her Indian fiancé in Ethiopia. They are getting married in Hong Kong before she moves to Sudan for a teaching job.

My work is a constant mixture of culture. Often this is difficult. There are literal differences and implicit differences between Western and Ethiopian time. Meetings can start thirty minutes late or can be canceled because of a holiday I didn’t know about or can end up taking an hour longer than I anticipated. And there are differences in communication. Simple subjects somehow balloon into immense problems of labyrinthine complexity. I ask, “Can we install sockets in the classrooms so teachers can use electricity?” and suddenly I’m Dante, wondering in a dark wood.

I’ve come to associate the problems of this cultural conglomeration with our church’s music, which normally consists of a Columbian monk on a dated Yamaha keyboard leading the congregation of, mostly, Italian and Ethiopian nuns in American songs. We can manage melody. The timing, though, incorrigibly oscillates between a synthesized polka and dirge.

Thankfully, my multicultural life is peppered with moments of exhilarating harmony: a student in his class’s adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk pretending to play a traditional Ethiopian harp while singing Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” or Meron pretending to sound out Ethiopian fidel in an American children’s book.

Or our church’s Palm Sunday service, which began with an Italian priest reading the story of Christ’s triumphal entry in English before I followed a Korean nun in a procession into the chapel that was backed by the Columbian monk strumming a distinctively Latin-American rhythm on his guitar while the Ethiopian nuns harmonized in Amharic with “Hossana, Hossana in the heavens; Hossana, Hossana on the earth” and a wind swept by us from over the mountains and I thought, This might be what heaven is like.