Life in the land of Tigray... 2 months down, 22 more to go!

It's with releif that I feel like I'm starting to be productive here at post; it's only been 2 months since swearing in and moving here, but each day that I spend doing 'nothing' makes me feel more and more antsy to get started on something. I have to admit, though, it's nice to slow life down- I find myself taking time to notice things I wouldn't pay attention to before and making efforts I would have otherwise decided I didn't have time for. I do miss a real job however, and I am excited to get to the point in my service where (I hope) I have a busy schedule again.

The past month (since it has been a month since I last wrote- whoops... I'll work on that) has been a bit busier than my first month: I've been working on the English clubs and language curriculum at the High School and one of the Primary schools here in town, as well as observing the Environmental clubs at two primary schools and the high school in order to hopefully get involved in the future with projects and Environmental education. My intentions in going to the schools were solely for Environmental Education purposes, but each time I spoke to the head master about it, they were interested, but even MORE interested if I were willing to help them in the English program. So far I've spent a few days observing classes and speaking with teachers, as well as giving them additional resources for activities and games for classroom and English club lessons. Our plan at the high school is to get the club meeting on a regular basis and have discussions, games, activites, etc. But it's slow starting to say the least.

Aside from the schools, I have been spending time working on my CNA (Community Needs Assessment) for Peace Corps- a report and presentation given during our In Service Training. It's an analysis of the community from interviews, observations, and community participatory assessments to determine the strengths and weaknesses and possible projects for our service. Basically it's been a lot of interviews and walking around observing.. but it's actually been fun to gather the information and gives me an excuse to ask a lot of questions. Yesterday my counterpart and I took a trip to the neighboring town to see and observe the tree nursary sites there (my excuse was for my CNA, but I just really wanted to see the sites). We have one in our town, but since these were the two largest in our Woreda, I thought it would be a good idea to visit them. It was great having my counterpart along (he's rather busy most of the time so I don't see much of him) because it meant I could ask all the questions I wanted and he could translate since my Tigrinya is still minimal at best. The trip made me really excited to work with the tree nursaries in my area and we spent time discussing possible project ideas for them, such as compost pits, improved irrigation systems, fruit tree production, and (my personal imput) spice and herb hardens. I'm excited.

So, work completely aside, I still have more free time than I know what to do with... some of the ways I spend my free time (like watching all 6 seasons of How I Met Your Mother in a week) I'm not that proud of, but this area is an amazing landscape of rocky cliffsides and plateaus and is great for hiking- most of my desitinations being isolated churches either carved out of a cliffside or surrounded by thick forest land. Or, whenever things get too boring I head out and look for wildlife (usually in the forest areas surounding the churches. So far, I've seen enough bush and rock hyraxes to last a lifetime, but also some Grivet monkeys, the endemic-to-Ethiopia White cheeked Turraco, and signs of spotted hyenas and Genets. I recently learned that there is a 7500 hectre forest in my Woreda but nobody has really studied it to see what lives there- maybe a future project??

Above is the inside of the rock hewn church just outside of my town (the top picture as well). The church is called 'Ara'abata Insasat', or, 'The Four Animals'; after a lengthy discussion with the Priest, I gathered the church got it's name from the tapestry you can see in the back partly obscured by the curtain. The painting is of three Saints and in each corner is an animal: An angel, a lion, an ox, and some sort of bird. The church itself is hand-carved out of the mountain and even has a 5 metre high vaulted ceiling!! Nobody knows how old it is or who even created it- I was told God carved it out of the cliffside himself.

Unlike most of the churches I've seen so far, the paintings in Ara'abata Insasat seem older and almost stencil like- I would love to know more and I keep searching the internet for histories of these churches, but with not a lot of luck..

One of the many friendly rock-hyraxes in the cliffs surounding my town.

Eastern Tigray at it's finest- a more traditional homestead a few kilometres outside a neighboring town.

The Environmental group at one of the primary schools: each morning they bring a container of water from home (there is no running water at the school) to water their project trees.

The view at the top of the cliffs of one of my many hikes- I dont know why, but I can't seem to upload a panoramic photo without it becoming blurry...

Finally some Photos! A few of my favorites from the past 4 months

I realized that thoughout my four months here, I have yet to upload pictures! So here, a little out of order, are some of my favorite photos from the past four months in Ethiopia; training, my new site, and Ethiopian holidays!



This was taken during the holiday of Timk'at, or the Epiphany of Christ, all the Priests parade through the streets 'moving' the church for one day to a new location with water for the baptism- First the children lead the way dancing and singing, followed by Priests with their colorful and intricately embroidered attire and umbrellas, followed by the men and their drums, and lastly, the women, all dressed in their white embroidered dresses.

Back at our training site, this river ran behind the town in a series of waterfalls. I was often told there were monkeys near the river, but, alas, I never saw any.

Well, until Tigray that is. This is my neighbor, Jackie, and the woman that owns him- he's just a baby male baboon they baught somewhere? He seems to be adapting to village life pretty well.

I think its the large amounts of hair, but jackie loves climbing up and digging through it to look for bugs. Dont worry, he didnt find any.

Another picture of Jackie and his "mom", eating wheat.

In my new town in north eastern tigray, this little waterfall is hidden down a little canyon at the bottom of the plateau my town sits on.

Coca Cola- in Ahmaric.

The freshly roasted coffee beans of a coffee ceremony. I wasnt much of a coffee fan, but I have to admit I am now!

The rural side of our training site.

Breanna and myself and our kids er caught.

Back to the festival of Tim'kat- this is of one of the groups singing and druming at the site of the new church.

ሪሑስ በዓል ልደት! (Merry Christmas!)

So, I just discovered the Amharic keyboard setting on my computer, needless to say I was very excited- and so impressed it was on my computer.
Christmas time is here! And for those of us Ferenjis living among the Habasha, we get to celebrate twice. Because Ethiopia is on a different calendar (similar to the Julian calendar), Ethiopian Christmas is two weeks after our December 25th, which means one celebration with the Peace Corps volunteers, and now one celebration with my Tigray family and community (which seems to be turning into a three day long celebration), then, stick new years in between (Gregorian calendar New Years- Ethiopia celebrated their New Years back in September- happy 2004!) and it’s been a lot of festivity…
For the first Christmas, most of us Tigray volunteers decided to meet up for the weekend in a town called Wukro, just a bit north of Mekele, the regional capital. Saturday was a lot of traveling and one big shopping trip in Christmas prep, and Sunday, between the 14 of us there, was an amazing Christmas dinner of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, salads, cookies, pies, and so much more. I don’t know how, but in some way, the food tastes oh-so-much better when you’ve spent all day cooking it. I’ve decided an American Christmas and an Ethiopian Christmas seem to share one major element: Food. These past few days of Ethiopian Christmas celebration have come with just as much, and just as delicious food. Christmas morning was started out with a beautiful coffee ceremony (the floor lined with leaves and grass with a small tea-set laden coffee table and matching coal stove and incense burner, surrounded by bowls and bowls of traditional bread ‘hambasha’, popcorn, and fruit.) and breakfast of (My favorite!!) Sabahi Doro (a spicy chicken sauce eaten with injera). After breakfast, then coffee (three cups), two hours later, lunch (this time Sabahi Siga- a meat sauce made with the ram we had tied in our compound for the past few days), and again, coffee, an hour later another lunch (impolite to refuse), and, yes, coffee, I spent half the day eating and the other half sitting around too full to do anything productive (but too awake to really relax). The other typical Christmas refreshment is the home brewed beer, ‘Suwa’, and we had numerous people over to our compound throughout the day to enjoy a glass, or two, or four… There were the certain ‘you don’t speak Tigrinya!’ ladies that became even more boisterous, though more enjoyable, as the day wore on. Then, into the night I could hear drumming, singing, and dancing through the streets (which I was a little to lame to go watch) making it a very different but very fun Christmas experience.
In between all the celebrations, I’ve also been taking time to get to know my new town. My site is definitely much larger than it was first described to me, which has both its ups and downs; good because I don’t feel like I need to know and greet everyone in town (nor do I think that could be possible), but bad because the kids (oh are there a lot of them) just see me as a rich, white, ferenji and I get a lot of harassment. The kids in my immediate neighborhood are great and are used to seeing me daily, but when I venture outside my neighborhood I still get a crowd of 30 or so yelling “ferenji! Ferenji!”, “you! You! You!”, “Money! Money! Money!”, and an occasional rock thrown at me. I’ve found it’s hard to get too excited about working with environmental education in schools when walking into a school feels like walking into the lion’s den… I have a feeling it’ll get better once I’ve started working with them and they see me every day.
My host organization at the Natural Resource office is great and so helpful and friendly so far- each time I walk in (which, regrettably, hasn’t been as often as I should) they are eager to talk, discuss the environment of the area, and I almost always get an invitation to have coffee or tea. I have also ventured out to the more rural areas around my town and spent some time with farmers, to better understand the area, the crops, and, of course, to practice my Tigrinya. As I had prepared myself, work has been very slow starting and often times frustrating not knowing specifically what my job is or what is expected of me; I know my main focus should be Tigrinya and a community assessment right now, so I’m trying not to get too ahead of myself!

Blog Entry 9/11/2011- Site VIsit!

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 :)

Three weeks in: site placement, language and so much more...

8+ cups of tea or coffee a day, falling asleep to the sound of the hyenas, or straining to catch a glimpse of a monkey while hiking behind the town after class: just some of the reasons I’m beginning to love Ethiopia!

It’s been a little while, (three weeks maybe?) So let me go back… There’s a lot to go over, from host family, to training site, to language lessons, to site placement and new counterparts, it’s hard to remember that I’ve only been here for a short few weeks.

The first time I met my host family (my new home for the next two and a half months) I immediately felt at home and welcome. I have a great ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ who both speak excellent English, two older ‘brothers’ who I’ve met one, but both are in University and living in the city, and a younger ‘sister’ whom I joke, tease, and argue with like either of my sisters in the states. When I first arrived, they had spread grass on the floor, a tradition of welcoming someone into the home, and a coffee or ‘bunna’ ceremony performed by my new host mom. The Bunna ceremony begins with fresh coffee beans, roasted over a fire right before your eyes, and then passed around the room to enjoy the aroma. Then, the host grinds the beans using a mortar and pestle and begins brewing the coffee in a hand-made clay coffee pot, or ‘jabana’. The ceremony ends three cups of very strong coffee later (all with liberal amounts of sugar) usually accompanied by popcorn or roasted barley. One important element I’ve forgotten to mention is the incense- placed on the fire at the beginning, the room is filled with heavy clouds of coffee and perfumed smoke by the time the ceremony ends.

The training sites (3 towns hosting 6 or 7 trainees each) are roughly 30, 45, and 60 K outside of Addis Ababa and surrounded by beautiful scenery. We’ve spent countless hours after class and on weekends hiking up and down the mountain sides, over the rivers to watch the wildlife, see the waterfalls, or the old churches on the tops of the hills. The saying for Ethiopia is ‘13 months of sunshine’ and here in our training site it’s also the perfect temperature- (especially compared to those trying times in West Africa with 47 degree C. heat) cold at night, and comfortably warm during the day, and, as I mentioned, hearing the hyenas at night brings a smile and a reminder of where I am.

Language lessons… oh where to start. Amharic (the language everyone studies for the first few weeks) is both incredibly difficult (to pronounce) and easy (grammatically structured) to learn; I would say the hardest part about it is the alphabet; I’m not sure I could say how many characters there are, but enough to be really confusing. Each phonetic sound has its own character, which, with numerous consonants and 7 different vowels, that’s a lot of characters… after a while however, I realized there is a pattern and rhyme and reason to the writing, and I can proudly say I’ve learned almost all the letters. HOWEVER… I have recently found out I will be switching languages and learning Tigrina, the language spoken in the Northern Regions of the country. Lucky for me, the alphabet is the same.

So, about a week ago, we had our site placement announcements and at the time, I was really hoping for lush, green forest area with maybe some monkeys hanging around (that’s what I’d pictured in my head anyway). But alas, I seem to be destined for the dryer climates; my new village is the furthest north of any PCV- In the Tigray region, it has been described to me as dry and semi-arid. Oh, and it’s only a stone throw away from the Danakil depression- the hottest place in the world! (Which, sadly, we’re not allowed to go for security reasons) Luckily, I’m up in the mountains at close to 2,000 Meters elevation, so it stays relatively cool. At first I was a little disappointed of my placement, but everything happens for a reason and I really am excited for my site. Plus, there are a number of old rock churches surrounding my town that will be fascinating.

So that about sums up the past few weeks- we fly out tomorrow to our sites for a week of site visit (that’s one of the pluses of living so far north- peace corps flies us to and from our regional capital) and then we’ll be back in training for about 6 more weeks. I’ll try to get pictures up eventually- but for the current internet connection, just uploading a webpage is hard enough!

A Few Days in Addis

Three days in and already so much to tell...

Last time I wrote I think it was from the hotel in Philadelphia, so I'll pick up from there...

There are exactly 20 of us in our group (Peace Corps Ethiopia calls us 'G6' or group six) which is nice and small, and I feel like we've all bonded pretty well- that could either be due to the size, or due to the fact that we spent somewhere around 23 hours of quality travel time in either bus, airplane, or airport together...

So after a long plane ride to Frankfurt, Germany, followed by another long plane ride to Addis Ababa, we landed in Ethiopia at about 9:30, which is something like 3:30 in the Ethiopian time; here in Ethiopia, instead of a 12 hour clock beginning at 12 midnight, they have a 12 hour clock that begins at dawn, around what the time zone would consider 6:00 am. Also, it is now the year 2004 here :) They are not on the Gregorian calendar, nor the Julian calendar, but on, from what I've been reading, a 13 month calendar called the Ethiopic Calendar. Since I'm pretty sure I would do a lousy job describing this, here's a website I found that explains it pretty well: http://www.ethiopic.com/calendar/ethiopic.htm

Anyway, moving on. Peace Corps has put us in a great hotel for the first couple days (hence, the internet) and have slowly brought us in to Ethiopian culture and Peace Corps lifestyle with several sessions of what to expect. In fact, today was our first language lesson of Amharic, the language all Peace Corps Volunteers start out speaking, until site placement, then you might switch to a local language depending on the area of your new post. Amharic is difficult so far, mostly because it has its own alphabet- so it gets written into the Roman alphabet several different ways, which makes it a little harder to distinguish the pronunciation- but don't worry, we're only working on the basic greetings so far... 9 more weeks to go..

Being in the hotel, I'm ashamed to admit I really haven't seen that much of Addis Ababa yet! We did get to go on a bus tour of the city today though, and go to two of the National Museums here in Addis. After working at the Musee back in my old post in West Africa, I have to say I was really impressed at the quality of the museums! The first one we went to was within the campus of University of Addis in an old Palace, and was a really detailed and engaging display of the cultures, religions, and ethnic groups throughout Ethiopia, along with numerous artifacts of Ethiopian history. The second one was similar, and the home of 'Lucy' whom I was very excited to see, only to find out she's on loan to the U.S.. Figures, the 3.2 million year old discovery I've been looking forward to seeing since I knew I was coming, just happens to be in the country I just left!

I think what has surprised me most about Ethiopia so far (just through the sessions taught and the walking around), is the amount of history here; from Ras Tafari, to the Queen of Sheba, to Italian attempts of colonization, and even what is said the be the location of the Ark of the Covenant, I am completely fascinated by the histories and cultures throughout Ethiopia!

Really quick, one last thing- We are moving to our host families tomorrow, which means our days of easy internet access are most likely are over; it may be a few weeks before I get a chance to write again!

Here We Go Again...

After reapplying for Peace Corps Service roughly 4 months ago, here I am on my way to Ethiopia, for another 2 exciting and life changing years as a Conservation and Natural Resource Management Volunteer.
Heres the story:
This time last year I was living in my first Peace Corps country, Niger, (see http://nicholeandniger.blogspot.com if you want the WHOLE story..) and loving life. Well, most of the time; like any other lifestyle, it had its ups and its downs- but I was at the point where I loved my job, felt confident in the language, and really couldn't ask for more. Then in the course of about 3 days in January 2011, the Peace Corps Niger world came crashing down as safety and security problems forced us to evacuate; leaving our homes, jobs, and lifestyles.
Evacuation meant making some tough decisions very quickly, including the decision to end service earlier than planned and head home. I COSed with the optomism that I was going to head to the US, find my dream job in a month, working in Wildlife Conservation or Zoolgy and live happily ever after.
Several of us werent quite ready to head to America though, and 5 of us newly COSed Volunteers headed off to Europe to readjust and get used to the idea of 'real' life again (secretly I think we were just all scared to aknowledge our Peace Corps Niger was over, which returning to the US would surely mean). After 6 weeks in Morocco and Europe with some truely great people, we finally, one at a time, headed home with a new plan and direction. Personally, I thought, ok, two weeks here, two weeks there, by then Ill have my dream job, DONE. But, life never turns out like we plan... I took small jobs here and there, applied and waited, and finally took a great job with Holland America Cruise line working as a Youth Staff in their kids club. It was a great job, but I truly missed the work I did in the Peace Corps, the lifetyle I got to live in West Africa, and the culture I was able to be a part of. I also realized that the field experience I was gaining as a Peace Corps Volunteer was possibly the best way to prepare me and lead me to that dream job I've always wanted; I think it came as a shock then, when I announced to my family that I had reapplied for Peace Corps and was heading off to East Africa in September. It is after all, another two year commitment, and that did make me a little nervous.
So here I am, bags packed, waiting for the bus that will take us to JFK, then on to Ethiopia. Having done this routine before, I feel like the veteran, having a pretty good idea what I'm getting myself into. At the same time, Ethiopia is completely new and unknown to me; I am so excited to learn and be part of a new culture and way of life, nervous (and excited) to begin studying a new language, and excited for a new community and job that will be the next two years of my life!!

So, long story short, I've started this new blog to keep everyone at home up to date on my life in the bush- that way, if you ever think, 'hmm, I wonder what Nichole's up to?' here it is :)
It's going to be a great couple years!