I don't know if it's accurate to say I'm adapting to life in Adwa. I think that really adapting takes a long time. But I am beginning to feel like this is my life, that my old life has been replaced at least for now, by this one. In very many ways, it's a nice life, not too different from the one back home. It underlines the fact that if you have money, Ethiopia is a nice place to live. And in Adwa Town, a town of about 60 000 people, there are most basic amenities - electricity (granted, it's out today, so this letter will end when my laptop battery runs out), running water, fairly modern buildings, supermarkets (okay, you would need about 40 "supermarkets" to fill one Loblaws, but my basic needs are met). My home, provided by the Teacher Training College is very nice and ridiculously big. I have running water, a hot water heater for the shower, a gas stove, a mini fridge, nice curtains, etc. My office at the TTC is similarly well-appointed, and I was thinking the other day that it would be easy to forget where I am.

Adwa is in Tigray Region, and is the home town of Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. The President and many other government members also come from Tigray Region. So, it's probably not surprising that Tigray has received considerable amounts of government aid in recent years, leading to greater investment, construction projects, road-building, new schools, etc. I haven't been anywhere other than Addis yet, but from what I've heard, the standard of living here is likely a little higher than it is elsewhere.

This is not to say that life is easy in Adwa. It's easy for me, and for the little middle class. But there's still a large proportion of the population even in Adwa Town who are struggling. I would guess that most children's growth is stunted to some degree. There is HIV/AIDS. Some of the schools are in very bad shape construction wise. Most people walk everywhere they go.

The majority of the population of Ethiopia (85%) lives in the rural areas. I got a taste of this last week when we visited two of the over 50 schools that we are meant to service that are in rural areas. Even in Tigray, rural means poor. The schools in the rural areas are very hard to reach. The roads are not roads. Most children need to walk several hours to get to school, and often don't go to school because they're needed to help on the farm. The children are often small, although when I visited a Grade 3 class I was surprised by how big the children were, until I realized that most of them were well into the double digits, as a result of starting school late, and repeated failures.

My computer's beeping and wants to be recharged.

I went for a walk and came back to find that the power was back on. It's very hard, with my easy life, to get enough exercise. I live less than five minutes walk from the College, so I don't get exercise walking to work. I'm not sure if I'll ever feel comfortable going running here, with the dogs and everyone staring at me anyway. And of course, there's no gym or anything of the sort. So I'm trying to go for a walk everyday. Sometimes it's hard to make myself go out, knowing that I'm going to be faced with calls of "Ferenji", "Money, Money" and considerable broken English. But at least on my own street, this seems to be getting a bit better as the people get used to seeing me.

What I had wanted to say is that there are a lot of very good things about Ethiopia, some of which are unique and others of which are common to many developing countries. Fresh, unprocessed food; a slower pace of life; an active life; friendliness and neighbourliness and the security they bring so that it's safe for children to play in the street; children being considered responsible contributing members of the family; coffee ceremony; clean air; low traffic; pink mountains; fields of teff; religious harmony among Muslims and Orthodox Christians; almost no TV; everyday exercise; fasting days when everything is vegetarian.

How do you raise the standard of living and at the same time preserve the good qualities of Ethiopian life? I've been thinking, for example, of the roads to the rural areas. If they were improved and the rural areas opened up, which I know would take years, what will be the impact on traffic, air quality, farming, HIV/AIDS transmission rates, the slow pace of life? Would the faults of our Western lifestyle be replicated here? Or what is the ultimate impact of improvements to the education system, or of increasing access to electricity and communication technologies?

But more than 15% of children die before they reach their fifth birthday. Do the costs of poverty outweigh any costs of development? Can development happen without all its negative consequences?