First week alone in Butajira

Up to this point I feel like my blog reflects a pretty positive image of my experience. Not that I have been lying in my past posts, but I have definitely left out many of my negative moments. I think we tend to romanticize Peace Corps life when really it’s far from it. As our director and the rest of Peace Corps has reiterated to us several times, “Peace Corps is the toughest job we’ll ever love”. Well at this point I don’t love it to be perfectly honest. I’ve been in my house in Butajira for a week now. I’m all alone and my house is practically empty. The only thing I’ve managed to buy is bed and a stove, which only works when the power is on, obviously, and the power has been going out every day for at least a couple hours which I do not understand why since the rainy season is practically over. I have peanut butter and bread at all times just in case I get ready to cook and the power goes out.

I have a shint bet and a shower room which are outside of course. I finally got used to the shint bet at my host family’s compound and now I have to get used to a whole new one (not all shint bets are the same). Several people live on my compound. There is my landlord and her family (she has 2 young kids and they’ve kept me company which is nice). There are also 3 other people that rent rooms from the landlord. My house is at the very end of the compound. In the middle of the compound there is the water faucet. Unfortunately we don’t have water all day so whenever there is water I have to fill up my bucket. (At my host family’s house we had water all the time so I never faced this issue). I’ve never had to think about my water usage because I’ve always had as much water as I could possibly want. Now I have to learn to ration it. Since there is no plumbing I don’t have a sink so what do I use? I’ve had to buy plastic buckets. Buckets are a Volunteer’s best friends. I’m lucky to have my water filter to use as a faucet. Since I have yet to buy a table (I need to do that next week), I have raised my water filter on my blue bucket (the same bucket that I store my water in). I have my orange bucket on the floor, this way when I use the water filter, the water falls straight into the bucket. I also use a bucket for washing dishes. I don’t know why I ever complained about washing dishes in the states. I hate washing my dishes here. It is such a process. Hopefully I’ll get faster at doing it. Even though I have much less water here then I did back in America I still have enough to shower, keep myself clean, wash my dishes, drink, and for cooking. Not having much water and still getting by makes me realize the ridiculous amount of water I used back home. But still, it takes a bit of time to get used to. A week sure isn’t long enough to get used to it.

All in all Peace Corps is hard. Living like this when you are used to having everything is difficult. Being in my house alone is the worst part though. Living with a host family was definitely not the best situation, however there were always people there and they helped me with whatever I needed. They also took care of everything for me so I never had to worry about having enough plastic buckets for all my daily chores. And my house does not feel like home at the moment. Right now it’s just 2 rooms with all my stuff laid out on the floor.

I’ve had to remind myself to step outside of my house everyday so I don’t become crazy or get depressed. However, this isn’t as simple as it sounds. I’ve met some really great people, but there is not one day that I walk outside and I don’t get some kind of harassment. This is enough to keep me locked in my house all day. Children seem to think I’m made of money. Every time I walk outside I have kids yelling, “Money, money, money.” I know it’s not entirely their fault. I can understand why they do this. This is the image they get of America from the films they watch and all the NGOs that come in and throw money at their country. The majority of Americans do have a lot more money than Ethiopians, but that doesn’t mean I have enough to hand out to everyone. And when I go back to America I won’t have any money. In fact I’m several thousand dollars in debt. But of course you can’t explain this to a 10 year old Ethiopian. Peace Corps does not give us a huge salary either. In fact, the budget of Peace Corps worldwide is equal to one day of the United States in Iraq. And that budget has to be split between the over 50 countries that Peace Corps is currently serving. So, “no kids, I have no money and that is not my name”. And if I were to give a kid on the street some money, then they would all expect it. And I have to live here for 2 years so I can’t start handing out birr (Ethiopian currency) to all of them. It’s not only the children that yell, “Money, money, money.” Yesterday I had an adult woman ask me for money. It wasn’t a homeless woman either. She asked me this right before stepping into her house. I’ve also seen adults smiling and laughing when kids call me money, so if the parents are not seeing a problem with this then it’s no surprise that they keep saying it. Some other things that I hear when I walk in town are “Ferengi, ferengi,” or “China, China, China.” Kids will also scream from across the street, “HELLO, HELLO, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” This may seem harmless, but if you are screaming this at me from across the road I will not respond to you. You need to come up to me and ask me politely. Just because I’m American does not mean I’ve got some superhuman qualities. I’m a person just like them. Some would say I am lucky though, because I haven’t had anyone throw rocks at me yet. A lot of Volunteers experience this. I guess this is the whole point of Peace Corps though, to build relationships with people so they can understand you and you can understand them. It’s just that some days I can’t stand it. I just want to yell back at them to shut up. Of course I know that wouldn’t get me anywhere and only make the situation worse. Some days it doesn’t bother me, but if I’m having a bad day this kind of verbal harassment is enough to make me stay home. I can’t walk anywhere without people staring. The amount of attention I get is ridiculous. It’s frustrating to have everyone constantly watching you.

So there’s my rant. I apologize for the negative tone to this blog however this is something that all Volunteers face so I think it is important that people back home realize that we are not living a fun, exciting, adventure. We face struggles every day that go beyond having to use a shint bet. A lot of it is psychological, like the verbal harassment and the realization that we are living alone, in the middle of Ethiopia among people who speak a language that we are trying desperately to understand but still struggling with.