I'm sorry I haven't been keeping this blog up to date the past few weeks.  Some of the time I've been away from easy internet access, the cluster team has spent several days away visiting rural schools, and last week I was in Addis and Sodere for VSO's Annual Volunteer Conference.  But apart from that, I'm afraid I've been experiencing some writer's block, so tonight I'm exercising a little discipline and settling down to write a short update before I go to bed.

The trouble is that my workdays are really very routine, and although I like and get along well with my colleagues, it's not really the done thing for women to go out much at night.  Not being one to do what's not done, I spend most of my evenings alone at home with very little social life (which isn't that much of a change).

The other trouble is that those things that might be of interest to you, and which weigh most heavily on me, I haven't quite figured out how to write about in a way that accurately reflects the reality.

Corporal punishment (if you can even call it that, as the term implies to me a greater degree of organization and forethought than that which often seems to exist in the treatment I'm observing) is very common in Ethiopia, at home and school. I find it difficult sometimes to interact with people in a friendly way after seeing them treat their children in a way that would certainly have merited a call to CAS at home.  It's difficult to always give advice about alternative methods of discipline, especially as a childless person from Canada, the country where all children are well-fed, well-dressed and infinitely well-behaved.

A sick little girl I didn't know how to help.  The constant waste of money and time. Sexual exploitation of women. These are the things that are touching me right now, and that I haven't quite figured out how to write about, let alone deal with.

The situation with Somalia seems relatively stable at the moment, at least from where I am in northern Ethiopia.  The changes for me are that instead of being alone in the computer room at the college, it's full of people checking the latest news on the internet, and the conversation of my colleagues in the car to Werieleke this morning was atypically political.

Christmas in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is not for another two weeks. I celebrated ferenji (foreign) Christmas on Monday by inviting some of my colleagues over to my house for lunch cooked by me and mostly my maid (I have a maid who comes three mornings a week mostly to do laundry, but it was very convenient to have her help cooking Christmas dinner).  It was vegetarian Ethiopian food.  Of course I'm vegetarian but also it is the tradition of many Orthodox Christians here to "fast" for the thirty five days leading up to Christmas, and the fifty days leading up to Easter, and every Wednesday and Friday as well.  "Fasting" generally means eating a vegan diet - no meat or animal products, although some people also don't eat in the mornings.  Anyway, it was very nice, the food was good and I managed to download some Christmas music from the internet.  As Ethiopia is home to a particular species of evergreen tree, I was able to decorate my home in a surprisingly homey, seasonal way.

I also had the help of my wonderful colleagues Abebe and Meresa who spent hours making Christmas decorations for my house.

The cluster team has decided to dedicate one to three days a week to visiting schools (in part because this is simply good practice, and in part because with our recent funding squeeze our trainings are postponed and we need to work with the teachers in some way).  So we went to Werieleke today, and I'm tired but actually quite uplifted as most of the teachers we saw were the best we've seen so far, extremely motivated and hardworking, and effectively using many strategies to encourage active learning and real group work.  They've taken things they've learned
from the workshop and added them to their existing skills. It was quite exciting to see, and a great start as we now have good teachers to videotape and send other teachers to observe.

I'll end on that happy note.  Tomorrow night I'll try to battle the writer's block and fight the urge to play Freecell or curl up with Jane Austen's Emma (which I picked up from VSO's library after a lengthy deprivation of anything literary) and instead write some more, as there is more to write.