Once again I have no excuse. I must once again apologize for not posting. I could try all the same justifications, and all the same reasons why they are not valid would apply. Please know that it is not because I don’t want to share my time here with all of you wonderful people who (through a wide range of types of invaluable support) have made my time here possible. I want to be able to communicate to all of you the blessings, difficulties, differences, similarities, funny stories, challenging moments, and ease of things here—all the little moments and details that make up my experience here. Unfortunately, that is impossible. Every time I have tried it has gotten a bit out of hand. I think a few of you that have emailed me with questions may have been a bit overwhelmed by the bulk of my (also very delayed) responses. It is then just that much more difficult for me to express myself on this blog that is so undefined in audience and scope. I tend to feel like in order to tell you anything I have to tell you everything, and that is, of course, an insurmountable task. So, more than seven month into my time here and only two blog posts in, here is what I’ve decided to do: I’m going to give you all a brief summary of what my life is like and then throw out an array of excerpts from emails and previous blog attempts. Once I get these things up I’ll try to post more frequent and less effusive posts. If you have questions you’d like answered or things you’d like to see a blog post about, let me know and I’ll try to accommodate.
Just so that you have some framework here are some of the basics:
I am living in Nazret, Ethiopia. I work at a nursery and kindergarten school run by a local NGO teaching English to each of their six classes, which average about 35 students. My work days go from 8:30am-3:30pm, but are filled with breaks, so that my actual time in class is only about two and a half or three hours. Tuesdays and Thursdays I spend half an hour of my lunch break at a small private (and affluent) nursery and kindergarten school. I really enjoy my fellow teachers, but language difficulties and different schedules have made it difficult for me to get to know them well.
My host family is wonderful. Living in the compound (a central house and more rooms outside) when I arrived were: two adult brothers (Eskinder and Danny), their nephew (Yonaton, who is about my age), and a female cousin who does the cooking and cleaning around the house (Melesech). Two more sisters live nearby: one lives just up the road with her family (Rahel) and one lives about an hour away (Roman, who is called Benju), but comes home nearly every weekend and on holidays. Since I’ve been here, one of the brothers (Eskinder) moved to a new job about four hours from here, and, just two weeks ago, Dagem, a sixteen-year-old female student, who was an acquaintance of the family and needed a place to stay, moved in. Several other members of the family live in North America (one brother, one sister, and the mother of the family in the USA, and one brother in Canada).
MCC arranged that for breakfast and dinner I eat what the family cooks, and I prepare lunch for myself. That has worked out well to give me some variety in my food, but also community with the family. I usually spend my evenings at home watching TV, reading, or preparing my lessons, but I also sometimes go to cafes or other places around Nazret with one of the family. On weekends I hang around the house with the family, go out around Nazret, or go to Addis Ababa and spend time with the other MCCers. When I am in Nazret on Sundays I attend the local Meserete Kristos Church (a member of the Mennonite World Conference) which is translated for me by a wonderful church elder who worked with the early Mennonites here and studied in America. I generally have found it difficult to find ways of getting to know people, particularly people with whom it is easy to communicate, in Nazret, but I have made a few friends outside my host family.
So, those are the basics of my life here. As I reread it, it didn’t really seem to reveal much of my experience or do justice to the wonderful people I have gotten to know or the fascinating face in which I live. Hopefully, though, it gives you some sense of how I spend my days, and a bit of a framework for understanding my other (hopefully forthcoming) posts. I will try to do better.
Just so that you have some framework here are some of the basics:
I am living in Nazret, Ethiopia. I work at a nursery and kindergarten school run by a local NGO teaching English to each of their six classes, which average about 35 students. My work days go from 8:30am-3:30pm, but are filled with breaks, so that my actual time in class is only about two and a half or three hours. Tuesdays and Thursdays I spend half an hour of my lunch break at a small private (and affluent) nursery and kindergarten school. I really enjoy my fellow teachers, but language difficulties and different schedules have made it difficult for me to get to know them well.
My host family is wonderful. Living in the compound (a central house and more rooms outside) when I arrived were: two adult brothers (Eskinder and Danny), their nephew (Yonaton, who is about my age), and a female cousin who does the cooking and cleaning around the house (Melesech). Two more sisters live nearby: one lives just up the road with her family (Rahel) and one lives about an hour away (Roman, who is called Benju), but comes home nearly every weekend and on holidays. Since I’ve been here, one of the brothers (Eskinder) moved to a new job about four hours from here, and, just two weeks ago, Dagem, a sixteen-year-old female student, who was an acquaintance of the family and needed a place to stay, moved in. Several other members of the family live in North America (one brother, one sister, and the mother of the family in the USA, and one brother in Canada).
MCC arranged that for breakfast and dinner I eat what the family cooks, and I prepare lunch for myself. That has worked out well to give me some variety in my food, but also community with the family. I usually spend my evenings at home watching TV, reading, or preparing my lessons, but I also sometimes go to cafes or other places around Nazret with one of the family. On weekends I hang around the house with the family, go out around Nazret, or go to Addis Ababa and spend time with the other MCCers. When I am in Nazret on Sundays I attend the local Meserete Kristos Church (a member of the Mennonite World Conference) which is translated for me by a wonderful church elder who worked with the early Mennonites here and studied in America. I generally have found it difficult to find ways of getting to know people, particularly people with whom it is easy to communicate, in Nazret, but I have made a few friends outside my host family.
So, those are the basics of my life here. As I reread it, it didn’t really seem to reveal much of my experience or do justice to the wonderful people I have gotten to know or the fascinating face in which I live. Hopefully, though, it gives you some sense of how I spend my days, and a bit of a framework for understanding my other (hopefully forthcoming) posts. I will try to do better.
No comments:
Post a Comment