Lorna of Arabia

I’ve already mentioned that one of the things I’m most looking forward to in our shipment is my memory foam pillow.

It was the last thing my dear husband packed up as we were sealing up the boxes  –  I didn’t want to sleep without it one extra night.  I felt similarly about it when we moved to Syria, but this time I miss it even more.

I don’t know what the ICS procurement department was thinking when they bought the pillows for the new faranji hires.  They are like overstuffed sofa cushions, about a foot high and hard as Ethiopian pillows.

Traditional Ethiopian pillow/headrest, designed to protect one’s elaborate do.

Well, almost.

I’ll admit they are step up from a traditional Ethiopian headrest, but a pillow fight with ours could still cause serious injury. They were quite the conversation pieces for the Varnero faranji during our first week in Addis.

A 2 pound can of Chilly Willy tomato paste doesn’t even make a dent.

I almost wondered if the school administration was posing some kind of personality test to see how its recruits would respond to adversity. The new athletic director, David, made a joke about the pillows the first time he addressed the staff.  The seventh grade math teacher, Thia, ripped hers open with a knife and removed half the stuffing.  Vickie, a new kindergarten teacher, took a taxi downtown and bought a softer faranji pillow for $35.  Andreas traded his for the little horseshoe neck thing one uses on airplanes.  I repurposed mine as a reading cushion and resigned myself to doing a without a pillow until the shipment arrived.

The ascetic approach only worked for me for about a week.   I found a five-dollar Chinese-manufactured pillow at a supermarket that was a great improvement and bought two – one for Alekka and one for myself.

Superior Chinese pillow

Andreas says he can stand the horseshoe thingie until the shipment gets here.  Then he can have my Chinese pillow because I will be reunited with the memory foam pillow of my dreams.

Provisional pillows

I want my stuff.

This is the refrain you start to hear from new overseas teaching staff around this time of year.  Listen closely: you can pick out my voice in the chorus.

Actually, when it comes to personal belongings, there are three types of new hires.

There are those who travel light, packing everything they need from home in a suitcase or two. Anything else they might want, they’ll buy local. These folks tend to be the seasoned ex-pats, the international teachers who know exactly what they’ll need to get by, and what is just excess baggage.  There is always a legendary character remembered for arriving in the country with only a daypack.  Someday I would like to be like that, but I doubt I ever will.

The second type are those who either don’t trust the shippers or who feel they must have all their stuff immediately on arrival.  This species brings everything they need with them in 20 suitcases.  I didn’t know you could do this until we started teaching overseas, but you are allowed to bring as much as you want on a plane as long as you are willing to pay extra. It gives me a headache just to think about this.  I don’t like airports to begin with, and we have a pretty lousy track record when it comes to airlines losing our luggage.

Finally there are those like us, who bring two suitcases containing enough essentials to get us through two or three months, with the rest of our stuff coming later.  It’s fine for a few weeks.  Then those two  or three months start to feel like forever.

We fantasize about our faraway stuff.  My life would be complete if only I had my memory foam pillow…  my brain bowl practice questions..  my Settlers of Catan game…  my Kitchenaid mixer… my black raincoat…  my external speakers… my chocolate chips…  my fluffy bath towels… my box of Pilot Precise pens… my taco seasoning…

I want my stuff.

My stuff.

Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 4:40:02 PM
Subject: Pot plants

Dear Varnero residents,
The ICS admin is pleased to let you know that it has purchased pot plants for your apartments. These will be delivered tomorrow. In case your maids are not at home, we will leave them at your entrance.
Enjoy!

Human Resource Manager 
International Community School 

Much hilarity ensues among the Varnero faranji.

Our pot plant: lavender and thyme.

You know dark days (and nights) are coming when the welcome kit includes a pack of long-burning candles and a big box of matches.  Also when new teacher orientation includes a session on how to start a generator.

Power outages are common here.  The electricity goes off for short periods several times a day.  The school has a backup system in place so the computers keep running and everyone doesn’t lose their work.

Frequent candlelight dinners make us feel fancy.

It’s not a big deal.  Shops are used to it, and in the daytime they just stay open and write receipts on a pad.  Storekeepers and restaurateurs can’t afford to shut down every time the power goes off.  At school the classrooms all have big windows that let in plenty of light.  After dark there are lamps and generators if the outage goes on too long.

The longest outage we’d had in our neighborhood so far is about 20 hours: once a couple of weeks ago, then again last Tuesday/Wednesday.  That’s long enough for us to want to start up the gas-powered generator for the refrigerator.  It’s noisy, but it’s out on the balcony.

Ethiopians use a different calendar than we do in the West.  I first caught on to that when, reading through my ICS contract, I encountered the statement  “all dates herein refer to the Gregorian calendar.”

Ethiopians have 12 months of 30 days each.  Some of you will have noticed immediately (I know who you are) that this only adds up to 360 days.  They tack on another five days as a special short month.  (This, by the way, is why Ethiopia’s tourism slogan is “13 months of sunshine.”  Hah.  More about the sunshine another day).

It’s not only the months they figure differently. Ethiopian Orthodox also have a different A.D. start date than the western branches of Christianity. By their count we have just launched into the year 2005.

The new year holiday is called Enkutatash, and this year it fell on September 11.  We got the day off.  Traditionally, families have parties where girls sing and are given money by their relatives.  Nowadays most people celebrate new year’s eve the same way we do on December 31.

This month on my Ethiopian-Gregorian calendar. Ethiopian dates are in red, Gregorian in black.

The Sheraton Hotel – the elegant faranji place in this city – has a party and shoots off fireworks at midnight.  Which is a little strange, given that the Ethiopian clock is six hours off ours.

The Varnero faranji skipped out on the Sheraton event in favor of an at-home celebration, for which Andreas and I volunteered our apartment.  It was a potluck, with an interesting assortment of home-cooked contributions interspersed with a couple of housekeeper-made dishes.   We faranji newcomers are still getting the hang of local ingredients and local cooking tools, not to mention the high altitude effect, so many dishes came with a side of apologies.  No champagne here, either, but we washed it all down with South Africa boxed wine and some local ouzo, and I think everyone went home pretty satisfied.

The potluck buffet.

What is it with us and kitchens, anyway?

Most of you probably know what happened a year ago last Monday.  Three weeks after we moved to Syria, Nik and Alice had a fire back in Medford that precipitated a full kitchen remodel and a major smoke damage cleanup operation throughout the first floor. The takeaway: do not leave frying calamari unattended.

Our Medford kitchen, a year ago

Fast forward one year.  In our apartment, three weeks here in Ethiopia, and Andreas is using our Chinese knock-off Italian-style stovetop espresso maker to brew a cup of coffee for Alekka to take on the bus to school.  Typically it takes a few minutes to heat up, so Andreas goes into the dining area to organize his briefcase when BLAM!  The unmistakeable sound of an explosion. Coffee on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Pieces of the metal coffeemaker have blasted all the way to the other end of the room.  Yikes.

The corner above the stove caught the worst of it, but the whole kitchen will have to be repainted.

The good news is that no one was in the kitchen to get hit with flying shrapnel or boiling water.

It will be stovetop camp coffee for us from now until our shipment arrives.  Then French press, all the way.