Silent Seva

Living in Africa for only a couple of weeks has helped me better realize certain nuances about America. One of them being that my home country is a place of convenience. This really isn’t new news, but it’s easy to look past this because we move so fast. We are an efficient, productive and results-driven society among other good and bad qualities. One of my main roles here is to share many of these American-like characteristics (the good ones) to the people of my Ethiopian community. This will be an interesting marriage of ideas, to say the least. It took about an hour after arriving at my host family’s home to recognize that almost everything here takes time and energy and is rarely convenient. Products don’t just appear on shelves that I go to the store to buy. Laundry is much more than sorting, pushing buttons, and folding. I don’t sing in the shower anymore, I shiver in the bucket bath. I have flushed or thrown something in a garbage can maybe once or twice. All this has been easy to adapt to, actually. I wouldn’t go so far to say that I enjoy going to the bathroom outside in a hole in the ground, scrubbing the dirt off my socks or not having running water, but it has allowed me to appreciate the resources I once recently took advantage of. Life is different and refreshing here.

Before I met up with the group of other PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) on Monday in Philadelphia, I spent the weekend with some family. On Sunday morning, I went to an interfaith service with my aunt and uncle. That particular day was focused on a silent seva (Sanskrit for ‘service’). To sum up the experience, I was doing yard work silently. It was a beautiful day and I thought it to be a nice prelude to the years and some odd months ahead.

I’ve only been living with my host family for a short period of time, but I have already had the opportunity to share many cultural practices with them. One of my favorites includes preparing the coffee ceremony. I’ll be honest and say that I was surprised at how much work goes into a cup of coffee. I always knew that it didn’t come magically roasted and ground in-house at a coffee shop, but I also never really thought about how exactly this delightful and delicious, caffeinated beverage came to be as such. Some nights I think it is worth the effort. (Yes, nights. Like right-before-bed night. I would consider myself more of a morning coffee drinker, but I’ll take it where I can get it, which is usually at this time. Luckily, I am more or less immune from the effects of caffeine, so I can still sleep afterwards.) My family grows coffee in their garden, so my host sister and I go out and pick the beans. After the beans are picked you need to peel and wash them. Then we sit in front of small charcoal fire in their living room and roast the beans. Then we go outside to grind them. We use a contraption that looks like a large mortar and pestle to release the sweet aroma of homegrown coffee beans. When I first stuck my nose close to the beans to smell them, my host sister started laughing at me. Later on I read that Ethiopians don’t tend to smell the food (or beverages) they prepare. Whereas in America, a typical holiday meal at my godparent’s house would include me smelling each dish and complementing the chef at another fabulously prepared meal. Some Ethiopians find this rude and would rather just feed it to you. I haven’t experienced this said hand-feeding yet and I’m completely alright with that. During and after you swallowed your fourth plate of injera and wat you should say “k’onjo.” As a side note, if you visit this country just knowing that one word could get you many places. It means “good, beautiful” and is used from anything to a goat passing by to your tasty lunch. Sometimes you are talking about the same thing. Going back to the coffee though, when we are outside grinding the beans we take turns. I like her grinding the beans because she creates this fabulous beat that I usually accompany by either me dancing or slapping my hands against my legs to make what I think to be new background music to a rap song (hey, at least it would be original). I remember the first time I looked up to the sky—stars! Living in a heavy populated metropolitan city made it impossible to see the stars. But here, the sky is just filled with an infinite number. I had to etch the vision in my memory, because no picture would be able to capture this. I feel like that about most of my experiences in Ethiopia thus far, and it only has just begun. Here I transcribe my main frustration—the difficulty of communication. My host family doesn’t speak English and I am just learning basic Amharic. My vocabulary consists of a handful of words, one of them being “k’onjo.” Therefore, when I asked my host sister through a game of charades and a couple of Amharic words if she shared my same fascination with the stars, she just shrugged her shoulders. That was the only thing we said to each other during that whole thirty minute coffee preparation. The silence isn’t awkward. It actually is nice and helps me to value the work being done (I think this was the goal of the “Silent Seva” at my family’s church/spirituality service/etc.). Actually most of the work the sister and I do together is in silence, which is not limited to the coffee ceremony but does not include the use of the latrine. This is namely because I don’t know much of her language, she knows much less in mine, and after a daylong language session that only translates into a couple seconds of conversation, I am just exhausted and prefer it this way.

Even though communication among the locals has been a bit limited, so far Ethiopia has treated me well. I have a relatively bug-free room with a decent bed and a nice family that respects my odd American tendencies like spending time alone before I go to sleep and other weird things. The food is delectable and the coffee even better. The people, especially in the community I’m training in, are amiable and welcoming. The children are sweet and curious. I don’t walk five steps out of my house before I hear my name shout out or “China” from someone who I haven’t met. Well, it is a mix between “China,” “ferenji,” and/or “you, you, you.” You are probably thinking, “China, but you have red hair?!” First off, they act indifferently to my red hair, which is new news. Secondly, a couple of years ago, some workers from China came in town to pave the main road. These workers are some of the only light-skinned people many of the locals have ever seen. They get this funny, confused look on their face when I tell them I’m American. I find that funny and right now, I’m always confused, so I get where they are coming from. A sense of humor will probably be one of the best assets I have here. If I don’t laugh, I may cry, and we all know the awkward cacophony created when these two sounds decide to come together. Well, now I must go do my laundry, my hands acting as the washer and the sun as the dryer—in silence, of course.