10^th March 2006 or 1/7/98 Ethiopian calendar!

I’m missing the cold, frosty English mornings but not the wet and drizzly ones. Miss running in the Hertfordshire countryside – Mike and I went for our first run in Ethiopia today. I know it has taken far too long! I found the altitude hard in Addis for the first two weeks. We were in a hotel and by the time I got to my room on the second floor I was out of breath! We are slightly lower here in Awassa and I am acclimatised now. So we were up at 5.40 am and out within 5 minutes. Still dark and the stars were lovely. Only one or two lights along the road so we needed headtorches for the first 15 minutes. They are doing major roadworks in Awassa – at present only two roads are surfaced and they are doing all the other main roads at once it seems. Sometimes you find a deep trench right across the road – no warning signs or lights here! Hence the need for a headtorch. Ten minutes along the road, passing only early churchgoers, and we head across a field at the bottom of Tabor Mountain (well, that’s what it is called but it is only a hill – nice bare rock though, with some eucalyptus trees on top, so easy running – apart from the gradient!). Managed to run part of the way up, then back before sunrise (just) and before the kids are out on the streets with their constant shouts! About 40 minutes so a good start. Often there are Ethiopian runners out doing hill reps but I think we were too early for them today. Really it is the only time for us to get a run in – too much hassle if we leave it any later. Mostly it’s just tedious not aggressive – shouts of “you, you, you”, “ferenji”, “money, money” is as bad as it gets – often though people (kids mainly) just shout “good morning, how are you?” You have to be in the right mood for it otherwise it gets a bit wearing.

I’m enjoying work so far – I started my course this week. It is for teacher trainers (‘teacher educators’ here). I have 25 on the course including the Dean of the college and two vice deans – a bit daunting! They are all so lovely though. College set up a fabulous induction programme – took me round Awassa, showed me the best places for coffee and juice (fresh mango juice), went out on the lake in a boat, fed the monkeys (!) and had a traditional dinner at the local hotel.

College is a 10 minute bike ride from home. Mike hasn’t been so lucky – the job he came to do seems not to exist so VSO are trying to sort out something else. Meanwhile he is practising drinking juice and coffee…. We were sharing a house with a Belgian volunteer for the first 3 weeks here but he went yesterday so now we have the place to ourselves. First thing to do is cleaning.

Living quite primitively in some respects – no fridge, so no COLD WHITE WINE!! In fact, no decent, affordable white wine at all!! How can I survive? Yes, so anyway, no fridge, no TV, no bloody radio at the moment but that’s another story… We do have a flush toilet tho and hot water for the shower! Even so, we have so much more than most of the locals. We do have our laptop and a phone at home so we can (sometimes) get email (dialup).

Thursday 23rd March 2006

Well, we’ve been here more than six weeks now so I guess it is time to start my blog! It has been a time of major readjustment but I am feeling relatively settled now. We had good news yesterday – Michael finally has a placement!! I can’t believe it has taken so long but apparently for Ethiopia the decision has come quickly! He is going to run another Higher Diploma group at the same college as me. It means that by the end of October 50 of the 115+ teaching staff at the college will have done the course and we will have at least two Ethiopians ready to lead two new groups.

I have done 5 sessions with my group now and interviewed over 20 of them individually. I feel I am really starting to get to know people at last. I have learnt so much about individuals, about the Ethiopian education system and generally about the culture here. I’m really impressed by commitment everyone shows to their education – it has a real value here, something I think it education has lost to some extent at home. In Ethiopia, you don’t get to choose the subject or the university you go to - I have talked to people who wanted to be architects or engineers but were assigned to study education or biology. It takes them a year or two to adjust before they do fully accept the future career they have been given.

We got a radio about a week ago so we can get world service now and keep in touch with what is happening in the world. Difficult to get any accurate sense of what is happening in Ethiopia as all the media is government run. The opposition members were due in court this week in Addis so they were expecting some trouble in high schools in particular.