Addis Ababa

We arrived in Addis Sunday evening to a sprawling city of lights; the first lights I'd seen in hours after flying over the immense Sahara.  The city was all lit up with red, yellow and green (Ethiopia's colors) string lights and flags decorating every building and streetlight to celebrate the Ethiopian Millennium.  2000 years as a country!  Talk about a rich cultural history.  The entire sides of some high-rises were light up with these lights. 

Being in Addis, I feel like I'm in any major metropolitan city.  We head to a different city for training tomorrow and will begin living with host families.  I'm very excited but nervous at the same time since I don't know any Amharic.  But I'm very exited to get started with everything.  We had personal interviews with the staff and now I feel like I have a better idea of what I may be doing.  It's all still very open and flexible though.  Which will make it a challenge but also very exciting, and hopefully rewarding!  I'm definitely looking forward to learning more about the country. 

I don't know if or when I'll have access to internet so I'll keep you updated when I can!

The Last Supper

Today was our last day of staging.  Our last night in the good ole US of A.  We take off tomorrow at 8:30pm.  It seems like we've been here longer than 3 days.  It's been a bit of a whirlwind.  Trying to absorb information, meet fellow Volunteers, and meet all kinds of people.  Our staging director made a comment about that 6 degrees of separation theory; the Peace Corps puts you at 1 degree from anyone.  I'm starting to believe that. 

Yesterday, the PC Director, Robert Tschetter and Congressman Honda visited us.  They are both RPCVs (Returned PC Volunteers) from the 60's.  The director doesn't address every staging group so that was special for us.  Yesterday afternoon, a couple people from George Washington U visited us, including their dean, to talk about a new plan to link PCVs with medical students or doctors at the university to serve as a resource to us if we have medical or health related questions that come up.  It should be a neat resource for us while we are in the field.  This afternoon, a few members of E&E RPCV (Ethiopia and Eritrea RPCV) spoke to us.  The National Peace Corps Association is basically an alumni organization and they are associated with them.  They have a couple programs that can help benefit us; including one that will provide textbook resources on HIV/AIDS to communities in Ethiopia and Eritrea.  I'll post the link and you can feel free to make a donation to provide that resource to a community, possibly mine!  One of them also sends out a daily e-mail that summarizes media coverage of Ethiopia and Eritrea.  It was neat talking to them and hearing how their service affected where their lives have gone.  One was a reporter for the NY Times and another actually acted as a intermediary between the Ethiopian and Eritrean ambassadors during the war that broke out between the 2 nations in 1998 and helped them negotiate a cease-fire.

This evening, we had a reception at the Ethiopia embassy here in DC.  That was really cool.  A couple people spoke, including the Ethiopian ambassador and the PC Deputy Director.  It was very sweet and they made it clear how excited everyone is to have PC back in Ethiopia, how much Ethiopia has always appreciated PC, and that they have high expectations for us.  No pressure!  After to formal part of the program, there was food and we got to mingle.  I got to chat with and shake hands with the ambassador which was pretty sweet!  And the PC Director of the Africa region and the Deputy Director.  And there was food.  It was yummy!  It was my first experience with Ethiopian food and I was happily impressed.  I'm sure I'll talk more about food in the future!

Staging - Day One

I arrived in Washington DC this afternoon.  I had just about 45 minutes in the Minneapolis airport this morning and kind of had my eyes open for another Peace Corps trainee because I knew there was one from MN so I figured we'd be on the same flight.  I did notice a couple girls talking that had the suspicious air of being like me and then I heard one say "Ethiopia".  So I got up and introduced myself, like the eavesdropper I am!  Sarah and Steph.  It was super exciting to get to talk to them and share our stories and chat and what not.  We all had ridiculous amounts of baggage and we felt so bad for the shuttle driver having to load it all into the shuttle!  Then we stopped and the next stop and saw 3 more girls that we knew instantly must also be PCs.  It was quite funny.  We have a look.  We got here to check in and it was immediately obvious who the others were that were milling around.

We had just enough time to check in, change clothes (staging is business casual), and walk to a mall nearby to grab some lunch before Staging started at 1:30pm.  We briefly covered the goals of the Peace Corps, development work, safety, cultural adjustment, shared anxieties and fears, introductions, things like that.  We'll get more into depth on all of that during Pre-Service Training (PST) but this is designed to give us the info we need going into PST.  It was mostly exciting to get to talk to everyone.  I believe there are 43 of us.  I believe 36 women and 7 men.  There are 2 married couples in our group and 2 women over 60.  Not so representative of the whole PC which is about 51% women/49% men. We are the first group back into Ethiopia since 1999.  This is the 3rd time PC has returned to Ethiopia...so we're like pioneers thrice removed!  But it is an exciting time.  Today was a lot of talking and meeting.  This evening a bunch of the group planned to go out to a bar and whatnot but a few of us decided we were a bit tired out and preferred something a bit more low key so I went to dinner with 5 others.

Some interesting facts about the Peace Corps:

Founded in 1961 by President JFK under Sergeant Shrier.

About 180,000 Volunteers have served since then.  Currently about 7000 are serving.

Annual budget is about $380 million.  About $55,000 is spent per Volunteer over their 2 year service.

Currently Reading Lonely Planet Africa By Gemma Pitcher, David Andrew, Kate Armstrong, James Bainbridge see related

The Departing