ELIC Party

Yesterday was one of the best days for me here in Ethiopia. We held a coffee ceremony in our college at the ELIC (English Language Improvement Centre). We invited all the students who belong to the three clubs we have there – Gender Club, Reading Club and Debate Club - and anyone else who wanted to join. The aim of the event was to have something fun at the ELIC and to publicise the clubs to get more members.

ELIC student members helped us to organise the event with publicity, getting equipment for the coffee ceremony, deciding the programme and presenting. We had coffee, bread, popcorn and ‘kolo’ (which is roasted grains). The event included a Reading Club member reading an Ethiopian Amharic story he had translated into English, music and dancing - one of the staff members bought his harmonica - and students telling riddles and jokes in English.

Dancing

Student reading his translated story

We tried to let students take ownership as much as possible because it is vital to the sustainability of the work that we have done here. We want students to feel that the ELIC is theirs because I will leave at the end of the academic year, but the first and second year students will be here next year. Therefore, we want them to carry on what has been set up because academic staff are normally very busy. The more the students can do the better chance the centre has of continuing to be a useful space.

At our ELIC coffee ceremony, it was great to see the students enjoying themselves and feeling like they were a part of something they were proud of. It was also great for me and other staff to see how far the ELIC has come. At the start of the year, no one was using the room or the resources in it, most people didn’t even know where the room was. But we are aware that this is just the beginning and there is still a lot more that can be done.

(The only regret I have is that we didn’t do something like this earlier, but with the way things work here sometimes doing things slowly is better.)

Some of the ELIC gang