Gill's blog

2007-09-29T07:05:00.000+03:00

Saturday was market day in Lalibela. The market started about 10 or 11am - late, because people walk for several hours from the surrounding countryside to get there.

2007-09-29T06:55:00.000+03:00

Went to Lalibela last weekend. It is one of the must do sights in Ethiopia. You’ll have seen it on TV no doubt, on some travel show. We had. Lots of rock hewn churches built by angels (according to legend!) some 900 years ago. I don’t want to sound un-enthusiastic, but it was hot and I got bitten to death by fleas. Had some fairly awful Ethiopian food too. Anyway, here are some photos so you can see for yourselves:

The first two are Bet Giyorgis or Saint George, unusual as it was set apart from the others. Apparently, Saint George was upset that none of the churches in Lalibela was dedicated to him so he went to see King Lalibela to complain. Lalibela then built the best church in the town for him!

When we got home, after the usual argument with taxi drivers, Mekdes had made lunch and prepared a coffee ceremony. Fabulous! The mesir wat (spicy lentil thing) is delicious and I got her to teach me how to make it this week. Of course, I have plenty of time for cooking lessons now as I told the Dean I wouldn’t go in to college until he phoned me with some work. I’m not going to pretend to work. I said to him that I thought it was a shame that they weren’t using my skills! VSO have said there is a possibility of something short-term at the Ministry of Education in Addis so I am waiting to hear. I’d rather be in Gondar but I would go to Addis if there was work.

Rainy season seems to be over and the garden is starting to look parched. Apart from the parsley, that is, which seems to have taken over.

We’ve been waiting a couple of weeks for parcels to arrive from the UK and then, as usual, they all arrived at once. Loads of goodies including some divine shortbread which we have just finished (thanks mum!). Mike has finally got started on his OU course now so we both have studying to do.

2007-09-13T12:34:00.001+03:00

Happy New Year! It isn’t everyone who can say they have lived through two millenniums, must be why I am looking so old. There has been a mad build up to the event: up till Tuesday there were sheep everywhere, being led home on a rope, carried over shoulders or fastened onto the roof rack of line taxis. Tuesday was New Years Eve and there were big parties in Addis – maybe you saw it on the news? It was on BBC World Service, concerts, fireworks and speeches by dear Meles. Wednesday, the sheep were heard bleating in yards or seen tied to gate posts having their last suppers. This was New Years Day but Wednesday and Friday are fasting days for Orthodox Christians so the great meat eating fest was postoned to today. Today, I expect the streets will be running with blood and there will be the usual heads and horns strewn around. Mike said there were piles of fleeces at the side of the road when he went out. 400 birr for a sheep - apparently things have never been so expensive here. That’s about the monthly pay of the lowest paid teacher.

We were invited round to a neighbours yesterday – really they wanted to invite us today and don’t seem to be able to cope with the fact that we don’t eat meat. Belete keeps saying ‘But I really wish you ate meat’ and looks really sad! It was great anyway, injera and misir wat (spicy lentil dish), special New Year bread (cooked in a kind of water oven) and the usual fab coffee ceremony. We stayed for the full three rounds (it is traditional to have three brews of coffee) and watched some TV with them – lots of the partying in Addis and the fireworks.

We found out on Tuesday that the government had declared Thursday and Friday national holidays – bit last minute, didn’t they know the millennium was coming??? So we are confined to home. Fortunately, on Tuesday I got the books for my next OU course. Some of it is a bit easy – stuff I remember well, but there is also a lot of more applied maths which looks interesting. Don’t laugh. And mathcad – anyone used it? Seems quite straightforward. Got some good video stuff too about applications of maths. So it should keep me busy for a while. Thanks to my friend in the Royal Mail for getting it to me so quickly.

Last night we started watching 24. Wow, anyone seen it? I said at the start that we would only watch one episode but it was so good I’m afraid we watched the first 4. Brilliant.

2007-09-09T10:43:00.000+03:00

Well, things are going on much as usual here. Living with giardia seems to be a permanent fixture here – I got it a few days after returning from the UK and it is proving drug resistant so far. Thought I’d try alcohol next, tho my first attempt last night failed as the Ethiopian red wine I opened last night was fizzy and ended up down the sink. What a waste of 35 birr (£2). One of the 3 shops (I can’t call them supermarkets here really because that would conjure up a vision of well-stocked shelves, a wide variety of food…) in Gondar has farenji wine I noticed so I might need to investigate how much it is. Web wisdom seems to say that giardia clears up by itself and there is some question over the prescribing of antibiotics. Yes, I am becoming quite an expert.

Enough of that. We actually did something interesting yesterday and went to visit Debre Birhan Selassie church. This is the most famous church in Gondar (the guidebook says there are 44 altogether) – hard to know how old it is but they reckon there has been a church on the site sincethe 1690’s. This one is an unusual shape (most churches are ciccular) and famous really for its paintings. The ceiling is beautiful, paintings of 80 cherubic faces as you see. Some of it has been water damaged but the roof of the building was restored recently. The walls are the traditional mud on the inside and covered with paintings depicting various saints, the life of Christ and Ethiopian historical figures.

The setting is beautiful, about a kilometre out of town, on top of a hill. There is a high stone wall surrounding the grounds full of juniper trees and others I didn’t recognise. It was a windy day went we went, cloudy and very atmospheric.

Went for lunch at Steve and Gemma’s too and had a great veg curry. Gemma is a optometrist and was telling us why we see so many blind people. Can’t remember the technical details (but I sure Mike will) but basically most cases are from an easily curable infection spread by the flies you often see round peoples eyes. Simple hygiene would prevent most cases.

I’ve finished ‘Researching Mathematics Education’ – the final part was a project. I have to say I think mine is crap but hopefully it is enough to pass. I think I peaked on assignment 4! Started my next course now, doing some hard maths and trying to really understand it.

Kibeb, the daughter of one of our neighbours, called round the other evening with her little sister Kizzy. Kibeb is studying laboratory at Gondar Uni and was one of the most open Ethiopians we’ve talked to. When I said we were going to visit the church she asked if I was Christian. Well, that started an interesting conversation – she can’t believe that we have no God or anything we believe in and are still happy! It is quite common here for people to dispute evolution and I think it is something we will talk more about.

OK, Mike has been making pancakes so I’m off for breakfast…

2007-08-24T06:53:00.000+03:00

It’s quite disgusting how little blogging I’ve done – my only defence is that I’ve been too busy. The trip to the UK was fantastic – time in London catching up with friends, eating, shopping then up to Yorkshire to spend a fabulous week with family. So good to see everyone again. My nephews, Alfie and Harry have changed the most – it has been a whole year since I had seen them last. Alfie has done his first year at secondary school and Harry transfers this September. Great to run with Helen, wander round Harlow Carr chatting and eat at Betty’s. (If you don’t know Betty’s tearooms then you are missing a treat, albeit an expensive one!). We all went to the pub one night – yes, I do look a bit drunk don’t I?

Michael and I had two weeks in Scotland, fortunately the midges didn’t seem to realise we were there. The first week we walked – bits of the Great Glen Way and the West Highland Way, round Kerrera Island (off Oban) and up Stob Ghabhar. This last turned out to be an epic walk from the Bridge of Orchy. We set out quite late, stopping early on for a coffee. Ended up doing 18 miles and just getting back to the B of O in time for dinner at 8! The last week was the Scottish 6 Days orienteering – based in Grantown beyond Aviemore. Grantown is a beautiful town, we camped in the grounds of Castle Grant. The orienteering was fantastic – my altitude training meant I was fitter than normal. It was still exhausting tho – three days followed by a rest day then another three days! We had one last day in London which was the usual mad rush to do all the last minute things and try to pack everything away. Highlight of that day was the most fantastic spinach lasagne that Sue cooked, full of mushrooms and peppers.

It was great to catch up with Camden people too – all the old maths team, Helen, Ange and Teresa. So nice to be able to have normal conversations with people, to eat such a variety of food, drink good wine, have a seat to myself on the bus etc. Great to feel healthy and well for five weeks too and not have to worry about amoeba.

Anyway, we’ve been back just over a week now and we have both found it quite hard coming back – mainly I guess, because the trip to the UK was so good. Still, we were pleased to be able to run our normal route only three days after returning to altitude and we’ve been a couple more times since then. The Great Ethiopian Run takes place soon but it is in Addis and we can’t really afford to go. Besides, I think I would prefer to do an off-road race when I get home. I enjoyed running in Yorkshire when I was there.

I have the final project to do for my OU course in the next couple of weeks. I’ve had difficulty getting students to interview this week but hopefully it will happen next week then I will just have the stress of writing it.

2007-06-24T18:41:00.000+03:00

Fasilidas Castle
Yohannes' library

Spent most of the weekend working on revisions for the Higher Diploma handbook. Really it needs more time but I’ve done as much as I can bear. We ran yesterday morning and it felt like hard work. Also finally did the tourist thing in Gondar – went round Fasilidas Castle. I have to say it is well worth a visit. We started off badly as we all had to pay 50 birr entrance, which is a lot for Ethiopia. Ethiopians pay 5 birr and we tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a volunteer’s rate.

The Royal Enclosure is quite extensive and a bit of a haven in the middle of town. Once you are in you don’t get hassled and the grounds are good for bird spotting or just sitting amongst the trees and the ruins. Fasilidas Palace is the oldest castle and the most impressive. Emperor Fasilidas declared Gondar the capital in 1636 and it continued it’s prominence until the 1800’s. Fasilidas son, Yohannes 1 built a library and his son, Iyassu built his own palace. A couple of other Emperors put their own building up making quite a complex. Enough history, here are some photos. If you want a place to stay while you visit you better get a move on – we will be finishing here early next year.

Iyasu's Palace

2007-06-22T18:29:00.000+03:00

This photo is a reminder of why I am here!

Ethiopia is ranked 170 out of 177 countries on the UN Development index. Frankly, I see no sign of improvement. In a recent article in the Guardian weekly there was a focus on aid and development. It seems that the amount of money spent on aid is no indicator of progress. Several countries with huge aid budgets have actually gone backwards in recent years – Ethiopia among them. The key factor is governance. Let me give an example of how poor government affects Ethiopia.

My first placement in Ethiopia was in a teacher training college, establishing and delivering a programme of professional development for teacher educators. The college was only the second private college in the country to run such a course. All colleges, including private ones, had been told that they had to run the Higher Diploma Programme (HDP) and that the qualification would be a requirement for those training teachers. Unlike in the government colleges, where VSO volunteers and DFID funding was provided for the courses, private colleges had to pay 10,000 birr a month (about £700) for the volunteer costs and find any money for resources itself.

The course was very successful with candidates working enthusiastically to complete it. I left after eight months with the programme established and running under the leadership of two Ethiopian staff. This might not seem unusual until you hear that many government colleges are struggling to motivate their staff to do the course and finding it impossible to get Ethiopians to take over as leaders. In several cases, VSO have continued to place new volunteers as leaders, despite there being trained local staff.

I have now moved to a government college where life is very different. An example that epitomises the differences between the two is the system for photocopying. In the private college, there was a photocopying room in the administration building which was open all day and staffed by two very friendly and helpful women. There were two working photocopy machines and copying was usually done instantly. Bigger jobs would be done and delivered to my office. In the government college I dread having to photocopy. There is a photocopy room in the admin building, but it is mostly locked. On the odd occasion it is open one of two things happens. Either there is a woman there who speaks no English, the photocopier is covered with a cloth and you are sent away, or there is a man there who says the photocopier is not working. If you want more than 300 copies they will do it on the Riso, if not, well, tough. So, if you really need to photocopy (which you do otherwise you wouldn’t have embarked on this painful journey) you go up to the Dean’s secretary and beg to use the copier. Sometimes she allows you to, other times you are told to get a letter from the Vice Dean. Yes, there is another option – just outside the college there is a shop where you can pay for photocopying.

Anyway, back to the story. This year more private colleges have been investing in their staff and offering the Higher Diploma. Last week there was a workshop for Deans and HDP Moderators in Addis. The Minister for Education was due to open the meeting and I was impressed when he turned up early and spoke briefly (very un-Ethiopian). However, he then made the mistake of asking for questions and a very articulate Vice Dean from a private college asked him an awkward question. It seems that the government has decided that private colleges should not train teachers any more and that any teachers trained in private colleges will not be employed in government schools. There is, therefore, no point in private colleges running the HDP and the universities will no longer support them (currently the universities moderate the work of their local colleges). The minister seemed unable to defend his position; merely saying it was a political decision. The logic of it defies me. He seemed to be saying that there were quality issues in private colleges and although the obvious answer to me would be to develop quality assurance systems that is not what they are going to do. Instead they will contribute to further demoralisation and attrition in the teaching force. Note that this is a country where the primary enrolment rate in 2004 was 46%, with the secondary rate much lower at 25% (UNDP, 2006).

So, despite the need for more teachers and for better training, one whole sector of teacher supply has been effectively closed down. Private colleges, working for the benefit of the country, have been slapped in the face. How must individuals working or studying in those institutions feel? We often bemoan the fact that many of the most educated Ethiopians leave to make lives abroad, but with this sort of system in operation, who can blame them?

I’ve been working with an Ethiopian colleague in the private college planning training for the next national HDP conference. I was told yesterday that private colleges have not been invited. Here we have a really good Ethiopian leader basically being denied his right to contribute by his government. As a volunteer, I have effectively spent most of a year establishing something that the system has now torn apart.

All this makes me feel like packing up and going home. What difference can I make in a system like this?

I have to remember that I am not working for the government but for the people - (sounds trite but it is true), after all, it is often those countries most lacking in terms of government where the people are the most in need of help. Any institutional change is hard won and could be undone by higher powers; what you have to hope for is that you help bring change at an individual level and that those individuals will one day be a strong enough force to make a difference here.

Anyhow, enough of that. We have just over two weeks till we come back to the UK for a break and boy, are we ready for it! Things at college have picked up slightly – work is continuing to establish some sort of line management system in the college. I was not surprised to hear though, that the Regional Education Bureau lays down the management structure of the college and the Dean is unable to change it. We will have to be quite creative I think! I am tackling the issue of time management and have been asked to do some training on how to use a diary. Haha.

I’ve been reprimanded for too much medical info in my blog but I gather Michael has been keeping interested parties informed about my amoebas! I have a season ticket at the clinic now.

2007-05-28T07:02:00.000+03:00

Back from Addis, laden with apples, leeks, green beans, cheese and tofu! Had a good few days, working at the Ministry and catching up with people. Great to be part of a professional community – it is so isolated here in Gondar.

Booked flights while I was there, returning to the UK for four weeks in July. I’m going to do the Scottish 6 days orienteering - can’t wait! We will try and change the flights so that we can stop off in Egypt and see the pyramids – since we will be passing by anyway.

Today is a holiday here to celebrate the downfall of the Derg. Still, we are in training now (ha!) so the alarm went off at 4.45 am. Michael’s first words to me were “good morning” followed rapidly by “come on else I’ll go without you”. Sometimes I hate him. He’s been running twice whilst I’ve been in Addis and he is completely unbearable if he goes running and I don’t – he gloats all day! Anyway, as usual, as soon as I am out I love it.

2007-05-20T11:24:00.000+03:00

Things have picked up a bit, workwise. I had a very promising meeting with the Dean of the college and a couple of the senior managers, starting to discuss some of the issues and brainstorm solutions. We are meeting again this week and the Dean seems really keen to move things forward. I’m off to Addis again on Tuesday to do more work at the Ministry of Education on the teacher trainers CPD programme and am hoping to meet someone working in staff development in the universities. Maybe there is more work out there! Mike and I did some training with a local school about active learning – we used a first floor classroom and there was a storm brewing. The wind was howling through the broken window (it was a private school, so at least it had windows) and I had visions of my matching activity blowing allover the place. Fortunately, the wind had died down sufficiently by the time we got to it.

No rude comments about the haircut please. I despair of finding anyone who can do a decent job here.

We have put our visit to the UK back to July. I am hoping to be able to get to the Scottish 6 days too (orienteering). Schools here have a long break in July and August. College will be open but there are allsorts of extension classes running so people are generally busier in summer than at any other time. Nobody really takes holidays here. Anyway, it will be a year since we were last back and we are both badly in need... of many things really, but mostly just what passes for normality in the UK. Hopefully I won't hate it all as much as last time! I really want to catch up with people - see if you have all aged as much as I think I have!

2007-05-13T10:58:00.000+03:00

In the volunteers room at the VSO office in Addis! Very severe haircut - and this was after trying the salon at the Hilton! Hideously expensive - about 70 birr (£5). Normally we pay about 20 birr.

Don’t know how long it is since I last blogged. I think the government is blocking blogs as we haven’t been able to get access for some time.

Feeling quite positive at the moment – just got back from a busy few days in Addis. Usually I hate Addis but I enjoyed it this time. We arrived at Gondar airport on Tuesday just in time to watch Ian Paisley and the rest make their power sharing speeches. It was quite a bizarre experience as the whole thing seemed to come out of the blue. Although we get the Guardian Weekly newspaper and listen to the World Service on the radio we are quite cut off from events in the UK. Very moving speeches really and gives some hope for the future. We had just re-watched Hotel Rwanda the night before so bloody conflict was in our minds!

The weaver birds are tapping at the window. It really isn’t possible to sleep in here at the weekends – if you aren’t woken by the church or next doors cockerel then the birds will knock and wake you! The church is the worst though, they start at 5 am, sometimes earlier.

Finally I have a new programme manager at VSO and I managed to meet him and discuss the difficulties with my placement. I think I have just begun to make progress with management at college but it is all a bit like tightrope walking. To keep sane I have been busy re-writing the Action Research module of the Higher Diploma and starting to change the assessment process and that work will keep me busy until July. I’ve told VSO they need to find me something more challenging! So I am quite optimistic and if they can’t find anything then I will look for a short term placement elsewhere. Mike is keen to stay on here until February.

We will definitely be back in the UK in July, I just need to work the dates out around a workshop in Addis. I am looking forward to catching up with people and also with exploring possibilities for work when I return longer term. We attended a leavers workshop in Addis this week – started thinking about all the things to do to prepare for going back. I think this seems more daunting than it was preparing to come out here in the first place.

The OU course is going well. I am really enjoying all the research, both reading accounts of other people’s research and beginning my own. We are definitely technically challenged here tho – I am interested in exploring further the links between geometrical constructions and proof and obviously all the research talks about using dynamic geometry software to do this. Here it is a challenge to get pencils and compasses! I probably could get some access to IT for some students but they won’t be able to use it where they end up teaching. When only 50% of the population get primary schooling it isn’t really a priority. The Open University library is fabulous, I didn’t realise there were so many education journals out there, all accessible over the internet. We have also made use of it to find research on best practice in teacher CPD as well as initial teacher training. Anyhow, I better get on now – there are two assignments to do before I return to the UK and a big project to think about!

2007-04-26T07:16:00.000+03:00

Another day another stool test….

Well, I have had a few days feeling reasonably healthy so I guess I was due for something. My friend the amoebas are still with me. This time I have been given 45 pink and blue pills and have to stay off alcohol for a week (five days whilst I gobble the pills and another two afterwards to be sure). Apparently, if you mix them with alcohol the consequences are dire.

Been busy all day today – that is such a rarity that it is worth a mention here. Not that I have been doing work for college! I am re-writing the Higher Diploma module on Action Research – I promised it ages ago but got sidetracked with my OU course. A couple of local teachers came in for support with their own action research projects, so that was good. Interesting issue – on the one hand the government are pushing AR as a solution to the problems in the education system yet on the other hand the current political climate hardly fosters a spirit of freedom and experimentation.

We are thinking of coming back for a few weeks in May as we have to go to Addis anyway for a leavers conference. Really we should wait till term ends in July but I don’t think it will make a huge difference when we go – we are hardly flat out! We get the Scotland map out regularly and are zeroing in on a certain little corner in the northwest but it is certain to be midgy. I think I will appreciate coming back more this time around. I have extensive mental lists of things to do and things to buy. I need to start looking around at jobs too. I want to live somewhere wild and remote.

Went down to the Red Fox on Sunday to watch the London marathon on the big screen. What a shame about Haile. Very exciting finish to the mens race and London looked beautiful. I am sure it isn’t really like that!

2007-04-10T21:00:00.000+03:00

2007-04-10T20:55:00.000+03:00

Simien mountain view and camp kitchen.

We spent Easter in the Simien Mountains, it was fabulous. Six of us set off early on Friday morning. We were lucky because Gemma organised the whole thing as she had two visitors from the UK coming out. We went in more luxury than Michael and I would have allowed ourselves but I think it was worth it. We had private transport there and back (sounds grand and I was expecting a 4 wheel drive but it turned out to be one of the minibuses they use for line taxis!) and a cook! The journey there was pretty hard work – as soon as you leave Gondar you are travelling on an unpaved road for 2 – 3 hours until reaching Debark, a sizeable town and the stopping off point for the mountains. The scenery switched between spectacular views and devasted landscapes where people were trying to eek out a living. At Debark we picked up a guide, an armed scout (obligatory) and the cooks assistant and rattled on for another hour or so. A couple of hours walking from the first camp we were slung out of the bus and left to gawk.

The views are really just too much to take in – amazing crags and weathered hills rolling off into the distance. Everything looking faded, burnt out by too much sun. We walked for two full days and two half days, mostly along the edge of an escarpment – over 1,000 metres high in places. Vegetation was sparse, some giant lobelia and some erica zones like we saw in Bale but much less lush. And few trees. There were gelada baboons a plenty, huge great groups of them. They feed on grass roots and don’t seem at all bothered by humans. You could sit and watch them eating and grooming each other for hours. My favourite animal was the Walia ibex which Mabo, our scout was great at spotting.

The first camp we stayed at, Sankaber, was at 3,250 metres and we climbed to about 4,000 metres when we were walking. It was hard work but I felt the biggest effect of the altitude at night – it was quite hard to sleep. The second night was at Gich (3,600 metres), an exposed campsite – we just managed to get the tent up before a heavy hail storm. We didn’t go for Ras Dashen, the highest peak in Ethiopia and I think the fourth highest in Africa (4, 620 metres tho there is some dispute over this figure!).

Before we went I trotted (!!) off to the local clinic – I had been feeling bad for some weeks and wanted to check that I didn’t have anything too serious before heading off for the hills. Also, Michael had been diagnosed with amoeba earlier in the week and I figured whatever he had I was likely to have too. Our medical book informs us that those with amoeba can often be ill-tempered – hmm, so quite difficult to spot then! Anyhow I was relieved to find that not only did I have amoeba but also giardia! Fortunately the same evil drugs kill both so I was sent off with three days supply. Physically I feel much better.

Work brought me down to earth with a crash this morning – I had thought I had done well last week. I laid out on paper what has happened so far with Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in the college (not a lot) and what the college have promised but not delivered (rather more) and went to talk it over with my line manager. He committed himself and the head of the Staff Development Unit (SDU) to a meeting either at the end of last week or this week. I was pleased with myself for putting the monkey back where it belonged (thank you Kay Bedford) and felt much better afterwards. Needless to say the meeting didn’t happen before we went off to the mountains and this morning I discovered that my line manager had gone off to Addis for the week. Now I am trying to talk to the Dean to tell him there is a monkey loose in the college.

The monkey business, by the way, is all about responsibility. The ultimate responsibility for CPD lies with the college management but they are really neglecting it.

We’ve just had the weirdest of evenings. It’s a bit of a long story I’m afraid. Last week I bumped in to one of our neighbours. She teaches in a first cycle school and her husband is an instructor at the college. She insisted I go back with her and visit her house. While I was there, eating special, Thursday before Easter food she invited Michael and I round this evening. I went through the whole thing about us not eating meat – Easter in Ethiopia marks the end of two months fasting so meat is big. Dorro wat (chicken stew) and sheep are very high on the menu and it is almost impossible to buy anything veggie for sometime. Anyhow, we went round tonight and I don’t know if we were too early or they had just forgotten! We were almost served meat but I checked just in time! After a few strange moments the son stepped in and made us tagabino which we had with the best injera yet, freshly made and delicious. Tesfaye, the husband, teaches chemistry and spent eleven years in Russia.

Tired now. I got absolutely savaged by fleas when we in the Simien. This despite the fact we used our own tent and sleeping bags. We are fumigating everything now we are back home.

Families are fabulous aren’t they? I got two parcels today – they know me well at the post office (cries of ‘small packets for Gillian’ echo the length of the building as I am sent down to the parcel office at the back and I see familiar handwriting on the envelopes). What I want to know tho is whether I can open them now or if I must wait til my birthday?

2007-04-01T22:47:00.000+03:00

Yeah I know - I'm not very consistent with this blogging business. Theres not much to say often! It hasn't been the best of months really, we have both had minor ailments and not been running for a while. One thing that cheered me up tho - I bought some rope yesterday and we have started skipping to try and get some fitness. Funny watching Mike learn....

Anyway, here is a bit I wrote last night, not the most cheerful but it is pretty much how it is these days....

Nearly a full moon and the dogs are howling.

Was walked home from the market today by Getachew, a little boy in Grade 4 who sells packets of tissues in order to pay for the exercise books he needs for school. It is quite common amongst the kids at the schools in town. Like Getachew, a lot of them have no parents and manage as best they can with the support of extended family. They shine shoes, sell tissues or beg. There is no other support system here. He sang me a song in English as we walked.

I’ve been in Gondar for four months now and the placement isn’t really working out. No demands are made on me, I’ve seen no evidence of ‘management’ and had no support. Somehow, though, you are supposed to carry on and work to convince people that things can be different. It is really hard to keep on reaching down to find the strength to go at it again in the face of - well, in the face of what? It is hard to describe. The effort to try to find someone, to arrange a meeting, prepare for it and then of course when you turn up on time they aren’t there. They say they will come and find you and they don’t. And you think ‘Why am I here? Do they want me?’ I am supposed to be working on continuous professional development for college staff but most of them don’t want it – they just want to get out of teaching (very low status here). Two months ago we agreed I needed an Ethiopian counterpart to work with but I still don’t have one. Apparently the guy identified is building his house.

So, anyway, the CPD bit at present is the downside of my placement! The other bit of it is working on training for school teachers and that is rewarding. These people are paid much less than the college lecturers (and their status is lower) but they are much more ready to learn. The last two Saturdays I have done training on Action Research and was delighted this week when two teachers came in to see me to ask some questions and talk over their research proposal. I do have some qualms about this training tho – Action Research is meant to be about changing your own practice but there are serious questions about how much freedom people have to do that with the current political situation.

Mike and I have been visiting the teachers who attended the maths and science training and observing them teach. That has been really interesting and given us more useful information about where people are and what we can usefully do to help them. I also have a small group of teacher educators working on Action Research with me in college and I’ve started a maths club with some first year students. This last was mainly motivated by the my need to have some maths learners for the course I am doing but I think it will be really interesting. I offered the club to a class of 43 and 37 of them turned up and stayed for two hours! Will they come back?? We had some language difficulties but we will see how it goes.

Thinking a lot about coming back to the UK. The job doesn’t help. Well, we will see – I will give it a couple more months. Things move so slowly here. You know if this was job in the UK I would have quit months ago. VSO are no support – we don’t have a placement officer at the moment (tho maybe that is better than having one!).

OK, enough of that. Time to get positive again.

2007-02-18T16:54:00.000+03:00

Norma, the new volunteer, is staying in the Lammergeyer hotel while her house is getting fixed up. We all met up for breakfast in the garden this morning - it is such a beautiful garden.

2007-02-18T16:48:00.000+03:00

I did one brainstorm on the training where I asked them “What is maths” – one group wrote that it was like the honey on bread – I think that is one Ethiopian proverb that doesn’t quite translate!

I missed Connie when I was getting ready for training – mind you, I can’t do multiple sets of matching activities here because the teachers just wouldn’t have the resources to duplicate them. The big yellow screen in the photo was for my matching activity!

Did I tell you that I have started a group for female teacher educators at the college? They wanted English language practice but I have subverted it a little to make it focussed on their professional development. I had them writing CPD plans in the last session! We meet twice a week and it helps me feel a bit connected with people.

The week before last we went to Addis for a meeting of volunteers working in Cluster units around the country. These cluster units are usually based in Teacher training colleges and they develop and run training for local teachers. I was great to be with other professionals and hear what people were doing. For me tho, the best part of the trip to Addis was my meeting with Beverly, who works in the Ministry of Education overseeing the Higher Diploma Programme (that Mike and I ran in Awassa). I had suggested some changes to the assessment system they used and arranged to meet up to talk about it. In the meantime I had proposed re-writing the whole module on Action Research – amazing what you will volunteer to do when you are stuck in a room on your own for some time. Beverly was a consultant in the south of England somewhere and it was great to talk frankly with someone from a similar background. So I have given myself lots of work to do!

I have also signed up for a course with the Open University. About 10 years ago I did a module for the Masters degree in Education (Leadership and Management) thinking I might work up to a doctorate! Well, you never know. Now I am doing a module called “Researching Mathematics Learning” – the set book is by John Mason, so my maths colleagues will need me to say no more. It looks like a fantastically interesting course. Sadly, I am already behind with my work as I signed up late and my books haven’t yet arrived from the UK.

What else is new? A new volunteer from Canada arrived the other day to work at our college – she is amazing, over 70 years old and this is her third VSO placement (so no excuses mum!). Very interesting stories to tell. Next week there should be someone else coming – an IT volunteer for college so maybe I will be able to use the internet at college soon!

Speaking of my mother, she is off in Cuba at the moment so I am looking forward to hearing all about her trip.

Ok, that’s it for now. I will add some photos. I have made a spinach curry and a dahl and Mike is finishing some crepes so I am off to stuff myself.

Don't forget, I can't get into my own blog here so there is not point in leaving comments. You can of course, email me at gilladams@yahoo.com with any feedback!!! Or you can write (PO Box 1090, Gondar, Ethiopia).

2007-02-18T16:42:00.000+03:00

This is the second cycle training room - Michael is getting teachers to do a decision line on whether intelligence is fixed or not.

Oh… yes, well I had noticed the lack of number fans and mini whiteboards. Actually they have made mini blackboards but I haven’t seen anyone using them. I think chalk is difficult to get hold of for the teachers, let alone having enough for each class of 80! So, I did my best. We did an activity on angles on parallel lines – I sent them all out at break to find 3 straight sticks and we used bottle tops to mark the angles (coke still comes in bottles here as does beer and an awful lot of it is drunk).

Angles on parallel lines!

2007-02-18T16:37:00.000+03:00

Caroline has shamed me into writing some blog! I know I haven’t managed to do anything regularly but I will try to improve! Anyway, I have lots to say now.

I’ve been really busy this week, it has made a nice change. On Friday and Saturday I ran training for second cycle mathematics teachers and the school supervisors. I was great to be training again. I am doing an Ethiopian version of the four day course, two days now, a gap task and follow up in schools, followed by another two days. I tried but failed miserably to get much involvement from the mathematics department here (the idea is that they plan and deliver the training with me and continue after I leave) and ended up doing all but one session myself. I did manage to get two of the department to come to a couple of sessions tho so I count that as an achievement. The first day was about learning styles, reflective teaching, the nature of maths and…. Yes, you guessed it, geometry! Saturday was more geometry and looking at planning. The feedback was really positive but I do wonder just how much people understood. I learnt a lot and would do some things differently if I do it again. I started with a starter on gradients of lines – I attempted to get them to imagine their bodies as the y axis, with the x axis running across their chest and then use their arms to show me the line y = x. Very reluctant! I asked them to show me a steeper line and one with a smaller gradient. They didn’t really like it at all!! I will persevere tho – probably it wasn’t a good thing to start with! I tried to do some of the stuff on loci from the Maths Study modules from the Key Stage 3 strategy but they found the whole concept of loci quite difficult. There is one where you have two points about 8 cm apart and you move a coin so that it is always the same distance from the two points – simple, you might think, you trace out the perpendicular bisector of the line joining A and B. Well, no. We grappled with this for some time. I got two people out to be A and B and then asked them all to stand so that they were the same distance from A and from B. After much persuading a couple of people got up and positioned themselves correctly, then some more and just as I thought we had cracked it more joined in and placed themselves in two more lines parallel to the bisector….hmm….. OK, so fortunately I had some rope so we measured the distance from these oddly placed people to A and B and showed that they weren’t the same. I think they got it eventually.

They want us to train using TALULAR at college. All very well I thought, but what the hell is it? No-one could tell us. Then one day I noticed a big sign just inside the college gate but obscured behind another.

Teaching

And

Learning

Using

Locally

Available

Resources

2007-02-04T21:02:00.000+03:00

This first picture is Piazza, the main square in Gondar. Note the sheep heading off to market!

A couple of weeks ago it was the celebration of Timkat. We got up around 5 am and headed down the road to Fasilidas pool where the crowd gathers.

We were too early, to be honest! There was a long period of waiting whilst the prayers continued.....

As it got light the crowds deepened, it was hard to move. Everyone was dressed in their finest clothes, looking fantastic. There was much splashing of water and then the procession of arks moved off, slowly back to their respective churches.

I’ve stopped taking Larium (anti-malarial – the one that can make you mad!). I need a break from the all-night movies, it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the effect to wear off. Most people seem to say the risk of malaria in Gondar is very slight, particularly at this time of year, when it is very dry. We have had only one or two short showers in two and a half months. So I am sure I will be more wary of mosquitos but after 13 months on Larium I figured I was due a break.

We’ve passed the one year milestone. On the anniversary we had quite a depressing evening – we went out for pizza with Lucy, a Kenyan volunteer who arrived at the same time as us. We are all quite cynical about the whole VSO thing – particularly in Ethiopia. Before you leave the UK you hear a lot about capacity building and sustainability but the reality is really very different. I think really people aren’t ready. At college is seems as though they just want someone to come in and do things – they want me to sort out CPD but management don’t really seem willing to get involved. Or maybe they just don’t realise that for any change to happen they need to lead. Actually, last week I had a very good week but only because I found things to keep me busy. I’ve been developing some training on Action Research, some mathematics training for second cycle teachers, working on some research for VSO on “Valuing Teachers” and started a network group for female teacher educators. I’d had a positive meeting with my line manager at the beginning of the week, raising a lot of concerns I had and getting some assurances that things would be different. One thing he had agreed to was to attend the CPD committee meeting on Friday to show how the college management were going to support the CPD programme. Five minutes after the meeting was due to start I got a message to say that the Vice Dean (my line manager) and two other senior members of the committee weren’t coming, they were doing something else. No apology of course – that is not the way here. Amygdala hijack.

Anyhow, you have to carry on. We had a great day yesterday, out walking in the hills around Gondar. And I am about to sign up for an OU course to ensure my brain doesn't die.

2007-01-03T21:52:00.000+03:00

Well, I am a bit stuck at the moment – I want to start to draft something about leadership support for the college dean but I need some reference books and of course the library is still closed because they have washed the floor. I tell you, nothing is easy! I am getting more tolerant I think though and usually manage to take these things in my stride. Work is at a very different pace here. It has just gone 10.30 am and so far this morning I have been a guest speaker in a second year English class and been to the post office. The English class was quite interesting – they had prepared questions for me but I could see from their faces that a lot of them didn’t understand my responses. English is the language of instruction in schools from grade 7 in this part of Ethiopia and it is meant to be the language used in colleges and universities tho most teacher educators here will tell you they use a mixture of English and Amharic. I suspect that there is more Amharic than English. People just don’t practice enough and teachers resort to Amharic too quickly in my view. Not that I claim to be an expert in learning foreign languages. However, I am going to speak at the students English club this afternoon on that very subject. I will talk about my experiences of learning French and Amharic – one successful and the other not. Key factor in my success – motivation.

We went running this morning – only 35 minutes but it was fab. So good to be out at 5.30 am with the stars! The power seemed to be off for the first part of the route so it was really dark, a bit chilly and the air was really fresh. You feel much more positive after a run! We were a bit indulgent afterwards tho because Mikes mum had sent some Green and Blacks chocolate powder so we had a small hot chocolate after breakfast. It was divine. We are really spoilt at the moment as we have had three parcels from home within a week so we have an extensive range of teabags, lots of chocolate and other goodies. It had been a good two (or maybe three) months since our last parcel so we had been feeling a bit cut off. The parcels are a real lifeline – you do get bored with the quite limited range of goods here and a little treat from home is so welcome. It is nice to get something through the post and people don’t really write letters anymore do they? Anyhow, now I have some boxes and envelopes I will fill them up with Ethiopian goodies and send them home!

2007-01-01T21:39:00.000+03:00

Happy New Year!

A couple of photos - us baking in the sun with coffee on Christmas day and Michael's garden - the beans are coming up. Hopefully we can transform our yard into something a bit greener!!

It feels a bit strange here as today has been a normal working day and we didn’t celebrate last night as I am on antibiotics and can’t drink. But did you know you can get Ethiopian champagne? No, I haven’t tried it. Though I think our taste buds have altered – we brought fairly decent bottle of imported wine back from Addis but found it a bit insipid after the local brew! Gouda (local red wine) really grows on you!

Michael and I have spent a lot of today planning our equivalent to the four day course for local maths and science teachers – I think visualisations will feature quite heavily as you can do them with no resources! Otherwise we are still settling in at college and learning the systems – today we discovered (after 6 weeks!) that there is a Post Office on the campus! Induction systems could be improved!

2006-12-09T19:19:00.000+03:00

Been gardening today in shorts and t-shirt! Thought that would make you all jealous. Very exciting this morning as I discovered the raddishes I planted last week have come up already. It is a shame I don't like raddishes more really. Two more plots ready for seed sowing tomorrow.

We've started running again, after a 3 week break due to our move (any excuse). I love it. We seem fitter than before. My goal is to run up to the Goha hotel for sunrise and breakfast - Mike reckons it could be a couple of hundred metres higher than our house so it will take a while to work up to it!

2006-12-07T18:16:00.000+03:00

Week 3: this week we have held meetings with local maths and English teachers from 1^st and 2^nd cycle primary schools (up to the equivalent of about Year 9 at home) to find out what their training needs. I really enjoyed the maths one – I did a visualisation as a started and they found it really difficult as it was so different from anything they had done. I think they found it hard to identify their needs as well – they have had no experience of in-service training and don’t really know where to start. Anyway, I have some ideas from them and I will try and go and observe some lessons next week to get a clearer picture. When I asked about challenges obviously class size was a big problem (some have classes of 80+) and a few said they didn’t have enough chairs for all the students. They don’t have books (student texts or reference books for teachers) and very few teaching aids.

The photo is our garden!! I spent most of last Saturday digging and picking out stones and I have planted a few things in one corner. The "soil" needs a lot more preparation - it is really a builders yard! We managed to get hold of lots of seeds left over from a previous volunteer - hopefully something will grow!

2006-11-28T18:51:00.000+03:00

It’s all a bit overwhelming really. I think we were really shielded from the realities of school life when we were in Awassa. Life in colleges is quite different from schools – yes, our classrooms were basic and the library was poor but the problems seem small compared to those the schools face. We have had an interesting couple of days out and about.

We began yesterday with a visit to the local education office where we met with the Education programme manager and 6 of the 10 cluster supervisors. The clusters are a relatively new thing – the 50+ primary schools in Gondar and divided into 10 clusters geographically and each cluster has a supervisor. I think the supervisors are responsible for teaching and learning and for training within their cluster – I don’t yet have a very clear picture of what they do. Some training has taken place already – the usual cascade system – and the supervisors are supposed to support and monitor. Anyhow, we have decided to follow up on the English training that was given over the last two years and to begin to work in Maths and Science. We took the first step by agreeing that the supervisors would designate key teachers in each school and setting aside time to meet with them next week to try to identify more precisely their needs. The supervisors gave us some ideas – active learning, making and using resources, continuous assessment etc. One of the real challenges is trying to adapt the things that we know work well to this environment – i.e. to classes of 60 – 75 and to schools with no resources and no money.

We also visited two schools in the town centre yesterday and this afternoon we visited two more schools – one in a nearby town and another in a more rural area out near the airport. The more rural one was interesting – lots of space and beautiful views of the mountains but the buildings are so poor. We saw a science lab and really it would make you weep. When I think of the resources that are squandered in UK schools…. It wasn’t appropriate today but I will get some photos of classrooms so you can see the reality. A lot of schools in Ethiopia work a shift system where children attend either in the morning or in the afternoon because there just aren’t enough school buildings for them.

We have also talked with the local manager of Link Ethiopia, a UK charity which links up schools in England with schools here in Gondar. The idea is that pupils write letters to each other and learn about each others culture and the UK schools also fundraise. It doesn’t cost much to build a classroom for one of the schools and it can make so much difference. We are going to find out if there is any way we can support their work.

2006-11-26T22:38:00.000+03:00

Part of the graduation involved a day out! We went to nearby Lake Langano - one of the few (maybe only?) Rift Valley lakes that you can swim in safely. We had a fab time, lots of swimming and messing about in the water, followed by lunch and a coffee ceremony.

2006-11-26T22:35:00.000+03:00

Before we left Awassa we had a graduation ceremony for all the teacher educators who had successfully completed the Higher Diploma Programme. Of course, we got everyone involved in some group work before the certificates were given out. The vice president of the region gave a great speech and Mike and I were presented with gifts of traditional costumes. For a significant sum of money I may be prepared to post the picture - I'm hoping Michael hasn't done this already.

2006-11-26T22:26:00.000+03:00

This is a view of Gondar from the top of a hill!

OK, OK I know I haven’t written anything for ages but it has been quite a busy time. We finished our placements in Awassa in quite a rush – our final day was 15^th November and we had the moderators in college all day looking at the work we (and the candidates) had done. That evening we packed and then travelled to Addis the next morning. Thursday afternoon and Friday were spent running between the VSO office, British Embassy doctors and the dentist but we managed to fit in a visit to the Zebra Grill (great cheesy bean burritos) and an Indian restaurant. We flew up to Gondar on Saturday and the Dean of the college met us at the airport. We had a couple of days in a hotel (big screen TV in the bar so lots of football!) and then moved in to our house on Monday. It is a new house, which sadly means no garden yet, just a building site but we have found loads of seeds so we will get to work out there soon. VSO have insisted we have guards so we have a day guard, Mekdes, and a night guard, Tiluhun. Mekdes is fab – she has trained as a primary school teacher but can’t get work – it is ridiculous as such a low proportion of the population go to school. The problem is lack of buildings tho in the first place. Anyhow, Mekdes cleans obsessively and tidies everything away. It is quite weird! Tiluhun doesn’t seem to do anything but I think that is the norm. We will try and get him involved in the garden I think. We are still struggling to work out their working hours and all the logistics. I think it is quite unnecessary to have them as our house is on the edge of a police camp so is probably quite secure. We pass these teenage police with their rifles everyday. I’m trying to be friendly and stay on the right side of them.

Gondar is quite mountainous – we are at about 2,200 metres here and the town is spread over the hills. The walk to college is fairly flat but a brisk 15 minutes. Up into town, in the other direction, is uphill and takes nearly half an hour. You feel the altitude initially. The air is clear and there is often a lovely breeze. Mornings we have that lovely clear blue African sky and sunshine but it gets a bit chilly in the wind in the evenings.

The college campus is lovely, lots of trees and great views of the hills all around. People seem really nice too. We are both trying to make sense of the work we will be doing. Fortunately we are in separate offices this time – different buildings too! We are going out to visit local schools this week, which will be really interesting. We will be working with all different kinds of schools from private ones to those that have no building even – we’ve heard stories about classes taking place under a tree.

2006-11-22T22:47:00.000+03:00

All been a bit frantic lately but we are now in Gondar! We finished work in Awassa last Wednesday with a busy day with the moderators for the Higher Diploma. Handed over the office to Alemayehu and Gobezie and left for Addis. Flew up here on Saturday and moved into our house on Monday. First full day at work today, been busy action planning. No time to blog properly but maybe at the weekend.... Mike's birthday tomorrow.

2006-10-28T23:31:00.000+03:00

Hussen and the horseman sorting out our luggage!

2006-10-28T23:29:00.000+03:00

2006-10-28T23:27:00.000+03:00

We met this guy one day in the mountains and he kept us company for a while - we weren't really in any position to argue with him!

2006-10-28T23:14:00.001+03:00

This is Hussen and I avoiding the mud in the Bale mountains!

Saturday night – nearly 11pm! Just got back from Jason’s housewarming. I tell you we have a wild life here. We have no news about placements – VSO are still holding on to the line that we could be going home in 3 weeks! Last weekend we had a visitor down from Addis and we just about exhausted our supply of “interesting” things to do in Awassa. We even went to watch Manchester play Liverpool. Should have gone to watch football this afternoon instead of getting gloomy about the future!

This bit I wrote last Monday but haven’t been able to get on blogger all week! Well, we have had a very lazy weekend. Today is a national holiday for Eid. We walked over Tabor Hill and down to the lake for breakfast this morning – the people next to us had a colubus monkey help them out with their food! It was ok till it put its hand in the butter dish and ate a handful – gross!

Not much to report really – we are in limbo as far as jobs go. We are due to finish here in four weeks and are having some aggravation with VSO trying to sort out what happens next. We did think we had sorted two placements up in the north but our work here has been delayed so we said we needed extra time to finish it. The initial response from VSO seemed to be that we should just leave the work unfinished and go north – something I couldn’t contemplate doing and couldn’t believe they were seriously advising us to do it. After some negotiation they asked the new placements if we could start a week late only to be told that the college would rather have no-one this year and would return the money. So then VSO said if there was nothing else in Ethiopia they would send us home!! I’m trying to focus on finishing things here properly so that the programme we have been delivering will continue after we have gone – hopefully something else will get sorted for us. We have only four weeks left in Awassa we think! Difficult to say, as term was meant to start two weeks ago but the students haven’t turned up yet!

2006-10-10T21:07:00.000+03:00

The vegetation was amazing too – we learnt different tree and shrub names and walked a lot of the time on a carpet of thyme. At one hut we drank fresh mint tea – mint just grows wild in many areas. Hussein knew so much about all the different plants and their uses – part of one tree is used to treat intestinal worms!

Anyway, I will add some more photos and finish by saying get there if you can! A fabulous few days.

A bit of a roller coaster day today – started it feeling a bit dissatisfied with what I was doing here and the prospect of the next placement and finished on a high following a fabulous session with my Higher Diploma group. The last module in the course is on action research and two of the groups were presenting their projects. They were really inspirational, really fired up and enthusiastic about what they had done and how it could be used to change things in the future at the college. Wow!

I had been feeling frustrated that I wasn’t able to impact on the management of the college but I have managed to fix a meeting with the new Dean tomorrow so we will see what happens. We did a joint session last week – both HDP groups, management and us – on institutional evaluation and action planning. It was also quite dynamic – loads of ideas raised about the direction of the college and how systems and policies can be strengthened further. I really want to be able to build on it but I guess the idea is that the existing staff do that!

2006-10-01T20:44:00.000+03:00

We walked from Monday afternoon to Saturday lunchtime through some of the most amazing, varied scenery. We got a real glimpse into the life of the local people as we walked – helped by Hussen’s explanations. We saw Colobus monkeys and the rare Ethiopian wolf, as well as the molerat – a Bale mountain endemic. (Endemic means it is only found in that region). The bird life was amazing too – some of my favourites were red winged starlings, augur buzzard and olive thrush. On the final day, heading in to Dodola we saw two new species – red-naped widowbird and yellow bishop darting about amongst the crops.

2006-10-01T18:33:00.000+03:00

Eco-tourism – what does it mean to you?

We have just returned from the most fantastic week, trekking in the Bale Mountains. If the first words that come to mind when someone mentions Ethiopia are famine and drought then think again. The Bale Mountains is described as the best kept secret of Ethiopia – a fabulous land of mountains, with a huge variety of lush vegetation and many wild animals and colourful birds.

There are two main areas for trekking in Bale – one centred around Dodola and another, further east, at Dinsho. Treks from Dodola (altitude 2,400 metres) are organised by the Dodola guides association through an Integrated Forest Management Plan set up in the late 1990’s by a German aid organisation, GTZ. This has to be eco-tourism at its best. At the IFMP office in Dodola you plan your trip and meet your guide (English speaking of course), then you are off. There are currently five huts and one tented camp (with about four others under construction), each managed by local people. You can choose to walk or ride – and you can hire a horse to carry your bags! You hire horses and assistants at each location, sharing the benefit amongst the community.

Anyhow, before we could set off we had to attend another college graduation ceremony! This was the “summer” extension class graduation so the students I had “taught” English were amongst the graduates. It all seems like a distant memory now though I can say that it went on too long and it was very hot in those gowns. I think about 1,200 graduated and we had to sit whilst they all trooped up onto the stage. The best bit, as before, was the circus. Again, no sign of Health and Safety regulations as a small child was tossed about in the air like a football.

Sunday morning we were off from Awassa within ten minutes of arriving at the bus station but only as far as Shashamene, 25km away. We were fortunate to find an almost full bus to Dodola and were on our way again relatively quickly. That was the extent of the speed, however, for we left the asphalt road to jolt for three hours on what is described as possibly Africa’s highest all-weather road! After a while it was hard to breathe as there was so much dust in the air. The bus climbed up onto the plateau the scenery shifting from eucalyptus forest to fields of teff, wheat and barley. Gone were the bicycles of Awassa, replaced by horse if you were lucky but the most common form of transport was by foot.

A note on the comfort of the bus ride – we thought we were doing well when we left Shashamene with only two or three more passengers than seats on the bus but soon discovered that once you get out of town the traffic police don’t operate so we stopped just beyond town and gained another dozen or so passengers. This was nothing compared to the scrum when we stopped at Kofele, the biggest town en route. The spirit on the bus was amazing though – really good humoured, with the whole bus cheering a galloping horseman who rode alongside for some time before disappearing into the distance.

We made it to Dodola in time to have lunch before meeting our guide, horse and assistant and heading off to the hills. The guides are all locals and extremely knowledgeable about flora and fauna, as well as local culture. I have to admit I usually prefer to walk independently but in Bale a guide is essential. Our guide, Hussen, was brilliant – we learnt loads from him and he’s a great cook too (the first Ethiopian male I’ve known who cooks!).

That first afternoon we walked for about 3 hours to reach a tented camp with amazing views.

Wahoro, where we spent Tuesday night.

2006-09-18T21:16:00.000+03:00

Monday afternoon and it is chucking it down. We could see the rain coming when we were cycling back up the hill after lunch. Fantastic black skies, with the Rift Valley mountains obscured.

Today seemed to be the first day of term here, there were some schools open at the end of last week but loads more kids around today, all clutching stacks of new exercise books and some wearing new uniforms. All seems quite different to a new term at home. All instructors were meant to report back to college today and there was supposed to be a big meeting about the changes in the college structure but now enough people came so the meeting will happen some other time. Can you imagine?! I mean, either you are supposed to report back or you aren’t…. Obviously there are problems with the system. Instead today the management have interviewed 16 potential new staff for the degree programme – they needed to increase the number of instructors with masters degrees.

We don’t have much to do right now. We have two more weeks with no HDP classes and we have caught up with marking now so I am searching for employment. Theres are loads of things I could be doing but they are only useful if the college think they are. I am quite frustrated in this role really – I’d love to be more involved in the management of the college instead of being confined to the Higher Diploma programme. Oh well, only a couple of months to go here. Mind you I don’t know if things will be any better in the new placement.

I was thinking the other day – as I was doing the usual ten minute hurtle down the rutted track on my bike at breakneck speed, hoping there was enough life left in my brakes to stop me in case some unsuspecting pedestrian stepped out in front of me or I got too close to a gari driver’s whip - I was thinking of the London Underground. Well, particularly of Ange and that daily journey home on tube, train and foot. I hope, Ange, that the journey has improved (unlikely) or that you will be plotting some way to escape it – even if that is only the next holiday. Mid September, what signs are there of Autumn – definitely my favourite season.

There was an article in the Guardian weekly where someone was suggesting paying £500 for students who get A’s in their maths A Levels. I’m all for promoting maths but surely there is another way?

We are hoping to go to the Bale mountains next week and I asked a couple of colleagues if they wanted to come – since we are paying for guides anyway I figured we may as well make good use of them. Anyhow, they looked at me as if I was mad. People don’t have holidays here in the way we do – if there is time off work then mostly people go and visit their families and that is it. The only time people have travelled outside their own area is when they have been assigned to college or university in some far flung part of the country (part of a deliberate policy to spread students from the same ethnic groups out to minimise potential conflict) or on a rare field trip. Can you imagine that – you people who are off to exotic destinations at the mere sniff of a school holiday?

Rain has stopped. Mostly it is heavy but short lived here – not like the drizzle that can cloak parts of the UK for days at a time! Better find some work to do.

2006-09-16T18:03:00.000+03:00

2006-09-16T17:54:00.000+03:00

Had a fantastic evening yesterday – a couple we know got married and had evening drinks at a lakeside hotel as part of the celebration. It was an Irish-Ethiopian wedding, with quite a contingent of family and friends out from Ireland for the occasion. So I had gin and tonic (very large gin with very little tonic on an empty stomach) at the lake whilst the sun went down and we were entertained by the Awassa Youth Campus theatre – a local group who specialise in amazing gymnastic performances. There was lots of tumbling and an incredible contribution from a wee guy who must have been 3 or 4 years old. It would never get past health and safety regulations in the UK but the whole thing was breathtaking. The backdrop of the Rift Valley hills and the lake was fab. Sadly, we didn’t take the camera so you will have to take my word for it. The group somehow manage to incorporate storey telling and traditional music and dance into their shows. After that there was a group rendition of Molly Malone followed by the Hokey Cokey before we were restored to Ethiopian traditional music and song accompanied by a mesinko player.

Afterwards we had a long walk home in the darkness and I cooked up tagabeno. This is a fabulous local dish. It involves a pile of fresh tomatoes, red onions and garlic cooked in a liberal amount of olive oil. Berberi (a blend of about 14 spices including chillies, cardamom, cloves, ginger, garlic, onions, cinnamon & basil) is then added followed by shiro (powdered chick peas I think!). Tagebeno is best served with injera but it is also the best way to disguise the crap white bread you get here. It all seemed to soak up the gin very well.

Last Monday was New Years Day so we had a couple of days off work. A very quiet, relaxing, long weekend. We were invited out to breakfast with a couple of colleagues – really good to have some normal, social contact with Ethiopians! We also climbed Lamora (a local hill) again last weekend. The route back takes you past lots of local toukals (traditional houses) and involves lots of greetings and handshakes. So many wonderful smiles…

College is quiet at the moment as there are no classes. Big changes afoot though as plans for expansion progress. They are opening a medical and a business faculty this term and the education faculty is expanding to offer degree courses. The other day we were showing a new VSO worker around college only to be surprised by a gym full of bodies – not real ones, demonstration ones for the medical faculty. All white, bizarrely. They have since been moved to a “demonstraton classroom”. College are also opening several branches, one in Arba Minch, about a day to the south and another in a town just south of here. Several of our candidates on the HDP are in line for a range of positions at these colleges, ranging from registrars to academic deans. Not sure what impact that will have on our course as they might leave Awassa before we have finished the HDP. Another thing which will affect the Higher Diploma is people leaving to go and do Masters degrees in Addis. Although courses will start this month, perspective students do not yet know whether they have gained places. Demand far outstrips the number of places available – someone said for one course there were about 30 places and several hundred applicants. And everyone wants to do a masters degree here, it is the way to get on.

2006-09-03T20:52:00.000+03:00

My Spoken English class! Sadly, we had our last lesson together on Friday - all that remains now is the final exam. I will miss them!

Had a great walk this morning, about three and a half hours, up a local hill. Had to set off around 7 am before it got too hot!

2006-08-22T20:46:00.000+03:00

I feel like I’m being bitten, sat here at the computer but there is no sign of mozzies anywhere. It has really cooled down here lately – not so much that you have to wear jumpers but enough to make a difference to energy levels. Need to get back to running again but I’m waiting for Mike to recover from my cold!

I’ve got a new best friend! One of the college staff, the woman who cleans the offices, invited me to her house on Sunday. She’d asked me over a week ago but I thought she was telling me she was going to leave Awassa and go back to her family for a couple of months! Her English isn’t much better than my Amharic! Anyhow, I finally understood what she was asking and off I went. Getting to her house was a complex journey from college involving my first garry ride – it was fab! A garry is one of the main forms of transport here – on most of the roads in Awassa you walk, cycle or use a garry. A garry is a ramshackle cart pulled by a horse. On the three or four tarmac’d roads the garry is replaced by beaten up taxis. (Most of the garry horses look really badly treated so I haven’t rushed to use one before but this one seemed ok). I hadn’t realised that Awassa was so big, we took so many twists and turns I had no idea where I was. My friend and two of her sisters lived in the service quarters behind a house – two of them shared a room three metres by three metres that had last been painted probably when it was built about 50 years ago. There was just space for a bed and a mattress on the floor. It was one of about 10 rooms around a yard festooned with washing and heaving with small children. Inside, coffee cups were ready for the coffee ceremony and one sister was cooking on the kerosene stove – first a cabbage dish, then shiro. They had made their own crisps, there was popcorn, bread and injera. Once the food was ready we ate – in the meantime the coffee making was proceeding. This starts with washing the raw beans then roasting them slowly over charcoal. Once roasted, they were removed and ground and the jubena put on the charcoal to heat the water (Mike has a picture of a jubena on his blog). The coffee was divine as ever. I’d been worried beforehand about how we would communicate but I was told as long as you keep saying how good everything is you are ok! It is true! I took along a phrase book too so we spent some time reading it together and asking questions about family.

So humbling really, the whole experience. Here are people who have next to nothing and yet are prepared to share it so willingly. After a few hours I said I had to leave – I thought I’d been understood when two sisters stood and escorted me out but we ended up at the third sisters house where the coffee was ready. I had so much coffee that day, it took me a while to recover! Anyhow, eventually I was escorted back to a location I recognised and was able to find my own way home from there!

2006-08-22T20:41:00.000+03:00

2006-08-21T21:59:00.000+03:00

A vulture taking a break from football on the roof.

2006-08-17T21:02:00.000+03:00

Seven pm. I’ve been standing on the terrace in the dark, listening to the rain and watching the sky. We’re at the tail end of the most enormous downpour we have had in a long time – I was working late (some things never change!) and heard the thunder. I hurtled down the hill on my bike and just made it through the gate as the drops got heavier. Outside, everywhere is flooded – I was hoping to go to the shop but it will be a mud bath out there. The weather in Ethiopia seems to be a bit mad lately – after all the drought in various parts of the country there has been really bad flooding – over 250 people killed and the same number missing in Dire Dawa in the east of the country, about 300 killed a bit further south from here and problems also in the north, all following flash floods.

Went up to Addis on Sunday for a workshop and back here on Tuesday. Re-learned the lesson that there is no such thing as a full line taxi. Fortunately on the way to the bus station I was wedged securely in to my place by a rather fat man. The only good thing really about the journey between here and Addis is the end. Well, that isn’t strictly true. It was interesting seeing how the countryside has changed since we first arrived – much more lush and green (and in some places, flooded); a contrast to the dry conditions of February.

The bed bugs seem to have taken off of their own accord thankfully and the nights continue undisturbed apart from the constant howling and barking of dogs, the irritating little dawn song of what looks like an oversized sparrow and the vultures playing football on the roof (that’s what it sounds like anyhow). We have a tin roof and vultures are very heavy footed. They are almost the ugliest birds I’ve ever seen – outdone only by the Marabou stork. I’ll get some photos and you can decide for yourselves.

Really enjoying my English group – not sure how much they are learning really but since I didn’t have any kind of decent course description I’m not too worried. They are doing lots of talking, learning different active learning methods and having fun. I’m still waiting for the ideas to flood in from those of you with any experience teaching English. Yesterday I took a bag of various objects in and we spent some time talking about a broken pair of scissors. You wouldn’t think there was much to say on the subject would you really? I also took a photo of Harry and Alfie playing on a Northumberland beach – this was quite difficult for them to talk about as they had no experience of the sea nor of children playing. The closest children get to playing here is running along the road with an old tyre and a stick. Anyway, they all enjoyed working in groups having conversations about these things.

We are planning to go to the campsite on Saturday night for an Indian meal – can’t wait. In Addis nine of us went out to Aladdin and squandered vast amounts of money on fabulous food and wine. Such luxury. I have to say I much more content with things here now after having been home. We live really well here – my diet is so much better than it was in England.

One last thing - I can't ever get in to ready the blog so if you do post any messages it would be great if you emailed them to me too!

2006-08-07T20:41:00.000+03:00

Bed bugs, had to happen sooner or later. They leave a line of intensely itchy bites and the book says the only treatment is not to scratch them – yeah, like that is possible! I haven’t time to count them (the bites, not the bugs) but the scratching keeps me pretty busy. Apparently if you leave your mattress out in the sun they will disappear – this would be great if we had any sun but we are into the rainy season so the sun doesn’t appear very often. Anyway, I haven’t had any new ones for a few days so maybe they have had their fill.

Been so busy lately. Today is Sunday (or Tuesday – I’ll explain later) and I’ve spent about half the day marking. Yesterday, I had a class to teach in the afternoon. We have this extension programme on at the moment at college – they call it the summer programme tho I can only think that is because it is summer in Europe because it certainly isn’t here – anyhow, it is the long break in between school terms so lots of first cycle (lower primary school) teachers are busy upgrading their qualifications so that they can teach second cycle (like middle school). Teaching isn’t that highly thought of here and first cycle is bottom of the heap - you can qualify to teach here after a one year training course. Second cycle, however, involves a 3 year course. Anyway, so all these teachers are training during their school holidays – the course was meant to be about 6 weeks but there was some sort of government training for teachers for a week after term finished and they all had to do that first. (People refer to it as political indoctrination but I have no details!). This meant our extension courses had less time (are you still with me?) so the college decided that we would work the first three weekends to make up. The students have classes from 8.10 to 5 or 6pm each day (with a couple of hours for lunch) and now it is seven days a week! So on Saturday we did Mondays timetable, today was Tuesday (fortunately I don’t teach on Tuesday!) and then tomorrow it will be Monday again. It is all a bit mad but no-one except me seems to think so. The Friday before classes started the timetables went up at 5.05 pm and people were expected to start teaching the next day!

Anyhow, I only have myself to blame – I did volunteer to teach a class on the summer programme. I have ended up teaching Spoken English – it was that or Calculus! I figured I ought to practice what I preach – on the Higher Diploma course we push active learning methods and the candidates are all trying to use them in their large college classes – I thought I should experience the reality. So I have a class of 46 and I am loving it. We have some trouble understanding each other but we are getting there. I am using lots of games and group activities and trying to get to know everyone’s names. This isn’t helped by the college policy of allocating students into teaching groups. They list everyone alphabetically by first name (because that is the name you use) and then divide the list into groups. Fortunately I have only 3 Tsegaye’s!

Had a busy, social weekend as there were a whole load of VSO volunteers down in the south doing a language course and we caught up with some of them in Awassa. Also had a fab meal last night – there is a campsite in town run by a German and an Ethiopian and they have a small restaurant – just a couple of tables on the terrace. It was fantastic – they cooked a Chinese meal, absolutely delicious. And we had chilled white wine sitting outside on the terrace!

Crashed my bike last week – it was quite bizarre. I was cycling down hill from college and I could see this guy coming up the hill towards me and I just kind of knew we would collide even though we ought to have been able to avoid each other. Fortunately I managed to slow considerably but I knocked him off his bike and we banged our heads together. Poor chap looked quite shell shocked, being knocked off his bike by some mad ferenji woman. I wonder if he just didn’t see me coming?

Apart from that everything is fine. We’ve run out of chocolate tho so if anyone is feeling generous….

Monday evening - couldn't get online for long enough last night to post this. Had a full day at college, I loved it. I am much better when I am busy. Such a laugh with my English class - we played"the cat with nine lives" - just hangman but you end up with a dead cat rather than a hung man! They loved it. Then we read a short story together. Anyone with any ideas or materials I could use do let me know! It was hard work to find a short story at the right level that was short enough for me to be able to photocopy it!

2006-07-23T19:56:00.000+03:00

Well, I don’t really know where to start! Been back in Awassa almost a week now and things are back to normal. It was great to go back to the UK though it all seemed a bit rushed. I found it really hard the first week, suffered extreme culture shock. Couldn’t cope with the consumerism and the number of obese people. Now, English people can’t all have put on a huge amount on weight in the last 5 months – I guess coming from Ethiopia the difference really struck me. I had been looking forward to having familiar food and drink but found I was quite turned off by the sheer amount and variety – and so much of it is crap, processed rubbish. Our diet is definitely much healthier here in Ethiopia - just fresh fruit and veg, pulses, pasta and you just eat when you are hungry. The culture of excess just doesn’t exist here. Yes, I complain about it’s limitations but surely there has to be a happy medium?

Anyhow, it was great to see family and friends tho I didn’t have time to catch up with many people. Mike and I went up to the Lakes, seeking solitude, and camped beside Sprinkling Tarn. Fabulous. Then down to Seatoller in Borrowdale and had a lovely few days walking, canoeing and eating at Zeffs and at the Lakeland Peddlar. We went through all kinds of weather from the hottest of summer days to torrential rain and we loved it!

The last couple of days in London were a bit fraught but we managed a day out on the South Downs at Seven Sisters. The night before we were due to leave Michael heard that a close friend had had a bad accident. He stayed on to go and visit whilst I came back to Ethiopia on my own.

2006-06-28T13:00:00.000+03:00

Back in London, all quite unreal. Train into London was filled with obese people, women showing off far too much flesh, people yapping on their mobiles...Strange when we landed, not sure that I wanted to be here at all. The mad consumer culture all seems so obscene.

2006-06-17T22:26:00.000+03:00

Not much blogging lately. Phone been out of order – we hadn’t paid the bill so they cut us off. Nothing unusual there except that we hadn’t been told the bill was due. No phone means a trip to the internet café which is so slow….

How exciting – tonight we are going out for an Indian meal! It has been about 5 months since the last one so I am really looking forward to it. The only other ferenji working at college is Indian and has invited us round for dinner. It will be so nice to have something different. Mind you, we have been spoilt this week – I found tinned hommus in one of the shops and WHOLEWHEAT breadsticks. We are brave enough now to have salad – after much cleansing of veg so our diet has expanded. Michael did say that he felt malnourished today though and I think he looks it! He has an extensive list of what he wants to eat when he gets home – I don’t think I am quite so bothered, as long as I can get chocolate.

I’ve been really enjoying life here lately and feel a little reluctant to leave. It is good timing though because there will be nothing going on at college for the next few weeks. Getting to know people better helps. Last weekend we went to college graduation, nearly 200 students graduated and went off to start their lives as second cycle (upper primary/lower secondary) teachers. The ceremony was held in the cinema in town and went on all morning. Well, actually it started two hours late – waiting for the president of SNNPR to arrive. The event was much the same as at home except that they had the local children’s circus/acrobatic act on first. They were amazing. An odd part of the act involved a guy walking a tight rope and removing his trousers half way across! After the ceremony college provided lunch at Pinna for the staff and invited guests. In the evening they put on another meal for all the staff – teachers, admin workers, gardeners, cleaners, guards etc. Lots of beer. Probably too much. We were the last to leave and they insisted on driving us home in the college bus! It was great to socialise a bit with some of the staff though. On Monday I attended a moderation workshop with a couple of the tutors with my group – the workshop was uninspiring but it was good to get time with the tutors and get to know them a bit better. I think they will be really good at leading the course next year.

Another bit of excitement this week when I got locked in the toilet at college. Don’t laugh – it was quite stressful. Thank god we have clean loos – you would be dead in minutes if you got stuck in some of the facilities here! Anyway it seemed like I was in there for hours though I’m sure it was no more than 10 minutes. Verging on panic and no-one seemed to hear me. Very solidly built cubicles with solid metal doors, very cell like. Eventually I figured I would have to get myself out – so I did a bit of climbing and got out through a high window into the next cubicle! Good exercise.

The weather has cooled down a bit and we get a bit more rain than before – I’ve had to put a fleece on a couple of times lately. And socks. It has been much hotter in the UK than here, seems weird. We fly back for a visit in 10 days.

2006-05-28T18:19:00.000+03:00

Sunday morning… good to have a lazy day. I’ve been really busy at college – I am enjoying it. It is so good to see the Higher Diploma Candidates develop and become more confident. There doesn’t seem to be any system of staff development at all here so they lap up any feedback and support I give them. The course itself is fantastic really, all about reflective practice and matches up with best practice we had developed in Camden. We’ve just established peer observations where all candidates pair up and go and observe each other teach. It feels like a really powerful development tool, exciting stuff. The teacher trainers also spend five days in a local school as part of the course, observing and teaching. For some of them it is the first time they have taught in a school and it is great to see how motivated they are by the whole experience. Several have been in and done more teaching than the course requires and the kids have applauded them at the end! I feel like I am really getting to know people now. I am in my second round of observations and can see a huge difference in practice already. They are a really talented bunch of people. I was given the most amazing portfolio of work the other day, packed full of drawings and diagrams to illustrate various active learning methods and with a glowing acknowledgement of my support! I’ve identified three candidates to be tutors and start work with them properly this week – the idea is that by the end of October some of them feel confident to run the whole course again with the next bunch of people.

We are already starting to think about what happens at the end of this placement – due to various reasons it finishes at the end of October. There are a couple of interesting placements in the north of the Ethiopia which we are investigating – it would be good to see more of the country. It feels weird though to be thinking of leaving the college so soon – we are already working to help develop systems etc that will continue after we have gone. Everything changes so rapidly here - our college has just built new science and language labs and a sports hall and is hoping to be approved to run degree courses for next semester. Management and staff development are all in their infancy so there is plenty to do. I am keen though to get involved in some work that will have bigger impact – after taking part in Global Education week I realised that there was a lot more I could contribute. The placements we are trying to set up next would be piloting a more coordinated approach to CPD for teachers that hopefully could be adopted nationally. We think we have identified one area where things don’t seem to be too held back by p & b ( politics and bureaucracy). Time will tell!

I have to confess that we were quite sinful last weekend – we went to Aragash Lodge at Yirga Alem (look on the net for photos!). It is a tourist lodge about an hour from here, hideously expensive on a volunteers allowance, but well worth it. Sadly, it is probably the sort of thing that tourists here see the most but it doesn’t give a picture of real life. We got the usual mini-bus to Yirga Alem – not so packed because it wasn’t a public holiday and there are plenty of police checks. (Interestingly the police only seem to check numbers – not quite sure of the point of it – if they only checked tyres I am sure many lives would be saved). From the bus we walked about 4km down the main street to the lodge. As we got further through town we attracted more attention until by the end we had a troop of a dozen children – all quite good natured, practising their English. I guess the only ferenji they see are heading to the lodge and therefore wealthy so of course they asked for money but actually they were much less hassle than many in Awassa. The lodge is amazing – you go in the gates and you are in this oasis of tranquillity, on the ridge looking down into the greenest valley ever. The grounds are extensive and full of fruit and coffee plants though the best thing for me was the flowers (and butterflies). There are about a dozen “toukals” – traditional round houses built of bamboo and thatch. Inside they are stunning and very calming, divided into two bedrooms, a sitting area and bathroom, all furnished with bamboo and traditional fabrics. We had a tour of the grounds and spent time relaxing, watching the birds and monkeys and generally enjoying a bit of luxury. I felt so guilty when we came back though at the thought of all the money we had spent – tho as Mike said, it was equivalent to a night in a youth hostel back home!!!

It is slightly cooler and wetter here these days – I think a bit spring like. The birds are nesting everywhere and sweetcorn is now on sale at every street corner. We had an exciting ride home from college one day last week – it usually starts raining around home time but if we are quick we can make it home before it really hits. This particular day it started about 4.30 and was really heavy. We sat it out till about 5.45 pm but it really didn’t look like it was going to pass over so amidst much protest from the remaining staff (most people wait till the rain is over before going out, even if that means they are late for work) we went for it! It was like real mountain biking, great fun and we got jeers from the crowd sheltering under the tree at the bottom of the hill!

Friday night I went to the post office to pick up a new jar of Promite from the Australia shop. Yes, I know – sad really but we have become food obsessed I think. There is such a limited choice here. The only bread we can get is crap white stuff and we can’t make our own coz we have no oven. All you can really get to put on your bread is either chocolate spread or laughing cow “cheese” – hence the need for promite. Anyhow, when I got there I was greeted by name – the express mail man was particularly pleased to see me as there was mail from VSO (more bird flu updates) and it saved him a trip to college. They are great down there and so far we have had everything that has been sent – we were warned that lots of things don’t get through. We managed to get a key for the college mail box which is much better as the guy who is meant to go and collect the mail only goes about once a month I think. Anyway, back to food – we are both looking forward to wholemeal bread and butter. Which reminds me – we have cracked and booked a trip home for a couple of weeks! We have justified it as it is the rainy season here and we won’t be able to do anything at college as there are no classes going on. We fly back on 27^th June and are continuously thinking about ~~the food we will eat~~ the people we will see!!

2006-05-06T14:43:00.000+03:00

Haven’t blogged for a while – been to Addis for injections. We got the bus up on Friday – very interesting! Driver chewing chat non-stop all the way, I guess at least it kept him alert. When you get on public transport here you enter a different world. No timetables here, we were told that buses go when they are full. Not true, they go when they are fuller than full – people sitting in the aisles. It is all very good natured though – no point stressing about anything. Hopefully you get where you want to go eventually and in one piece.

It was interesting being in Addis again – felt quite normal. Last time we were there was when we had just arrived in February and everything seemed alien and frightening. We appreciated having TV in the hotel but weren’t so happy when we had no water! I got landed with doing a presentation at a national conference on education for global education week – the theme of the week was “Every child needs a teacher” and they asked me to do something giving the perspective of a developed nation. So I did “Valuing teachers – the English experience” and just picked out all the positive things that are happening at home. Those of you teaching might struggle to think of them but compared with here your life is a doddle, believe me! I’d love to get more involved at a national level, there is so much more that could be achieved here but I think the big block is with the government. Politics and bureaucracy … Anyway, I enjoyed working under pressure again.

Had some fabulous meals out in Addis – don’t know how anyone could afford to live there on a volunteers allowance, there is just so much temptation. The first night we went to an Armenian restaurant in the Bole Road area (the posh part of town). Only downside was it was full of expats. But the food was great – falafel, humous and fish kebab, washed down with some superb, chilled white wine, my first in three months. Cost a fortune but well worth it. Also had a bean burrito (another night!!) with cheese. Yum. Can’t get decent cheese in Awassa.

Mike and I finally got some time apart as he went back to Awassa on Sunday to do some catch up classes and I stayed up for the volunteers committee meeting. The first time we have had apart since arriving and it was nice – we didn’t plan to be living and working together!

Coming home on Wednesday I waited 15 minutes before I managed to get into a line taxi down to Stadium near the bus station. Nearly gave up – made me realise how lucky I was not to live in Addis. Bus station was chaotic but I was quickly directed to the Shashemene bus and thought my luck was in – only two empty seats! I took one and waited for the bus to leave – it took another half an hour to squeeze another 10 people on and get permission to leave but we were off by 8.30. Five minutes outside Shashemene we had a big oil problem but it took the conductor only minutes and a liberal doussing of oil to fix it and we were off again. At Shashemene I was loaded onto a minibus and we set off down the hill to the lake, speedo on zero all the way. Good to be home – 3pm by then so I had a late lunch and stayed at home.

Now I am re-adjusting to being back in Awassa – seemed more hassle than usual today but maybe because you are more anonymous in Addis.

2006-04-23T20:05:00.000+03:00

Wow! Well I feel like we have really arrived in Africa now. Today we were invited to Fasil’s family in Yirga Alem, a village about an hour away from Awassa. It was Easter Sunday here, so the end of about 50 days of fasting ( no meat or dairy products) – a big holiday. My guts were still playing up this morning so I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go but drugged myself up and hoped for the best.

Fasil is our landlord and says his family is small by Ethiopian stands – he is one of seven children. He lives in the same compound as we do with two of his sisters, Mersha and Emebet and his nephew, Abi. They had all gone down to Yirga Alem a couple of days ago so we set off to join them this morning. Awassa bus station was closed but there were a couple of mini buses trying to get business outside. We were quickly directed to one for Yirga Alem but we were the only passengers to start with. After about 10 minutes driving down the road and reversing back up again we managed to fill up. Well, I thought we were full but obviously I was wrong because we stopped a few metres further on and managed to get 5 more passengers in. Ok, now we are off, no way we can get anyone else in…. well, just 3 more then! And so it went on. I couldn’t turn round to count but I estimate about 30 of us in a 12 seater bus. Every so often we would stop to let out one passenger and add a few more.

The scenery is so different outside town, so green everywhere, not at all like you would imagine. Traditional circular thatched houses line the roadside, cultivated land protected by cactus fences. We saw coffee bushes for the first time today, lots of huge avocado trees, papaya, enset, others we couldn’t name. Everywhere so poor, you can see why the drought further south and east is so devastating. Children in earth coloured clothes playing outside their houses, colours muted. This is the reality for most of the population here.

We were besieged by a small army of children at the bus station on arrival but managed to find a phone to announce our arrival. Spotted Fasil in the street shortly afterwards – he must have been waiting. We did have an enforced stop on the way to exchange one bald tyre for another so lost a bit of time. Yirga Alem is much more relaxed than Awassa, just a rural village really. We were made very welcome by the family – Fasil’s parents, brothers, sisters and their children. Bizarrely the TV was on in the corner of the lounge with Brendan Foster commentating on the London marathon! We were in time to see Castor win and Haile loose out – a great disappointment. Still, it is only his third marathon and the weather didn’t look too kind.

The photo shows the bread being baked – the dough is wrapped in enset leaves (like banana palm leaves) and a fire lit above and beneath it – takes about an hour to cook. That’s Fasil’s mother with the big smile, Emebet poking the flames and Abi’s mother behind. They had all been feasting for some time – they had slaughtered a sheep and three chickens! Fortunately they made some tagabino (a kind of spicy lentil dish) for me. We tried teulla, the local home made brew, but I don’t think it will replace white wine for me anytime soon!

On the way home we stopped in at an aunts house and Fasil sent a friend to the bus station to reserve the two front seats in a mini bus for us! Eventually the bus arrived at the door and we were off…. but not for long. The engine cut out after a short while but we managed to get going again. Then it happened again and required some banging about under the bus to get us going. A couple more times this happened, getting more and more difficult each time to restart. Finally, most of the passengers had to resort to bump starting us by pushing the bus back down the hill we had just come up! Looking back through the rear window I could see disaster looming in the shape of a big bus barrelling down the road towards us. Fortunately, this turned out to be our saviour – most of the passengers from our minibus realised the problems were terminal and flagged the other bus down. We joined them and were soon crammed into an already jam packed bus which had come all the way from Moyale on the Kenyan border – some 12 hours away. Brilliant bus ride back to town, with the rain teeming down and a great spirit amongst the passengers – a definite feeling that we had arrived!

2006-04-19T20:39:00.000+03:00

The post continues to be a bit erratic here but at least things seem to be getting through. We’ve spoken to our line manager again about it and college seem to be sending someone daily to check – well they have for the last few days anyhow! This morning we got three editions of the Guardian weekly - March 10, 17 and 31^st. The inbetween one we got last week! Hopefully it will settle down and they will come weekly? Mike got the DVD he ordered thro Amazon – seemed to take over a month so we think the man who collects the post at college has sat on this stuff for a while – apparently he’d had an accident and that was why no-one had collected the post. Post takes on huge importance for us here. Today I also got a slip asking me to go to the Post Office to collect a parcel – real excitement. It was the promised minty smelling parcel from Helen – now we have more variety in our teabag collection – that should keep us going for a while. Also got a birthday card from mum – a bit mean I thought as it had pictures of chocolates on the front!!!

Had a great birthday do – I thought that since people don’t have much money here it would be good to do a meal for everyone so we asked Fiona’s maid Almos if she would prepare food for 15. I invited the dean and vice deans from college, the other VSO’s and Fasil, our landlord, and his family. Almos did enough food to feed about 50 people I think – it was lovely if a bit over the top. It seems to be the way it works here – I guess not having enough food is a sign of poverty so people go to the other extreme. We gave loads of left-overs to Fasil and to Almos so I think we’ve fed two families for a day or two. Anyway I ended up feeling really bad as everyone brought presents – adopting our English tradition. I got a gorgeous Ethiopian bag and scarf from the dean, a t-shirt with the Amharic alphabet on from our line manager, another Ethiopian scarf, cakes, chocolate and a garlic press from the others – I wasn’t expecting anything. Another thing I have to confess – it seems you can get birthday cards here - I was presented with several, very flowery birthday cards. So grovelling apologies to mum!

My Higher Diploma group did some of their microteaching the other day – they were brilliant! They’d had a week or so to prepare a ten minute teaching activity using an active learning method either individually or in small groups. For me one of the most successful methods was Jigsaw groups – you divide your group/class into groups of 4 or 5 and give each group a different topic or part of a topic to read about, becoming experts in that area. Then you form new groups with one person from each of the original groups and each person has to “teach” their topic to the rest of the group. We were given a chemistry topic to work on and it really made my brain work – trying to understand the information in order to be able to share it later. I had to sit and mark a pile of their work today – normally something I would find tedious but it is quite inspirational really. Candidates are working in English, which for some of them might be a third or fourth language and you will remember that very few of them actually wanted to be teachers – however, they are all really enthusiastic about what they are doing, trying out new methods and reflecting critically on their practice. It is very humbling to work with them.

First slightly dodgy gut problem today so I stayed home this morning – phone calls from the Dean and vice dean to check I was ok! They are looking after us so well.

Things are grinding to a halt at college – very few students in today. This weekend is Easter so Friday is a public holiday and the college is closed – but just for the long weekend. We are struggling to understand it – there are no students and they don’t expect most of them back till next Wednesday. A lot of the staff have also said they won’t be there Thursday or Monday. Why don’t the college just declare those two days as holidays too? Easter is the biggest holiday here I think and everybody goes home – journeys that could take 2 days so it would make sense to have a long holiday.

Power has gone off for the third time today so I am writing by candlelight and battery power....

2006-04-16T19:50:00.000+03:00

Ok, a couple of birthday pictures hot off the press. We had 15 people round and food for at least 40! Top picture is Almos, the chef with the bread and injera and then me cutting the birthday bread. More later....got leftovers to eat!!!

2006-04-15T20:51:00.000+03:00

School uniforms. Some of the kids look like real fashion victims. Purple trousers with bright red jumpers, or lime green shirts and turquoise trousers – anyway makes them easier to miss on the bike.

It’s hot again today and I’m feeling sleepy. No rain for a couple of days so the streets and choking with dust. Things are calm here and we are back on green – proceed as normal! Talking to a couple of the guys from college at the bar last night and they wonder how Ethiopia will ever move forward. People always talk about development as if it is a good thing but I think we have lost a lot in the “developed world”. Social relationships are much more important here and people will do anything to help each other – they really have time for each other. In such a poor country there is a custom that people invite you for drinks and food without a second thought.

There is a donkey braying in the street. And a very quiet, very dead cat. It is probably the one that a previous volunteer kept as a pet. I can’t believe VSO sanction that – you can’t take them back with you and then someone is stuck with having to try and look after it.

Michael is trying to make ginger biscuits with some very yellow long life margarine – no refrigeration needed! Really he should be making hot cross buns but I’m grateful for anything. Anyway it isn’t Easter here for another two weeks. Having about 15 people round for lunch tomorrow for my birthday. People don’t celebrate birthdays here – a lot of people don’t know what day they were born on and there is no money for celebrations. I love being away from all the commercial nonsense in the UK, but I have to confess that there are some things I miss. Often it is just a craving for something a bit different.

Saw two maths lessons this week at college. The first was calculus – I had to confess to the teacher that it was my least favourite area of maths at college. They were differentiating and did the whole lesson without any graph sketching at all. The other lesson was teaching methodology – how to teach multiplication to first cycle (lower primary) children. Great active starter, followed by a multiplication game. Then they looked at multiplication using partitioning and I was itching to get up and show them the grid method but I managed to resist! How is Alfie getting on with his multiplication, I wonder??

2006-04-12T21:31:00.000+03:00

The view from Tabor Mountain and enjoying the feast at Michael's induction dinner a couple of weeks ago. Our phone is sorted again, thank goodness.

2006-04-09T17:37:00.000+03:00

Sunday

Raining here - got soaked on our way to the internet cafe. Michael thought it was great to be out in the rain, I wasn't quite so amused.

Quick check of the emails shows there have been some explosions in Addis over the last couple of weeks, anyone hear about it on the news? We get very little news here but things seem ok. Fab run this morning!!

Saturday 8th April

We’ve had no phone line for a week now so no easy internet access. Earlier in the week, Fitsum, our line manager, took us to a couple of internet cafes and introduced us to the owners – to ensure that we got habasha rates and not ferenji. Been so busy tho that we haven’t had time really to get there.

On Monday we had another college dinner at Pinna Hotel – in honour of a visiting American who had adopted two children from Awassa and was meeting his extended family. He was travelling with an Ethiopian whose organisation had donated books and helped fund the computer lab at college. Marhary was fascinating – he has a wealth of experience – coordinating relief during the drought in the 80’s amongst other things. Both got us all thinking about the role of the college in bringing change in the country – the teacher educators train about 5,000 students a year who all go off and teach hundreds of children themselves.

On Thursday our programme officer from VSO turned up at college with two volunteers from Dilla, a town to the south of here. They have been evacuated as there have been some problems this week – the local sidaminga group still trying to get their own region. It sounds as though things have calmed down there already but I guess it is better to be sure. Everything seems quiet here in Awassa though we have heard that people are still imprisoned following the trouble here a few weeks ago. I think the Amnesty International site has more information – difficult to get anything reliable here. Bizarrly non of it seems to affect us.

Today was a very leisurely day – breakfast at Lewi 1 with Lena – our first trip there. Good to visit somewhere new. They had fabulous mango juice and a great omelette – a nice atmosphere, very popular with locals. Breakfast for about 60p. A bit of shopping and then called at Fiona’s – just in time for the coffee ceremony! Bliss!

Sunday 2nd April

I think Michael is a bit of a Cinderella really – our morning run has been getting earlier and earlier so that he can be back before there are too many people on the streets. Today the alarm was set for 5 am – at that hour I have no desire at all for exercise and today was no exception. I kept as still as possible hoping that he would go back to sleep – tho at the same time a small part of me wanted to run, I know I always love it once I get out there. Anyway, by 5.30 we were out and it was lovely as usual. Had the life frightened out of me be Bobby (our guard dog, who should have been at home!) as I turned the first corner in the darkness and there were loads of bats flying around as we turned the second. We have had rain daily I think for about 3 weeks so the insects are starting to breed. Everywhere is really green now too and you can smell the eucalyptus as you get to the trees. I’m afraid I did the usual walk to the top of the hill but once down again I did a few reps. The first twenty minutes or so is always so hard as my body just wants to be in bed. Out long enough to see the sun rise. I long to be able to go for a run at a sensible time of day….

The rains are great – really dramatic, not like the endless English drizzle. Clouds build up during the afternoon and we usually have a dramatic thunderstorm late afternoon. This week we had a grey day – no sign of the sun and I missed it tho I was glad of the lower temperature. Evenings generally are a welcome relief from the heat.

Got the bird book we ordered so we can start to identify some of the many new birds – they have great names. The “Beautiful Sunbird” is a regular visitor to the garden, as is the “Speckled moosebird”. One of my favourites is the “Red-cheeked Cordon-blue” – a tiny azure blue waxbill. If it stays dry we will go down to the lake later and see what else we can identify. Well, there isn’t much else to do here…..

I’ve had a week of observations at college, really interesting. I have my first maths observation next week. I’ve seen a lot of education methodology lessons and people are taking on the new methods of teaching with enthusiasm. We are struggling to come up with alternatives to lecture notes in a place where books are scarce. Exciting moment this week when I was observing and a snake was discovered under my chair – now that doesn’t happen at home!

2006-03-31T21:58:00.000+03:00

Ok, all gifts gratefully received. Chocolate was a bit soft but I can't complain. You can't get everything in Awassa, in fact you can't get much at all - I shouldn't grumble tho really, we aren't suffering from the drought at all. Tea bags are much appreciated - the coffee here is fab but you can't get a great variety of tea! Looking forward to the grand prix and anything else that will fit in the parcel. Just keep the parcels small and then hopefully I won't have to pay storage!

2006-03-30T19:53:00.000+03:00

Susan, I love you!! Today we got your parcel at work - so exciting! Who would believe that we could get so excited about a two week old newspaper, a couple of packs of blutac, some pens, chocolate and some fruit tea bags.... I think the trick to get the chocolate through without it being nicked worked well. We also got the first edition of Guardian weekly today (dated 3rd March so I hope they don't all take that long). As if that wasn't enough excitement, later in the day I was given a ticket to take to the post office to collect a parcel. My first experience of the post office - I had to wait whilst a form was completed, complex calculations were done and then 5 birr 25 was demanded from me. Apparently the parcel had been there for a couple of weeks and I had to pay storage! Hmmm..... if I'd known it was there, I'd have gone to collect it... Anyway, our first delivering from Amazon. I'm amazed that we have managed to get things through in one piece - we've heard lots of stories about things going missing in the post.

2006-03-29T21:15:00.000+03:00

Caroline asked about Government policy – well! Where to start? I tell you, I am glad I am in a private college – now that’s something I didn’t think I would ever say! The government institutions are so hampered by politics and bureaucracy it is a wonder anything gets done. There are some VSO’s in a government college in our region who have had to wait over a year to get a table and chairs for their office. At my college things arrive before you even realize you need them. Government schools are so poor, with class sizes up to 100 and no resources so anyone who can sends their children to private schools which are often supported by foreign NGO’s. A lot of the appointments at senior levels in government colleges are political and staff can change almost overnight. Not great for stability or strategic planning.

Interestingly (apart from the lack of chilled wine) I feel I am having it easy here! I guess the tough times will come but the people make it all worthwhile. It is very humbling. I am three weeks into the course and have seen three lessons today – all very good. Although lesson planning is not part of the culture here I was given a lesson plan for each and observed teachers trying out various active learning methods. Teachers sharing lesson objectives with students for the first time, using pyramiding (starting from pair working, then to fours, then to eights), ice-breaking activities and spider diagrams – so refreshing and frankly much better than I was expecting. I even saw one teacher try using some peer assessment! We have so much to learn from them in terms of attitude you know – the majority of candidates on the course did not choose to be teachers, they were assigned and yet by and large they have devoted themselves to it. They really see the value of education – all have had to really struggle to get where they are, I mean really struggle

2006-03-26T16:28:00.000+03:00

Induction at Debub Ethipia College of Teacher Education - the vice deans and friends!

2006-03-26T16:25:00.000+03:00

Policing the bike race….

Settling in to a Sunday routine here – for the last three weeks it has been my only day off work as we have had series of lectures on assessment at college on Saturday s. More of that later… Up at 5.30 a.m. again – I hate it until I am out of the door and can see the stars! The moon was lovely this morning too, a crescent but you could see the whole disc. Seemed slightly lighter this morning – no need for torches – and I managed a bit more of the hill. I have to confess that this is the first run for a week, not good going but I blame Michael. The sky as the sun rose was gorgeous.

Did the washing on the terrace before breakfast (discovered affordable oats so had porridge as an alternative to bread and bananas) then roped Fasil, our landlord, in to help us out shopping for parts for Mike’s bike. It needs a new saddle, pedals, mudguards and a rack…. Anyway, being Sunday and a holiday (halfway through the 55 days fasting period) most places were shut so they will have to go again tomorrow. Then off to buy veg and stop in at Pinna hotel for a mango juice – still such a treat and healthy too. The main street was closed off to traffic with police stationed at intervals to keep people off the road. Wondered if it was a political protest but then all became clear as some incredibly fit lycra clad women hurtled past us on bikes. There were a couple of police motorcycles clearing the route in front and the guys stationed along the road had assault rifles slung across their backs! They also had sticks and whips and weren’t afraid to use them… we kept well clear! A bit later the men’s race went off – seemed to be several circuits up to the church and back down to the lake – a bit like final day of the Tour on the Champs but with more vigorous policing. Although with the way things are going in France these days who knows….

Waiting for the usual afternoon storm but I think it may have bypassed us today – thankfully it has clouded over though so is much cooler. I was at risk of getting sunburnt when I was ironing!

On Friday night we were invited out to watch a film. Marion has a projector at her workplace and a collection of DVDs so a load of us piled round to watch “Bonnie and Clyde”!

Busy week ahead – as part of the Higher Diploma candidates have to have four formal lesson observations and I am starting the first round this week. Mostly people are teaching in English but there are a couple who only teach in Amharic or in another local language. This is a good opportunity for me to do some joint observations with candidates who may become tutors on the course. Over the next couple of weeks I need to identify 3 or 4 likely candidates to become tutors – they will then work with me planning and delivering the course and hopefully one or more of them will go on to lead a new group when we finish.

Had two phonecalls from home this week, makes me feel less distant. Mum’s birthday tomorrow – but I guess she will be too busy out on some long hike in the dales to celebrate! Hope it is a good one anyway mum!

2006-03-23T19:45:00.000+03:00

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.