Ferenji's and Prince

So the Amheric word for foreigner is ferenji,* and we are called such both by the locals and amongst ourselves. Ferenji culture here is unusual and forms a strange double standard with what people are here to do. Most ferenji's in Ethiopia are there to do some form of aide work in an attempt to raise poverty levels, gender awareness, HIV/AIDS work, etc. At the same time though we're quite rich here because of exchange rates and even our pay levels our pay levels are up there by the local standards. Recently myself and some others went to a fairly amazing restaurant. Probably the fanciest restaurant I've ever been to. It was an Italian place that was also a contemporary art gallery. I just split a pizza with someone and got some water and this worked out to 30 birr with tip, which with the conversion rate is about $4 CD. My meal was on the cheap side though and some people got bottles of wine and the meal altogether was about 500 birr between eight of us, which is about $70 CD. There's people who live on a birr or two a day and we're throwing it around like water. It's a strange way of volunteering, where on the one hand ferenji are doing our best to improve the standard of living here, but simultaneously we are able to live as if we are amongst the very wealthy, because well... we are made wealthy just by being here. There's differing opinions on ferenji culture over here, with some people avoiding it entirely and attempting to go local, some people taking full advantage of it in order to feel wealthy and most people falling somewhere in between. At VSO most people seem fairly aware and a little guilty of our new found wealth, but it's a very unusual thing to try and come to terms with.

On to lighter things though because I really want to share this with people. Ethiopia has it's own calendar system, which is lunar and also some years behind our own. Guess what year it is? 1999! I can still party like it's 1999!** I won't be around for the New Year's celebration, but still this is exciting.

*It's so close to Ferengi that I was really excited and still think that it's pretty hilarious how close it is. I have shared this joke with no one who is here as I don't think any of the other volunteers are nerdy enough to get it.

**Thank you Michelle for pointing this out to me.