“Home”

But first a clarification.  Ethiopia doesn’t really smell like blood. I was trying to be poetic, but my walk down Ethiopian memory lane just came off kind of grim.  Sometimes lasting impressions aren’t always the most positive.  I failed to to describe the unbelievable hospitality and generosity of the Ethiopian people.  The beauty of the countryside, lush green, red soil, beautiful birds everywhere.  Anyway, moving on…

My 3 year old son asked me where “home” was the other day.  We have been traveling around Oregon for the past 2 months staying with family and house sitting for friends.  In retrospect, I’m not sure that this was the ideal lead up to 10 months in a foreign country.  We are all feeling a little unsettled and sick of living out of suitcases.  Especially my routine lovin’ children have been shaken up by our nomadic lifestyle this summer.  So his question was timely.  I consider Oregon my home.  Its where I feel most comfortable in my skin.  Technically, Oklahoma is our home.  Its where the house we own is and is the location of our jobs, friends and children’s school.  Though he was born in Maine, his earliest memories will surely be from Oklahoma where we moved when he was 18 months old.  I have moved every 1-2 years for the past 16 years (the last time I lived anywhere longer than 2  years was college!)  “Home” is a moving target.  And we are about to embark on yet another move, yet another “home”.  New friends, new language, new jobs (my husband will be teaching anthropology graduate students, I will be home with my children, homeschooling my 5 year old daughter for kindergarten).  We depart in one week.  The final countdown has begun in earnest.  Here we go again!  Below is a map of where we’ll be in Ethiopia.

 

Remembrance of things past

I’ve been thinking a lot about my prior experience of living in Ethiopia.  I lived in Jimma for 7 months in 2004-2005. Dan was there doing research for his dissertation.  I volunteered at a Catholic mission clinic.  8 years ago the only way to check email was by going to an internet cafe.  There was no wifi, smart phones or ipads.  We got our news via a small radio.  One of my most vivid memories was sitting by candlelight  in our house at night  (the power was out, a not uncommon occurrence) and listening to the BBC world service, “Its 10 PM Greenwich mean time and you’re listening to the BBC world service” (said with crisp British accent).  It was such an eery feeling of complete isolation from the rest of the world.  In Jimma in 2004 the roads were still unpaved.  When it rained, the streets would become a thick sludge of red mud that would stick to the bottoms of your shoes.  My walk to the mission took about 30 minutes and by the end of it my sneakers would be crusted with so much mud  I would have to scrape it off along the edge of the cement porch before entering the building.  I remember the vultures constantly circling overhead and the sound of them landing on our tin sheet metal roof at night clattering so loudly it would wake you from sleep.  The day someone brought a box of mangoes to the mission and we ate them dripping sweet juice while a pregnant woman labored on a sheet spread on the floor in the next room beneath a portrait of the pope.  The same children shouting “you” on my daily walk despite my correcting them every day (in Amharic) that “you” is not a proper greeting and that they should shout “good morning” or “hello!”  They never stopped shouting “you”  The smell of incense and roasting coffee beans and popcorn.  Of kibbeh (spiced clarified butter) and blood and wood smoke.

So, we’ll see what its like this time around.  We leave September 6th.  Less than a month away.