Update

It’s the small rains here in Debre Birhan at the moment. They normally come in February, but this year they are late. The small rains last for a few weeks whereas the big rains, in July and August, last a couple of months. The farmers have been waiting and praying for them, and it’s easy to see where I am that the earth needs it – when I came in September everything was green and alive, now it is brown and dry. I am told that soon it will all be green again. The rain is magnificent here with crazy thunderstorms and lightening. I am still surprised and very grateful that the roof in my house hasn’t leaked. It’s been very strange for me to wake up with a cloudy sky here; it feels a lot like home when it’s drizzly, although mostly it rains in the evening and at night. Needless to say, the rain means that the electricity goes out frequently.

I don’t know if it’s to do with the weather, but there is now an even more limited selection of fruit and vegetables – or if it is available, it’s not good. For example, the bananas and tomatoes available have not been very nice recently. Plus there is a situation with sugar here at the moment (not just in where I am but other places too I’m told.) I can’t quite work out if it’s a shortage or what. Anyway, it has now become impossible to buy sugar from shops. You have to buy it from the Kebele Office, which is like a council office. There people queue for it and then it runs out and they tell you to come later. Very frustrating. Ethiopians love their sugar – in tea and coffee – so they need it. I need mine for my morning cup of tea (though I don’t use anywhere near how much Ethiopians use). I stupidly waited until I’d completely run out last week to buy sugar. I went to three Kebele Offices and for various reasons waited ages, but they didn’t have any. I did manage to find some in a hidden shop where I was secretly sold about two handfuls of sugar for six birr (normally a kilo is fourteen birr). I felt very lawless buying sugar on the black market! But I was lucky because a friend of mine went to Addis so he bought some more back for me.

Work has been going well. The classes with the teacher trainers are going well, though I am unsure if they will complete the course this academic year because we started so late. However, they will be able to complete the course next academic year if they need to. It is also nice to see that staff and students are using our English Language Improvement Centre.

This is one of our student Film Nights with me telling students about the film they are about to watch.

As part of the Gender Club, we are planning a Health Training workshop for females next week Wednesday for 400 females. The tutorial program in which second and third year students tutor first years will also start on Monday next week. The students were very keen to join this programme, so it will be interesting to see how it works out.

I am still taking Amharic lessons. I have been learning the ‘fidel’ or the alphabet of Amharic as well and earlier this week I read my first words in Amharic! I was so pleased. Also when I went to the Kebele Office, I was able to read the sign. Learning a new language has been a great experience for me. I enjoy it so much and will definitely miss it when I return home, but it’s sad to think that I will forget most of what I am learning because I won’t use it in England.

VSO Conference

I have just returned from a two day conference in Addis, which was organised by VSO for all their volunteers from around the country who are involved in the English Language Improvement Programme. Although I have met a few other volunteers doing the same or similar work to me – some volunteers I came out with in September and through chance meetings in Addis and so on – I haven’t met them all. It is always great to meet up with people involved in the same work as I am doing as a lot of the volunteers have been here a lot longer than I have and have much more experience than me. At the conference, it was interesting to hear about the different things volunteers have done in their colleges or universities (where some are based).

One of the major issues addressed in the conference was sustainability - if and how things we do as volunteers will be sustained once we have completed our placements. The long term objective of all VSO placements is that the sharing of skills will enable positive change in communities or institutions. That is what I am trying to do in my placement and so are all other VSO volunteers, therefore at the conference we shared ideas on what we mean by sustainability and discussed strategies to maximise the possibilities of it happening.

For three nights I stayed at a hotel in Addis called the Yonas. Every night I battled with the cockroaches in my room. I took insecticide spray with me (-I normally take it everywhere I stay the night-) so I sprayed the room every day but it made no difference. It was disgusting. I don’t mind a few cockroaches here and there but they were crawling all over the floor and the walls, and I there were two on the bed! It was like what my idea of hell would be like.  I would have complained, but I have stayed there before and I know the staff’s response is that they are harmless. I was there in September when I had just come into the country. It was so bad that I actually went to another volunteer’s room and slept with her. This time I managed to stay in the room on my own. I guess that’s progress right…

I took a bus to Addis and back which is always an adventure on its own as everyone in Ethiopia knows. I normally enjoy the journey with the fights, the random stopping, bribing traffic police and generally all Ethiopian life crammed into a bus. But the worst thing for me is when a man sits next to me – why can they never just sit quietly? Why do they have to talk to me for the entire journey even if we both quickly realise that my Amharic isn’t that good and his English isn’t too great? The guy today was even worse than usual so I tried pretending to sleep, but he just kept talking even when I had my eyes closed! Oh what sweet relief it was when I came to my stop!

Six months in Ethiopia!!

To celebrate here are some of the things I love about being in Ethiopia: 

Firstly I love the sun - every day the sun shines and it’s always hot during the day time. Just looking up at the sky without a single cloud in the sky makes me happy. It means I can sit in my garden every day in the sun and watch the birds.

I love the people. The people are mostly very nice. I have made so many great friends here. Plus most people have a very relaxed attitude to everything and don’t seem to worry much. I think it’s rubbing off on me, which is probably a good thing.

I love the food. Although I get a very limited variety of fruit and vegetables compared to back in the UK, I know that it’s all fresh and organic. Plus I love the fact that I get fresh milk delivered to me every day just after the farmer has milked his cow in the evening. There are also street vendors and small shops that sell amazing lentil samosas, which are enough to rival any Indian samosa.

I love the fact that when I go out I see cows, goats, horses, donkeys, bulls, sheep, chickens etc. The lambs and kids are so cute that I really want to bring a little one home with me….

I love that the closest corner shop to me, opposite my college, is called The Doctor’s Shop. Why? Well, when the owner was a baby his parents thought he looked like he was going to be a doctor. However, he never became a doctor but the name stuck.

I love the fact that I can still use my hair straighteners in Ethiopia on most days as the electricity is very good.

I love my neighbour’s two children. My neighbour is the Dean of the college - he has a daughter who is three years old and a son who is one and a half. They are the cutest children, and the son calls me ‘Atta’ as he can’t say my whole name. I go to play ball with them in the fields at the weekends.

I love the fact that I never have to think too much about what to wear and I never iron my clothes. No one here cares much about clothes.

I love that I confuse people. When I walk along the road I hear people discussing whether I’m a ‘ferengi’ or a ‘habesha’. Most people can’t tell whether I’m Ethiopian or not when my hair is covered.

I love the views from my house and on my way to the local shops. I see the beautiful gorge and river every day, and miles of fields and crops. So very different to my life back at home.

All that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything I dislike, but that’s for another day….

Skills Share

Last week, on Friday we conducted a training workshop for the Gender Club in the college. A few months ago we proposed that we would do a skills share activities between males and females. The aim of this training was to allow males and females to try activities that they would not normally take part in because of cultural reasons, and thereby understand that there are no activities that both sexes cannot do. Females are normally very reluctant to take part in any sports activities and males don’t do any household domestic tasks such as cooking.

Most of the students in our college come from rural areas and so have very traditional backgrounds where gender roles are very segregated. We had no idea how the students would respond to this type of activity, but we wanted to try it anyway. We decided that we would have ten females and ten males who would take part. The males would teach the females some sports skills and the females would teach the males how to cook something.

We have a fantastic Gender Club Coordinator who was very enthusiastic about our idea. But as with most things, we started planning it last minute - on Tuesday, which gave us two days to plan. So we managed to organise a car to take us shopping to buy the necessary materials on Thursday afternoon. We bought all the ingredients for the males to cook ‘chiro watt’ and we bought some footballs for the girls (we decided we’d borrow other sports equipment from the Sports Department). We bought cooking equipment from our houses like knives, chopping boards, pots and our electric cookers, I also went around a few of the houses in the compound asking if they would lend us some of these things for a morning as we didn’t have enough. (Even though I explained why we wanted the equipment they looked at me like ‘yep the ferenji is definitely weird’.)

Anyway we had twenty students on Friday morning. I introduced the session and then it was translated in Amharic by the Gender Club Coordinator. We first paired up the students – males with females, then started with the sports session. Some of the males were Physical Education major students so they were keen to share their skills. We had handballs, footballs and volleyballs and we swapped the different balls mid-session so they could try more than one sport. At first, the girls especially were reluctant to work with the boys, but after some encouragement, they worked very well together and had a lot of fun.

After an hour we moved to a classroom where we had the cookery session. We explained that we wanted the students to work in pairs and that the females were to guide the males rather than do the work themselves. The males did all the preparation, cooking, serving, and clearing and washing-up afterwards. Once the ‘chiro watt’ was made, we told the girls to sit down and the males to serve the food. (We bought ‘injera’ to be eaten with the ‘watt’.) Normally males do nothing in the kitchen and will even have a female bring water to them to wash their hands before and after meal. In our session the boys went round and washed the girls’ hands then served the food. It was great! The food was delicious, and even the Dean came to try the food which was great for the students.

The students worked extremely well together and enjoyed themselves. They gave very positive feedback and suggested that we do more activities such as this. A few even suggested that we should organise this same training session for the teacher. The training was a lot of hassle but worth it.

Water, Gas, Electricity

In the college compound there was no running water for five days last week. Needless to say it is very difficult to do anything without water. I was going every day to collect some in a bucket for my house, because luckily there was a tap that was working not too far away from my house – but far enough! The water in the college compound comes from a well, but the tap that we collected water from has its source elsewhere which is why it worked. We were all very grateful that we had this otherwise we would have had to go further to collect water.

It was the first time that I was living without running water in my house for such a long period of time. Normally the water here is good – although we don’t have water from about 11pm to 7am during the night every day and we frequently have no water, it’s only for a few hours during the day time, so it’s okay to manage. Our well pump was broken, but luckily we now have water as the problem has been fixed.

Also, I now have gas! As you will have seen from the pictures of my house in October, I have a cooker in my kitchen. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to use it for the past four months since I’ve been here, as I haven’t had gas. Finally one of the drivers at the college took my cylinder to be filled yesterday and so I can now use my cooker! I had been using a one ring electrical stove, which was extremely time consuming and slow. Also, now whenever we have no electricity, I’ll still be able to cook!

And funnily enough I have no electricity at the moment! The problem has been on-going for the past six days. So I have water, I have gas, but no electricity. It’s frustrating to say the least. And the most annoying thing is that it’s just in my house, as there is some kind of wiring problem. I am waiting for it to be fixed, but have no idea how long it will take. But at least I can still cook on my gas cooker. And I can heat up water for bucket baths.

Lalibela

For Ethiopian Christmas, or Genna as it’s called here, which was on Saturday 7^th January, I went to Lalibela with Maeve and an Ethiopian friend of ours, Mahalnesh. Mahalnesh’s birthplace is Lalibela and so she wanted to spend Genna with her mother and sister who are still living there.  


Lalibela is a town 600km north of Addis. Although it is possible to get a flight to Lalibela from Addis, we travelled by bus. It’s cheaper and you get to see all the different places you go through. It was my first really long journey in Ethiopia. Previously I had only travelled by bus from Debre Birhan to Addis and back. It was about a two and a half hour journey which was reasonably comfortable with a few toilet breaks in fields on the way.

For Lalibela we started our journey on Thursday at lunch time. From Debre Birhan we travelled to Dessie which took about seven or eight hours. We then stopped for the night in a cheap hotel in Dessie (where I got bitten by fleas in my bed) and continued on another bus at 5am the next day to Lalibela.

The journey was extremely interesting. As you travel thought different towns and villages you see just how diverse Ethiopia is. You travel just an hour or two from Debre Birhan and everything is different -
the weather, the people’s clothes, animals, houses and crops.

Inside the minibus as many people as possible are crammed. There were at least twice as many people as there should have been on it. People are crammed in on the available seats, they even sit on tiny stools that are placed in the walkway down the vehicle, and others stand. I'm still not sure why there were so many people on the busses this time– either they do this all the time, or Genna is a busy time and they try to make as much money as they can in this period.

This does not mean that there aren’t any laws about numbers of people on vehicles, there are. And there were even traffic police on the way who inspect vehicles. So how did we get past them? Well, the driver knew where they were, so before they saw us he ordered all the extra people to get off the bus and walk past the police. We got inspected with the correct number of people and were told we could continue. Then after some distance, clear of the police, the bus stopped and waited for the people who walked and got on the bus again. Simple! 

Anyway we got to Lalibela completely exhausted. We visited Mahalnesh’s family which was lovely. Her mother and sister were so welcoming. Her mother is the sweetest old lady who was convinced I was Ethiopian and wouldn’t accept otherwise. The minute she saw me, she said (in Amharic) ‘Oh this is so-and-so’s daughter!’ Mahalnesh told her no, that I was a ‘ferenji’ and that my name is Fatuma. (All Ethiopians call me Fatuma.) So her mum said ‘Yes, Fatuma, her name is Fatuma, she lives in Dessie’. It was so funny. Anyway after some time we convinced her that I wasn’t Ethiopian, but every so often I’d catch her looking at me thinking ‘really?’.  

The town itself is really pretty with mountains, winding roads and beautiful traditional houses. I visited the famous rock hewn churches and climbed one of the mountains from which the views were amazing.

We started our journey back home on Tuesday. We had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 3.45am to get the bus on time! I arrived back home on Thursday afternoon.

Getting Things Done

We had our first Film Night which was a success. We showed a documentary about the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia. We had over forty students which was lucky because that is the maximum capacity of the ELIC. The aim of the Film Night is to show a different film, documentary or TV show every week and have a short discussion after it. We want the students to be able to improve their English speaking and listening skills in an informal environment whilst enjoying themselves, as most of the students here think they are learning English only if they are learning grammar from a textbook. We will continue this as a weekly programme and are hoping that the number of students will increase.


We also successfully held a Gender Club Welcome Ceremony last week. It was a conference to introduce the Gender Club to first year female students and to introduce some of the activities that are going to be held between now and June. The agenda at the Gender Club Welcome Ceremony included the following: an introduction from the Vice Dean, a talk from the Regional Educational Bureau on Justice in Ethiopia and people’s rights, a presentation by one of the teacher trainers on his action research on Sexual Harassment in the college, and an outline of the purpose of the Gender Club and upcoming activities.


We wanted to do this Welcome ceremony much earlier – in November or December, but for various reasons we just couldn’t.  Organising anything in Ethiopia is such a challenge! However, we had a lot of support from the staff who took part in the ceremony which was great.


Some of the other activities we are hoping to do are a skills share between males and females – so the females will teach the males how to cook a simple ‘watt’ and the males will teach females football skills. We are hoping that this will enable those who take part to break gender stereotypes and try new skills which they normally wouldn’t.  Another planned activity is a HIV/AIDS and Safe Sex workshop with speakers from the local hospital. We also have a tutorial scheme planned where third year students tutor low achieving first year students. In addition, we have a conference organised for International Women’s Day in March. Altogether there are about eight events/activities planned. It was great to organise the event from the beginning and finally carry it out.


On the downside I still haven’t started the English Language Improvement Programme classes for the trainers at the college, which is very disappointing. The college is being very slow with getting this going. Nevertheless I have decided that I will hold speaking and listening English classes for the cleaners and the administrative staff who have very little English. Fingers crossed this will be a little easier to get off the ground!


Also I have a friend who teaches at a local preparatory school who asked me to come to her English class and teach intonation. It was a lovely experience and the students were great as they always are in Ethiopia. I have been to quite a few local schools before to see classes and observe teachers. For me it’s always been such a positive experience and so I’m hoping to do more of it.