The Emotional roller coaster that was 2014

Here's the first blog of the year. Enjoy!

It's been some time since I last wrote. That's because one of my close friends from college came to visit for three weeks. It was great showing her around Butajira and the daily happenings of my life. During her visit we traveled to Hawassa, Shashamene, and spent a really fun weekend in Addis. It was also wonderful having her here for Christmas. With the limited ingredients we had, the both of us were able to come up with a pretty delicious meal. Being away from home during the holidays is always harder so I'm thankful to have had my girl Candace with me and I feel like those three weeks together brought us much closer. There's nothing like washing each other's underwear in a bucket outside and sharing a chamber pot to bring two ladies closer. With a new year upon us I've been reminiscing a lot on 2014. So much has happened and I'm trying to piece it all back together to come up with a coherent idea of what the year's been like for me. Around this same time last year I was in a very different place mentally. I started off 2014 feeling quite uncomfortable and unsure in Ethiopia, even after having been here six months. I still had no idea what I was doing, how to go about doing my work and living here, and to be honest, several things were still scary. I was pretty negative and I hate to admit that my outlook on Ethiopia wasn't great. I can remember only focusing on the bad things that happened to me which caused me to be angry most of the time. Things were not going the way I wanted at work, my communication skills weren't there, and the harassment I received was really getting to me. I stayed in that state of mind for longer than I'd like to admit.

So I moved from being scared and uncomfortable to being angry which in turn became sadness. All of this wasn't great. I can recall last spring when I was counting down the days until my trip to the states and only being focused on that. Not healthy! Going to America was a whirlwind of emotions in itself. After a month in America, where I got to be with my family, see my friends, and eat a ridiculous amount of food, I arrived back in Ethiopia feeling depressed. All I wanted to do was go back. The thought of ending my Peace Corps service early crossed my mind on more than one occasion. Looking back on it now though, I'm so happy I decided to stick to it. When my second year began I knew I hadn't given it my all so I decided to try harder and seriously push myself.

I don't remember exactly when it was, I want to say sometime in August, but my outlook on Ethiopia changed. I made a decision to view Ethiopia in a different light if I was going to take on another year here because I couldn't continue the way I had been for months. I wasn't going to make it to the end with that frame of mind. And if I was, I would have become an extremely angry and resentful person. I had to accept that I was never going to change Ethiopia and that I'm not here to change it. Harassment was probably the hardest thing I dealt with and I came to realize that if America still doesn't have its act together concerning gender equality, how could I ever expect Ethiopia to? I had to stop allowing harassment to make me angry and afraid and ruin my days.  Being angry wasn't solving the problem and the men that I was getting angry at didn't understand where my frustrations came from. Changing the way society views gender takes generations. I'm only here for 2 years. How could I ever think that my being here for that short span of time would make men treat women as their equals? That's crazy! The best I can do is hope that my being here alone is planting seeds in peoples' minds about changing the role of women in Ethiopian society.

Concerning work, I decided to do things that were working and to make more of an effort to work with people who wanted to work with me; To only focus on the work that is going well. I decided to make more of an effort to work with my community and school and really listen to what they wanted me to do instead of what I wanted to do or what I thought the schools needed. Because that doesn't work and it's not sustainable. At the end of the day, my coworkers have been here a lot longer than me, they know their communities better and ultimately I am their volunteer.

The hardest pill for me to swallow has been having to remind myself that I am a guest here. I made the decision to come to Ethiopia on my own. No one asked me to do this and so in that period when I was constantly complaining about this country and I only saw the negative was unfair. It still doesn't make the way I'm treated by certain Ethiopians right, but when it comes to work I try to remind myself of that simple fact. I made the decision to live in Ethiopia for 2 years. Don’t get me wrong though. I constantly find myself in less than thrilling situations, but I try my best not to focus on those incidents so much and to think of the good things that happened to me that day.  Being the center of attention every time you walk out the door and having people yell out at you and gawk at you really builds confidence after a while. I'm no longer scared to walk through town and I brush things off a lot more easily.

Favorite picture of 2014 - Surroundings at Lake Langano

I have to thank all the Ethiopians I've met who have made me feel welcomed and loved. My host family and compound family are always here for me. Conversations with them and encounters with my teachers makes it all worth it. Even though working with the teachers has proven to be quite challenging, they are still very nice and appreciative of what I'm trying to do and I'm comfortable around them. I try to focus on the student that hugged me and kissed me on the cheek after we read together for half an hour or the student that offered me her banana flavored stick of gum as we crossed paths on the dirt road. Simple interactions with a suk owner can turn a bad day around. Just yesterday as I was walking to school I had an elderly Ethiopian man bow his head at me and take off his hat when he walked past as a sign of respect. I try to focus on those moments instead of the ones where people are aggressive towards me.

I want to end this post my expressing that my experience is mine personally. I cannot stress that enough. It's important for people to remember that every Peace Corps volunteer's service is different. We may live in the same country, but our regions, our sites, our work, the people in our community, etc. vary widely. Each one of us has a very different experience and so what may work for me does not necessarily work for someone else. For all the volunteers in my group who ended their service early I think they all ultimately made the best decision for themselves. And who knows, if I had had to go through some of the awful stuff other volunteers experienced I probably wouldn't still be here either. But whenever I thought of going home I knew I would end up regretting it. I hadn't given it my all and until that moment came when I had tried everything and I was still miserable, then I would say it's time to say goodbye. That moment has yet to arrive.

For my own experience, staying patient and going through that difficult first year allowed me to learn, grow and arrive at this current point where I'm happy in my service. I'm sure some will ask if going through those rough months was worth it. For me it absolutely was. I'm not here to change Ethiopia. I'm here to experience this country for all its good and bad and learn from it.