My friends and family back home often ask me what my life is like, how different it must be to live in Ethiopia, how hard it must be to adapt. Honestly my life here follows some of the same routines I have at home: I wake up at 5:30AM, I do yoga, I wash, I make breakfast, I go to work by 8:30AM, I go home for lunch ((which to me is a luxury)), I go back to work until 5:00PM, I walk home, I make dinner, I clean up, and I go to bed. At work I sit at a desk or the computer and keep busy. We all wear business casual and have meetings or surveillance visits in the different k’ebeles. Weekends I clean my clothes and do errands. Sometimes I take a bus to the closest city to shop and relax. Most of this is exactly what I do in America, with some differences: I wash my clothes by hand, I have bucket baths instead of showers, and all of my food is prepared from scratch. If I had to pinpoint one aspect of my life that I was unprepared for it is the market.
Walking into a
market is a real wake up call to living in a different country. My town’s
market happens every Saturday and everyone from the surrounding villages comes
to buy and sell. The market has everything from plastic goods ((jerry cans and
pitchers and basins)) to vegetables, fruits, and spices; to livestock; to
things like fabric and shoes. Whatever you want can usually be found here. The
market is composed of rows and rows of women ((and a handful of men)) sitting
down with umbrellas selling their goods in piles on burlap or plastic sacks in
front of them. Every person has a different quality and price, so you have to
mill through these tight rows, asking the sellers how much their onions or
tomatoes are.
Being able to
navigate the market requires you to 1) know how much everything should cost, 2)
being able to haggle the price down when they try to overcharge you, and 3)
getting a good idea of what a good onion or tomato or potato is by sight and
feel. In America you do the same, but because the range of quality is much
larger here, you end up sifting through the pile of vegetables on the ground,
trying to find exactly what you need. The market is loud, hot, and packed with
people. Because the women here carry around umbrellas to stay out of the sun,
and because I happen to be exactly the right amount taller than most Ethiopian
women, I have to duck and weave around umbrella spokes.
Learning how to navigate the market is a point of pride for me, and as I get more comfortable going it will mean that I am more comfortable in my community. Plus when people see me in the market they understand that I do live, eat, and cook here just like everyone else. When my coworkers see me picking out potatoes, or paying for my garlic; they are enthusiastically proud of me. When they find out I cook it myself they are even more pleased. Admittedly it is a strange thing, as I started making food for myself as early as Kindergarten, but it does show that people have a different interpretation for how ferengi live and eat. All I have to do is exist to show a different side of the story: that I may be from America, but I still can buy my own groceries and cook my own food, and that this is what nearly all Americans do too. It is probably the easiest ways I have of accomplishing Peace Corps goal two: educating host country nationals about Americans. It does make you question what American movies and TV are teaching people though.
Like bunna, going to market is
one of the cultural touchstones that I am learning to navigate and accomplish.
It’s funny to think that in two years after spending 2 birr ((or 10 cents)) on
half a kilo of tomatoes, or 5 birr ((or 26 cents)) for half a kilo of potatoes
what my sticker shock will be in America.
No comments:
Post a Comment