Oct 24

Greetings to you from Wolisso, a medium-sized town (50,000) two hours southwest of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I have been in Ethiopia for close to three weeks, and much has happened already. Liz and I have begun learning our second language (Affan Oromo – mouth of the Oromo people) after a quick two week intro to Amharic, the national language. Half of our PC group is going to the Amhara region (northern mountainous area), still learning Amharic, while the other half of us are going to Oromo, which is in the central, southern, and western regions of the country, encapsulating Addis and a few other cities. There are 42 volunteers on the trip, 34 of which female (I did not know this detail before arriving at staging). The six single guys are all very excited to have lots of estrogen on our trip, but I was a little disappointed in the scarcity of male comrades. PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) is funding the PC’s reentry to Ethiopia, and the majority of volunteers are health advisors, thus the female predomination. There are only four other micro-enterprise volunteers alongside myself here, but we have bonded together to complain about the overkill of technical HIV/AIDS training. All the girls Liz has become close friends with are going to Amhara, but I’m excited to be going to Oromo with the guy on the trip I have gotten to know best, although we still could be days apart by bus depending on our individual sites.
I’m fairly upbeat about the Oromo region, Addis Ababa is there and we may get a site that works in partnership with “Save the Children”, a US Intl Devp NPO that works closely with orphans as well (a dream job for Liz). “Save the Children” has a sector that works specifically in economic development with women, so I hoping to get one of their two sites, which would be really helpful with my thesis – The impact of micro-enterprise programs in Ethiopia.
Other happenings… While you were _______ (insert fun activity here) last Thursday, I was fighting off my first immune system attack. 103 degree fever with a healthy side-helping of diarrhea, but fortunately the fatal strand of H5N1 has not reached the chickens in my community. I’m healthy again, but squatting at an outdoor latrine with the runs has made us really hope that our permanent site is equipped with an indoor option. All you former volunteers who had indoor plumbing, you had a treat (Chris Kline you rotten guy you).
FINAL parting shot – It’s been more exhausting than I anticipated to have every person you see have a motive in regard to my person – lots of people see the rich white American and want cash, lots of people just want to be friends, but the most surprising are my host-family sisters, who sporadically question Liz and I about when we are going to get them a scholarship to America. It is not really fair to blame them for wanting to go abroad for advanced education, and I am to blame for not clearly saying up front that it is near impossible to get a scholarship for undergraduate education in the states. Scholarships seem to be a pretty standard request towards any volunteer, but I certainly was not prepared to field such an appeal. I hope you’re all well – any questions about Ethiopia, concerns with my health or the bird flu epidemic, or other African issues are welcome. Talk soon, Chris