Blog Entry 9/11/2011
Back home at my host family, sitting in my room munching on the snack for the night, roasted barley, yum .. I think the last time I had the chance to write was during the counterpart conference over three weeks ago- so I have a lot to cover.
Site Visit! My new home far north (roughly 900 Km from Addis Ababa) is a town situated on a plateau overlooking an amazing mountain range for miles in every direction. Before arriving at my new site I had been told it was a very dry place… having just come from the Sahara/Sahel region of Africa, my idea of ‘dry’ was, let’s just say, a little more extreme than others. I was pleasantly surprised then, when I arrived in a rocky, yet green (ish) farming community nestled on a spectacular mountain range and surrounded by old rock-hewn churches hanging from steep ledges and cliff sides. I was even more surprised when it rained nearly every night I was there (it’s not even rainy season!!) and by the perfect almost year-around temperature. On top of that, everyone I met was very friendly, the family living within my compound was wonderful, and my counterpart was great. Needless to say, I’m so excited for my new community. I will be working within the Natural Resource Management office as well as
(hopefully) spending a lot of time working with the schools; the high school and their environmental club, and the primary schools in environmental education. Oh, one more quick story of site visit... The first evening I arrived, I excitedly unpacked my bags to set up my computer; unfortunately, when I pulled out my power strip/regulator for my computer, one of the prongs had broken off of the plug durring our trip up. Unwisely I decided to plug it in anyway, and my computer wouldnt turn on.. and didnt turn on the rest of the stay. On my way out to Addis, we stayed in Mekele (the regional capital) for a day, so I took it to one of the two computer repair places in town. The guy tried this and that and couldnt get it to do anything and just looked at me and shook his head (I almost cried). Finally, he announced that he couldnt do anything to help me, but that he knew a guy who just might be able to fix it... After following roundabout directions to this mans workshop, I stepped in to a small dusty shed packed full of old computer, fridge, radio, and applience parts. In the shadowy corner is a man sitting behind a small wooden work desk. I explained the problem and that the other man had sent me, and I hand him my computer. He begins to take it appart piece by piece, at an alarmingly fast rate, and after a large pile of my computers parts had formed, he pulls out a screw and holds it up. 'Heres the problem." and he immediately begins putting it back together before I can argue. I skeptically watch as he puts in the last peice, plugs it in and pushes the power button, but to my grateful and happy suprise, it turns on!! I definately learned not to judge a computer expert by his shop.
Since the week at site, we’ve been back in our host family sites studying language. For those of us up to Tigray, we had a total of 3 hours Tigrinya class prior to site visit (you can guess that made things a little difficult) so are now working to build the basics. Tigrinya is full of different sounds (many of which I still can’t pronounce) including all the sounds in the English alphabet, plus several ‘exploding’ sounds and a few glottal sounds described by another volunteer as ‘the cookie monster speaking Amharic’. It roots from Ge’ez and is similar to Amharic in both structure and alphabet, so I I’ll catch on (eventually).
Considering we’ve done basically nothing but study Tigrinya since we’ve gotten back, I don’t have a lot to report on. Other than language, we spend one day a week in our ‘hub’ town with the trainees from the other sites in technical training or safety and medical related trainings. We also took a great field trip to lake Wenchi last week to see the ecotourism supplied around the lake. A beautiful crater lake at roughly 3000 M elevation, Mt. Wenchi was probably worth the 6 hours we spent in the bus to get there and back. We first hiked down a narrow windy path to the lake from the crater rim, spent a great day by the lake complete with peanut butter and jelly sandwitches, boated to an island at the center to see the monastery, and then finished the day by horseback riding back up the windy path to the rim. As usual, pictures will have to wait until I have a more reliable internet connection.
Other than that, my only other piece of news is that I have a new address!! While on site visit I was able to set up my post box for the next two years. After setting up my bank account and post pox I now feel like I am officially a resident of Ethiopia! Anyway, here it is:
Nichole Peatross, PCV, P.O. Box 11, Wukro, Tigary, ETHIOPIA, East Africa. Feel free to try it out :)
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