This is a Dysentisaster!

The health issues you face in a third world country like Ethiopia are slightly different than the ones you deal with in the U.S. Just a bit.

Coming here, I don’t think I really understood just how different they would be. Having a “jumbly-wumbly stomach” is a fairly common occurrence, so I thought nothing of not feeling so hot for a day, and even after sleeping fourteen hours, I’d woken up a couple weeks ago, took a cipro (the medicine I take every once in a while when my stomach is really not happy), and planned to sleep it off. Luckily, Alex, the man in charge here at SFEL, has a little more experience and wisdom in these affairs, and told me to get myself out of bed and on a the back of a motorbike on my way to the clinic to check and make sure it wasn’t anything more serious.

There’s nothing quite like walking into a medical clinic in a small town in southern Ethiopia and have everyone stare at the ferenji who only wants to be in bed and not have everything she’s consumed in the past two days  (you’re welcome for not getting more descriptive). After wandering around, mostly lost, trying to figure out what should be happening, I got the lovely diagnosis of amoebas, also known as dysentery.

After a quick trip to the pharmacy, where I picked up two different medicines, as well as some oral rehydration salts, I headed back home, on the back of a different motorbike, to share the good news and crawl into back into bed. 

All things considered, I'm still pretty lucky, I've heard horror stories about friends spending two weeks trying to recover from the dysentery fairy, dealing with glucose drips and all sorts of fun things like that, and I was up and feeling just fine a day or so later, happy to be alive and to have heard almost all the dysentery puns my cousin could come up with.  

Dysentery is one of those things that happens because of a lack of clean water and spreading the germs by not washing food or their hands properly, so I've been even more careful than I was before, but sometimes it just happens. 

Now I only have to get malaria, giardia, and typhus to be a four star general and a total pro at Ethiopian diseases!

Still Kickin'

Time for an update! I am in fact, still alive.

I finished up the Permaculture Design Course two weeks ago, and am now the proud possessor of a certificate saying that I have the ability and theoretical background to put together a sustainable design for a property.

Since the course finished, I’ve been working in the demonstration garden/food forest mulching, building raised beds, transplanting, cleaning, and trying to avoid killing too many plants (jury is still out on how well I’m doing with that). Occasionally I get such fun diversions like moving mountains of rocks from one place to another in an effort to reduce damage that rainy season floods do to the property, sifting sand and gravel, digging out pits for new compost toilets.

I finish the day covered in dirt, and always with at least one more splinter, blister, or scrape, all of them honorably earned.

I’ve been picking up bits of knowledge and skills as I go, and one of the ones I’m most proud of is my new-found ability to wield a machete like a champ. Just don’t ask any of the locals how I do with it… having used a machete their whole lives, they’re less than impressed with how far I’ve come in such a short time.

I took a quick trip to Arba Minch, the land of forty springs, for my rest day, so I have better, cheaper internet access and a whole list of posts that just need to be typed up and scheduled. Keep checking back!

F.Y.E.

I’m scheduling this post in case I don’t get back up to the internet in the next little while. I know everyone is anxiously awaiting news from my side of the world with bated breath, on top of being completely unable to come up with other ways to spend their time besides reading and rereading the old news. It’s completely understandable.

Rest assured, I have a solution.

This is also dedicated to AFPT and those folks who miss my Monday morning serenades. I haven’t quite perfected my Ethiopian singing and dancing, but by the time I come back, I will have, don’t you worry. In the mean time, enjoy two popular local music videos.

 

Bire Lala played more than a couple of times on the latest six hour bus ride I took. And I can't find the only song I know any of the words to on youtube (funny how using a different alphabet does that), but here's another one I'm sure you'll enjoy.

 

Safe and sound.

There will be significantly more radio silence from here on out. I’ve made it to Konso, started my Permaculture Design Course, which is the training for my internship, am working hard, and my head might be on the verge of exploding from all the incredible things I’ve been learning.

On the voyage down, some kind soul decided to relieve me of my most financially valuable possessions, helping me on the journey to unattachment to physical things and being a Buddha, but also leaving me without a laptop on which to compose blog posts for uploading whenever I get the chance. On top of that, there is one lone internet café within two hours of travel, and there’s a decent chance the power won’t be working whenever I make the trek up. First worlder problems in a third world country.

All that being said, I am glad to be here, and totally stoked to be settling in and learning lots. It is definitely a different experience than anything or anywhere else I have ever been, even here in Ethiopia. The basis of permaculture is sustainability and being able to take care of yourself no matter what, and they are well on there way down here. There is no connection to the power grid (apparently local politics have a lot to do with that one), so we use solar power and to charge anything, you take a stroll down to the reception and plug it in there because there are no outlets in the sleeping areas.

The sleeping areas are traditional tukuls with grass thatched roofs and mud composite walls. Right now I’m in the dorm and share that with three of the other participants, including the older Somali man who provides most of the entertainment for the group, as well as a few nightly wake ups, courtesy of his snoring.

Hopefully at some point I’ll get the chance to share some more stories from the travels down here, as well as keeping my super-interested audience up to date with the hip happenings of Konso, but if I don’t, just know there were lots of buses, museums, a few Rastafarians, Ethiopian parliamentarians as well as late night and early morning police station trips! Bundles of fun!

 

 

 

This lovely tukul is my home for the next little while.

 

And this is one of the beautiful views I get to appreciate every day. I'm a lucky girl.