A Stick in the Road

After a successful working weekend in Jimma, two volunteers and I caught a mini bus back to Agaro. It usually takes an hour, but this mini bus made an unusual stop. There was a giant branch-like contraption sticking out of the road and several people standing around staring. My gaze soon shifted to the left, where a giant power line was half tilted, ready to fall at any moment. I almost knew before I asked… is there power in Agaro?

No, they said. It disappeared.

There’s no telling how long a situation like this will take to fix. As an added surprise, both the water and phone network went down with it.

So Dave, Marissa and I arrived in Agaro with limited options. Our days went something like this:

√   Go to the market, come home and use the remaining water I have stored to wash and peel veggies for dinner. Slowly.

√  Pull down the small box of Christmas items from last year. Set up a mini tree, hang a few stockings. Stand back and admire.

√  Take quizzes from Oprah and Cosmo magazines. (Turns out we’re all romantics, and can keep our cool under pressure.)

√  Prepare dinner by headlamps and candlelight. (Part camping, part alluring ambiance?)

√  Explore Cosmo for all the new fashion, culture and beauty trends we’ll never be a part of.

√  Discover a million and one tricks to do with matches.

√  Visit the small local library… Read the Encyclopedia Britannica circa 1981, The Babysitters Club and several books on Karl Marx.

√  Find someone along the road selling coffee they made with a charcoal fire.

√  Do crossword puzzles from a book published sometime in the 1990’s.

√  Sit around listening to my iPod until the last of it’s battery is drained.

√  Read.

√  Read some more.

√  Discus options.

Agaro is really hot this time of year. We can buy bottled water for drinking, but as for washing our bodies, our clothes, our dishes… you begin to understand what a serious commodity water is. Going weeks without water, you feel hot and dirty. Your dishes pile up. You dream of cold showers and clean clothes.

So… our options: Stick around Agaro and go through the whole experience we’re all too familiar with. OR. Get on a mini bus back to Jimma, share a hotel and take a shower.

Call me a cheater, but that shower was amazing.

Let’s Talk

I got a message from the Peace Corps office today, making this adventure all the more real. In addition to training information, there’s a section they wrote up especially for you. Here’s the gist of it:

Letters
The mail service in Ethiopia is not as efficient as the U.S. Postal Service.  It can take 3-4 weeks for letters from Ethiopia to get to the States.  And if I’m assigned to a small faraway village, it could take 1-2 months to reach you. If you date your letters to me (and number them) I can let you know how long it takes for me to get them.

Packages
These are not guaranteed to reach me, but current volunteers have said they haven’t had a problem. Don’t send anything too expensive. Electronics have extremely high custom taxes, so please don’t send any. Padded envelopes are often taxed less than boxes, if you can opt for those. Care packages will probably be a little piece of heaven, so thanks ahead of time. Here’s the address again:

Katie Olean, PCV
U.S. Peace Corps
P.O. Box 7788
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Also they said cash and checks are not recommended through the mail. (bummer.) If you send a postcard, please put it in an envelope. If you don’t, some postal worker will likely have a new picture for their wall. 

Phone Calls
To get some actual voice conversations, it’s possible to call my cell phone (number to come). However, there’s a part about how difficult it is to get through and you may need to call 5-10 times in a row, even if it says I’m “out of the service area.” There’s always Skype… although I haven’t given it a practice run yet. And who knows how internet will be.

The Fun Stuff
Then there was a little section on my possible “war stories,” by which they mean illness , lack of good food, isolation, etc. They assure you it’s never as bad as it sounds, and we have a doctor and physician’s assistant on staff in Addis Ababa. If it’s really bad, we’ll be medically evacuated to Kenya, South Africa or the United States. (Let’s not hope for that.)

So that’s about it. I love you all forever for reading this and sending me letters when I get there. I promise, I’ll write you all back. Two weeks to go!