Work Day #1

Don’t worry. I’m not gonna detail each day at work for the next 10 weeks, but I figured the first day deserved a post by itself.

Where to begin? How about midnight?! I went to bed Sunday night at around 9PM (still a little jet-lagged and dealing with the altitude), but I woke up around midnight to the barking of a couple of dogs in the neighborhood. Apparently all of us in the house were up from midnight – 3AM (when the dogs finally decided to stop barking – maybe they finally got tired?). A couple of street dogs were outside of the neighbor’s house and the neighbors have a dog they keep locked in a pen at night. Locked up dog was not happy about the two dogs on the street. And before long, dogs all over Addis were barking and chiming in. I wanted to open my window and scream at them to go home…but then I realized they probably wouldn’t understand me. If they bark again tonight, I’ve come up with a brilliant plan to start throwing shrimp out the window to get them hush-up. Unless we cook the shrimp tonight for dinner….then it’s green beans?

I quickly fell back asleep, but at 4AM I woke to the sound of prayers. No, not the Muslim call to prayer, but from the Ethiopian Orthodox church in the neighborhood. The church is praying for families in the neighborhood. How can I request that tomorrow morning they pray for the dogs to be quiet and for Meena to sleep? Thank you!

Fast forward to breakfast…our USAID contact met us for coffee/tea/bread/eggs and to discuss our itinerary. Two of the interns got sick last night from the Ethiopian food we had (yes mom, I ate with my hands – no silverware), so only 3 of us were going to work the first day. One intern is working at an organization by herself, but Whitney (MPH student from UNC-Chapel Hill) is working with me at Save the Children on the HIV prevention program. We didn’t know where we going (and neither did our driver). After a couple of calls to the Embassy, we finally found the office. It’s a pretty large compound – there’s even a cafeteria on site! We met with the team (our boss is in the States for the next few weeks), and basically spent the day reading reports. We had lunch with the staff (more Ethiopian food), and once we got back to the office, it felt like nap time. We lasted until about 2:30 and called our driver to pick us up. It’s kinda nice not having to drive – traffic is INSANE! There’s one junction that I want to stand on the corner and record the cars driving - it looks like the crazy videos you see on YouTube from Vietnam! Maybe I should put in a prayer request for vehicle safety tomorrow morning :)