Learning to slow down

So you might wonder what I have been doing with my days since training has been over and what kind of work I have been doing. To be honest, I haven’t done much. The Peace Corps approach to development is people centered. It is a bottoms-up approach that starts at the grassroots level. It’s a participatory and inclusive approach that allows for different parts of the community to be involved. In order to achieve that, Peace Corps strongly believes that within Ethiopia at least, it is important to develop personal relationships before professional ones. Showing your face around town and just going to your school to chat with the teachers is enough. People need to get to know you and you need to get to know them. Getting started here has meant going slow and taking time to get the lay of Butajira. What’s most important right now is to develop relationships with my English teachers at Mekicho and the staff at the education office.

            To get some idea of the importance of personal relationships, let me take you through a simple Ethiopian greeting. “Tena istilin, dahnah adark, seulam nah, igzabierh istilin, seulam nah, dahnah, dahna nan.” These greetings could go on forever. It’s not a simple hello or good morning like I am used to back in the States. No. Here when you greet someone, you greet them in at least five different ways. And what I just wrote up is just for the morning. There are also separate afternoon greetings and night ones. Ethiopians take time to make sure the person they are greeting is doing well, also asking about their family and making sure their life is okay in general. As Americans we tend to have a million things to do every day and often don’t have the time or we don’t take the time to really ask about how the people we are greeting are doing. In Ethiopia when people greet me I can tell that they actually really do want to know how my life is going, it is not just a formality or something you do to be polite. And if I don’t respond to these greetings in the same way, I’m being culturally insensitive. So I am having to learn to take the time to ask everyone that I meet how they are doing and trying to remember all the Amharic greetings.

I am also learning to slow down. In America, we are constantly running around trying to do as much as we can, forgetting to do the simple things. Ethiopians have asked me what time I eat at in America and I tell them that depends on the day. I’ve had times where I’ve had to eat my lunch as I was walking to class or eat while driving to work. It wasn’t uncommon for me to eat just twice a day. When I was with my host family they never let me out of the house without sitting down and eating breakfast and drinking my tea. Trying to explain to them that not eating breakfast was no big deal and was customary back home was something that they couldn’t wrap their heads around.

            Learning to be patient and slow down when you are used to doing the complete opposite is a bit challenging. Changing your behavior is no simple task. When I first arrived to site after training, I started off with a list of goals that I had to accomplish every day. I’ve realized after just a month that a list of weekly goals is much more doable than daily ones. I’ve learned that it is common for me not to accomplish all I want to do in one day because according to Ethiopian time, I’m planning too much in one day. Life is much more laid back here and I am having to learn that if I don’t get something done that day, it’s no big deal, it will just get done the next day… or the day after.

            So what have I been doing? Well every morning I show my face at Mekicho Primary school. I’ve done some classroom observations. Part of my assignment here includes me getting a model classroom. The school director says I will get a classroom soon (but again you never know what soon means here). Once I get the classroom I have to turn it into a learning center and decorate it in a way that enhances learning. Most classrooms here are just dirt walls with old desks and overused chalkboard. With the model classroom I get to show teachers how they can use the room as a learning/teaching tool for their students. When my director gives me the classroom I will have plenty of work getting materials and probably go to school all day. For now though I just go in the morning. I come home for lunch and then in the afternoons I try to get stuff for my house which is still pretty empty. It’s funny though how much of a difference having a bed and some flooring can do. My house may not have much in it, but I get more and more comfortable every day. I’m learning that I can live with very few things. I’ve made it work. And most importantly I'm learning not to rush through everything all the time and to be patient.