The stuff I see

So, I have been here for almost 4.5 months now and the other day, I really started realizing that Addis is the place where I live.  I’m not really on “vacation”…I mean, I work here, go to church here, have friends here, and have typical days.  That doesn’t mean I’m an expert by any means, but it means that I don’t always look at the things around me the same way an inquisitive tourist would…if that makes sense.  I mean, some of the things I see that would be shocking to a tourist here for only 2 weeks are now commonplace for me.  Nevertheless, I wanted to comment on a few of the things that stand out about this place. 

 1. Sugar.  Ethiopians love it.  It is extremely common for people to have coffee/tea breaks during the day…I know one girl, for example, who has tea five times a day!  (I don’t think the American working system would go for that).  In any case, if you order tea/coffee, be prepared for them to put at least 3 spoonfuls of sugar into it.  Now, if this were a large coffee from Starbucks that might be acceptable. But, these are teeny-tiny little glasses.  If I accidentally forget to ask for no sugar at some places, I end up feeling like my teeth will rot out of my head after drinking my beverage. 

2.  Children.  It is very common to see women walking around with babies (adorable babies) wrapped up in large scarves on their backs.  The sad thing, though, is that often these women are working and carrying their babies around with them all day.  For example, many women often stand on the side of the road giving santim, or change, to the mini-bus attendants.  They may stand out there for hours and their baby is with them the entire time.  The other thing you’ll see are tiny little children running around on the street.  We of course are way to paranoid to let this happen, but everyday I see tiny little children gallivanting all over the place.  I think part of it is economy…people working on the side of the road can’t exactly afford daycare, but I also see middle-class people walking with their small children down the road.  I have come to realize that perhaps it is because strollers aren’t widely available, but also, it is because they aren’t in such a dang hurry.  We are way too concerned about time to walk at a 2-year-old’s pace.  Here, they have all the time in the world.  My coworker told me this expression: “If you could export time, Ethiopia would be rich!”

3. Servants.  I haven’t talked about this much, but Ethiopia still has servants…I’d argue slaves, in some cases.  Here in Addis, the majority of middle class/upper class families have a seratenya, helper/servant, who works in their home…doing just about everything.  Usually, these are girls coming from the countryside trying to make some money for their family or get a better education in the city.  It has been a funny thing to try to get used to…and, I’m not convinced I’m used to it.  At the Midwifery College where I teach Tues/Thurs, for example, there is a servant who brings me tea and bread while I teach.  I mean, it is nice to have tea and bread and all, but it just feels funny to be served.  Some of these servants are treated well by the families/orgs they work for and are given decent lodging, wages, etc, but it is sad knowing that many of them are being worked to the bone for what would equal a few US dollars a month.  It is a hard balance to know whether or not to be happy that these women have jobs or outraged that they are serving others in this way.  I think this is one of the legacies that has held on due to the fact that Ethiopia was never colonized.  This is one of the cases (I have others, believe me) in which I wonder if colonization may have been a good thing for this place… 

Look-alikes

When I was a child, I was convinced that when God made people, he started with a basic “mold” for faces and then just moved things around a little to make people look unique.  Well, I am not exactly sure if that is how people end up looking the way they do, but I do believe that the same face can exist in different races.  I say this because I have seen SO many Ethiopians who remind me closely of friends back home.  For example, last week I saw a driver who looks EXACTLY like my friend Lisa’s husband Jonas, I know a little girl who has the same face as my friend Ellie and I saw a mini-bus weyele last week who could have been my cousin Robbie, save for the fact that he was Ethiopian.  So, I’ve come to the conclusion that not only do we all have a doppelganger out there who looks like us completely, we can also have look-alikes of other races.  I’m on the lookout for mine…I’ll let you know if I find her….or, if I find yours, I’ll let you know that, too.

Uploaded

I finally got the photos uploaded…I mentioned them in the previous entry.  Seriously, next time you upload photos and it takes you two minutes, think of me: it took two hours to upload these.  NEVER will I take even semi-high speed internet for granted again!!!   

Amazingness

Yesterday was a great day.  I had the chance to hang out with my friends Bethany, Sarah, Maren and Josh, which would have been great enough in itself.  But, it was extra great because of the two activities we did: 1) The other girls and I received pedicures.  Now, I have only received one other formal pedicure in my life and hadn’t really thought about getting one here.  But, the girls found a salon where we could get them for 30 birr, so, about $3.50.  It was amazing.  These women SCRUBBED and pampered our feet for an hour and a half!  I honestly have a few bruises from her scrubbing a bit too hard with the pumice stone. I can’t tell you how nasty your feet get here…I mean, today I narrowly missed stepping on a dead cat.  So, needless to say, it was nice to give our feet some TLC. 

After pedicures, we met up with Josh at the cafe next door.  He had even thought about getting a pedicure, but couldn’t stay in the salon because there were Muslim women in the salon getting their hair done.  It worked out well, though, because in the cafe he ended up meeting two American guys, one being my friend Aron from Alabama. (Josh lives with three women, so, he craves male contact whenever he can get it!) So, we grabbed Josh and headed to a place called The Family Restaurant.  The name wouldn’t give it away, but this place serves Mexican food.  I was SOOO excited…I have been missing Mexican like nobody’s business.  I had a chicken tostada salad and was pretty impressed.  And, afterwards, we all indulged in dessert.  I had the Mexican fried ice cream.  It was incredible.  I couldn’t even TELL you the last time I had friend ice cream…but, the fact that it was there and I was able to eat it was amazing.  It brought me back to high school days and eating at Chi-Chi’s with my friends.  Ahhhh….good times. 

By the way, I am in the process of uploading some photos to my shutterfly account.  Check them out when you get a chance.  They are a random mix, but, the captions should be pretty self-explanatory.  Enjoy!  http://laureninethiopia.shutterfly.com

Circus Pony

This is the most accurate way to describe how I’ve felt the past couple of days.  Let me explain: On Sunday, I walked to attend the festival of Timkat (Epiphany) in a part of town where many people were gathered to celebrate.  I was by myself and simply standing off to the side, occasionally taking a few pictures.  Overall, from my experience, Ethiopians really enjoy seeing ferenji taking part in cultural activities: eating injera, trying to speak Amharic, enjoying cultural dance, etc.  The problem, though, is that their way of showing appreciation is to point, stare and laugh.  They usually don’t intend it maliciously…these are simply (from my observations) their ways of acknowledging you and showing appreciation.  So, while they were trying to be kind, my response was to try to find a hole somewhere to crawl into so that I wouldn’t get so much unwanted attention.  A similar experience happened this morning.  I was running late because there were ZERO minibuses.  Because of this, I was late to get to the meeting spot where I usually carpool with a group of others up to the Midwifery College (where I teach Tues and Thurs mornings).  I missed the shuttle and so I ended up waiting at the taxi stop for about 30 minutes waiting for a different driver to come and get me.  There are way fewer foreigners in this area of town and so because of that, I was once again felt like a circus animal on display.  I wished that more than anything I could have made myself invisible to make the stares and comments stop.  Honestly, if this is what people of other races feel like in the US when they are the lone person of color in a sea of white people, I can’t imagine the patience and strength they must have to stay sane.  My point is: sometimes you may wish you stood out a bit more, but honestly, appreciate the ability to blend in.  Living under a microscope is definitely not a fun thing.  But, the silver lining to the situations has been the fact that there are always small children who beam as soon as their eyes meet mine and who turn around to smile at me even when they’ve walked past.  Sometimes a three year old can make you feel like a million dollars!  At first, I remember thinking that it was strange for children to give this sort of ”praise” to white people…at this point, I am simply happy to be receiving the genuinely kind attention…I have yet to have a three year old ask me out and I like it that way! 

Book Recommendation

Say, I have just finished a book that I found to be really encouraging.  I am sure some of you have read it, but I hadn’t heard of it before finding it at a used bookstore in Dinkytown last summer.  It is a little book by C.S. Lewis called “Letters to an American Lady.”  It is basically his 10+ year correspondence with a woman in America whom he never met.  It was so cool to read his own words and learn about his character and faith through them.  So, if you are looking for a good quick read, I’d highly recommend it.  There were honestly three or four times when the letters he wrote spoke directly to my situation that day.  Pretty cool when that happens! 

Happy Birthday Mom!

Just wanted to take a minute and send a big Happy Birthday to Barb who celebrates yet another anniversary of her 29th birthday today!  I’m sending only love and good wishes for a wonderful year!  I would say that i’d send the warm weather, but, we are actually experiencing a little coldspell this evening…probably only in the high 40s.  I’m sure that would feel BALMY to you, but I am shivering a little as I write this…I think I’m becoming a softy.    So, if any of you find yourselves in Duluth soon, stop in and give some happy birthday wishes to mom!  Some of my friends actually did this past weekend (Kari, Danita and Kristy) and I know she appreciated it.  And, their little present to me was giving me a call!  It was so nice to hear from family and friends!  And, then as a bonus, my friend Emily in Portland called me unexpectedly.  It was such a wonderful surprise and I was definitely feeling the love.   After kind of a depressing start to the day (see my entry from yesterday), it was nice to finish it so well.  

Hard to take

Ethiopia is a poor country, as I’m sure all of you are aware.  Honestly, though, I’d say that as I live my daily life here, I consciously or unconsciously put on “blinders” to an extent ofsome of the poverty or effects of poverty I see here.  I think that if I didn’t become “used to” seeing dirty drunk people laying on the side of the street, people hobbling along/crawling along the street due to deformities, or beggars, often children, continually coming up to me, I would literally shut down.  But, perhaps I should shut down and not be able to pass by the scenes I see? 

This morning, as I was walking to church, I saw one of those situations which takes the difficulty of life here and shoves it in my face.  I was approaching a group of shoe-shiners (a common profession here) and just as I was coming near them, I saw that one of them was being held and punched by another of them and a third of them was laying on the ground as though he were unconscious or worse.  All of a sudden, another person (a bystander, I think) threw a rock at the guy being held and hit him square in the face.  So, here I stumbled upon this violent situation in which one person was seriously hurt and another was now bleeding from the nose and mouth.  At this point, a crowd assembled, the man who was laying on the ground was carried off and the guy hit in the face lay down and was surrounded by the crowd. Now, I don’t know exactly what had happened, but one hypothesis (which would be true from other experiences), is that perhaps the “unconscious” shoe-shiner had either made a negative comment about or more likely, taken a customer from the other guy.  (I’ve seen it happen before with taxis, vendors, etc. where they will fight over a customer…literally, fight).  So, because of this, the other guy must have somehow hit/beat him to get him into his current state.  The saddest thing about these kinds of squabbles is that the amount of money usually being argued over is about 1 birr…a dime…$.10.  If I drop a dime on the street, I may pick it up, or I may just leave it there.  Quite the contrast.  I walked away from the situation flooded with a variety of emotions: sadness, pity, gratefulness, shock, etc.  I wish I knew the answers to help reduce the problem of poverty and the effects of poverty, but, I haven’t found them yet. Let us keep working together to find the answers. 

What I’ve Learned In 4 Months

Proverbs 9:7-9  “He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself, And he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you, Reprove a wise man and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise mand and he will be still wiser, Teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning.”

During grad school at Wheaton I took a summer class in which our professor read the above passage and encouraged us to be “Proverbs 9″ people: people who were able to accept correction/instruction in order to be better/wiser people.  I remember a few days later I read this passage before heading out to my friend Sonya’s wedding.  Even though she had hired an official photographer, she had asked me to take a few photographs throughout the day.  So, that is what I did.  Well, throughout the day, her sister-in-law, who I know was feeling the stress of being the only sister-in-law present, took it upon herself to make a number of “remarks” about some of the shots I took: “you should really have asked them to turn so that thing wasn’t in the background,” “that lighting really isn’t the best,” or, “oh, I guess I would have done it this way instead.” Let’s just say, I wasn’t necessarily crazy about the attention she was giving me…I had traditionally thought of myself as a decent photographer so to be getting these unsolicited suggestions didn’t necessarily make my day.  FORTUNATELY, I was able to stop, breathe, and reflect on the passage I had read earlier that morning…”teach a wise man and he will be wiser still.”  Now, this was by no means the way in which I would have asked to be taught, but it was a form of teaching nonetheless, and I was able to determine how to accept the teaching.  I could be bitter and resent her remarks….or, I could hear them, process them and let them sink in and lead me to become a better photographer.  (Sonya–I probably never told you that story…don’t worry, I don’t hold any bitterness toward her!)

 I tell this story because it closesly relates to my teaching job here in Addis.  For the sake of time, let’s just say it has been a “challenging” position in many ways.  One of the most difficult aspects has simply been the lack of good resources and the fact that the resources we do have are pretty crappy.  Because of this, it means that as a teacher, I have to work quite a bit harder to create, organize, find resources and as you can probably guess, it is quite difficult to find decent resources here in Africa.  That, and the students have HIGH expectations of the class since they are paying good money to be there.  There are days when I simply don’t want to go to work.  Fortunately, I just recently remembered the above lesson and realized that I again find myself in a similar situation.  So, while I still find myself counting down the days I have remaining of teaching, I am realizing that this experience is in fact training me to be a much better teacher.  Again, I considered myself to be a pretty good teacher when I got here…by the time I leave, I will be even better-equipped because of the challenges I’m facing.  Again, not exactly the lessons I came to Africa to learn, or so I thought, but it makes sense that becoming a better teacher would God’s reason for bringing me here.  Sure, I have been able to volunteer with fistula and become more exposed to that issue which is so close to my heart, but practically speaking, teaching is likely to be a part of my future and so it makes sense that this time would be used as training to become better.  I feel slightly like Santiago in the Alchemist…read it if you haven’t had the chance. 

So, basically, my hope here at four months is to be able to filter the experiences I have with work over the next few months as teaching and try to process them in order to become a wiser and more loving teacher and person.  I’m sure I will still count down the days, but at least, I will try to focus on how kick-a$* of a teacher I will will be becoming through the process! 

Hey Baby!

Guess how many times I’ve received that recently?  Quite a fw times…and often by middle-aged men.  Nice. Today the guy was talking on his cell phone and paused his conversation to make his comment.  Classy…………..That’s the way to get the girl.