A Sunday on the Compound

It's been almost a whole week now that I have been at The Learning Village in Kalaala and everyday has presented itself with new and exciting adventures. I have settled into my apartment and am starting to get familiar with my surroundings and happenings around the compound. Today we did our laundry and had an interesting time trying to figure out how to operate the laundry washer. You would think it’d be a simple task but the washers here aren’t like the washing machines back in the states where all you have to do is load it, put in detergent, and press a button to start. Thankfully there was a sheet of paper taped to the wall with instructions on how to wash your clothes. It involve filling up the washer with water by turning on the faucet behind the machine until you have your desired water level, putting in the detergent and your clothes, setting the cycle on wash and setting the timer to 9 minutes. When the wash cycle is done we have to switch the washer to the spin mode and change the setting to drain, then filling up the washer with more water and setting it on rinse mode with the timer at however many minutes we want, than once again drain it. Then removing the clothing and put it in another compartment that spins really fast and drains most of the water out of the clothes (kind of like the machines they have in locker rooms that help to dry swimsuits. Because they don’t have heat dryers, we had to hang dry our clothes.

After we did our laundry, we decided it would be a good idea to practice some Amharic. Ileah brought a helpful Amharic phrase book with her and we both tried our best to pronounce the Roman letter’s equivalent of Amharic words. Seu-lam (Hello). Se-me Ting no (My name is Ting). Se-mesh man no? (What is your name?). A-meu-seu-ge-nal-lo (Thank you).  Kidric (I think that’s how his name is spelled) one of the maintenance guys that live on the compound saw us practicing and came over to help us improve our pronunciation. Everyone here is so gracious and friendly that I feel very much at home and helps to cushion the fact that I am over six thousand miles away from my home in the US. Tsigay, the cook on the compound, brought us lunch of Ethiopian cuisine call injera which is composed of thin pancakes and various stews and paste that’s similar to Indian sauces. Later on in the afternoon, close to evening, we went on a walk with Dr. Fekede around the compound I got to see some spectacular views of the lush fields and wide open farmland. Tomorrow we are going to the clinic and hopefully be of help to somebody.