April 7, 2009

March 17, 2009
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!
Happy Birthday Kristi!!

March 26, 2009
Happy Birthday Aunt Cathy!!

Another Month Down – April 7, 2009
So I have pretty much resigned myself to writing one blog post every month. I know, I spoiled you all with my multiple entries while I was in Training, but now I am at site and my life is considerably more boring. Things just move so slowly here and surprisingly, for being a New York gal, I am embracing it just swimmingly. Aside from all the shenanigans with my house, which thankfully is finally complete, the slow pace doesn’t really bother me. I spend a lot of time reading and cooking, two things I enjoyed doing in the States but didn’t have as much time to dedicate to them as I would have liked. Now, I have nothing but time. So as for reading, I have gotten into this fantasy series called The Wheel of Time that another PCV got me hooked to. I know, reading fantasy books, I get a huge “Triple Nerd Score” but they are extremely entertaining and there are twelve books in the series, with each book about 6 or 700 pages long. Ergo, they help pass a lot of time.

As for cooking, I have been very impressed with myself and think you would be too. I successfully made spring rolls, entirely from local ingredients (except the soy sauce, which I bought in Addis). Other notables have been beef stew, sourdough bread, fajitas, and kebabs. I actually managed to make a grill here! Traditionally, Ethiopians cook over a coal stove called “mandeja”. I have been cooking on two kerosene stoves but this past weekend, I bought a mandeja and the shop actually had a little metal grill that fit perfectly over it! I couldn’t believe it, I was already preparing in my mind a way to describe in Amharic what I wanted to someone at the metal work shop. Then I went to the market and managed to find thin metal sticks to use as skewers. I have no idea what their actual function for Ethiopians is but they served well as skewers. Anyway, the kebabs were delicious and now I have a grill!! Cooking is providing me so much pleasure here that sometimes I feel like such a fat kid. I’m afraid if some of you are expecting a scrawny, tan version of Bonnie to return home, you will be sadly disappointed.

Hmmm, what else? Oh yeah, AIDS. Sometimes I forget why I’m here – just kidding! Well, like I said, things move very slowly here. These first two months, I have basically just been going all over town and meeting people. Visiting schools, NGOs, and the health center and establishing relationships, trying to identify motivated people to work with. I have scheduled to give two trainings to Anti-AIDS clubs at the two local high schools. Basically, I will be covering the basics of HIV, how the virus is transmitted, how to prevent transmission, etc. and then opening it up for questions and discussion. Both clubs have been pretty inactive so I hope to motivate them to be move involved, in their school and the community. I am also working to organize an HIV testing campaign at one of the high schools because the students said they have never had one. I hope to open it up to the community and have the members of the Anti-AIDS club mobilize not just other students but also members of the community to come and get tested. I am also hoping they can prepare a drama or something to give about HIV. I may have mentioned this before but it bears repeating, ETHIOPIANS LOVE DRAMAS. So those are my biggest activities coming up.

I am also conducting a Community Needs Assessment (CNA), which needs to be completed and submitted to Peace Corps by the end of May when all the PCVs in my group will meet up for In-Service Training. Basically, I am just collecting information, statistics, etc. about Dilla: population, natural resources, organizations, schools, services provided, and then identifying gaps and problems, then making suggestions for possible projects that I could work on in the future. That part I haven’t really gotten to yet. Peace Corps suggests doing door-to-door outreach and having informal interviews with members of the community to identify problems but that seems really difficult to do. Dilla is a pretty big town, about 70,000 people, and I would really need a translator with me since my Amharic is still so limited. I just don’t know of anyone who has that kind of time to go around with me. I’ll see if I can get around it somehow.

Well, I think that’s all for now. I wish everyone a happy and healthy Easter; I will be missing you all very much. Enjoy your Easter dinner extra lots for me!