All-Volunteer Conference (AVC)

I did some traveling last week. I had to be in Addis Ababa for the All-Volunteer Conference but a couple days before that I met up with some friends in Hawassa (the capital city of SNNPR). It was a much needed break. All of us that live in the South absolutely love Hawassa. There’s a beautiful lake (you can’t swim in it or you’ll get shisto), some great restaurants, gelato, and it’s just a great place to relax. I hadn’t left Butajira in eight weeks, since G9’s IST (In-Service Training). I left my house early in the morning, around 6:30am so I could catch the direct bus to Hawassa. Missing it would mean having to take three buses and I wasn’t about to go through that. Since it had been eight weeks since I had last traveled I was pretty nervous about getting on a public bus. My stomach started hurting the night before I had to leave. As soon as I arrived at the bus station, men came up to me asking me where I was going wanting to lead me to the right bus. When I gave them my destination, they said the bus was on its way so I would have to wait. They had me sit next to the bus station manager. As in most situations in Ethiopia, I was the center of attention. The manager wanted to talk to me and ask me a gazillion questions. Every guy that came up to the manager’s desk had to look at me and ask about me. Each time I said something in Amharic they started laughing. I guess seeing a foreigner make an attempt at their language is amusing. When the manager asked me why I was going to Hawassa, I told him I was meeting my friend and he immediately asked me if Theresa was my lover. That made me laugh out loud. I’m still not used to how when you say “friend” people assume you mean a boyfriend/girlfriend. After an hour of waiting outside (the manager’s desk isn’t in an office but off to the side of the bus station on a porch) the Hawassa bus finally showed up. Being as I was the foreigner, one of the guys in the bus station forced everybody back who was trying to get on and made sure I had a seat (the bus was already almost full since it had filled up in another town and was just stopping through Butajira to pick up a few more). From that point on the trip was really easy except for the fact that I had no space in between my seat and the one in front of me and so was forced to put my incredibly heavy hiking backpack on my knees. I wasn’t able to move at all for three hours, but I guess that’s partially my fault for packing so much stuff.

            Hawassa was amazing and after a couple days of enjoying Hawassa, walking around, eating a lot, and drinking beer we all headed to Addis for the conference. AVC was a two day event where all Peace Corps Volunteers in Ethiopia (mostly G7, G8, G9) got together. I wasn’t sure what to expect with so many of us together. I’m alone most of the time so the thought of suddenly being surrounded by two hundred volunteers (PC Ethiopia is the second largest PC country) was both exciting and overwhelming.

            We arrived on Thursday afternoon and had dinner with the ambassador that evening. After we finished eating she did an interview with one of the volunteers. That was a great experience. The following day started early with sessions. We divided up into our various sectors, education, health, and environment. It was great getting to hear about some of the things G7 (they are all education volunteers) had done and share our experiences thus far. It was also nice to see that we are all facing similar challenges and it’s more than likely that the problems I’m facing in my school and community, another volunteer is going through something very similar. The rest of the sessions throughout the conference were on different projects we could do in our communities. Several sessions were offered and we got to choose the ones we wanted to attend. Hearing about the various projects that volunteers have been working on and how we could start them left me feeling motivated to go back to site and get back to work.

            I also attended a session on women in PC Ethiopia. Females discussed their experiences with sexual harassment and assault and how it has affected them. This was probably one of the most helpful sessions I attended. We talked about how the daily harassment has changed how we act when we are walking around town and how we communicate with males. For many it has made them more angry, alert, and anxious. For myself, I have to mentally prepare myself for all the attention I’m going to get when I walk out of my house and go into town. Most of us agreed that we have our “bitch face” on when we walk out the door. For many of us, that’s the best we deal with it. It’s a way for us to cope with harassment. It was really helpful to hear that the way I’m reacting to the attention isn’t crazy. I’m not wrong for reacting like this and many of the female PCVs are feeling the same way. Attending that session made everything that I’ve been feeling from the verbal and sexual harassment validating. One volunteer mentioned that she hated the fact that this sort of harassment was enough to make PCVs quit PC and go home. It gets to a point where it becomes too much to handle. That’s why it’s crucial to find healthy ways to cope with it.

            Besides the serious stuff, there were also a lot of fun things we got to do and see. On Friday night there was a talent show and Saturday night was karaoke. Those were great. During lunch on Saturday there was a fair where local vendors came to sell various hand-made items. We were also given time to start thinking about doing summer camps for students with the volunteers living in our region. I’ll talk more about that in a future post. At night after sessions were over we were free to go wherever our stomachs called. I got to eat at a Chinese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and on my last night I got a fresh salad and a delicious cupcake. After dinner we went to different clubs and bars. It was so much fun to meet new volunteers and for all of us to be together just having a good time.

            Finally, as my post started with a bus ride, it will end with a bus ride. If I was nervous about the bus station in Butajira, I was super stressed about catching one in Addis. Us volunteers may love going to Addis because of the great restaurants, beer we can drink without people gossiping about us throughout town, hot showers, and going out at night with our friends, but getting around Addis is a pain. You have to catch a “line taxi” to get anywhere. These are like big vans that are full of people and really uncomfortable. The guy who collects the money will stick the upper half of his body out the window and yell the various locations that the bus is heading in. To get a bus home, I first had to get a “line taxi” from my hotel to Mexico. At the present moment Mexico is the biggest pain because either a railroad, or a subway, or a tramway is being built (I honestly still don’t know) but anyways it’s a big mess. There is construction everywhere, huge piles of rubble, hundreds of people going in various directions, people selling random stuff, homeless people begging for money and on top of that dirty water all over the roads that’s coming from who know where. Once in Mexico it took me a little bit to find a line taxi going to the Mercato bus station. I had to ask several people where it was because the first three people I asked completely ignored me. Finally a nice man had me follow him and asked around where it was and lead me to it. I’m so thankful when I run into those people. Now about Mercato. No one likes Mercato. In fact, PC tells us we are not allowed to go to Mercato, except to the bus station for those of us who live on that route, if that tells you anything about the area. After about 15 minutes the line taxi dropped me off in the middle of chaos and told me to walk the rest of the way to the station. I was in the middle of a bunch of small shops. There were people everywhere, the area was gross, random people were shouting out to me, but luckily I didn’t have to walk far and I was pointed in the right direction. Once in the bus station, a swarm of guys came up to me yelling, “Where are you go? Where are you go?” I told them Butajira and a man grabbed my hand and lead me to the bus. I tried to loosen my hand from his grip him but when I noticed he wouldn’t let go I didn’t care as long as he didn’t try anything crazy. I just wanted to get on the bus. Funny how you start to adapt to the way of life here. If some guy in a bus station had physically grabbed me and wouldn’t let go in my first couple months in Ethiopia I would have been so scared. Now it’s normal to me. Of course the bus was full when I got there and people were screaming and shouting. Moments like that I’m glad I don’t understand Amharic. There’s a cushion in between the driver and the passenger seat so I had to sit there. There was a man already on the cushion so I sat behind him so we were back to back and I was facing all the passengers. Not a comfortable ride but I finally made it home.

All in all, public transportation is no fun, but AVC was amazing and well worth the travel. I hope it becomes an annual event and we can do it again next year.