Catching Up.

You might possibly notice that I have taken a little break from writing about our time in Ethiopia – a moment to think about what I have written so far, and about how writing these entries has influenced how we think and talk about our experiences.

I love that this exercise has given us a reason to talk about our life in Ethiopia, both between ourselves and with our families and friends. With twenty years of distance our memories have definitely faded, but it has been so interesting to converse about what we remember, to try to re-establish a timeline in our heads, to look at pictures and ask each other, “Wasn’t that…?”, and especially to compare and contrast our recollections of the same person or event. I am flattered when I receive compliments, comments, or questions from readers, especially from people who didn’t know us back in those days and are hearing these stories for the first time.

However, I have also been a bit frustrated, mostly by the sense that words aren’t adequate to represent our thoughts and feelings about our experiences in Ethiopia. I think that’s why I waited so long to write about it and why I have been slow to continue, especially after writing about our first visit to the countryside. It’s not so difficult to describe the facts of the matter as far as we recall them, but the feelings and sensations are much more complex and difficult to communicate. Honestly, I don’t think exploring and communicating feelings has ever been my strong suit, and I don’t really believe I can accurately represent feelings from twenty years ago. So I have had to shift my perspective a bit, and recognize that I am writing about my/our current thoughts and feelings regarding what I/we remember of our experiences back then.

But! As a (partially) trained historian, I have also taken some time in the interim to track down some primary source material. Many thanks to my fabulous sister Lisa, who not only had the foresight to save every single e-mail message we exchanged starting in mid-May of 1995, but also was able to locate them and took the time to copy them and send them to me. Here’s a paragraph from my first e-mail message to her, sent on May 12, 1995:

“Of course, very little has gone as planned since we arrived! We spent the first two weeks here in a guest house because our apartment had to be checked out by the government and then painted. Then we were out of town for two days, so we finally spent our first night there on Tuesday – with no running water, because the faucets leaked. The plumbing was fixed on Wednesday (a holiday), and we actually got a refrigerator and stove into the place, but the floors are still muddy and we have only a kitchen table and six chairs to hold all our stuff! We hope to rectify that situation this weekend, and to buy some curtains for privacy. One whole wall of our living room is windows and a door, which is very nice in term of light but not so great for privacy.”

(My dad has also been a great resource for me, but his collection starts later, in January 1996, and we are pleasantly surprised and grateful to find these notes from the very early days).

So we are months behind schedule, but I am looking forward to writing a lot more in the days to come.