Stephanie Nicole Muench
My Study Abroad Experience:
ETHIOPIA
A group of 6 students traveled to Ethiopia for an Archaeological dig sponsored by the University of Florida. During this study Abroad the students learned how to skillfully and delicately manage a excavation unit, find artifacts in different stratigraphic levels, log the locations of these artifacts in depth and quadrant of the unit as well as extract the artifact for later cleaning. Although this study abroad was focused on Archaeology, I became immersed in the culture of Ethiopia, fascinated with the food, the language, the practices and the rituals. I am a cultural Anthropologist and as such, became observing and asking questions of every single behavior I noticed. The knowledge that I gained from asking these questions helped locals accept me working in their space with more ease.
I learned that the elders are the most respectable and high ranked individuals in rural villages. So, I learned the greeting appropriate for a man of high hierarchy in their local language and every morning, when we arrived to the dig site, I would get out of the car and greet the village elder before playing with the children that would surround us. The act of greeting the elder before anyone else in the village in their local language, showed the villagers I understood their hierarchy and their values. I repeated this action daily, and after 5 days I realized that many local adults were lined up to greet me personally after my greeting with the elder. I was overcome with joy. I am no longer a stranger to them.
This was the excavation unit we worked on. Mine is N40E35, in other words, the one in the top left side of the picture. Two people are working on the bottom left unit and one is working on the bottom right-most unit.
Here we do arbitrary levels of 5 cm, which means that regardless of the artifacts recovered, we have to go down 5 centimeters across the unit. When we excavate we have to be careful of how much we go down. Another method we use is of natural levels, which means that if as we are digging we find a different stratigraphy, we have to stop and create another level, regardless if we went down less than the 5 centimeters we try to achieve.
At this time, I was on level 10, and have gone through about 6 different stratigraphic units.
As a lunch break one day, we had the amazing experience of being invited to a local house for coffee. Yohaness, (the man with the beanie) lives about 5 minutes walking distance from the dig site. He showed us around the mountain, his land, crops and house (that he built himself from scratch) as well as the sacred area where his parents are buried. His wife invited us back to their home after the extensive tour of the fields for coffee she would make in honor of our visit. As guests in her house we politely accepted, sat down and took a sip of her freshly brewed coffee, and realized this was the single most unique cup of coffee I had ever had in my life.
Some people in Ethiopia brew their coffee with salt instead of sugar. This family is one of them. We were invited to their home and offered coffee that Yohaness wife brewed with salt. It is very honorable and proud to provide food and beverage for your guests, especially if they are foreign and so we were served the coffee she made, roasted chick peas and an apple. We said we enjoyed her coffee very much in order to thank her for making it, but unfortunately most of us did not like the saltiness of the coffee. However, when she heard us complimenting the taste, she offered a second serving with the face of excitement, and I could not deny it. I could not deny her the feeling of a foreigner thinking her coffee was delicious and worthy of a second cup; even if I did not enjoy it that much.
When finalizing the study abroad trip to Ethiopia I learned many things about myself; first including a curiosity to the cultural differences and willingness to learn these differences. Second the ability to put aside my cultural beliefs and embrace those of the people with whom I am working in order to build trust. All of the qualities above are very necessary when one is involved in fieldwork. These cultural differences are only understood when one has the opportunity of being part of a Study Abroad travel where one can truly become immersed into the practices and beliefs of the studied cultural group. I am excited to continue being a student of the infinite cultural variation there is in the world.