Bren and Jen were in Ethiopia, now Mexico.

Its sods law that when I post a blog about having no work to do everything here goes mental and I barely have time to breathe, so I actually have had work to do for the last few weeks and I wanted to post this last week but just didn’t have the time.

One thing in Ethiopia that is very different to most of the rest of the world is the use of a plant called chat (or khat, quat or qat depending on how people feel). In Eastern Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen it is a popular activity rarely seen outside of those areas because the plant only grows in very specific conditions.

Anyone that chews khat will say that the stuff grown around Harar is the best in the world. The next nearby town called Aweday happens to be the biggest khat market in the world and the stuff is exported around the world, most of it going to London where a big Somali population resides. Khat accounts for about ten percent of Ethiopia’s cash exports. Many people back home would be amused to find I left Manchester and accidently landed in one of the biggest drug cultivating areas of the world! It’s usually sold in bushels with the quality controlling the price and each bushel is enough for two or three people to enjoy, again depending on the quality.

There is a whole culture and tradition associated with chewing. It’s considered holy by most Muslims because it is referenced in ancient texts and that gives them an excuse to chew as much as they want. A khat chewing session is known as a Bircha and usually lasts most of the day, people can chew in smaller quantities or whilst working and the effects are less pronounced. A bircha includes a large group of people and often the location is varied from house to house, the bircha also involves shisha pipes, incense and a coffee ceremony usually preformed by women who are not chewing that day.

It takes several hours for the drug to take effect, during that time people take the soft leaves from branches and chew them, keeping them in the mouth for as long as possible, people that are really good chewers can keep chewing for several hours. Once all the soft leaves are gone people can start on the tougher leaves and if people get really desperate they can eat the branches themselves. The reason for this order is simple – Khat tastes awful, it’s like eating grass. However the softer leaves contain the most of the drug and do not taste as strong so they are the best place to start.

The effects of the drug are widely talked about and way overhyped. People here believe chat will cure everything from heart problems to digestion issues (the latter is probably true, you do end up eating a hell of a lot of fiber). What khat definitely contains is an amphetamine which makes people more alert, talkative, friendly and awake. Bircha sessions go on for so long because people slowly get high, chew more, talk absolute rubbish and lose track of time completely. Sometimes they go on for seven or eight hours before the chewing stops and people either go home or head to the bars.

In its defense it’s not a particularly destructive drug and although most people in and around Harar chew there are very few people addicted to it chewing in the street (the few that do are absolutely disgusting though). On the khat Wikipedia page there is a graph showing the potential harm of all the common recreational drugs and khat scores last, far below alcohol and tobacco, which doesn’t surprise me. I have never felt threatened by happy talkative people with green mouths.

There are some drawbacks though. Firstly that it is still a drug and therefore dangerous if abused, which is difficult to do, but still possible. Secondly that people chew at work. It may improve your concentration but I would prefer my bus and taxi drivers to be sober when doing their jobs. It also means that there is a cultural acceptance of people skipping work in the afternoons to chew. The college where I work is half empty in the afternoons because both the students and lecturers chew and sometimes don’t bother to come in.

It is however an intrinsic part of life in Eastern Ethiopia and living here you quickly see the positive and negative aspects of its use. I do agree with the assessment that it is a big development issue for Ethiopia; whilst people chew they are usually disinterested in working and improving their situation in life. It’s just another reason in a long list of why Ethiopia is an underdeveloping country.

February 16th, 2009 | Tags: Chat, Ethiopia, Harar, work | Category: Ethiopia | Comments (2)

I won’t say this post is another negative post, but it certainly isn’t positive either. For some reason I find it easier to write about the difficulties of living here since it gives me more to talk about. Plus if I write about all the fun I am having everyone will be thinking ‘git, you’re not supposed to be having that much fun helping people’ and there definitely are more positives than negatives in living and working in Ethiopia. It is working here though that has been the most trying for several reasons.

In the beginning there were the obvious difficulties in understanding the systems and the way in which things occur here. The problem is that I am still learning a lot even now. I doubt I will fully grasp the intricacies of Ethiopian work life in the time that I am here. Frequently someone at work tells me ‘Oh, you don’t understand Ethiopia’ when I am chasing a problem or asking questions.

That’s not to say the people themselves are difficult to work with, on the contrary, the people I work with are fantastic friendly people who have done their best for me and Jen in getting started. It’s the way in which things occur (or don’t occur) that confuses and irritates.

Our current laughs and frustrations are on keys at the moment. We still have not quite figured it out but people place huge importance on keys here. Trying to get one for a room is impossible, and people are often away from their office or post which means regular access to a room is nearly impossible. We thought we could get around the issue by making copies, but that upsets people big time. One of our colleagues here said ‘Here in Ethiopia, to have a key is to have power’, which is probably the mentality behind it all.
When I first got working I was asked to start planning workshops for the teachers before I even knew what issues they faced. I didn’t feel comfortable with planning and running training for teachers and them potentially missing the point. ‘It’s no problem’ use last year’s needs assessment and plan from there I was told.

After several weeks of planning, getting things together and submitting the proposal it was turned down by the Regional Education Bureau (REB) because we hadn’t done enough needs assessment.

So, after a sigh, we complete a full and detailed needs assessment of all the schools in the region, asking questions, sending out letters and speaking directly to teachers in as many schools as possible. The whole process took another four weeks. Mainly because there is only one car in the college and most schools are very far away.

The completed needs assessment was given to the REB along with recommendations for training and support. The bureau decided then to tell us that they have no money to do any training at all!

So that lead to me having to scale everything back and find money from other sources, which has eventually occurred and within the next few weeks we will be helping science teachers train to use the new science equipment which will allow them to do practical work and demonstrations for the first time.

Eventually I might end up doing something other than fixing the colleges computers and wasting paper on pointless reports and hopefully that something will be of great help. I can’t help feeling that I could have achieved so much more though. It is possible that my personal expectations have been too high when working in a developing country and one of the poorest in the world. Its sometimes easy to forget that.

We were thinking of possibly doing another year out here, but I think some of Jen has rubbed off on me and instead we are going to try something a little different. Watch this space.
No blog post next week since we are living it up in Addis.

January 30th, 2009 | Tags: computers, science, VSO, work | Category: Ethiopia | Comments (5)

Here is another apology for the lack of posts here recently. The internet has been appalling for several weeks and only just got to the state where I can load the websites without waiting several hours. Cheers to the hopped up monkey sailors that managed to sever all the communication lines between Europe and Africa just before Christmas and cut us off from the rest of the world for three weeks.

Jen’s Christmas post below sums up our holiday adventures, I hope everyone at home had a great time.
Quite a lot has happened over the last month. One of our chickens got ill and died (Maude) which was pretty traumatic since it was one with a personality. My awesome Nikon D50 also decided to give up and die as well which was another trauma right before Christmas. Also the regional education bureau here told me that there is barely enough money for petrol, so training teachers here just got several shades harder.

The other volunteer in Harar left for England a few weeks ago leaving myself and Jen alone here, several other volunteers from the region are also shipping out shortly and only two new people replacing them. It does mean that I am now the volunteer committee representative for Eastern Ethiopia which sounds impressive but no-one else actually wanted it out of the four of us.

I wrote a post ages ago and its been sitting on my hard drive for a while, I should probably write a funky fresh new one and save this for when things are rolling again but my head is not in blogging mode so I am going to use it now.

A few weeks ago I promised to talk about what we live on here and how much things are over here. People have asked where we get our money from to live out here and what we can spend it on. The Ethiopian currency is the birr and when we arrived in Ethiopia it was about 20 birr to the pound, it currently sits at 16 but for a while was as low as 14 to the pound.

I get paid from two main sources. The college where I work pays me 1150 birr a month (around £70) which they pull from World Bank funding. VSO pay me 1000 birr a month (£60ish) which is primarily funded by DFID (Department for International Development) in the UK and charity donations from around the world.
So in total I earn 2150 birr a month or about 130 pounds, which is only slightly above (by about 100 birr) what the average Ethiopian office worker earns but well above (by about 1700 birr) what the average manual worker in Ethiopia earns. There’s a huge gap between people’s earnings here and as I have said before I have no idea how people survive on such small amounts of money. Things which seem inexpensive to us must be a fortune to people who live on only 400 birr a month.

As far as groceries are concerned things are very cheap (for us). Fruit and Veg never cost more than 5 birr a kilo, pasta and rice are a little more at 14 birr per kilo. Anything outside these staples costs more though. For example when cucumbers occasionally appear they cost 20 birr a kilo.
Eating out is also fairly inexpensive; a meal in a Harar restaurant (of which there are about four) will cost 50-60 birr a person unless Jen starts drinking imported wine and spirits. Local alcohol is also well within our budget and fairly good quality. The beer here rocks although Jen says the local wine tastes ‘minging’
However anything imported is very expensive, more so than in the UK. A can of beans costs 20 birr and a cheap bottle of red will cost over 100 birr (£7-8). When you are trying to live on £130 a month, spending more than a few pounds can get stressful.
It’s actually pretty easy to live on our wages (Jen’s parents send over some money each month as well, which is a fantastic lifesaver) as long as we keep an eye on finances. However there’s not much extra our wages are good for, anything extra like flights to Addis or trips around the country come out of our own pocket. Which is fair enough, we are volunteers after all.

It is strange how quickly you adjust to local prices, I was recently appalled at how much I was spending on books on Amazon. Suddenly five pounds is a huge amount of money. I will probably have a heart attack when I start buying rounds again in England.

January 22nd, 2009 | Tags: Ethiopia, money, VSO, work | Category: Ethiopia | Leave a comment

Christmas Ethiopian Style

I was very concerned about Christmas this year. It’s my favourite ever time of year and it just wasn’t feeling right over here in the sunshine. It’s also typical that the one year I am not in England for Christmas it actually decides to snow……..gutted. Anyway, Bren and I bought some decorations from the market here and my parents sent over some twinkle lights so I did eventually start feeling rather festive!

On Christmas Eve, Bren and I did some last minute shopping before we were to head up to Haramaya to stay with Jan and Ian. Before we set off we headed to the post office to check whether any of our parcels had arrived. Well, Christmas definitely came a day early for us as we had NINE parcels waiting for us in the post. We excitedly opened them when we got home and found goodies ranging from chocolate and crisps to a whole parcel full of a variety of cheeses (Bren was like a kid in a sweet shop). There was also a number of wrapped presents that we saved to open on Christmas day. Yes, Christmas was definitely here now and I even got Brendan feeling a little bit of the festive spirit!
At 3pm we plodded on to Haromaya with two huge rucksacks full of presents. Once there I got my festive fancy dress on (reindeer ears, flashing angle earrings and flashing Christmas tree broach courtesy of mum and dad) and headed to Jan and Ian’s house for a pre- Christmas dinner of Vegetarian lasagne washed down with lots of wine and beer- fantastic!

After dinner we played a little game of ‘Sinta Klauss’. We each had to buy three presents totalling no more than 15 birr each (Around £1). Brendan was extremely inventive when it came to one of his presents as he decided to sellotape Vaseline to a huge rock from our garden and wrap it all up nicely in a cardboard box! This naturally became the present everybody didn’t want! Other presents from us included incense, a twix, a football and party hats.
We managed to get rid of all our rubbish and left laden with brand spanking new gifts to take home with us. Bren and I got some fab ‘African’ ornaments for the house, a box of ‘Magicarroni Cheese’ and an ‘I love Ethiopia’ scarf. All in all Christmas Eve was a great night enjoyed by all.
At 6.15 on Christmas morning I woke up feeling just as excited about the day ahead as when I was 5 years old- i’m still a kid at heart! My mission for the future is to attempt to get Bren a tenth as excited as I feel about Christmas, however at the mo he is having none of it! We opened up all our lovely presents people had sent and debated whether or not to have some of the cheese and chocolate Brens family had sent over for our breakfast. We resisted…..just!
We headed up to Jan and Ians house to go on the ‘Christmas walk’. I wasn’t exactly dressed for a 2 hour walk (with my flip flops on) but I did it anyway. We walked the perimeter of the University taking in the fantastic views. I was actually thoroughly enjoying myself until a certain someone pointed out the funnel spider webs by our feet (I am terrified of creepy crawlies and to add to this I was wearing a dress and therefore proceeded to have visions of big spiders jumping out of the grass and biting me to death). From that moment on all I wanted to do was get back to the house and have a glass of wine to calm my nerves!

This is precisely what I did as soon as I got back to Jan and Ians. I cranked up the Christmas music (as you can probably imagine, Brendan was loving it!) and ate my entire body weight in pate and crackers (pate is one of the things i’m craving out here, so I was in heaven). At 2pm everyone had arrived and we sat down for Christmas dinner. For the non- veggies it was roast pork with apple sauce, glazed carrots and green beans, potatoes, stuffing, gravy and an American cheesy corn style dish. For the veggies (i.e Brendan) it was nut roast with all the trimmings. The dinner was absolutely amazing and we finished it all off with Jans home-made Christmas pud with rum sauce- fantastic!
After dinner, we handed out our secret santa presents and ate and drank some more before eventually sitting down to watch ‘love actually’- Brendan was overcome with Joy and excitement at the prospect of this. Well, he made it all the way through the film without a single moan (i’m thinking he must of been in a beer haze and therefore didn’t even realise the film was still on). Following the film we had pork and apple sauce sandwiches (nutroast butties for you know who) and proceeded to roll our way back to the apartment to sleep off the ridiculous amount of food and drink we had consumed.

Although Christmas 2008 was one to remember, it was never going to be quite the same as spending it with family back home in snowy old Manchester. Despite us having a Christmas we will never forget, we missed everyone big time and you were never far from our thoughts. xxxxxx

January 14th, 2009 | Category: Ethiopia | Comments (3)

Jen keeps telling me off for being pessimistic and negative in my blog posts, so after spending the last few sleepless nights hearing and hunting for a giant rat in our house I am going to write about all the things that are great here in Ethiopia. I apologise if this comes off as a list, but that’s exactly what it is.

First of all the weather is fantastic, it’s sunny every day here, but the pleasant sunny where you don’t have to be scared of the sun or avoid going out. I know people back in England have been stuck under five feet of snow and petrol has been freezing in tanks and whatever and that makes the glorious weather here even better!

Of course great weather is no good without great beer, and the beer here is awesome, ½ litre jugs cost about 30p (it was cheaper but the pound has lost a quarter of its value to the birr) and the glasses are kept ice cold in huge freezers in our local. You can’t beat ice cold beer on hot days, just watching the huge scenery roll by and trying to hunt for a cloud.

I can’t mention drinks though without talking about the juices here – mango, orange, pineapple, papaya, custard apple and rather strangely avocado are freshly made in huge glasses with lime on top for around the same price as a beer. They are mouth-wateringly good and refreshing.

Next up is the wildlife, although Harar is missing monkeys, the wildlife here is awesome, particularly the birds, huge eagles and vultures swooping about. Camels, goats and cows line the streets eating the grass. Hyenas charging around paths at night and lizards of all kinds sunbathing in the mornings (Chameleons are really good fun to watch). At some point we are going to try and visit the Elephant sanctuary, although they are apparently now very rare. Of course having the chickens is also great, Betty and Maude come charging up to us and are quite happy to sit around us when we have food out.

Although the local dishes are pretty bad the food overall here is pretty good and really cheap. Now we have settled in we have a pretty varied diet and regular food packages from back home add a little extra (you have no idea how deliriously happy a block of cheese makes me). Plus going to the markets and picking up veg and haggling is good fun. I am still eating tuna which makes me a very bad vegetarian though.

Finally I should mention work. Although it is really frustrating waiting around for things to happen or when things go bad for daft reasons I actually still like the job I am doing. The people at the college are really friendly and helpful, when things do happen you get a real buzz and I do feel like I am contributing, in a really small way, to the country itself.

The other expats and volunteers with us are also fantastic and supportive, there is usually something going on every weekend and people are so open here that meet-ups are always eventful. We are lucky to be surrounded by such awesome people.

So although it is really annoying when we find rat droppings on the towels, or cockroach eggs in the sugar, persistent beggars and people shouting at us in the street, the smell of burning rubbish, power and water cuts and poor services overall we are extremely happy here and enjoying almost every day. The people and the environment around us make it a fantastic place to live.

December 12th, 2008 | Tags: chickens, cockroaches, Harar, VSO, work | Category: Ethiopia, work | Comments (2)

A few weeks ago we did the tourist thing and went around Harar to see why it is considered an upcoming backpacking/tourist destination. A big group of us either from VSO (myself, Jen and Ben) and a few Americans from the university spent all day touring around and taking pictures (A few of which are predictably on FB).

Harar was a pretty important city for a long time and is widely thought of as being the fourth holiest city in Islam (I think there is a big drop off after Mecca and Jerusalem). This is because a lot of Christian killing was launched from it, a number of Islamic poets originated here and because there are also a ridiculous number of tiny mosques dotted about. This is set in a city where the people themselves are not generally overtly religious and Christian killing is now frowned on.

The city itself is in two parts, the old walled city known as the Jugol, which is where most of the Muslims live and the new city that is sprawled around the wall and predominantly inhabited by Christians. The Jugol itself is straight out of ‘Arabic picture postcards vol 1’ and is distinct from every other Ethiopian city. You could be forgiven for thinking you are in Yemen. It comes complete with narrow winding paths, hundreds of laden donkeys, crowded market squares, people screaming at each other, strange chanting coming from mosques and homicidal taxi drivers.

Tucked away down narrow paths lie museums, markets and other fantastic sights that pull in a fair number of tourists and makes the locals think anyone who is foreign is a walking cash dispenser. I have probably mentioned it before but most Ethiopians automatically assume that all foreigners are stinking rich and just waiting to be asked for money. You can usually put them off with a few words in Amharic but within the streets of Harar people can get a little more insistent. Even other VSO’s who come to visit comment on the increased hassle within Harar.

Although we have been here for a few months and know our way around Harar and the Jugol we have had to treat some areas of the walled city carefully because it is very easy to get lost without a guide. So some of the places we visited were new to us as well. Highlights include the meat market watching huge eagles and vultures scavenge scraps, the brewery and views from the Rimbaud house.

However the big event was clearly feeding the hyenas in the evening! There are a family of nutters who live just outside the city and have adopted a pack of wild hyenas to the point that they all have names and are really fat from all the free meat. Having them come up to you and grab chunks of meat from your mouth is awesome (awful breath though). It does look like a scene out of ‘When animals attack’, and you are just waiting for a voiceover saying ‘these tourists thought feeding wild hyenas was a good idea, little do they know that these hyenas want more than scraps…’. I am looking forward to doing it again when friends and family come to visit; I might even get a decent picture of Jen feeding them second time around.

There is a real buzz to Harar and you feel like you are living somewhere special, from visiting other Ethiopian towns and cities we feel lucky to have hit such a fantastic place, now all I have to do is find some decent cheese. 

December 5th, 2008 | Tags: animals, Ethiopia, Harar, VSO | Category: Ethiopia, VSO | Leave a comment

We decided we needed a pet to liven up the house a little and welcome us when we got home. Dogs and cats where out of the question and cockroaches just don’t seem as much fun as they did in the UK.

The obvious answer was to get chickens, and I think it was a good choice because they are awesome. We have five of them and they live in a coop I built under the front door balcony. Pictures are up on facebook.

Getting the chickens proved to be a bit of an adventure and eye opener. Animals are treated appallingly here and it can be difficult to deal with. Donkeys and camels are over laden, goats left to wander the street and scavenge, chickens thrown about by their legs, dogs and cats left to starve and hunt for themselves and all of them are quite frequently run over by speeding cars.

We really didn’t want to get chickens from the market, as they were probably deeply disturbed and nasty animals. Plus local chickens lay tiny eggs that I just don’t trust after my close encounter with a chicken fetus a few weeks ago.

That meant getting European chickens from the university at Haromaya which have been mucked about with to lay mammoth eggs all the time and are less likely to claw us to death. So we travelled over to the university, got really freaked out by a crying goat on the bus on the way (we couldn’t decide if it was a baby or the goat!) and had the best meal in ages at Jan and Ian’s place who are two fantastic VSO’s based at the university.

The university itself was an agricultural centre and has a huge farm attached. They even have Friesian cows and pigs (Ethiopians do not eat pigs as the church here has a heavy Jewish influence). The products are sold locally and it’s the only time we can get milk.

It turned out that these chickens are not much better treated than market ones and live in battery conditions, but at least the workers are not actively malicious unlike some people we have seen here. After seeing the chicken sheds you feel like you are rescuing them though. The total cost of five chickens and 2 weeks of food cost £2.50!

The chickens did not like being put in the cardboard box and they certainly did not like the bus journey home. I did feel a little awful for subjecting them to that. They are much happier now and love running around the garden eating ants and concrete. They even roost themselves at night which saves us running around after them. Chickens are surprisingly quite nippy.

We have named them Betty, Doris, Mavis, Hilda and Maude and each one has a slightly different personality, Betty appears to run the roost and Hilda tends to get picked on, Maude spends most of the time cleaning herself and Doris loves to sing. They are all completely daft and have repeatedly had me in hysterics being so stupid together.

Chickens are pretty good fun and give us eggs, they don’t replace a rabbit though.

November 17th, 2008 | Tags: animals, chickens, cockroaches | Category: Ethiopia | Comments (2)

This week’s post is a little brief as trying to get anything written on a PC is a nightmare. It was actually Jen’s turn to post, however she has been ill for the last few days and will post another time.

The reason for the lack of contact is that power cuts have become a regular occurance and the college library has not had a continuous connection for nearly a week. Plus in our house the circuit breaker has started tripping off all the time. So even when we do have power it keeps cutting out, I get the impression that its a bad breaker since it cuts out randomly after being flicked on, I should probably ask my father. 

Other than power problems when it comes to living here it seems I have most of the right genes and Jen most of the wrong ones. She tends to get bitten a lot by everything. Upset stomachs with every other meal and wakes up to the slightest noise.

I have managed to start drinking the local water whilst Jen appears to get ill even from bottled water. I’m surprised she is still here.

It is true to say that hygiene standards here are considerably less than those in the UK, and that foreigners do get ill quite regularly. Even at home you very quickly become desensitised to cockroaches, flies and other bugs running around and potentially getting on your food. It would be impractical if not impossible for us to cover all our food all the time.

Eating out at restaurants can also be hit and miss. The quality of meat here is very poor, and probably one of the reasons Jen is more prone to illness. You can never be sure if things are cooked properly. One of the local delicacies here is raw meat either minced or in strips. The locals all eat de-worming tablets regularly and tend not to go for over cooked food.   

I will probably talk much more about the food later in the year. As it stands we both try to avoid the local food when eating out (don’t tell the culture police) so my knowledge of dishes here is a little short. Plus most of them try to hide meat within the dish somewhere. Although Friday is supposed to be a fasting day, so they do understand when I ask for no meat.

Later on I will post about our new pets which are awesome. I just want to get this published before the power drops again.

November 11th, 2008 | Tags: chickens, food, illness, work | Category: Ethiopia | Comments (2)

The reason I am in Ethiopia is to help the development of the country in whatever small way I can. I thought it was about time I described my job and what I am doing here, I doubt anyone really knows anything about what I do since up until very recently I didn’t either. Plus it also corresponds to a batch of pictures we have just put on facebook showing where I work and a few of the people I work with.

My actual job title is Cluster In-service Trainer, and it basically means I am improving the relationships between schools (clustering them) and also helping to improve the skills of the teachers already in position (the in-service part).

Teaching in Ethiopia until very recently was very didactic, the teacher talked and the students listened and made notes. There was very little pupil interaction with the lessons and as a result the education system did not reach everyone, or even most.

Over the last few years the Ethiopian government has invested significant amounts of the budget into education, resulting in a massive expansion and now the majority of children have a basic education. Also one of the Millennial Development Goals is to have every child in primary education by 2015 and so there is international support for this expansion with funding from various sources. Such huge growth has fuelled a huge demand for teachers and that means that a significant number of these teachers have no interest in the job.

Students in Ethiopia who get though secondary school have basically three choices; the ones with high grades can go to university, the ones with low grades go to technical schools and all the rest go to teacher education college. Not that you have to go to teacher college to be a teacher, those that teach the first few grades only need to have been to secondary school!

Teacher education college in Ethiopia is nothing at all like PGCE’s or GTP’s back home. Firstly because the students are younger, and secondly because very little to none of the time they spend in the college is learning how to be a teacher. Instead they learn more about the subject of their choice for three years. So when a newly appointed teacher walks into a classroom it may well be their first time in front of a class.

These factors, plus the usual ones of low pay, low social standing and poor conditions makes teaching a ‘fall into’ job, rather than a ‘want to become’ one.

So taking all this into account it’s my role to improve the teaching skills and train teachers on the use of active learning, special education needs, lesson planning, action research, CPD, continuous assessment and all the other education techniques that have supposedly improved other education systems around the world.

So as well as helping teachers get better at their jobs I also improve the communication between schools and the sharing of resources and ideas. Being a poorer country the schools here are really basic. So the teacher training has to take into account the scarcity of supplies and materials, if schools share their resources, then they have a bigger pool to choose from (in theory).

That means I also have to work closely with the Education bureau and the local government offices not only to foster these bonds, but to provide money to run training courses. I also have to operate a ‘model classroom’ which showcases the techniques talked about above and gives me a place to run workshops. Jen has taken this particular job though, since she is much more resource creative than I am.

Finally I am also supposed to link my work to the various development challenges countries like Ethiopia face, such as HIV and AIDS, gender equality, health, advocacy and disability awareness.

Having to do all these things within a year or so would make me a very busy person, however the job role will continue after me, and VSO does not expect me to fulfil all these objectives (although I am sure they would like me to make some progress). Plus things in Ethiopia happen slowly. I am actually less busy than I would like at the moment. Hence why am I writing this post at work, waiting for some figures from the education bureau to come in.

As far as the working environment goes, I have my own office and classroom (the model classroom), work starts at eight and finishes at five, with a two hour lunch break. Except on Fridays when it’s a 3 hour break. The people I work with are friendly and helpful (when they are around) and once I have a feel for the place I should get loads done.

Other than work this weekend we went to Dire Dawa for another night out, which in Dire means staying out all night, old habits die hard. I learnt that cracking eggs with half formed chicks inside is absolutely revolting, male goats have huge testicles and that Jen is hopeless at most domestic tasks.

October 29th, 2008 | Tags: Ethiopia, volunteering, VSO, work | Category: Ethiopia, VSO, work | Leave a comment