I am in an internet cafe next door to the hotel where we are staying...it is Saturday night, and this is the first time we have been allowed to leave the compound.
It has been pretty exciting so far, and non-stop.
We have been in the capital, Addis Ababa, for two days, and tomorrow, on Sunday afternoon, we leave for Ambo, a town about an hour and a half west of here, to meet our host families, move in with them, and begin our 10 weeks of language training. For five weeks we will learn Amharic, the main language in Ethiopia, and at the end of week five we find out where our sites will be and what language we need to continue to study for that place.
Hey!
The internet here is incredibly slow and nonexistent in most places, but I am at an internet cafe in Ambo. We were in Addis Ababa for several days, being treated like royalty...probably to ease our transition. We stayed in a hotel called the King's Hotel, ate three meals a day in the restaurant, and did some opening type stuff.
They gave us cell phones and water purifiers!!!
The phone service in Ambo is absolutely terrible, because of the congestion...and there is only one tower in a town of 60,000.
Also, I am living with a woman and her family. She is an elderly woman named Wezero (Mrs.) Abebech. She loves to continue feeding me, even after I tell her I am full (in Amharic, she speaks no English). I am on a every-other-day bathing schedule, and when I say bathing, dont think shower. I stand in a basin and pour water over myself with a small jug, in a room with dirt floor and dirt walls...ITS AWESOME!!! The bathroom is the same, just a hole in the floor in a room with dirt floor and dirt walls, which we share with about six other families. It's great!
My Amharic is coming along very well. Amharic is the language of the tribe and region of Amhara, and the national language, so they speak it everywhere.
I am having a great time here in Ambo. I live with a family of all females. My host mother's name is Wezero Abebech. She wont stop feeding me!
My Amharic is coming along pretty fast!
It’s the real deal here. Mud walls, hole-in-the-ground latrines, and bucket baths. I WOULD KILL FOR A SHOWER! Thursday we are visiting villages, and preparing to leave for our sites in 9 weeks. I hope that they put me working with OVC, Orphans and Vulnerable Children. This is the only thing close to my background, so I think it will happen. Chris, one of my friends, took a video when a baboon walked up to us and climbed up my leg!!! It wasn’t violent, it wanted food, so I kicked it off.
The coffee is amazing here. The Amharic word for coffee is bunna (boo-nah) and 2 or 3 times a day, we have a coffee break, and once a day, usually when I get home, we have bunna maflat, the coffee ceremony. First, someone grinds the beans in a mortar, and then they pour the grounds into a ceremonial pot, where they heat it over a fire just until boiling point. Each person drinks about 3 cups during the ceremony, because the cycle occurs 3 times.
Every other day, I take a bucket bath in a separate room of our compound. Luckily for me, and not so much for other volunteers, my family has a plug in heating element that I drop into the bucket for a little while before I bathe. I stand in a basin, soap up, and then use a jug to rinse off. It takes about 30 minutes. My host family is very very gracious and wants to do my laundry, but I am learning how to do it...by hand...in a bucket...one garment at a time. It sure is a lot easier to let a washing machine agitate the dirt out! I brush my teeth with bottled water, just whenever I am inclined. I keep a toothbrush and toothpaste in my bag. The food is taking a lot of getting used to. A flat bread, called enjera (in-jer-ah) is eaten with just about everything. It goes on the plate first, laid out flat, and other food is put on top of it, to soak up the oils and juices. The enjera is the utensil as well as part of the meal, as you always eat with your right hand. But the enjera is very bitter, so I and the volunteers are having a hard time eating as much of it as our host famlilies want us to while we are getting used to Ethiopian food. I have a room to myself with a comfortable bed and a mosquito net.
You can mail things to the Peace Corps HQ in Addis. Here is my address:
Jordan Cole PCV
Peace Corps Ethiopia
P.O. Box 7788
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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