Ocholoni Shai (Peanut Butter Tea)

I’ve been meaning to sit down and spill my guts about several different, challenging and deep, topics for quite some time, but it seems that every time I sit down to do it I suddenly feel it’s more important that I play a game of Plants vs. Zombies (which I’ve beat several times over now), or Cake Mania, or to look up inane topics like Robert Pattinson or awesomely bad tattoos or birth defects, online. I know! I have my priorities, right? Not to mention I’ve also sat down with every intention of finishing my Educational Needs Assessment (ENA) for the PC, with the same outcome. I’m in a rut, simply because I can’t seem to make myself do the writing I’m supposed to do. When have I ever been at a lack of words to write? I mean, I have an essay I wrote in Denny’s at 11:30am about how thumb tacks are taken for granted for crying out loud!

But….here I am now, sitting at my computer again, making an attempt at doing something somewhat productive, hoping that at the completion of this blog update, I will have managed to get the ball rolling enough to work my way through the ever threatening “To do” list by the start of the weekend. Seeing as I’m kind of forcing myself to do this, I’ve chosen a simple, uncomplicated topic that most people enjoy; food.

I’ve decided that, when I’m due for a blog update but I’m not feeling terribly inspired, I’ll post a recipe for you folks back home to try out, or to grimace at as the case may be; you choose. The winning food, or drink I should say, for this time ‘round is Ocholoni Shai. (Oh-cho-low-nee Shy). To us English speakers it translates to Peanut Butter Tea. Sounds weird, I know, but it’s surprisingly good, especially on cold days when you just can’t seem to get the chill out of your bones. Here goes;

Ocholoni Shai

Ingredients

Tea – Herbal, nothing fruity, and green tea probably wouldn’t taste very good either. Can’t give you a brand because the kind they use here isn’t available in the states. Find one you like, experiment!

Peanut Butter – Duh! Here we use organic, unsweetened, all natural. You can get it in most grocery stores in the states now, if not, go to the local Co-Op. You can use chunky if you like, but keep in mind you’re going to be drinkin’ the stuff.

Sugar – Which isn’t actually necessary if you’re going to use already sweetened peanut butter like, Skip or Jiffy, or what-ever-the-hell brand you like.

Get Cookin’

1.       Make the tea. If you don’t know how to do this already, there’s no hope for you.

2.       Spoon in the peanut butter a little at a time until it’s as thick or thin as you like. If you’re using sweetened peanut butter, taste as you go so you don’t end up with it too sweet.

3.       Poor into the tea cup/s or mug/s of your choice.

4.       Add sugar until it tastes delicious!

5.       Drink it! It’ll warm you up in no time flat!

Finally, furniture!

Finally! My furniture has arrived!!!

Is it anything like what I ordered? Nope, but hey, I’m only going to have to live with it for another 17 months, right? Want to know the drama that unfolded in my Ethiopian life in order to get my furniture here? The answer is probably “No, thanks!” but guess what! I’m telling you anyway. The good thing about being the reader of a blog, any blog, is that you can stop reading at any point. So, if you get to the end of my wordy purge and you find your mind numb with boredom….blame yourself.

Two weeks after I moved to Assella, permanently, I decided it was time to order some furniture for my little studio room. I left it to my counterpart to decide which carpenter I went to as I assumed he knew best. I ordered a table for two with two chairs, making sure I specified that this was a table I would not only be eating at, but using as a desk as well. So, it had to be tall, not like a coffee table which is what they use to eat on in these parts. My wardrobe was to have the closet bit up top and the drawers on the bottom with no decorative whirly-gigs on the front. I drew pictures of what I wanted and the man, or “young man” I should say, gave me the signals that he understood what I wanted. The dude said it would take 6 weeks, tops, as he had a lot of work to do. It was longer than I wanted to wait, but I agreed. What’s another 6 weeks in the long run, right? (If only I had known!!)

“6 weeks” my big, white butt!!!!

At 8 weeks I was finally able to nag my counterpart into seeing about its completion. Nope, not done yet. “One more week”, he said. Two weeks after that I’m getting a little perturbed, so I go with my counterpart to see about it. Crap! Still not done! Really? No, really??? Again, he says “One more week, for sure this time. Really, really. It will be prepared. We will come on the weekend to pick it up.”

Now, I’ll allow you to guess whether it was ready for me or not. Come on! Take a swing at it!

Well, I was angry to say the very least; a few Kilometers past angry, actually. It didn’t make it any easier that my counterpart didn’t show up at the time he said he would meet me. I couldn’t open my mouth. Nothing would come out. If I said a word I would burst into tears I was so livid! I, literally, threw my hands in the air and said “I have to go home!” and I did. As I walked away I could hear my counterpart yelling at the carpenter.

Day after day I was told it would be finished, and day after day I was given excuse after excuse. “Yesterday was a holiday.” “The carpenter is not there today.” “The power was out.” “The carpenter is out of money.” “The table has been sent to be sanded.” “The chairs are in the back.” “Other people are nagging him for their furniture.” Argh!!!! You know those cartoons in which characters eat something too hot and they turn red from the toe up until steam comes out of their ears? That’s what it was like. I’m still battling the anger as I write this.

Finally, I refused to go back. I refused to have anything more to do with it until it was delivered, finished, to my door. I refused to listen to another excuse. People kept telling me, “it’s culture that this happens.” Well, just because it happens all the time doesn’t mean it’s acceptable…..right? It’s not culture, it’s just bad business.

Okay, now I’m going to tell you about this last weekend, but don’t worry, it’ll come back round to the furniture in due course.

 A few of us volunteers have been assigned Warden Duty. I’ve been made Assistant Warden which means, in the event of political or natural upheaval, I am in charge of helping make sure the PCVs in my region are safe and accounted for.

On Friday a bunch of us piled into a private car and headed into Addis Ababa for Warden Training. The training was short and sweet, leaving us with pretty much all of Saturday and Sunday to do as we pleased. For me, this meant traipsing around tourist shops and eating lots of super delicious Ferenji food. Mmmmm…..so good. For other’s it meant running in The Great Ethiopian Run, which I plan on running next year. If you don’t know what it is, Google it.

FYI, if any of you readers suddenly find yourself in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the next month, find a restaurant near the National Theatre called Sishu. It’s got just about the best American food I’ve ever had here, and it’s well priced. Unfortunately, due to government crap, it’ll be torn down in January, hopefully to be rebuilt elsewhere thereafter.

Anyway, what made the weekend the best ever was the fact that I spent it with friends I’d missed terribly, that I visited two craft fairs, and that I spent a crap-ton of Birr on a deliciously, mind blowingly beautiful painting. Now, I love this painting so much that when I bought it, I cried. No, really! I did! That’s how much I love it. If I go back to America with no other souvenir but this painting, I will not be unhappy. I met the artist. He shook my hand, wrapped my painting, and his sister, being so moved by my tears, sat my friends and me down right there in their shop and made us buna. It soothed my soul.

Not to mention, I had a whole three days in which I did NOT have to think of my furniture.

The Precious Painting

Upon my return I found my furniture complete and at my door. The table is NOTHING like what I wanted, but rather than wait another 6 months for a new one, I decided to suck it up and figure out how to make it work. My counterpart took liberties in making choices for me regarding…well….everything (sigh). However, like I said before, I don’t have to live with it forever.

I’m a resourceful, clever sort of girl. I’ll find a way to make it work.

To make a long story longer, my house feels more…..homey, with furniture tucked inside. Now I can start putting all my accumulated crap away. It’s amazing how much “stuff” I have after only 6 months. It’s a good thing though, seeing as most of it is arts and crafts related, so I’m happy to find a place for it all.

Is there a lesson in all this? Yes, of course there is. The lesson is: if you come to Ethiopia expect to have the same ugly furniture that everyone else in the country has and splurge on the things that are going to make you really happy, like art and food.

The Furniture

Kindness by presence, package, touch, and compliment

Yesterday my site mates handed me a slip from the post office informing me that I had a package waiting for me and that there might be another behind the counter. It’s always excited getting mail from the states. It makes me feel not-so-far-away.

Today I went to fetch them. When I got there I discovered I had not one or two packages, but FOUR packages, one of which has been missing in action for over a month. As thrilled as I was to have them, I wondered how the hell I was going to get them back to my tinish bet (little house). I could think of only one option. Reluctantly, I texted my site-mates for their help and, of course, they came to my rescue. They walked from the bottom of the hill, up to the post office, schlepping my stuff all the way back down the hill and over to my house. I’m grateful to have them here. I’m not sure I would have stayed in Ethiopia if I’d been placed in Assella by myself.

While I was waiting for them to meet me at the post office, I sat schlumped over my stack of packages thinking about home. Several people passed by, all of them taking second glances, probably wondering why the white lady was sitting on the ground with a stack of boxes. An elderly woman with no teeth came slowly down the walkway and stopped in front of me. I smiled. “Salomnesh? Indenesh?” I greeted her. She said nothing. She was mute, or spoke only Oromifa, or both. Instead, she clasped her hands together in front of her, as if in prayer and bowed her head to me. She took my hands in hers and squeezed them and bowed her head to me again. She was thanking me. She was showing her gratitude for my being here.

When I got home I did some laundry, left again, and when I came back found that my libs (clothes) were no longer on the clothesline. A while later my landlady told me my clothes were in her house. I assume it was because the household was gone and she didn’t want them stolen. She brought my clothes out to me and from what I could understand from her Amharic, she said something along the lines of, “You're washing is beautiful. I couldn’t have washed them better myself. Very good.” Now, hand-washing is hard, getting clothes truly clean is even harder, and to be complimented on my hand-washing skills by a habisha woman that has been doing it her entire life is a major major MAJOR compliment. It almost blew my mind. No, it did blow my mind.

A previous Peace Corps volunteer was talking to us (volunteers in training) about finding our way through the rough bits of living here. He said “let Ethiopia save you.” This is what he was talking about. It’s the smallest kindnesses that are really the biggest life savers.

Now I know that if catastrophe strikes and washing machines aren't possible, I'll still have clean clothes.

Proof of my mad hand-washing skills

Proof that my friends and family love me

What I learned from the shoe-shine boy and thank you, lord, for cobbled roads.

Lately I’ve been suffering a mild depression. Don’t worry, I’m keeping close tabs. Among other things, I’ve been dwelling on the fact that my Amharic sucks and I’m losing most of what I learned during pre-service training at an alarming rate. Or, so I thought.

I’d just filled my belly with Foul (pronounced “Fool”) and coffee  and was walking back down the hill, eyeing the many shoe shine boys thinking I should get my poor shoes polished as they looked a mess but thinking I’d pass if I didn’t see one that looked honest (run on sentence, anyone?). As I passed, one of them beckoned me to come. He must have been alarmed at the extent of my shoe neglect. “Don’t judge me.” I thought, “I live on a dirt road and have walked in miles of mud.” I paused, looked down at my feet, and decided to go for it, so I sat down on the bench and watched him get to work on my Mary Janes.

As expected, being a giant white lady sitting at the side of the main road, I caught folks’ attention and became the topic of conversation. I listened for bits and pieces of conversation that I actually understood. One of them cracked a joke about serving a foreigner. I laughed with them. They looked to me with amused astonishment, their minds visibly being blown at the fact that I understood their banter. A fellow who was obviously friends with the kid shining my shoes sat down on the bench next to me and started asking me the generic questions habisha (locals) ask when they discover I speak Amharic.

“You speak Amharic?”

“How do you find Ethiopia?”

“How do you find Assella?”

“What is your country?”

 “What is your work?”

“Where do you work?”

“Do you know Oromifa?”

“Do you have a mobile phone?”

“Can I have your phone number?”

And all of these, to my surprise, I was able to answer in broken, but adequate, Amharic. I sat there, quite pleased with myself, a silly grin on my face. The conversation turned to what was happening at my feet, and still, I was able to follow, understand, and discuss. I was actually having a real conversation. I am bad-ass! Thank you shoe shine boy, for calling me forth and re-acquainting me with some of the confidence I feared had been lost forever.

With my beautifully polished shoes I paid the boy 3 more Birr than was owed him, and told him that he was very clever and that my shoes were beautiful (all in Amharic, mind you), and started back down the hill.

Now that my shoes were beautified I started fretting the fact that I have to walk up a dirt road covered with red, volcanic, dusty, dirt.

“Crap!” I thought, “Why does god hate shiny shoes?” I succumb to the inevitable re-dirtying of my shoes. But, wait! Look! Only half my road is dirt now! The road workers have been hard at work cobbling my street! Oh, beautiful cobbles! I love you! I will marry you and have little cobble babies!

I tread lightly until I reach the cobbled bit of road and proudly step up onto the cobbles. I admire it, and inside I thank the cobble layers for working so quickly. My whole street will be cobbled in no time. I can tread proudly along the cobbled road with my shiny shoes without fear of mud or dust. Thank you, powers that be, for the invention of the cobble!

On an unrelated note, I’ve been sneezing a lot today and I fear I will be consumed by a cold before the day is through. I have boogers. Not that you need to know that.

I wonder how you’d say that in Amharic.

Giant White Lady

Seeing as I'm a girl in Ethiopia it's always best if I have someone accompany me home if I'm out after dark. On this occasion it was a habisha (local) friend on mine. As we're walking up towards my house a kid runs by us full speed and enters a compound.

Friend: Which house is yours?
Me: The one that kid just ran into.
Friend: Does he live there?
Me: Yeah, he's my landlady's son.
Friend: Did he see us?
Me: Around here its kinda hard to miss a giant white lady walking around in the dark.