hurry up and wait.

i’ve spent the better part of a day sitting on a bus.

night fell quickly. the rain wasn’t so hasty. first came the lightening. close enough to blind you, frequent enough to read by. i suppose the gods were smiling upon me. i had sat on a cramped bus nearly long enough to read tom sawyer from cover to cover. the destination was nowhere in sight, so i suppose if i was going to have to endure this much longer, the heavens were at least going to provide me with the world’s most terrifying book light.

as we cruised past a straw hut that was ablaze from the inside out with no respite provided by the sudden, unceasing, violent downpour, i put my twain down, and pondered for a moment.

briefly as to whether the people inside the hut were home, and if so, were they still alive.

then, more laboriously, as to why i choose to write.

it dawned on me as i read through the mishaps and adventures of an incorrigible young man (for at least the third time in my life) that my adventures didn’t quite compare. i wasn’t digging up treasure, or getting on the wrong side of any injun revenge murders, but my audience wasn’t either. i hoped my writing didn’t come across as bragging, or boasting.

i don’t quite know why i write, but doubtful my main motive is to brag (i think i would be more into twitter and facebook if that were the case). more probably, it is an attempt to inspire people to seek out their own adventures. more probably, it is also to explain why i choose to adventure the way i do.

as a child i had read kesey and steinbeck over many times before i graduated junior high. something about willingly and knowingly delving into literary endeavors that would surely end in me bawling like a small girl over the terrible atrocities that often befall even the best laid plans of mice and men… probably says a lot about a young boy.

as a tot, my mother used to try to read me to sleep with tales like robin hood, and treasure island. i say try because usually she read me into insomniatic curiosity. i’d stay up all night imagining what if. then as day broke just enough to read by, i’d snatch the book off the night stand and plow through chapter after chapter before i had to get up for school.

now, as the lightening cracked just enough to read by, i curbed my inner child. i parking lotted the last chapters of tom sawyer (i already know how it turns out) and appreciated the beauty of the moment.

i thought to myself, self, it’s not that our life is more adventurous than any other (although i do occasionally slip into the third person). if you add up all the time i have spent waiting…

…waiting at airports and bus stations. waiting on airplanes and buses. waiting for medical clearances, and security clearances. waiting for people to finish shaibuna. waiting for hotel rooms. waiting for flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, or bands monkeys to clear the road. waiting for internet to load. waiting for the church service to wrap up. waiting for the blizzard to blow over. waiting for the diarrhea to stop. waiting for the show to start. waiting for godot, wait… no. waiting for my bags to come around on that giant carousel. waiting for the drugs to kick in. waiting for power or water to resume. waiting for the political uprising to cease…

…if you add up all the time i have spent waiting for adventures and count it against the high degree of adventure i have when the good stuff does eventually get underway, i think we all probably even out in the end.

it was for this reason i closed the chronicles of tom and huck, wiped the condensation off of the bus window, and stared in awe as dozens of electric veins crashed across the sky whilst our bus barreled through the blackness in between. like the many dawns of my youth, the world had provided a natural means with which to appreciate the adventures of others. but as day breaks on my life, i have come to realize, there will be plenty of time for that later. for now, there was a glorious storm of biblical proportions raging outside, and i didn’t want to miss one drop.

i read because it fills the space between adventures with inspiration toward new adventures. i read because i have plenty of time to. i read because when it’s time to put the book down, i am all the more open to living my own story to the fullest.

i write because i want the world to understand who i am, and what exactly it is that i do. i write because i hope to inspire even one person to do what i do. i write because i want the world i don’t know to understand the world i do know, and vice versa.

but when it’s all said and done, i close the book and put down the pen, because i might spend a lifetime waiting for adventure, but adventure waits for no one…

****

stay tuned for our next episode:

jimma loop brings brunch to walkite

****

easy listening: the temper trap : fader

meet the peace corps: one month in, jessica…

no, that sounds bad. how about…

the jessica i know and love.

yes, that’s much better.

before i even knew her, there was just something about jessica that i knew right from the start i was going to love.

the first thing i remember about her is her luggage. at barely twenty-two years old, and all of five foot high, she was naïve enough to bring matching faux croc skin bags big enough to comfortably fit two years worth of provisions, plus herself, a date, and a romantic french dinner inside, and given the amount of candles we found in there, i think she had the dame idea.

one bag alone weighed ninety pounds. i think jessica weighs about eighty-five, soaking wet, after a hearty mexican meal.

as the legend dubbed “one bag dave” i was called in at the airport check-in desk to jettison the expendables. my team of experienced and sarcastic travelers set in on her bags, throwing out fluffy guest towels, extra large sexytime bath candles, cans of lysol and raid, family sized shampoo, value sized packages of bar soap, armageddon sized hand sanitizer, and a box of stationary that looked like she just swept her desk into a rubbermaid container.

somewhere between the check-in desk and the heineken bar at the gate, her carry on bag broke and will had to step in and give her some s-clips and a strap, while megan and i explained to her the differences between all the beers on the menu.

i had pegged jessica as the first of group 5 to die. not ET (early terminate. we’re nuts for our acronyms here in the PC), not admin sep (fired), not medi-vac, she was going to die.

during G5’s honeymoon in addis, jessica was known to throw a fit every time someone sat at her table without asking, or knocked on her door after 7:30 even if it was to visit her roommate, and she was often heard to say things during language class like “ama-blah-blah-blah-boo. whatever, i don’t know what the hell you’re saying”.

the first week of jessica was so special. there was just something so endearing about how destined she seemed for incredible disaster and/or international incident. i wanted to adopt her as my little sister just because i felt like i had so much to teach her.

one month in, jessica is tying a pocket flashlight into her dreads to use nasty shint bets in the middle of the night. she says things like, “i don’t even use toilet paper anymore. i just give it a good bounce and move on. i mean, what did they use before toilet paper?”

one month in, jessica is one of the unfortunate who had to switch from amharic lessons to a local tribal language halfway through training. one month in, jessica is meeting habesha (locals) on the bus and translating songs into oromifa (her new language) for them.

one month in, jessica is sleeping on concrete floors with seven other people in the room, saying, “i ain’t shy. dave’s already seen me in my booty shorts. whatever.”

one month in, without any real mentorship, jessica has become my odds-on favorite for PCV MVP G5 (there’s those acronyms again).

the awesome thing about jessica is that she hasn’t really changed much. she has just grown so quickly into the jessica she always could be. it’s like this is the life she never knew she always wanted.

one month in, jessica is a completely different PCV, but she is still the jessica i know and love.

****

stay tuned for our next episode:

we brake for monkeys.

****

easy listening: thao : bag of hammers

pasta?

with great expectations, often come great disappointments.

****

through hours and hours of sessions on lowering our expectations, we have come out on the other side feeling like, if we don’t get killed but do befriend at least one person in our town, we will have been successful as a PCV.

so what did you expect peace corps would be? how will you define success in your service?

i think there were a few definite ideas for some.

some thought it would be some sort of sleep away camp singles mixer, and to be fair, 60% of women in the peace corps meet a future husband during their service. at least that’s what i hear second hand. 87% of all statistics are made up. 23% of all people know that. i think for many, they will have been successful as a PCV when they bring home a sweetheart. when they redefine their love life.

for some it was a chance to redefine themselves. sort of a fresh start, amongst kindred spirits. for these folks, i think they will feel successful when they no longer feel burdened by their former selves.

for some it was a sort of expatriation/extended vacation. they galavant around impoverished villages, drowning in cheap beer and lapping up the hollywood level attention of the locals. they seek to redefine nothing, indefinitely. there is no level of success these people can or cannot achieve, for if one never endeavors, they can neither succeed or fail.

then again, for some of us, those who have been to a dance or two in our time, there weren’t many expectations, and those that we had were based on experience. not expectations of duty or success, but of culture and locale.

addis abeba, for example, is a trafficky metro with nasty black smog. that’s to be expected, but frankly, it’s one of the less trafficky metros i’ve been to in the developing world.

having never eaten ethiopian food before, i was excited by my first experience at merkado in little ethiopia, west hollywood. i was fully prepared to be overfed when i arrived in country. this is how hospitable countries work. i was fully prepared to enjoy some of the food, and some of the food not so much. like any country, there are good cooks and bad.

the peace corps, however, was expecting us all to be expecting sleep away camp singles mixer. they told our host families that we were delicate americans, with tender tummies, and maybe it would be best if they laid off the local treats. they suggested that instead of feeding us the stuff they know so well how to cook, that they instead should be substituting pretty much every meal with, wait for it…

pasta.

not the good stuff either. not the homemade noodles and slow cooked sauce i grew up on. no. these are cheap store bought noodles, in a country that doesn’t eat pasta, ever. piled high atop a roll of injera, smothered with greasy spicy grilled onion sauce, and accompanied by two kinds of bread. just the thought of that ethiopian carb bomb makes the bile rise in my throat, to say nothing of smelling it first thing in the morning, when i still haven’t digested the heaping pile of pasta from the night before.

i tried to come in with few expectations, but like i said, this is not my first rodeo. admittedly i knew very little about ethiopia that couldn’t be read on wikipedia, but i did know a little bit about this great big continent. when i arrived, a few familiar things popped up, and few new.

the antique SUVs, the intense rain, the throngs of children following us through the streets. these things are not unfamiliar. the lines of souks peddling all-purpose bar soap, odd flavored gums, dry biscuits, and bottled water, i have seen these before. the 5-a-day coffee breaks, the copious amounts of dark mud, the lack of pungent smells. these were a surprise. the stark contrasts of addis, the lack of middle ground or transitional neighborhoods, people living in corrugated tin boxes on the side of the road, right across from grand apartment complexes with landscaped grounds. i did not expect this.

the lush greens of boru crawling over 8 foot fences and into the muddy rutted streets, the butcher shop with shit covered hay strewn about the floor looking more like a pig sty than a slaughter house, the cattle bones and skulls littering the town, the pastel walls of the clay houses. these redefine my vision of africa born in ghana and morocco, but they define my boru. blaring funeral horns at dawn, the rhythmic churning of the pedal machines at the seamstress next-door, near collisions with horse drawn carts made of mismatched car tires and miscellaneous junk scavenged from garbage hill will haunt my malaria med dreams.

i love being in a town that never ceases to surprise me.

that’s why i try to approach everything with only my experience to draw upon, and i try to experience first hand as much as i can. that’s why i wanted to have my first ethiopian cuisine in nothing less than a predominantly ethiopian neighborhood, and that’s why i was excited to try some of the local noshables when i got here. i expected spicy stews, lots of injera (like a huge, bitter pancake), very few vegetable varieties, but lots of permutations of what was available. i expected lots of coffee, and maybe a little goat.

yeah, expectations can be a bitch.

so what did i think peace corps would be? how will i define success in my service?

i, didn’t think a whole lot about it, but i do have one or two little expectations. for one thing i expect a good and bad food experience (right now i’m in the throws of the pasta doldrums). i expect to not get killed, and to befriend at least one person in my town. i expected an aimless, thankless task. i expect to define and redefine relationships with people and places, but i never thought i would have to repair a tragically broken relationship with a food.

for me, success as a PCV will come when i have redefined my relationship with…

pasta?

stay tuned for our next episode:

your settlements will collapse like easter island, and other reasons i already love masha, southern nations

in other words. tales of language lessons and lessons learned.

this post was an attempt to introduce you to the people that define my world right now. i went about it many ways but time after time it landed on the cutting room floor.

i have been trying to write this post for over a week now, and i just couldn’t find a way to define these characters, and when i thought i had, i couldn’t find a way to conclude it. i think, perhaps i had run out of words. i think, perhaps i may need to borrow a few words from my colleagues. read it in pieces if you will. there are a lot of people to meet.

so, without further ado, i present to you: peace corps ethiopia as interpreted through the words of it’s PCVs…

hi, i’m brittany. i already ate.

- brittany. memphis, tennessee

let me tell you all about un faux pas apropos.

we have been dispatched to out host families, and one glaring culture clash is that, whenever you meet someone, they feed you.

sounds great, eh?

trust me, that shit piles up, literally.

but sometimes, from small mistakes come great discoveries.

here in boru kebele (village) five of us have found ourselves on the maiden voyage of a town that has never seen peace corps before. a town that may have never seen a white person before. monica, brittany, DT, deanna, and myself are stationed in a town that sprung up from the mud and tangled weeds and bleached cattle bones, as if from nowhere for nowhy. boru is not on the map, and for good reason. it might not be here next week, let alone the next time they send a cartographer around to line things up. it looks like the last ditch efforts of a roving band of gypsies. they don’t know how to treat americans because they’ve never seen any before, and for some reason the solution is often to overfeed us.

needless to say, a lot of people want to meet us, and that’s a lot of mekses and shai (snacks and tea).

as boru crew begins proper language classes, we are learning all the (not so) subtle mistakes we have been making. for example, when you meet someone for the first time, it’s polite to say, “dave ibalalihu”, which means, “i am called dave”. it’s slightly less polite to say, “brittany, ibelalihu” which means “i’m brittany. i already ate”.

lord! monica done got bit by a dog!

- DT. apalachicola, the oyster capital of the world, in the grrreat state of florida

the US really is in the minority when it comes to domestic animals.

whenever you ask people in other countries “what’s the dog’s name?” the answer is often “no name. dog”.

when you see a dog in the states, it looks at you quizzically as if to say, “are you my buddy? do you have snacks?”

look at a dog in ethiopia. go ahead. i dare you. they seem to be saying something more along the lines of “you see this here? this is all me. you come into my zone and i’mma eatchu”.

“i’m gonna eat you”, by the way, translates as “ib’ alilihu”, which is perhaps the worst way to introduce oneself in this or any country.

the reason the dogs are so ornery out here is that these ain’t pettin’ dogs. these are workin’ dogs.

all day these dogs roam the mucky go-betweens of boru like dickensian orphans, but when darkness falls, and the packs of glowing eyes come bouncing through town, carried on the lilting laughs of hungry hyenas, those mangy mutts clock in.

they work the graveyard shift, tied to the front gate, fighting off the hyenas that prowl the streets… every night.

if that were your job, you’d be a little on edge, yourself.

compound that with the fact that these pups have to drink stagnant water out of the gutter (ok, so gutter may be a little generous. let’s say… garbage trench), and get by on little more than bleached cattle bones and old shoes, and you can see why monica found her tasty leg on the business end of a snausages hallucination.

mama bear’s getting her groove back with a vengeance.

- brendan. san francisco, california

moonshine, pruno, hooch, bathtub mint julep, gut rot, paint thinner, engine polish, toilet wine… same same, but different.

the difference in ethiopia is that you buy it out by the dumpster behind the king hotel, it’s called t’aj, and it tastes like rancid pineapple.

bottoms up, buttercup.

now, jean was just about the last person i expected to hook up a backdoor deal for intoxicants. jean looks like the 5^th grade teacher you hope your kids get. she looks like the nurse you don’t mind getting bad news from. so when she reached into a nondescript black bag and pulled out three dusty water bottles full of what looked like raw sewage, i knew me and jean, we were going to get along just fine.

what can i say? i like people who break character.

the moment started off slow. just dave and jean, drinking some pruno. then (don’t call her) abuelita priscilla stepped up to the plate.

now, up to this point, priscilla had managed just fine on a few beers, and the occasional tequila shot, but we knew better. jean and i knew that a 65 year old woman doesn’t volunteer to move to third world africa with a bunch of 20-something hippies unless she’s got a little fire in the belly, and we planned to put a little fire back in that belly.

she reluctantly tipped back a glass of t’aj, and the moment that sweet pungent nectar hit her lips, mama bear was born.

see, most of us had left mothers and fathers and abuelitas behind. priscilla had left kids and grandkids, and news had just reached us that she was expecting a brand new little chitlin. like a fine toilet wine, the maternal instinct can remain bottled up only so long.

t’aj in hand, mama bear sat in her grand velvet throne on the patio of the king hotel, pouring shots, and pouring affections upon us. up the marble stairs they ambled, a few at a time, unwittingly into priscilla’s kingdom as subjects to their queen. at the top of those stairs each was handed a questionably sanitary glass of t’aj, and was toasted. at that moment, trepidations evaporated like the fumes of so much 100 proof honey mead into the balmy night air as we professed our love for priscilla and she returned the sentiments. laps were sat upon, arms thrown over shoulders, and babies named.

amongst the verdant palm fronds and elegantly carved wooden furniture, a family was born. with tobacco smoke like incense wafting in from the darkness beyond the cobblestone walk, and casio keyboard like the pipes of the grandest church organ blaring in from the glass walls behind, priscilla was christened mama bear, and each of us adopted as her own.

meanwhile, somewhere halfway around the world, a new member of the family was on the way, and if peace corps ethiopia has anything to say about it, that baby’s name will be addis abeba…

“new flower”.

small talk is bullshit.

- will. everywhere, USA

or so says my addis roommate, william power (real name, true story).

i guess when you’re an army brat who’s been bounced around the country your whole life, you have two options 1) never knowing your friends’ favorite colors, or 2) knowing everyone’s favorite color, and never having any friends.

i, for one, love small talk, mostly because i like to read into the answers.

i swear, you can learn a lot about a person from the way they answer silly questions like “if you could have any modern article of clothing made to look like pilgrim clothing (heavy black wool, white lace, pewter buckles), what would it be?” (best answer so far: lingerie. it would be itchy as hell, but lingerie isn’t built for comfort) or “if you were trapped on gilligan’s island, which would you succumb to first, passion or cannibalism, and with whom?” (best answer so far: i’d have sex with all the women, and eat anyone who challenged me).

but after the fifth straight day of language classes that are focused on greetings and introductions, in a culture that is known to drag greetings and introductions on for a half an hour or more (how are your cattle, how are your chickens…) i think mr. power might be on to something.

alright shint bet, it’s just you and me.

- deanna. simi valley, california

DT has come a long way since i had to draw her a diagram of how to use a shint bet (aka shit pit, or pit toilet, not to be confused with garbage trench).

there are many ways to approach the first encounter with a raunchy hole in the ground that you’re supposed to poop in, and sometimes the whole (hole) experience raises more questions than it answers.

imagine this: you walk into a dark, moist room, usually about the size of a closet. there is a hole in the ground flanked by two foot pads. there is no toilet paper, no lid, no handle or button or chain to flush. in fact, there are no pipes, or plumbing at all.

which way are you supposed to face? where do you sit? how do you wipe? how do you flush? what if you miss? what about splashback? what about splashback?!

few things in this life are certain, but this i can promise you: no two shint bet are quite the same, every other shint bet is better than yours (the ass is always cleaner on the other side), and you have to approach with confidence.

the first time you see a shint bet, you stare it down and in the immortal words of deanna, you declare with all due mettle, “alright shint bet, it’s just you and me. how we gonna do this?”

the last thing you want to do is panic.

well… the last thing you want to do is panic and call DT (who, you may recall, needed me to draw her a diagram of how to use a shint bet not but a week ago). the last question you want to ask is, “what the hell is this thing?”

…and if you’re amaka, and this is your first shint bet, and you do panic, and you do call DT and ask “what the hell is this thing?” the last thing you want to hear is, “amaka, it is just a… lord! monica done got bit by a dog! hold on, girl. i will call you back.”

i imagine at that moment amaka uttered the words

…alright shint bet, it’s just you and me.

you’d better scoot over, because that cow is going on this boat.

- helen. seattle, washington

helen was detailing her boyfriend’s peace corps station in panama. five hours by dugout canoe from the nearest big town, and that cow was getting on that boat one way or another.

i could see the tears welling up in her eyes a little as she talked, and i’m not too proud to admit that my eyes were a little watery as well.

helen and boyfriend had decided to do peace corps as separate adventures, and he had left for panama ten months before she came to ethiopia. in those ten months she was faced with business as usual minus one. her boyfriend, however, he had so many things to fill his time, and occupy his mind. building his own house, for example, might have distracted him from thoughts of his helen of ethiopia (the face that launched a thousand canoes), but one can only imagine that, no matter how eventful, a five hour canoe ride might afford some time to get wistful.

i can tell you this for sure: a nine hour language class certainly does.

i have a great respect for helen and her boyfriend. i have a great respect as well for tony and erin, who decided to do peace corps as separate adventures a few years ago, and are back as a couple to do it again.

for me, the moral of this conversation with helen was: it is possible for people to have completely different experiences on the same adventure. it just depends on how you define the adventure. for helen the adventure looks like ethiopia, health clinics, injera, and hyenas. for her boyfriend it looks like panama, expat bars, and canoe rides, but that doesn’t mean they are on different adventures.

the great adventure in life is life itself. never shall it be defined, because every waking moment is its ever growing definition.

of all the people who are helping to define my experience right now, the most important is the one who isn’t with me. for me the adventure looks a lot like helen’s, and soon enough for jenny, it will look like togo, and… i can’t wait for her to fill in that list.

simply because, over the next two and a half years, jenny and i will tell completely different stories, it does not mean that we aren’t on this adventure together.

i had a great conversation with erin the other day, and the moral was this: it isn’t about making it work within the parameters of other people’s ideals. it’s about whatever works for you.

for some people, sharing an adventure means picket fences, hot showers, a tire swing, 2.5 kids and a dog. for some it means hyena perimeters, and bucket baths.

we’re not so different, you and i. i have a bunch of barefoot kids playing with an old tire in my yard. i don’t know who’s kids they are, i wouldn’t be playing with that tire if i was them, and don’t you pet that dog boy, you fixin’ to get bit, but it’s all in how you look at it. whether you’re in suburban america, or rural africa, on saturday afternoon we all pile into the SUV and drive into town for lunch and a beer, don’t we?

i had a great conversation with tony the other day. the moral of that conversation was: our Ethiopian Gladiators names will be the fightin’ ferenji (white man) and shaibuna (it means coffee break, but it sounds so much cooler in amharic).

jesus, every conversation doesn’t have to be a deep philosophical ponderance, does it?

perhaps now is not the time for conclusions.

- paul. minneapolis, minnesota

my writer’s block had fallen right on my conclusion once again.

i wanted to introduce you all to some of the characters that define my experience out here, but i just couldn’t find a way to wrap it up.

maybe it’s because there are more than just the sixty-nine new volunteers. there are second year volunteers, third years, language teachers, administrators, a smooth talking doctor, a busboy who looks like sammy davis jr and sells moonshine out by the dumpster. there are boyfriends, girlfriends, parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren at home and abroad. there are host families, neighbors, town harlots, save the children, USAID, VSO, cornell grad students, cats on leashes, cats in closets, cats on leashes in closets (we call him the gimp), dogs that should be on leashes, australian bush pilots, fur traders, mayors, door-to-door nurses, the list goes on, and it gets longer every day.

every day our relationships are redefined. busboys become bootleggers, for example. nurses become host cousins. trainers become site mates. coworkers become den mothers. strangers become friends. roommates and neighbors move hundreds of miles away in an instant.

i can’t count the people i have left out of this post, they number too many, and those i have included appear in no particular order. names have not been changed to protect the innocent.

these are simply a few of the characters that are helping me now to define the great adventure that is life.

as i closed my laptop on a dead battery, and prepared to board a bus for boru, paul read the frustrations on my face. he knew all about my tribulations in creating this piece, and he said to me…

perhaps now is not the time for conclusions. perhaps now is the time to leave things undefined.

perhaps now is the time to start something new.

well, where the hell were you ten minutes ago, paul?

* * * *

stay tuned for our next episode:

pasta?