Rebecca in Ethiopia

2008-07-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

This is probably the final blog post that I will write. I am back in Toronto after two years in Ethiopia.

I left Adwa about two weeks ago, and have been travelling in southern Ethiopia - the South Omo Valley - where life is very different from the developing modernity of the north. There are a number of peoples living in very traditional ways in the south. There's much more chronic poverty, and people are much more vulnerable to the drought and price rises. I think my pictures show this.

I spent a couple of days in London on the way back, and am now in Toronto. I'm still trying to figure out how to feel about being in such an opulently consumerist society.

2008-06-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

I was at an opening ceremony last weekend at Maiweyni School for the toilet VSO has funded. All the families in the area were there: children, mothers and fathers. When we went to look at the toilet, the men came first and crowded into the toilet building, while the woreda head did his speech. Then we filed out and into a classroom, while the women trailing behind us went in to look at the toilet. In the classroom, the men and I were treated to more speeches and explanations of teaching aids. Just before two children were about to present a dialogue, I whispered to one of the woreda heads that perhaps we could invite the women in to see the dialogue… and it was done. Someone went out, told the women to come in, the men shifted over, and there was space enough for everyone. I don’t know whether it’s more or less disturbing that there was no reason for excluding the women. They were simply an afterthought, not important enough to be included. Women and men are often separate, and more so in the rural areas than in the town. While gender is an issue, class is very much an issue too. As women and men become more educated they don’t put up with this. Or at least not quite as much. My friend Mehari – a man – did a full coffee ceremony for me the other day, and had to withstand a lot of ridicule from both male and female friends for doing so. A lot of men wouldn’t do it at all, and although some men in the town have some token involvement with their children, there are still a lot of lines that people won’t cross. Men DO NOT make injera is a big line that I’ve never yet seen crossed. And the idea of hiring a man to teach in the Kindergarten – not popular!

It’s hard to believe that I’ll be leaving my life here in Adwa in 21 days. There’s still so much to do: meet with Cluster committee and supervisors to finish developing the annual plan for next year (I won’t be here!); visit the schools that have constructed toilets with VSO funding; hire new assistants for the Inclusive Kindergarten (all the current staff is staying on, but since we’re adding a class to KG1 and KG2, we’re adding staff) and register children; write reports for everything under the sun; sort out two years of accumulated stuff in my office and my house, and pack!

There have been regular power failures across Ethiopia 2 to 3 days a week for the past several months, which makes it a bit hard to get things done. This is the result of drought causing low water levels so that insufficient hydroelectricity can be produced. So power outages are rotated across the country so that every town (or place that has electricity) has it for a few days a week. This is quite difficult for businesses that rely on electricity, such as the nearby textile factory. It’s also difficult for small cafes and restaurants and internet providers. In Addis some cafes are using generators, which means added costs. And the replacement of a carbon neutral energy source with a carbon-spewing one! Others have no choice but to lose business. Here, the generator option is fortunately less available.

The power outages are just part of the bigger drought problem (although we have had some rain recently, but not enough), and the resulting price increases across the country. Teff, the staple grain in most of Ethiopia, has almost tripled in price in the past year. This means that even in favoured Tigray, we’re seeing more women and children begging in Adwa, and fragile looking children in the rural areas. There are some foods, like flour, that you can’t buy at all. But in southern parts of Ethiopia, the situation is more severe.

See Ethiopians drink from cup of sorrow

Of course, the rapid increase in food prices is top of mind when I can see the impacts of it in front of me here. But it is also all over the internet and the media. As I get ready to go back to Toronto, one of the many things I wonder about is what it will be like to be aware of problems without being directly in them (at least to the limited extent that I am now), and how I’ll be able to make a contribution to this problem. The top priority in my mind is getting countries on board to seriously address climate change. It’s mind boggling to me why this is so difficult, especially when it’s increasingly apparent that petroleum based fuel is not going to be around forever.

2008-05-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

Once again, money is coming up as an issue here. A lot of volunteers find our salary of about 1600 Birr a month insufficient. I sympathize, but I can’t help feeling a bit judgmental too. We are volunteers after all, not UN staff. And I am here as much because I know I need to have less as because I know others need to have more. I do crave certain things – decent chocolate, decent toilets, but overall I find it pretty easy to manage here on the salary I get. To some extent I think I can be tolerant to a fault. But this is an opportunity to live a simpler lifestyle, and one would reasonably be expected to embrace it.

Today is May 1, a meaningless holiday here but still a day off work, which works well as it is also the feast day for Georgis church where I live. So people have been pouring into this part of town all day and filling the houses with music, food and suaw (homemade alcohol).

There are students from Axum University staying at the college this week while they do practicums at the high school. Unlike at teachers’ colleges, students at universities come from across the country, and so usually speak Amharic or other languages rather than Tigrigna. I was reminded of how insular Tigray (and especially Adwa) is when I was at a café yesterday. One of the Amharic-speaking students needed a friend to translate as he tried to communicate with the waitress about what juice was available. Iit was a conversation I could have handled, and I suspect the need for the translator was more about the student’s need to keep a line between Amhara and Tigray than about any real language gap.

2008-04-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting article today about the Cuban fuel embargo period, during which food and fuel shortages led to sustained weight loss and improved health in Cuba. As much as we’re willing to talk about simplicity and say “less is more” and “bigger isn’t always better”, when it comes down to it, mainstream western society (and not just western society) is driven by some idea of progress as always growing in size and wealth, having more, not just having better or being better. It seems ironic that it’s so difficult to embrace the health and lifestyle and environmental benefits of having less. What I’m afraid of is that if we don’t embrace having less, we’ll be forced into it, in fact many people already are. But this only affects those who already have too little, those who are at risk of starvation, the people living on the edge in Niger or Malawi or parts of Ethiopia, not those in North America who really do need to lose fifty pounds and gain some muscle in their legs.

Unfortunately, I read Oryx and Crake not long ago (and hated it all the way through, although possibly being at a refugee camp at the time didn’t help). With the constant talk of food shortages and economic crises and the growing impact of climate change, I can’t get Margaret Atwood’s image of the future out of my mind.

It seems so simple: those in the west, in North America which is using far more than its share, need to use less. Less meat, less junk food, less junk, less fuel, better life. Then we need to invest in technologies that will allow us to keep what we need: solar capture, hybrid cars, sustainable agriculture, low-flow showers, whatever. And we need to help developing countries access these technologies too. It’s not rocket science, and any economic or environmental think tank can tell you basically how to do it. So why the **** aren’t we doing it?

2008-04-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve had a lot of conversations with people lately about how desperately poor Ethiopia is – or at least is perceived to be. The roads are awful, especially in Tigray region. Electricity, water and phone infrastructure are inconsistent. And as one friend noted, there’s little evidence of development: few international companies or resource extraction industries are based in Ethiopia. My argument is that these things – which are most obvious to us from the west – have little impact on actual quality of life for the majority of Ethiopians, which has improved dramatically in the past twenty years. Is Ethiopia as poor as we think?

2008-04-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

There is electricity tonight, for a change. It’s taken me a while to find out the reason for the frequent power outages. There is a schedule, although I don't know what that schedule is, communication being what it is here. It would seem the unseasonal dryness in Ethiopia this year means there is not enough water to power the hydroelectric dams that provide electricity for most of the country. So we’re having rolling blackouts. I am so used to having power, even here. Until now we have usually had not more than a few hours without power each week. It’s frustrating going into work with a load of computer work and photocopying to do and having no power for the whole day, and it usually doesn’t come back on till about ten o’clock at night. My favourite beeswax candle is now down to nothing. But it certainly does make me aware of how much I take electricity for granted, as my colleagues do too. In some ways it’s strange, because it was only a few years ago that there was no electricity here at all. At the college lounge, as at most cafes in town, we now have a fancy coffee machine. And although last year (before coffee machine – BCM!) coffee was made using the traditional method. Now this is verboten, and it seems to be asking a lot to simply boil water for tea when the power is out. I’m just as bad, and I do appreciate it when power failures land on our workshop days. But if I happen to be in the office, I’ll stare wistfully at the computer and flick the light switch regularly, even though I know there’s no way that power’s coming back on before nine at night. I might take the opportunity to go visit a school, or I might go for a walk after work, but come darkness, I’ll be sitting in my house counting the minutes till the power comes back on.

I will be returning in a couple of months to one of the richest countries in the world. Unfortunately, much of her wealth is dependent on huge investment in economically and environmentally unsustainable industry. Perhaps it is because I am working in a country that is just at the beginning of its modern development that I am particularly conscious of sustainability. Or because of the overwhelming awareness of climate change and the population and food pressures that it exacerbates. I am increasingly worried about the need in all countries for development that is sustainable. Development is ultimately only economically and socially sustainable if it is environmentally sound. So as I return to Canada, I wonder about how truly developed we are, and how we might shift our development onto another path that might bring greater sustainability and security.

2008-03-16T16:13:00.000-07:00

The price surge has hit Ethiopia. The price of a quintal (100 pounds) of flour has gone from 450 to 760 Birr, sugar from 600 to 800 Birr, and teff (for injera) from 450 to as high as 700 Birr within the space of a couple of weeks. Bread has doubled from 25 or 30 centimes to 50 or 55 centimes. Some of my colleagues are worried, but they generally make enough that they can cope. For the majority of people in Adwa, already struggling to get by on 200 Birr or less each month, the difference is more painful. In the past month or so I've seen more children at schools, and on my road, who look thin and listless.

I know many people don’t agree, but I am terrified by the worldwide price increases. We’ve been living on borrowed time for too long and finally the population and environmental pressures imposed by rich and poor countries have reached the tipping point. But far too little is being done. I’m going to sleep with apocalyptic visions of rioting and hunger across the world, and praying that I’m being paranoid. Certainly there’s a need for a change in attitude towards what we eat and how we produce it, in order to mitigate the impact of climate change and water scarcity, and this needs to happen across the so-called developed world as well as in the developing world! And we’ve got to stop dedicating resources to this insane biofuel project!

Reusable Menstrual Pads

I have not done very much in my work in Ethiopia that extends environmental issues into the classroom, other than not promoting the use of the college’s laminator. Most of my work has been focused on teaching strategies and methods. However, I have been coordinating a large VSO-funded project constructing toilets and setting up girls’ rooms at selected schools in our cluster programme. Often adolescent girls do not come to school when they are menstruating, in part because menstruation is seen as something shameful and because they don’t actually have any menstrual pads. The idea of the girls’ room is that this is a place where menstrual pads can be provided, and where girls can change their menstrual pad. It can also serve as a meeting place for a girls’ club, and for the dissemination of information that is important to girls – nutrition, anti-early marriage, birth control, career advice, etc.

Where this has been done in other places, the bulk of the money has been spent on disposable menstrual pads. I wasn’t keen on this, so I sucked in my embarrassment and showed my male colleagues my washable menstrual pads. I asked my friendly Almeda textile factory manager for a donation of scrap cotton material. And my colleague Abebe went wild making sample menstrual pads.

We had our information session yesterday for the schools that are receiving funds for girls’ rooms, and it was quite a success. The directors (mostly men) and the girls’ club coordinators (women) were keen and had a lot of good ideas on all the issues we raised – for activities and topics for girls’ clubs, for including boys in gender equality education, for HIV and AIDS education – and seemed to buy into the reusable menstrual pad idea. Each school made a sample menstrual pad to take away with them – and as often as not it was the man who was cutting and sewing – and took a load of donated materials away with them. I was afraid reusable menstrual pads would be seen as a step backwards - away from modern packaged pads, rather than forward - but the teachers seemed to embrace both the environmental and financial benefits of reusable pads. We’ve also had numerous requests from college staff, especially the cleaning women and others whose salaries are very low, for instructions and sharing of material, so we’ll do a session with them soon. From my initial skeptical feelings about the girls’ room idea, I ended up being quite pleased with the project. It still has to be implemented at the schools, though, so we’ll see what happens.

2008-02-19T17:43:00.000-08:00

Back in Adwa. Today is a holiday (TPLF day of all things!) so in addition to catching up on workshop planning, I also have the time to reflect on, complain about, puzzle over and feel overwhelmed about my role in development here. I’m finding myself more and more asking what is development, what is poverty, what is progress and where do we, as a global society, really want to go?

Hunger and starvation are problems. But living a rural lifestyle, in relatively good health, using a donkey to cart your produce to market along dirt roads: is there anything wrong with that? If food security is in place, as it is in much of Tigray, then do we really need all the other trappings (did you notice the root trap?) of modernity and so-called progress? I’m asking because I don’t know. Should developing countries strive to the level of development of Canada? If my answer is no, it’s not just because I’m not sure it’s environmentally sustainable or even possible. It's also because I’m not sure it’s a better life for people. Or at least whether many parts of it are a better life: more processed food, big office buildings, longer work days, cars, paper, an economic system that’s all about production of stuff with little focus on peoples’ real needs in terms of the environment, health and social well-being. What’s so great about all that?

Ethiopia, even with its pro-poor policy and areas where people are relatively food secure, still has a way to go – many peoples’ lives are still not great – in terms of

- equality of women and men

- access to an education system that promotes thinking and supports all children, not just the brightest

- improved health and health care

- clean water and sanitation.

How can these needs be met in Ethiopia and other developing countries, while still maintaining and strengthening aspects of life here that are important? Already you can find cheaply made junk from other countries in many shops in isolated Tigray, and the Coca Cola invasion is certainly underway. Peoples’ ways and attitudes are changing too. Many people who would not have thought twice about walking 30 kilometres from one town to another will now wait for a line taxi to take them one kilometre down the road. Teachers in towns use lack of materials as an excuse for poor teaching. Reusable bottles and boxes are often thrown out as garbage. Many people have access to television, if not in their homes then in shops and bars. They can see the way of life in Addis Ababa and the West, and they want it.

In developed and developing countries, we’re blindly following a path just because it’s there, with little thought to where it leads or what alternative paths there might be.

I’ve probably written similar things before, and have come to no conclusions. But this problem is huge. As I approach the end of my placement here, and begin to wonder about what I’ll do next, it’s a problem that is occupying my thoughts. I know I will go back to teaching in Toronto in the short term. But in the long term what do I want to do? How do I want to be involved in development or in improving the lives of people?

Anti-Corruption?

There is a strong movement to prevent corruption here. As a result accountability and record-keeping are huge issues. Unfortunately, there is now so much anxiety about providing receipts and paper that the original purpose is often forgotten. The process seems to me to be opened up to corruption even more. For example, the Cluster Unit pays for lunch for teachers at workshops, often provided by small restaurants in little villages. Often the restaurants don’t have proper receipts, or the restaurant-keeper doesn’t know how to write. So our solution to this, as at our workshop yesterday, is to find a shopkeeper or someone who does have receipts, ask them to give us a blank one and stamp Paid on it, and fill in the purchase and the amounts ourselves. This happens so often and is so little thought about that I think there must be books worth of blank stamped receipts floating around. Although I trust that my colleagues are writing the correct amounts, there is nothing at all preventing them from bumping it up a bit and putting the rest in their pocket.

2008-02-10T14:16:00.001-08:00

I’ve been travelling and hanging around in Addis Ababa for the past few weeks. The Cluster Unit and Kindergarten took an experience sharing trip down to Debre Birhan and Addis – to see the Cluster Unit and Special Needs departments in Debre Birhan and the school for Developmentally Delayed Children in Addis. It was a really useful trip. As I’m writing I’m thinking of all the ways it reflects the problem of isolation in Adwa.

For the teachers – okay, me too - we saw materials and strategies in Debre Birhan, courtesy of the VSO volunteer/Special Needs Advisor there that I think in their very concreteness helped to answer the how of teaching children with Special Needs, especially the Deaf and developmentally delayed children. I think I have given them a lot of good ideas and we really have done very well in the Kindergarten. A lot of what Kat taught us in Debre Birhan extended these ideas a little further. We also had a chance to talk with some Special Needs teachers at one of the schools in Debre Birhan, although there were no classes to observe because of a directors’ meeting. I was a bit skeptical of how much useful discussion would come out of that, not having any concrete basis of a lesson observation to get us started, but as it turned out, the discussion was quite animated (in Amharic, so I only got a rough translation). I think both groups of teachers were grateful for the opportunity to talk with others who had some understanding about their experiences. At the Mekaneyesus School for Developmentally Delayed Children in Addis Ababa we all observed a class for about an hour and a half, and the teachers were blown away by the different way of teaching there – basically the Montessori approach.

I think the teachers benefit so much from seeing different ways of doing things – even if they don’t adopt all of these ideas (in fact, I don’t think they should adopt all of these ideas). But as they see other ways of doing things, I think this helps them to develop as reflective practitioners: thinking about what the children need, what they do as teachers, why they do it, and planning with greater intentionality. This is part of the problem of isolation, of never really seeing anything different - it makes it so hard to move forward. So at least this is my hope, that we won’t throw away the baby with the bathwater, or wholeheartedly embrace something new without really thinking about why. The teachers will just have a slightly broader basis from which to question and think about what they do, and may slowly bring in new approaches where they fit the need. At any rate, I think Freweyni understood this, but I didn’t have much chance to talk with her about it.

Although the trip was undoubtedly very useful, it was not altogether pleasant: a two day journey from Adwa to Debre Birhan on our infamous mountain roads (things are improving, there are paved roads for about half the distance). Two of the teachers were very carsick for most of the way (most Ethiopians aren’t used to car travel), and none of us were particularly comfortable. I found myself getting easily, and perhaps unreasonably, irritated with certain tendencies of my colleagues – like insisting on bypassing nice well-appointed restaurants (when available, in places like Mekelle and Addis) for tiny cheap little holes in walls. With a bit of distance, these things don’t seem so crazy, but at the time, I was certainly frustrated.

We planned our trip to coincide with the school exams and holidays in Tigray, which last two weeks, so I scheduled my holiday at the end of the trip, as I’ve not taken many holidays. I’m starting to be aware of the end of my placement bearing down on me, and there are still some places I want to visit in Ethiopia. When the experience-sharing trip was over, I stayed in Addis and made my way from there to Dire Dawa and Harar, two cities in the east of the country. There is an airport in Dire Dawa, but to save money, I took the bus – it’s almost a full-day bus ride, but the roads are paved all the way, which makes a big difference. Dire Dawa is the second biggest city in Ethiopia – with a population of about 250 000, but surprisingly cosmopolitan. A lot of different cultural groups live there – Oromos and Amharas, Afars and Somalis. Walking past a high school at letting out time, I watched the girls coming out in their white blouses and green skirts. I wasn’t surprised to see the Muslim girls wearing long skirts to their ankles, but I was surprised that the other girls were wearing skirts reaching no further than their knees. In Addis, many women dress in a very modern way. In Adwa and other parts of the country I’ve seen women wearing trousers and the odd woman wearing a shortish skirt, but it’s still pretty rare, and the standard outfit of even the teenage girls at the college is an ankle-length skirt, whether Muslim, Orthodox or anything else.

I met up with Clare, the volunteer in Harar at whose house I would stay, at another volunteer’s house at Haremaya University. This was a bit of a treat, as they have lucked out with an American-built house well-stocked with just about every cooking utensil you could ask for, and of course, an oven! The evening was spent making chocolate cake, macaroons, pork (I didn’t eat that) and altogether enjoying the luxury of delicious and different food, and good company.

Harar is famed as the walled Muslim city. It is a beautiful city, although I think the descriptions of it in guidebooks and the like tend to gloss over the fact that it’s very much a poor developing country city, and a lot of people go there expecting it to be like a polished old European or even Asian city, and it’s not quite all that. But it is beautiful and a bit different from the northern cities and towns. Probably the people, from the outside at least, are the most different: the women with their colourful headscarves, and the Oromo men with their skirts. Like all big cities, there’s more poverty and desperation, more people living on the street and more severely disabled people begging. In Harar and Dire Dawa to a lesser extent, there is a lot of chat-chewing (imagine if every person in Toronto smoked marijuana on a daily basis…) Some people are addicted to it, and others perhaps do it more socially. But there were a lot of men sleeping on the street during the day, which is not something I’ve seen so much of in other places.

I came back to Addis on Tuesday for the meeting of the VSO volunteer committee of which I’m a member, and then stuck around over the weekend for the Cluster meeting this Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. So between all this and the experience sharing trip I will have been away for 2 ½ weeks. When I get back we’ll be right into a workshop in Ahferom on Thursday and Friday. I’m bouncing between another volunteer’s house and a hotel (the hotel is paid for during the meeting time, so it’s nice to enjoy the luxury, but it’s also nice to be in someone’s home – I’m staying with another Canadian volunteer, and although we are different in many ways, we certainly do have some shared reference points, which is something to enjoy). I have really recognized how hard I was finding the isolation in Adwa. It seems to build up on you until you forget that there are other people, other places, other foods and other things - or at least don’t realize how important they are. I really needed to get away, but didn’t realize it till I got here.

There are quite a few VSO volunteers from Kenya in Ethiopia. Being in Addis, I have been able to find out a little about what’s been going on with some of them. There is still a lot of uncertainty and violence in Kenya. Certainly it’s difficult and dangerous to be there, but also for the volunteers here, there is a lot of worry about their families and homes. As a Canadian with a security net, it’s easy to think of my experience as the only one. But for Kenyans – volunteers from another developing country – there are difficulties that I wouldn’t really imagine. For most Kenyan volunteers, a short phone call home is not just expensive, but prohibitively so, making the anxiety that much greater.

I was getting my shoes shined the other day. It’s something I do more often here in Addis than in Adwa, feeling the need to dress a bit more smartly, and also because one can imagine that it’s a little less dusty and a shoeshine might actually last for more than a few hours. I was very aware of what a good job the shoeshine boy was doing. There is never a slapdash attitude, despite the repetitive work and the low income, but rather a lot of care put into each step of the process. I’m not romanticizing shoeshining, but I am impressed with the shoeshine boys’ commitment to doing their work well.

2008-01-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

At our workshop at Abba Hailemariam School on Tuesday, I was surprised to find a high school. The very large area of Geter Adwa – the rural area on all sides of Adwa town which is a separate woreda or administrative area – has had no high school of its own. Students have to travel up to 30 kilometres to attend high school in Adwa town – a long distance on rocky paths with no buses. At Abba Hailemariam School, a grade 1 to 4 school, a high school has been built. This year it is just Grade 9, next year it will add Grade 10. So high school is accessible for about 250 students a year living in the surrounding area.

I took the opportunity to observe a couple of classes. There is no plasma television so the teachers have to work for the whole period, and work they do! I observed two classes, Physics and Mathematics. The teachers, who know their subjects well, lectured for the whole period, with little thought that the students might benefit from doing some work themselves.

Both teachers worked out several exercises for the students’ benefit, but didn’t give them time to do anything on their own, and neither teacher assigned any homework. They were pretty receptive to my feedback though, although they still repeated the old line that there’s not enough time for the students to do more. I was impressed that all the high school teachers, who naturally had not been aware of our workshop, welcomed the invitation to join in.

I’ve been observing a lot of higher grade lessons lately. While the lack of student involvement is obvious, the high quality of most teachers’ lectures is also obvious. It does make me think back to my own education in high school and university, and really how similar the lecture format is. We certainly don’t have all the answers to education in the West either.

High school teachers have Bachelors degrees, while Grade 5 to 8 teachers generally have Grade 10 plus three years Diploma, and Grade 1 to 4 teachers have Grade 10 plus one year Certificate. I don’t know if this creates a bit of an intimidation factor, but it was apparent that something was going on with the high school teachers in our workshop. They were the only ones to offer ideas to the whole group. The normally keen grade 5 to 8 teachers wouldn’t say a word.

Phone Update

My phone is still stolen. But at least I was able, with remarkable efficiency, to get a new one with the same phone number. The bad news is that although I didn’t feel terribly upset at the time, it has made me a bit more wary. When a little boy touched my shoulder to offer to carry my bag home from the market today, I responded with a lot more paranoia than I would have liked.

2007-12-29T13:33:00.000-08:00

Adwa Police Station

The good news is that I’ve finally been to the Adwa police station and have something new to write about. The bad news is that my mobile phone was stolen. As reasons to go to the police station compare, this is certainly mild, but it does shatter my sense of Adwa as a place relatively free of crime… and the hassle of having to get a new phone and retrieve all those lost phone numbers is not something I’m looking forward to.

It seems that my phone was stolen just as I left the market this morning, with my carrots and cabbage and delicious seasonal baby tomatoes. I missed it when I stopped for tea on the long walk home, but I waited till I got home and emptied out my bag before I was convinced of the theft. I have to say that it is my own fault, because I’m sure I didn’t close my purse properly and my mobile and about 40 Birr were probably visible and tempting. I just hope my carelessness hasn’t created the opportunity for some child’s introduction to a life of crime.

I enlisted my friend Gebrehiwot to go to the police station with me, waiting until after lunch to be sure it would be open. Even so, it certainly wasn’t a very busy place and it was hard to find anyone there to talk to us – good thing there’s not much crime in Adwa. When we finally did, I answered a series of questions, including such curiosities as age, educational background and religion, and pressed the details of the phone and the theft on the police officer, who told us that there wasn’t much chance of finding it. Then he promptly closed his book and sent us on our way. Both Gebrehiwot and I felt that the chances of finding the phone might be somewhat greater if the police actually looked for it – it’s not that big a town after all, and people do talk.

Despite the theft, I seem to be having one of those nice days (oddly, in contrast to the rest of the week which saw me in tears over a date change, as well as various other emotional embarrassments) where even the theft of my mobile phone can’t seem to shake my equilibrium. Would that it lasts!

Adwa Hospital

My other recent new experience of an Adwa institution has been visiting the hospital, which I’ve done a few times now as part of my work with the Inclusive Kindergarten. All the children have had check-ups at the hospital and I went to arrange this and also accompanied the first group.

The hospital is surprisingly large. I’m not sure how many nurses, support staff or cleaners there are. But there is certainly a strong smell of stale urine in the ward, which we were led through on our rather extensive search for the doctor (as you would imagine, there is no PA system). It’s busy with a lot of people milling and waiting around, some of them obviously very ill, but there did not seem to be a huge number of inpatients. One does have to pay to go to the hospital, although not as much as at the private clinics. I think that may be one reason why it is not used as much as it could be. That, and the powerful belief in traditional medicine (basically immersion in holy water), even among educated people like many of my colleagues.

There are two doctors at the hospital, both quite young. The one who has been seeing the Kindergarten children is quite ambitious, and apparently saw the ferenji woman who walked in as a potential source of something, because he ignored the Tigrigna speaking Kindergarten staff who were with me, and every other sentence out of his mouth was “Will you have dinner with me?”, even as he was examining children and talking about the significant problems like pneumonia, seizures and cataracts. I wasn’t interested in the least, but I did find it a bit of a challenge to do my job and advocate for the children while at the same time struggling to deflect the doctor’s attentions.

Samuel, the little boy who is deaf and blind, has congenital cataracts, which is apparently quite common in Ethiopia. His visual acuity was tested - I don’t know how accurately – I would think it would be rather difficult to test a deaf blind child. But the doctor lost the piece of paper on which the result was written. Fortunately, he did manage to write on his prescription pad for me “difficult to help him”… There will be an eye surgeon coming to Axum in a few months so we’ll follow up then.

The minor health issue among the volunteers here has been Arlo’s typhus (diagnosed at one of the private clinics). With rats visiting my house (now under control – the still under-construction part of my house that was allowing them entrance has been sealed up with cement and steel wool), I was immediately worried that I might have given him typhus. But it could have come from anywhere – there’s really no shortage of possible sources. We both went through a rather intense spraying and washing and ironing period, and read some scary articles about typhus, and some reassuring ones, on the internet. It is the mild variety that Arlo has, and with antibiotics (tempered with Christmas and post-Christmas alcohol) he seems to be okay now.

HIV and AIDS

In the time I’ve been in Ethiopia, I have not been much touched by the HIV and AIDS epidemic. As I’ve written before, Ethiopia has not been as hard hit as countries further south. But it’s still here, and this week at the Inclusive Kindergarten was a bit of a reminder of that. There are two children, out of 30, who are affected by AIDS, as far as I know. One is a boy whose parents are both HIV positive, his father being a soldier. Soldiers are perhaps one of the populations most at risk, so much so that when someone is sick, identifying him as a soldier is equivalent to saying he has AIDS. The other is a girl whose parents have both died, and when the children had their check-up at the hospital, she was found to be HIV positive. She is still healthy. Treatment is generally not given until a person’s CD4 count drops below 200. There is a free AIDS clinic at the Adwa Hospital, as in many parts of Ethiopia, so she will have monthly check-ups and CD4 counts, and when the time comes will be able to get the ART medication for free. The little girl lives with her aunt, and is lucky enough that our Kindergarten teacher is her relative and referred her to the Kindergarten. She’s obviously in our target group in terms of financial and social need.

Cluster Update

The Cluster Unit is almost finished our first round of workshops – the last one will be on New Year’s day. Way back in September, I scheduled it on New Year’s day so we could maintain our Tuesday and Thursday schedule, thinking hopefully that by that time my colleagues would be able to do it themselves if I felt the need to take a New Year’s holiday. The good news is that my expectations have been met. Meressa and Berhana are comfortable and effective at leading all parts of the Model Classroom workshop now and I am just a figurehead (although I am still useful for a few things, like developing workshop materials, which I am in the process of doing for our next round of workshops). At our last workshop, on Thursday at Bete Yohanes School, we managed to make very good use of time as Berhana and Meressa led the workshop while I observed and gave feedback to teachers (because we use a shift system with the same workshop in the morning and the afternoon, half the teachers were teaching while the other half was participating in the workshop).

I’m still getting familiar with Grade 5 to 8 issues, since last year we only worked with First Cycle (Grade 1 to 4), especially focusing on Grades 1 and 2. I have been trying to squeeze in as many observations of teachers at this level as I can. The teachers of Grades 5 to 8 tend to have better English and better skills than 1 to 4 teachers. Traditionally they have been the people who had better high school marks, attending a three-year teacher training Diploma programme rather than a one-year Certificate programme. Still, there’s very much a teacher-centred, fill the empty vessel approach. Although teachers recognize the benefits of active learning, they worry that there’s not enough time or that it’s too difficult to do in large classes. Getting the active learning message across to teachers who have had so little exposure to it in their student and teacher careers is a bit challenging… actually, I guess it is the challenge.

The other day I observed Grade 6 and 7 English lessons and was introduced to the new English textbook produced by USAid in 2006. There only seems to be one textbook per 4 children, at least at Bete Yohanes School. And the textbook is a bit hard, probably because the Grade 1 to 4 English programme is so weak. I don’t know why USAid started with the higher grades instead of the lower grades. But it is a very good textbook. It incorporates teacher instructions and includes lots of opportunities for sensible pair work and integrating development in reading, writing, speaking and listening. Very often when I see the USAid stamp on something here, it’s something good. It does make one wonder how much could be achieved in the developing world if that huge country (and Canada too) would live up to the promise of 0.7% of GNP to foreign aid.

This year the Cluster Unit is working very differently; more efficiently and successfully, I think, than last year. Last year we worked with a small number of key teachers in grade 1 and 2 who came to the college for workshops, and received a substantial per diem for doing so. This year we’re working with all teachers from Grades 1 to 8, because, as I say in our workshops, all children deserve good teaching and good classrooms and all teachers deserve good professional development. We’re working properly in clusters now, so all the teachers from about 3 to 6 schools will meet at the cluster centre school for the workshop. This means they only have to travel a short distance, generally 5 kilometres or less. In some very rural areas, we still have teachers traveling 15 – 20 kilometres, by foot. They don’t get a per diem, although we do provide lunch. We have 22 clusters, comprising a total of about 108 schools, in our programme. So we’re doing each workshop about 44 times, including morning and afternoon shifts at each cluster. Merlin’s Pants! No wonder Berhana and Meressa have improved so much, and me too. And no wonder I’ve been feeling so bored lately!

This also means that we get to spend a lot of time at a lot of different schools. I've experienced more of what it feels like to teach and learn there than when I’m just observing. We’ve been in private schools in Adwa with nice clean meeting rooms, and we’ve been in schools in the rural areas where the first order of the day is cleaning out what seems like a month’s worth of dirt and scrubbing the bird droppings off the tables. We’ve led more than a few lessons while pigeons nested in the ceiling and occasionally flew overhead. This is more disturbing for me than for the teachers, who are used to the birds and to having an open space in the rocks as a window. At Merhiseney School, which once had real glass windows, the windows were bombed out during the civil war in Tigray that ended the Derg regime, and have yet to be replaced – a small reminder of the lasting effects of war. We’ve sweated at our workshop in the lowland area of Rama, and shivered under four layers at Wukromarye, a highland area where it’s especially cold in December. Observing classes at Bete Yohanes on Thursday, I sat among well-dressed healthy looking children and among sick and hungry looking children. I observed the teachers, some of them so enthusiastic, and others with lessons barely planned. I felt, as I’m feeling a lot lately, the weight of development here, how much I still have to do and how much I will not achieve, and how much still has to be done by my Ethiopian colleagues; and how this fits into the larger process of development in Ethiopia and Africa, and in the struggle for some kind of equality in the world.

2007-12-23T19:48:00.000-08:00

It seems harder and harder to keep this blog up to date, partly because of the great difficulty of uploading to it, but also because I guess the novelty of life in Ethiopia is fading. Life is just life, most of the time.

I’ve been very busy lately. The cluster unit is running very smoothly this year but we have a packed schedule with at least two workshops, usually at rural schools, every week. We leave at 6 in the morning and are back by about 7 in the evening, and between the bumpy road and the workshopping, I’m usually pretty wiped out. Fortunately, my cluster colleagues, Meressa (same as last year) and Berhana who is a new addition to the cluster unit – and it’s good to have a woman on the cluster unit!- are starting to take on more and more responsibility. At first Meressa was just translating for me, but now both he and Berhana are leading many sessions themselves, and a couple of times have led the whole workshop. We’ve all been learning so much from working together, and it really does look like the cluster unit is becoming more and more self-sustaining.

My mom came for a much anticipated visit in October and November, bringing with her a much-needed taste of home (literally as well as figuratively, as her bags were packed with chocolate, nuts and brown rice, mmmm!). We spent some time in Addis Abeba and then traveled through the tourist areas of Bahir Dar, Gondar and Lalibela (perhaps the most famous place in Ethiopia, where I got so sick I didn’t see any of the underground churches). The hardest part of the trip was perhaps the begging, especially for my mom, who isn’t used to this kind of poverty – in the tourist centers, it’s hard to walk down the street without being overwhelmed by beggars, some of them desperately poor and others looking for a ferenji to take advantage of.

A highlight was our visit to the village of Awramba, where the traditional Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity has given way to a secular society that believes in hard work and equality. I don’t know if it would work on a large scale, but on the village level, it meant a simple clean village with a school and a library and a home where the elderly are taken care of. All members of the community work as weavers, producing beautiful fabrics and blankets that they sell to visitors. Hunger and begging are unknown.

After our travels, my mom stayed in Adwa for about three weeks, where she had a chance to get to know my colleagues and friends here, see what work I do here, enjoy numerous invitations for lunch and coffee ceremony, and especially help out in the Kindergarten where I think she got to know some of the children and the teachers quite well.

The Inclusive Kindergarten is bouncing along fairly well. I try to squeeze in time to visit and work with the teachers as often as I can between workshops, meetings and school visits. But on a day to day basis, the teachers are managing excellently. Would that I could be so comfortable and confident and yet so ready to learn and improve! The children are making great progress, underlining the importance, especially for children with special needs, of coming to school. Recently, I went to Adwa hospital (2 part-time doctors in a hospital serving an area with a population of at least 80 000!) with a group of Kindergarten children for a check-up, and while we were waiting, I watched some children play with Samuel, who is Deaf and has very limited vision, by bouncing their hands on his arm and waving their hands in the little area where they knew he could see. Samuel was laughing and smiling to no end. Of course, for most young children, inclusion is natural, but I think the Kindergarten has helped the children learn how to play with Samuel in ways that are meaningful to him, and therefore to keep up their interest in connecting with him. Samuel has become so much more responsive and interested in interacting with others.

There are two new volunteers in Axum and one in Adwa, so I’m no longer the only English-speaking ferenji in Adwa. It's a nice change to have someone who’s missing the same things I am, and to have company once in a while.

I will be coming back to Toronto after two years here. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do with myself when I get back, but it does look like I’ll make it through to the end of the two years.

2007-10-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve moved houses to make way for two new male volunteers who were going to share my old three-bedroom house. Unfortunately, only one has come (hopefully the other will come in February). But I’ve still moved, and although I knew my old house was nice I didn’t quite realize how favourably it compared to most Adwa houses. Although there are a lot of new houses popping up as higher income people invest their money in real estate, their polished brick outsides often hide less perfect insides. Since many houses are rented out, they are not maintained in between tenants and often fall prey to pigeons, cockroaches and dust. Many contractors don’t know how to properly wire houses so there are often electrical problems, open holes with wires leading to nowhere, improperly sealed windows; difficult locks, weird water situations and whatnot.

My house problems seemed to come to a head last night when I had the new volunteer over for dinner. When the fuse finally blew, not to be flipped back on, I ended up having to cook by candlelight, which is one thing when you’re by yourself and don’t care what you eat, and another when you’re trying to impress someone with your cooking skills. On top of that, I had to ration my water because the taps run continuously and water leaks everywhere unless the outdoor main is turned off, which then means there is no water in the house. So I have to run back and forth turning the main on and off whenever I need to have a shower or wash dishes or boil water, and this is annoying to me and seems to be very unsettling to my new (and rather elderly) guard, so I try not to do it too often.

So I am sitting at home this morning waiting for my landlord to come and see what he can do. What is nice about this house is having my own space, having the doors and windows open and not having children careering through the house or people shouting at each other around me. It is nice to have a relaxing(ish) Sunday morning in your own house.

The Inclusive Kindergarten

The teacher and assistants have come a long way in the past few weeks, and the kindergarten is running with a degree of smoothness that you’d expect in October of Kindergarten! The teacher and assistants work so well together, and are really very keen and hardworking. In my mind, a big problem at many schools is that teachers just aren’t interested. They have too many other problems, both at home and at school. They see teaching as just a job and a paycheque, and are not concerned about the children in their classes as individuals. This then makes it hard for them to imagine supporting individual children, especially the struggling students, to meet their particular needs. They certainly struggle to see teaching as a learning process, where they themselves can reflect and gain strategies to support their students. This is a big generalization of course, and there are many really wonderful and caring teachers in the schools in Adwa and the rural areas. But what I am finding at the Kindergarten is that the teacher really is paying attention to the individual unique problems, and strengths, of the children – the mainstream children as well as those with special needs. I think the nature of the Kindergarten, the way we’ve set it up to support individual and group instruction, the frequent coaching that the teacher gets from me and the other steering committee members (if it’s not driving her crazy!) and the fact that there are three assistants - who not only share the load but share ideas as well – are all contributing factors, but definitely we’ve hired well - a teacher and assistants who all care about the kids and are keen to learn as well as teach!

The children are progressing well too. The boy who is developmentally delayed is beginning to interact with the other children and to cooperate with the teachers, although his behaviour is still one of the biggest problems in the kindergarten. His sister is getting along very well, and the regular tantrums have almost disappeared. The boy who is deaf and blind is still one of our biggest programming challenges, and probably always will be. Still, we are figuring out how to adapt to him, he has learned at least one sign, and he has finally managed to separate from his older brother (or his brother has managed to separate from him). It is interesting to watch as he explores new things and tries to focus on things with the little vision he has. The assistants (mostly Netsanet, the deaf assistant is with him) are great with him. We have a sand area in the playground, and the first time Netsanet took him there, his face lit up with the biggest smile and he jumped around for a long time, enjoying the feel of the sand on his bare feet and skin. Now he will make his way to the sand area on his own and take his shoes off and dive in, smiling. We still have a long way to go with him, but it’s really good to see him smiling and responding now, often using some kind of gesture rather than the crying moan that we heard so much at the beginning.

The children and families lined up to register outside the kindergarten have finally given up. The experience has educated me again as to how valuable free or lowcost kindergarten would be. This is especially so because here students don’t start grade one until they are seven years old, and because most parents have little idea of how to play with and teach their young children. Although I had thought that in Adwa all non-SNE children were attending school from grade one up, there were also lots of school-age children wanting to come to the kindergarten. There are also many more families with special needs children that have come out of the woodwork and approached the woreda about the kindergarten. We are full now (9 children with special needs and 21 children without), but hopefully we’ll be able to take them next year. It’s good that families are recognizing the importance of education for children with special needs: this is one of our goals.

2007-09-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

It’s odd that it didn’t occur to me before now that setting up an inclusive kindergarten is rather difficult.

For a teacher who, although she is quite good, is used to teaching grade one in the sit-at-your-desk, follow-the-teacher format, a play-based kindergarten is quite a change. I think she’s still struggling to believe that children really can learn something by playing. We’ve only had three days of school, morning only, the first day was only for the children with special needs, and still this feels like one of the longest weeks of my life. I’ve been trying to be at the kindergarten for most of every morning. Fortunately, there’s not much cluster stuff to do yet.

We have about nine children with special needs in the class. Top of the needs list is a deaf and blind boy. He is becoming more comfortable in the class - that is, he’ll come inside the room, doesn’t spend quite the whole time crying “ooooh”, and will play with some toys without biting the person who hands them to him. His brother, who is about sixteen and seems to be the main person responsible for him, has stayed at school with him every day this week, and has been very helpful. Unfortunately, we’ll lose him when high school starts in a few days.

Next is a boy who is developmentally delayed. His father also has some kind of mental problems, but is the main caregiver for the two children as the mother is physically disabled and cannot walk. The father obviously has very limited parenting skills, which seem to centre on hitting, threatening to hit, grabbing and ignoring. We have accepted the four-year old sister as well, and both children are a handful, the boy taking pretty much the full time attention of one of our assistants, and so far not demonstrating any interests other than trying to test her. The Ethiopian class factor is definitely present – the assistants and teacher obviously don’t like these children, which certainly doesn’t help, and their complaints about behaviour have hinted at a request to reject the children from the class, which obviously would be contrary to our inclusion philosophy.

Then there are the typical problems of kindergarten – four year olds who spend the first half of the morning in tears, who have never sat down in a classroom and listened or played independently before.

And there are the simple joys of doing business in Ethiopia. We’re using a temporary classroom and the lock is broken. The college staff person responsible for locks has promised me about ten times that it will be fixed tomorrow, and every day, it’s not, and the teachers have to carry the materials in and out each day. Or the baker who promised brown embasha (Ethiopian bread) now says he can only do white, and today arrived with it an hour and a half after snack time.

The Inclusive Kindergarten is free. The idea is that in addition to serving children with identified special needs, we’re also serving children from poorer families who couldn’t otherwise afford kindergarten (in Tigray region, there is no kindergarten in the public system, but there are several private kindergartens popping up across Adwa, which range in price from 40 Birr to 300 Birr a month – even at the low end inaccessible for many families). So registration for our free kindergarten filled up quickly, on a first come first served basis, and since then parents have been coming to the college begging us to let their children in. Today, about three parents brought their unregistered children to the class and just left them there, and since everyone is new, the teacher didn’t realize they weren’t on the list until the parents had already left. At pick-up time we had to inform them that sorry, your child is not registered and won’t be registered. One parent took it pretty well, but another broke down in hysterical tears, kissing my feet and the teacher’s, begging us to accept her son. Later, two parents (the hysterical one and another one) showed up separately at my house, to try and convince my landlady to convince me to let them in, which to my mind is crossing a line, but lines are in different places here (although as the only ferenji, I’m the most recognizable person responsible for the Kindergarten, I usually defer to my Ethiopian colleagues when it comes to decisions about numbers and who to accept). It is really hard to say no, but with so many high needs children already in the class, the Steering Committee has really decided that we have to draw the line.

Part of the idea behind the inclusive kindergarten is to serve as a demonstration site for teachers to promote inclusive education in the regular grade 1-8 schools. The premise (my premise), I guess, is that teachers simply lack the inspiration to support children with special needs, and once they see how easy it is in our lovely kindergarten, they will become supporters and promoters of inclusive education and will welcome children with special needs into their classes.

As I said at the beginning, despite having taught (a painful experience) and studied Special Ed in Toronto, somehow I deluded myself into thinking that this inclusive education business would be a lot easier in Ethiopia than it is. The reality is that for a skilled and motivated teacher and three assistants in a class of less than thirty, coping with a child who is developmentally delayed or who is blind/deaf is very difficult… for a teacher on his or her own, who may not be as skilled, who has a class of fifty, sixty or seventy, it would be very difficult to teach or even to safely manage some of these children.

Apart from that is the issue of access. For children with special needs, school is not mandatory. We have several children in the kindergarten who are seven or eight (and several requests from families of even older children) who had been rejected by the local school. It goes further than just educating school administrators that they have to say yes to all children. Teachers need the skills and the resources to serve these children. I think of how difficult and complicated it is to meet the needs of special needs children in Canada, and really how much resources go into them, and are still not considered enough. It’s naïve to think that a little inspiration and a catchy slogan, Education for All, can solve this problem in the developing world, where often the problems are deeper and the teachers’ skills and resources are shallower. And once you get into the rural areas, the problems are far worse than they are in the towns.

One of the children on our initial list of children with special needs is a five year old girl, an orphan, who is “paralyzed” (probably cerebral palsy, but I’ve never actually seen her). She was living with her uncle and grandmother in Adwa, but the grandmother died, and the uncle couldn’t or wouldn’t care for her on his own, so he has sent her to live with other relatives in the village, where she probably will never leave the house. But who am I to judge? It would be hard enough caring for one’s own disabled child, let alone a child who you don’t feel a connection with. In the rural areas, even more than in Adwa, there is little expectation of children with special needs attending school. There may be an option of helping this family get a wheelchair, but if the girl stays in the village, a wheelchair will be more trouble than it’s worth on the rocky mountain foot paths.

Another family was in town for the recent New Year holiday, and heard about the kindergarten. An eight year old girl, who is small enough that her mother carried her on her back the way mothers carry babies, who is multiply disabled – blind, deaf and unable to walk (cp again?). The family lives in a village about twenty five kilometers from Adwa – the kindergarten obviously can’t accept this child because the family has no way of bringing her to school each day. There are no residential schools in Tigray that serve children with multiple disabilities. And could the local school in the village serve her? At this point, probably not.

2007-09-12T00:23:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning, September 12, 2007
Happy New Millenium!

Today is Meskerem 1, the first day of the new year, and this year, the first day of the year 2000 in the Ethiopian calendar. Even with increasing Western influence, everyone follows the Ethiopian calendar and clock here. Yesterday was New Years’ Eve. There were rumours of a march in the town; the college had even prepared a bus, but nothing transpired of this. I went for a walk anyway, and found if nothing else, lots of honking buses and line taxis. There were also boys going house to house singing for money, a tradition along the lines of trick-or-treating. A couple of weeks ago, girls and women did a similar thing, surrounding people and singing and dancing.

I spent last night with Freweyni, my landlady’s, family, having coffee ceremony and, now that she has a fancy television, watching the Millennium celebrations in Addis Abeba. Today and tomorrow I have a few invitations for New Year’s lunch, and I’m particularly looking forward to it because today happens to be Wednesday, fasting day, so people will be cooking their best vegan food.

Usually, holidays seem to last only the one day and then people are back to work, but I guess because this is the Millennium, and because the whole country is involved - even those regions that are a little less thrilled about being part of Ethiopia are keenly celebrating the Millennium – and both Muslims and Christians are celebrating (although the date is rooted in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity), the government has declared a holiday for the rest of the week. They only did this on Monday though, so it is a bit of a frustration not to be able to do any of the purchasing and painting and preparations for the Inclusive Kindergarten that we had planned.

We did hire our two new assistants yesterday. The outdoor play area is coming along. And our teacher has been busy making materials. We have also got some funding from some people in Canada, as well as a local textile factory (which is great, because it also sends the message that Ethiopians can take care of each other locally without always looking to outside funders!) So we should be ready for the first day of school in a week and a half.

With my cluster colleagues, I’ve made up the plan for the cluster programme for this year and it’s been approved (and then revised and approved again when the budget came out much lower than expected). Once school gets under way, we’ll be busy visiting schools and conducting workshops at the school cluster level rather than at the college – which means lower cost and higher participation.

Meanwhile, VSO has provided some money to build toilets and rooms where girls can have access to menstrual pads etc. because the lack of facilities means that many girls just don’t come to school when they have their periods. When I visit schools, I don’t tend to pay enough attention to toilets (even when schools do have them, they’re the type that you don’t want to see or smell) so I’ve been carelessly assuming that all the schools in Adwa town had toilets, and was a little surprised the other day to find out that there are several that don’t. So deciding which schools should get toilets will be one of the projects for the new year.

2007-09-12T00:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday September 9, 2007
The rainy season: As pretty much all the precipitation Adwa gets is concentrated into three months, the rainy season is pretty intense. It rains almost every day, with great drama. In the space of a few minutes, the sun will be overtaken by heavy gray clouds, the wind will blow, and heavy thunder will rumble. Then the rain will begin to fall, becoming a fast and heavy downpour. Lightning will flash and thunder will crash. Almost every day, there is one of these intense storms, the type that at home is rare enough that you would remember it for weeks or months.
The rain has done its job. The river that was barely a trickle for much of my time here is alive again - people gather to do their washing and children swim and play. And paths which I used before I went to Sherkole have disappeared under a metre or more of grass and brush. Farmers are busy with their crops too. My guard is job-sharing with a friend so that he can spend one full day out of two on the farm.
Even with all the development in Adwa and Tigray region lately, unemployment is still high. There are two assistant positions at the Inclusive Kindergarten, in addition to the one being taken by Netsanet, and it wasn’t long before my colleagues on the Steering Committee started putting their wives’ names in for the jobs. Since this didn’t feel quite okay, we announced the positions in the town, and were quickly overwhelmed with applications. People don’t do resumes here, they just show up, so I soon had to put up a sign saying the position was closed – otherwise whenever I saw their eager faces I was compelled to let them come to the interview.

2007-08-25T00:55:00.000-07:00

Thursday August 23, 2007
I’m starting to take on the idea that simply getting people into school is more important than what goes on at school in terms of the quality of teaching and learning. For certain disadvantaged groups, like refugees or people with disabilities, I think this is particularly true. I heard the other day of a young disabled person in Adwa who died last month at the age of twenty, after not having gone out of his home for the past sixteen years. And when I went to meet some children with special needs the other day, I was met by young children but also by school-aged children who had never been to school and by droves of teenagers and adults – blind or physically challenged or with other disabilities.
So by helping to establish an Inclusive Kindergarten at the college, I know that the most basic goal of getting children with disabilities out of their homes and into school will be achieved. And as an inclusive kindergarten serving children with any disabilities or special needs, alongside typical children, it will reach more children than would a school focused on a particular exceptionality.
But I do hope that the Inclusive Kindergarten will do more than just get children into school, and will actually provide them with the early developmental experiences and skills to achieve their potential. So yesterday when I met a number of the children with special needs and their families, I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the scope of the project we’ve taken on. In particular, looking at Samuel, a little boy who is deaf and blind, I’m aware of the expertise and skill and resources that would be spent on him in Canada. Compared to this, my understanding of how to teach him is so limited, not to mention how limited is the understanding of the (very good) teacher who will be responsible for him. But we certainly can’t reject him on these grounds, because what other chance does he have?
A number of the children who want to come to the Inclusive Kindergarten are deaf. As I recognized this fact, I also began to wonder how we could provide a quality programme without sign language. I asked the woreda administrator if he knew of any deaf adults who knew sign language, and then I asked my colleagues at the college as well. No luck. There is one staff member in the SNE department at the college who has been trained in sign language, and she had already expressed her willingness to help out but she won’t be available on the regular basis that the children would need.
These were some of the things I was thinking about as I went for a walk in the town yesterday evening. But I was also thinking about more mundane things like food. Although I usually frequent only the same shops over and over in order to avoid new expressions of ferenjiness, I decided to go into one of the new shops that has sprouted up in my end of town, to see if they sell oatmeal, a big imported treat which till now has only been available in one shop at the other end of town. They did have oatmeal, and instead of telling me the price, the girl typed it into a calculator and held it up for me to see. I said the number in Tigrigna, as sometimes people don’t talk to me because they doubt my ability to understand. She squeaked and signaled that she couldn’t speak. Hmm, “Do you know sign language?” I asked, and received a brief demonstration.
Not wanting to get ahead of myself, I went back to that shop tonight with my sign language trained colleague and Hailemichael who is one of the Inclusive Kindergarten coordinators…. The girl, Netsenet, is Deaf and knows sign language very well. She studied to grade 8 at the school for the deaf in Addis. For some reason, she had to return to Tigray and stop her education, and she’s living with relatives and working in their shop temporarily. To her knowledge she’s the only deaf person in Adwa who uses sign language.
So, in true Ethiopian style, we hired her on the spot (well, we had decided in advance that we probably would) to be one of the assistants in the Kindergarten! When something as fortuitous as this happens, it feels like confirmation that you’re doing the right thing.

Thoughts after sleeping on it
Why can’t all the deaf children go to a big school for the deaf in Addis or Adigrad? I guess because there wouldn’t be enough space for all of them. I’m surprised by the proportion of deaf children here – chronic ear infections?, meningitis?, iodine deficiency? I don’t know what the causes are. Also, not every family is financially or emotionally able and willing to send their child away to school. So low-cost local solutions are needed. My hope for the Kindergarten now is that we will be able to teach a group of deaf and hearing children who will then go on to the local school where some of the hearing children will be able to act as sign language interpreters for the deaf children. Is this too idealistic? When your options are limited, you have to be a little idealistic. This is how my blind friend Hailemichael made it through school – with a student beside him reading everything off the blackboard, and scribing assignments for him.
I also have to admit that I feel bad that we’re using Netsenet rather than helping her finish her own education. So this is something that I’m filing away to figure out how to do in the future. In the meantime, though, she will have a good job and an okay salary at the Inclusive Kindergarten, and I think she was just thrilled to be able to have a real conversation in sign language, something she hasn’t been able to do since she left school.

2007-08-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

So I’ve finished a month of teacher training at Sherkole Refugee Camp. It was nice to get away from Adwa for a change, and it was also good to be doing something as immediately rewarding as full-time training, rather than the coordinating, planning, talking, feedbacking, and hoping-something-comes-of-it of Cluster work. And I loved working with the teachers.

Despite the ongoing repatriation of refugees to southern Sudan, Sherkole Refugee Camp is not shutting down, but is the designated camp to hold those who cannot return home from other camps, as well as newer refugees coming to Ethiopia all the way from Darfur and from Great Lakes Region countries like Congo and Burundi, where there continues to be war and instability.

Many teachers from southern Sudan have been repatriated, but the school is remaining open (and even using this opportunity to reduce class sizes from 70 and 80 to 30 and 40), so a lot of new refugees have been hired as teachers and have been teaching for a few months to a year. Almost all of them have no training (that’s where we came in), and most of them have only Grade 10 or even Grade 7 or 8 education themselves. They follow the Sudanese curriculum, and teach in English, but many of them also have very limited English themselves.

According to the teachers (it’s the summer break, so there were no students to know for sure), there are a lot of behaviour problems at the school, including people coming to school drunk, fights and threats against teachers, and just plain not listening and not working – very different from Ethiopian schools. These problems are aggravated by having children and adults in the same class, and by many of the teachers being very young (18, 19, 20) and having to teach people their age or much older. Trying to help the teachers imagine solutions to some of these problems was difficult to impossible.

According to some of the people in charge, there are also lots of problems with the teachers not coming to school, not planning, having very limited skills, and - as we observed first-hand with a couple of teachers over the training - coming to school drunk or drinking themselves. (My judgmental self found this a little hard to cope with.)

Among our group of 33 teachers, there were 2 women. There are big problems of low enrolment and high drop out rates among girls, so that by Grade 8, last year, there were 117 male students and 10 female students. Gender-based violence at the camp is also a big problem.

Sherkole Camp has been around for ten years so it’s established, kind of like a village. People live in tikuls (mud huts, like most Ethiopians), not tents. They get monthly rations, and if they work in the camp, as teachers, for example, they get an “incentive” as well. Most people are surviving, but walking through the camp, you see a lot of children with sticking-out-tummies and orange hair.

Most of the teachers have terrible stories of how they came to be at Sherkole, and they have lost a lot along the way. In various people, we could almost see the weight of their pasts and of their lives hanging over them. Sometimes, it was hard to know if our expectations for them as teachers were unrealistic. And sometimes, it was hard to know what to do or how to be, how to help people within the limits of the little bit of their lives that I’m knowing them for.

So now that I’m away from the camp, when people ask me how it was, I can say it was a good experience, or an interesting experience, and I’m glad I had the chance to go. This is true. But at the same time, it was a hard experience, bringing up a lot of my own self-doubts, about how to help people and care about people without getting lost in their problems; witnessing the shortcomings of the international community in caring for refugees; and making me question even more what is next in my life, how can I be involved in helping refugees or other vulnerable people? and how can I not?

What I know is how fortunate I am, that I had the chance to go to Sherkole, and then I had the chance to leave again. This freedom, and sense of security, that I really have taken for granted in my life, is one of the big things that separates me from the people of Sherkole, or any refugees, and the injustice of this is overwhelming.

2007-07-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

Friday the 13th
I'm in Addis for the night, after a long bus ride (350 kilometres in 12 hours). We had a good two weeks of Amharic language classes in Yirgalem, at a quite nice training centre. I can now understand, and try to speak, a touch more Amharic than before. And I think that because the two languages are so similar, it has helped my Tigrigna a little too. Both the company and the food were a nice change - I retrieved a few of my lost pounds, whether I was looking for them or not. My teacher training partner, Jenny, and I will be flying (no decent roads to Assossa) out to the refugee camp near Assossa tomorrow morning. We've spent some time trying to get ready, but won't really be ready till we get there as we don't really have a good sense of what to expect.
On a different note, the Inclusive Kindergarten in Adwa is going ahead and everyone involved is very excited. I have heard from my colleagues that the teacher we wanted to hire has accepted the job. The guards at the college are starting to build an outdoor play area. We have some money and some promises of money, but need more. For those of you who are interested, I will post or send details soon on how to make a donation.

2007-06-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

Thursday June 27, 2007

If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you know that the situation for most children with any kinds of special needs or difference in Ethiopia is bleak. My understanding of what a big issue this is has been developing throughout the year I’ve been here. As Cluster Coordinator, I’ve brought the issue of inclusion up in workshops throughout the year; next year, it will be a workshop topic on its own. But the trouble is that by the time the Cluster programme gets involved, it’s very late: we’re working with teachers who are working with children 7 and up. As there is no public kindergarten in Tigray region, most children don’t get any early years education. Most children with serious special needs don’t even attend grade one, let alone kindergarten. Children with milder problems might go to school, but, get very little support, and often don’t make it very far. Intervention in the early years can have a big impact in terms of minimizing disability, but for most children in Adwa (or in Ethiopia, or Africa) this intervention doesn’t exist. Most children are hidden at home. Muscles, and brains, atrophy from neglect, and so much potential is lost.
My colleagues and I have been mulling this problem over for a few months, and after a while the impossible didn’t seem so impossible anymore. We have decided to start an Inclusive Kindergarten at the college.
We have gotten permission to repair and renovate two abandoned buildings as classrooms. We have developed a proposal and have the support of the town administration and the college. We have the children, and we’re pretty sure we’ve got our first teacher. What we need now is the money to make this happen. Our first priority is the renovation of the old buildings and the construction of an outdoor play area from local materials, which is estimated to cost approximately 70 000 birr (or Canadian $8274).
So now I’m embarking on a fundraising journey, and I’m asking for your help. If you would like to support our project, give a child a chance to have an education that can make the difference between hope and despair, and create a model of inclusive education in Ethiopia, please email me (email is the best option, but you can also post a comment on this blog) about how to make a donation to Adwa’s Inclusive Kindergarten. If you would like more information, would like to read our full proposal, would like information on some of the children with special needs who will attend the Kindergarten, or would like to help plan a fundraising event, also please email me.

Summer Plans

As you’ve probably figured out by now, the difficult stay-or-go decision has long been made. I can’t remember if I reported it already, which is a bit anti-climactic as it was a very anxiety-filled decision at the time, but most days I’m pretty sure it was the right one. I am staying for a second year or so – the cluster programme has a jam-packed plan for 2007-08, and there’s a lot to do to support the Inclusive Kindergarten as well. But, right now, the summer holidays are upon us – a week of exams (even for grade ones!) has just ended, passes and fails are being sorted out, and school is wrapping up. I will be spending the first two weeks of July in Awassa, attending VSO’s intensive language training (in Amharic, as the volunteers in Tigray are a pretty sparse group). From there, I will go to a refugee camp in southwestern Ethiopia, near the Sudan border, for four weeks in July and August – myself and another VSO volunteer are doing a sort of mini-secondment training teachers for the school there. Likely, there will be some interesting blogs about that experience. Then, I’ll be back in Adwa for the rest of the summer, sorting out the Inclusive Kindergarten, and maybe doing some summer programmes for children. And of course, I’ll be celebrating the Ethiopian millennium on September 11 (Meskerem 1, Ethiopian calendar).

2007-06-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

Wednesday June 26, 2007

News from Adwa

I was at the woreda administration office the other day (“city hall”). There was a couple there who had found a newborn baby abandoned by their neighbours, in a plastic bag with some clothes. The neighbours who found the baby are going to keep it, and they were asking for some financial support from the woreda.
There are a lot of abandoned babies in Adwa, some with neighbours and family members, and some at the orphanages. One baby that made his way to the Italian orphanage about a year ago now was found in a basket in the river, like Moses. I guess the good news is that somebody is taking care of them, and that, at least in the town, there’s now the beginnings of supportive infrastructure, so this family that’s taking on their neighbours’ baby can ask the woreda for help.
My guard didn’t come the other day because his wife had been beaten by one of their neighbours. Their animals strayed onto the neighbour’s land; first he beat the sheep and goats with a stick, and then he beat the woman. Fortunately, some other people intervened and stopped him, but she was hurt somewhat seriously. I don’t know exactly why his response was so strong, but I do know that the environmental degradation caused by overgrazing is a very serious problem. Without condoning beating people, I can understand why the farmer wouldn’t want someone else’s animals grazing on his land.
Finally, my colleague’s brother in law died on the weekend from a snake bite. He was working as a shepherd in a very rural area a bit west of here, and it took more than a day to reach the hospital, by which time it was too late. He was only in his early twenties, and left behind a wife and young child.

Weather Update
The rainy season is well upon us. We’re experiencing very dramatic storms most days, accompanied by almost-daily electricity failures and frequent phone and internet problems. And it’s very cold. But the brown desert of a few months ago is being replaced by lush greenery. People are planting and even harvesting corn, and beginning to plant teff.

2007-06-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

Wednesday June 20, 2007

A young man died on Sunday night. He died at the holy water place, which is where people go when there’s little hope left. He was a teacher who spoke relatively excellent English. For several months he begged me for English lessons whenever he saw me on the street, and when ELIP started in January he came twice a week with enthusiasm. And then he stopped, and I didn’t see him anymore. I wondered about him for a while. He came to my house about a month ago, but his words didn’t make any sense. I asked him where he’d been and he didn’t answer me. I asked him if he’d been sick and he said no. He didn’t seem quite okay, but I remember thinking that it was probably just a communication problem, that his English probably wasn’t as good as I remembered. But he did say “I need help.” He said it. But when I asked what was wrong, what he needed help with, he didn’t say anything. And I rushed off to work, brushing him off, not imagining that the problem was as big as it was. He came another time when I wasn’t at home, but I didn’t find out about it until after he died.
His parents were dead and he lived with his younger sisters and brothers, for whom he was the main provider. Nobody’s really clear what was wrong, what he died of – only that his behaviour was very strange for the past three months or so, staring into space for hours, screaming, running outside in the middle of the night with no clothes. I think his sisters tried to keep things quiet, because here, like most places, mental illness, more than most disabilities, is shameful. Whatever he died of might have looked like mental illness, but I suspect it was probably something very physical. His family took him to the doctor, but medical care is limited here, and the doctor didn’t know what was wrong. And he asked for help, from me, and from other people too, but he didn’t get any.

2007-06-10T02:08:00.000-07:00

Saturday June 9, 2007
Maybe I’m feeling a little homesick for DRA (for those who don’t know, in many North American schools DRA is a reading assessment for Kindergarten to grade 3 students, usually conducted at the beginning and end of the school year). At any rate, I spent last week having grade 4 and grade 2 students at Adwa Town schools read to me (or try to) in English. The point was to find out how effectively the students are learning what the teachers are trying to teach.
The result was, there’s a lot of variation from school to school. Many of the students in grade 4 can decode at the level of the Grade 4 textbook, but don’t have a clue what they’ve read. Many grade 2s and a quite a few grade 4s can not decode and don’t know the alphabet. Many of the students who struggled the most also have difficulty in other subjects besides English.
The most striking thing about doing this assessment was the attitudes of the teachers. With inclusive education the new buzzword here (well, my new buzzword anyway – most of the teachers have never heard of such a thing), I’m very aware of how teachers attitudes towards all students affects students with and without special needs, and can either close or open the door to education for many students. Well, there are some closed doors in Adwa.
One grade 4 boy, Solomon, couldn’t write his name in English, struggled to read a passage from the Grade 1 textbook, and managed to identify barely a handful of letters. His teacher described him as lazy, not putting in the effort to improve. (The teacher referred to Solomon as the “weakest student” about ten times in front of him, and I’m willing to bet that if Solomon understands any English, it’s this.) This teacher, like many, provides extra support for struggling students on Saturdays. He told me that Solomon looks after the sheep after school and on Saturdays, and therefore won’t come to school on Saturdays, no matter how many times the teacher has asked him to or spoken to his family… I was going nuts but I stayed polite and just added this to my mental list of things to address at next year’s workshops. It’s extremely common that teachers perceive extra support as an extra, something that should happen on Saturdays, rather than incorporating accommodations and support into all their teaching, every day.
At another school, Desinet, a grade 2 girl, was another student who couldn’t write her name or read, although she put in a very good effort at letter identification, identifying more than half the capitals and lower cases. I went to this school with my friend and colleague Hailemichael, who was exempted from conducting the census with the other college staff because he is blind. It’s good to go to schools with someone who speaks Tigrigna, because things are caught which I would otherwise miss. What Hailemichael caught was the teacher calling Desinet “the weak one” and asking another student “what’s the name of ‘the weak one’?”
Of course there are many reasons why these students are struggling, and poor teaching all by itself is definitely a possibility, but family instability, poverty, malnutrition and special educational needs are definitely up there. While children with the most obvious special needs are rarely at school, many students with high incidence minor disabilities such as mild developmental delays, learning disabilities, hearing and vision impairments are in the regular classrooms. Often neither their teacher nor their parents recognize the disability, or if they do, the teacher rarely has the skills or the capacity or motivation to provide the necessary support. Like everywhere, I guess, ability is valued and disability is not. The way that so-called continuous assessment is used in Adwa schools is one example of this: rather than being used to improve teaching and track and support all students, it’s basically used to identify and reward the top three students each month or week, often the same students over and over.
So the children who most need support don’t get it and suffer through school, learning very little, like Desinet, or drop out all together, especially in the rural areas, where getting to school is so difficult, and the child is needed to help at home, that if it doesn’t seem worth it, the family and the child easily give up.
I reread the story of the starfish a few weeks ago, and it’s been on my mind. Hailemichael is one of the best people I know for picking up starfish and throwing them back in the ocean, maybe because he’s been thrown back in himself a few times (I guess we all have if we’ve made it to adulthood). He’s very keen to try to provide support to Desinet next year. But it’s also been part of my thinking lately, as I try to be a person who picks up starfish, about how to make a difference in inclusive education, within and beyond the work of the cluster programme. I’m still thinking.
In Adwa, there are three orphanages. You’d think that would be enough, but my colleagues who were conducting the census found many children sleeping on the street, in all parts of the town (not just the bus station and the market area, where you’d expect to find many homeless people). They went out in the middle of the night to find them. Being a bit naïve, I was somewhat surprised by the numbers: homeless adults are fairly easy to spot day or night, but children tend to blend in easily. Many of them are shoecleaners, mostly eight years old and up. Many of them have come from the rural areas around Adwa; often if the mother dies and the father remarries, the children of the first marriage are no longer wanted in the home. Sometimes girls will go to a relative to work as a servant, so there are somewhat more boys on the street than girls.
The Story of the Starfish
An old man was walking along the beach, and he encountered a young man who was picking up starfish, one by one and tossing them back into the ocean, so that they wouldn’t dry out when the tide went out. The old man said to the young man “What’s the point? The beach is too long and the tide will be coming out soon. You’ll never be able to make a difference.” The young man bent down to pick up a starfish, and tossed it back in, saying “Made a difference to that one.”

2007-06-10T02:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday June 3, 2007
On Friday I got a long-awaited care package, including some nuts - almonds and brazil nuts. I was loath to share, wanting to hoard my rare bit of gastronomic variety, but I felt the eyes of the college secretaries and messengers on me and my exciting package from Canada… they were NOT a hit. The brazil nuts were decidedly unpopular; the almonds had a slightly better reception. The main question was whether they could be planted - as a naïve city person, this has never occurred to me - can you plant almonds? If it works, I have several promises of a supply of almonds for as long as I want.
Although the food options will probably always be somewhat limited here (and that’s kind of a good thing, because it reflects greater reliance on locally produced and minimally processed foods rather than imported and artificial variety) as I get to know Adwa better I’m starting to become aware of new things. For a long time, I entertained a mystery about embasha – the delicious whole wheat bread that you can almost never buy but only find homemade in people’s houses. The few bakeries only sell white buns (bani) and the market hardly sells any kind of flour. Finally (being a little slow), I realized that people buy the wheat at the market and clean it and take it to a local miller themselves. I think it’s cheaper to do the processing yourself, and also I think people prefer to be as close to their food as possible.
So, with Freweyni’s help, I’m now in the loop and cooking with whole wheat… I’m mainly enjoying pancakes so far, but I’m working on my skills at making bread (without an oven, maybe I should learn to use an injera oven). I’ve also discovered flax seeds at the market. I was enjoying toasting a handful at a time and sprinkling them on oatmeal (one of the few non-local treats I allow myself) or whatever, until my housemaid, who I think has a very negative view of my cooking ability, decided that I needed help and took my flax seeds home and turned them into a traditional toasted spiced thing. It’s very nice and very rich tasting, but not good on oatmeal (well, maybe savoury oatmeal).

2007-06-10T02:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday June 2, 2007
Ethiopia is in the midst of conducting what I think is its third census, conducted about every ten years. It’s interesting to realize how important a census is in a developing country like Ethiopia. With still many unregistered births, the census is the only accurate measure of how many people there are, where they are, and how they’re doing. This is, of course, important for planning and monitoring and evaluation purposes. For example, one non-formal education provider mentioned that when schools report their enrolment figures they do so in the context of the school age population, and since they are either guessing or using data more than ten years old, the reported rates of school enrolment are unreliable, particularly in rural areas.
With a low adult literacy rate, and limited infrastructure, the government can’t just mail a census form out to every household, part of the point being that they don’t know how many households there are. So the responsibility for carrying out the census is given to the teacher training institutions and vocational schools and, for some highly populated areas, elementary teachers. For two weeks in May, Adwa CTE was full of students again, this time 900 student teachers from Abi Adi as well as other institutions, including our own staff, being trained as census counters. And last week and this week, they are all out, censussing. (Unfortunately for me, this means that I have no colleagues to work with, which is a bit frustrating.) I met with Meressa for a little while last week, and he told me about the census questions. It’s very wide ranging – one of the good things is that it identifies whether or not children are in school, and if not, why, which will be very useful in the efforts towards inclusive education.
The census in most parts of the country is taking place right now, but I read an article the other day that described how in the pastoral regions of Somali and Afar, the census will be conducted in November when the pastoralists return to their home areas. Ethiopia is buying some kind of satellite technology that is going to help them to identify where the people are.

On a related note, it’s interesting how little contact people in one area have with other areas. I was shocked to hear from one of my good friends the other day that he has never allowed his teenage daughters to visit Axum, half an hour’s drive away. Apart from growing up in a village to the east of Adwa, they have never been outside of this town. I guess it’s also partly a gender issue: a lot of people are afraid to give their daughters too many opportunities, for fear that they will get into trouble.)
I’ve been trying to coordinate a visit by some teachers in Adwa town to one of the villages nearby where the school is very good. There are public busses which go there, so travel does happen, but for these women who have pretty much lived their whole lives in Adwa, the thought of traveling on their own out of the town was very daunting. Part of it is lack of experience, but part of it is the lack of infrastructure. They know that the bus and the road will be uncomfortable (and not 100% safe); the bus may not go all the way to the school; to return to Adwa they’ll have to wait till a bus becomes ready and full, and this often means waiting overnight - since one of the women has a small baby, this would be impossible. So we’re going to try to send a large bunch of teachers to this school, using the college car or bus. It doesn’t really send a message of independent learning and motivation that I wanted the teachers to get, but ultimately, the point is for them to see well set up classrooms so they can improve their own, as there are no decent classrooms in Adwa town. If we get a few, then we won’t have to send people out into the wilds.Adwa town people expect busses. For rural people, these problems don’t stop them because they are used to them –there are no options. Freweyni’s housemaid went back to her village last week, about eight months pregnant. She took a line taxi to the end of the town, and then she had to walk the rest of the way because the roads to this place are not accessible by car. It was to take two days, as she would stop and rest in a village midway. My guard, Wendim, has promised to go and visit her at some point and bring us news of the baby. I asked Freweyni if she would visit (I knew she wouldn’t) and she said no, it’s too difficult to get there. Wendim is another example of the industrious rural walker, walking at least 2 hours each way from his home to mine every day. I went to a wedding around his house a few months ago, taking a bus towards Axum and then walking a long distance through fields to this home; apparently Wendim’s house is twice as far and over what looked to me like a difficult mountain ridge. He doesn’t seem to mind, though, and at least he has shoes.

2007-04-30T01:35:00.000-07:00

Sunday April 29, 2007
During yesterday’s “Active Learning” workshop, I was trying to get a group thinking about what good group work would look like. I (foolishly?) asked “would you see children hitting each other?”. The answer was yes, so I took it as a language problem and called my translator over…it wasn’t a language problem. Many people really do see hitting as an acceptable way to solve problems, and although children often hit each other in the classroom, it’s not seen as a concern, by most teachers. In fact, older children are usually charged with disciplining their younger siblings, and this discipline usually takes the form of hitting. And, in the classroom, one child will often be assigned as a monitor to ensure good behaviour; he carries a stick and swats the children who misbehave. I’ve actually never seen a teacher hit a child in class, but in the yard, there’s constant stick swinging and stone throwing.
The other day, walking down my street, I saw a little girl who often walks with me, and is very quiet compared to the many friendly children who usually hold my hand. She was being hit by a man, maybe her brother, in the middle of the street. I wanted to say something, but I doubted that we’d speak the same language, so I just gave him a really bad look. It’s as pointless as it sounds, because I’m sure he had no idea why this ferenji was staring at him, and if anything at all, it probably made things worse by adding to the negative energy.
I’m embarrassed to write this, because I haven’t really done anything. It’s been discussed at the Classroom Management workshop, and, of course, it came up at the Active Learning workshop, but still, when it happens in front of me, I don’t really know how to deal with it. Fortunately at least, change is happening in the home of my friend with a six year old son, who has been making a big effort not to beat her son.

A nice thing about living in a small town is that people can be very trusting. When I went to the shop yesterday to buy vegetables, (no time for Saturday market on a workshop day) I only had a fifty birr note, and my shopkeeper didn’t have enough change, so she told me to pay the next day (which I did). It’s a small thing, but it’s a nice thing.

It’s been raining a bit lately. It’s often very dramatic when it rains, with thunder announcing the coming storm long before the clouds have hidden the sun. Often the electricity will go out when it rains. And the rain brings insects: big flying termites, and more crawling insects like cockroaches which I hardly saw during the dry season.

2007-04-30T01:32:00.000-07:00

Thursday April 26, 2007
Aesthetic Vision
I’ve been complaining that many of the teachers don’t seem to have a well-developed aesthetic sense, as it’s so common to go into a “model classroom” and find letters and charts hanging crooked on the wall, and tons and tons of materials produced without the aid of a ruler, even though most schools do have rulers. To me, it seems impossible not to be bothered by these things, but many teachers really don’t seem to see them.
My new theory is that it’s not carelessness; rather, it’s about how well you know and understand something that enables you to see it in detail. For example, while I keep a reasonably neat classroom, I make shiro (that Ethiopian bean powder convenience food I’ve mentioned before) that I’m quite happy with but I would never serve to an Ethiopian, because I can’t be bothered to cut the onions into the near-slivers that an Ethiopian woman would produce. To me, it’s really not a difference worth noticing, but to an Ethiopian it’s a difference between good food and barely edible. I can’t notice it because I’m not used to looking so critically at food, but for Ethiopian women who spend so much of their lives cooking, it’s easy to see.
Or, there’s my new Ethiopian-style scarf, or netella,the kind of scarf worn by most Tigrayan women, with a little fringe at the edge. Even close up, I have difficulty seeing the difference between my fringe and anyone else’s, but several women have come up to me and shown me how I have to twist together two strands in order to complete it. One teacher offered to do it for me: “It won’t take long”, she said “only about two hours”.
So, as anyone who’s seen the churches could easily have argued, my conclusion is that Ethiopians have no worse aesthetic sense that I do, it simply hasn’t been developed in the context of education. Crooked charts are as important to them as underchopped onions are to me. Hopefully, as they continue to be exposed to “model classrooms”, and to the harder task of making active learning work, they’ll become better at looking critically at their classrooms and their teaching. And maybe some day I’ll be able to invite people over for food I’ve cooked myself, without fear of it sitting untouched on their plates.

The Other Kind of Vision
About thirty years ago, Tigray was not the relatively peaceful place it is now. The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front was active across the region, and many people were anxious and angry enough to do strange things like keep homemade bombs in their homes. One of the instructors at the college, who is a good friend of mine and has embraced new methods of teaching and learning, grew up in this time. As a curious seven-year old, he and his cousin and younger brother found a bomb and decided to investigate. His cousin was killed, his brother received some minor scars, and he was blinded.
He was fortunate enough to be able to go to the school for the blind in Asmara, up to grade 5, and received a good education after that, has a degree in History, and has been teaching at Adwa CTE for the past 15 years.
There are many people with disabilities who struggle to live on the fringes of society, and what my friend and I were talking about today is that very few children with disabilities are in school (I’ve seen one child – a mentally challenged boy – in all the schools I’ve visited; the statistic is that worldwide, at least 40 million children with disabilities are out of school, that’s 95% of school-age children with disabilities!). However, as an educated person, my friend is respected, and generally accommodated fairly well, although there are times when he has to struggle to get what he needs - like when the ferenji cluster coordinator (yes, me) did a workshop for college staff that included a sample English lesson that was very dependent on being able to see.
I don’t think I’ve spent any time with a blind person until now, and as a teacher it’s a good check for me to recognize whether my lessons are really inclusive, and really using a variety of ways of learning. And, walking alongside him, I’m forced to be more aware of my environment. At the college, it’s easy, because even though he will usually hold someone’s hand for guidance, he knows the layout very well. But when we went to Dessie, and I was once in a while the guide, it was easy to see how hard it is to navigate without all your senses. I needed to be very alert to upcoming obstacles or changes, and it’s hard. My friend is very adept at figuring out what’s happening around him and where people and things are. Much of it is himself, but I think that the five years he had as a child at the school for the blind really served him well.

2007-04-30T01:30:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2007
Knock on wood that I won’t be screaming in frustration next week, but the Cluster unit seems to be taking on more of the shape that I want and I’m starting to have an occasional sense that the work I’m doing now might be a little bit sustainable. I think working with the college staff is very important to the sustainability and real improvements in teaching, as they are the ones (hopefully) training the teachers. It can be very frustrating, though. A group of college staff have gone out this week to observe teachers at schools, and a few of them have already called and said that exams are going on (there’s a serious case of testing taking the place of learning here, but that’s another issue) … oh well, Meressa, my colleague, whose calm attitude will hopefully rub off on me, responded by saying it’s a learning experience and next time we should ask the schools for their exam schedules in advance… good idea.
Also, the frustrations extend to the college staff skills: from the work we’ve done so far, it’s clear to me that my ideas of active learning and their ideas of active learning are not the same, and despite the orientation we did, I worry about the kind of feedback they will give teachers. Anyway, it’s really all a learning experience.

2007-04-09T07:54:00.000-07:00

Monday April 9, 2007
Yesterday was Easter Sunday, and today is a regular workday here in Adwa, Ethiopia. I had made the mistake of eating salad, which I guess I didn't wash well enough, on Saturday, so I was feeling a little off yesterday. But I still made it down to Freweini's where she made a gigantic omelet for me, which I struggled with while the family ate sheep. In the evening, I went to my friend Mehari's mother's house. I had tried to cancel, but been guilted into coming because she had made a whole lot of vegetarian food just for me which nobody else could eat because they had to eat meat.
Fasting time was nice, especially on the trip to Dessie when we were eating out every day, and every restaurant served vegan food all the time. Most of the year there's fasting on Wednesday and Friday, but unfortunately, I've just found out that for the next fifty days to make up for all that fasting, there are no fasting days. It will be very challenging to get vegetarian food anywhere but at home.
What is this with the spelling? Are you noticing that I keep spelling Freweini's name differently?I'm looking for the best fit. Because the Tigrigna/Amharic and English alphabets are so different, it's very hard to find a firm spelling for most Ethiopian names. At first I was spelling Furwaini but then I saw that other people spell it differently so I changed to Freweini, but I still see Freweyni and Frewaini and I just don't know. Fisseha is probably one of the worst names. I've seen Fissha, Feseha, Fesseha, and every combination in between, many of them spelled by the same Fisseha, who seems to be experimenting with the best way to spell his own name.

2007-04-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday April 7, 2007
Bingo
At the English workshop, I introduced sight word Bingo. Of course, I’m not the biggest fan of Bingo of any kind, but as the teachers are having so much difficulty giving the students more opportunity for active involvement, I thought this might be a good stepping stone. And English sight words are very much something worth practicing. So, Meressa and I visited a Grade 2 class at Bete Yohanis School last week, where we observed Number Bingo, English Bingo and Tigrigna Bingo! Meressa was very impressed with how much the teacher had applied the ideas of the English workshop, and to other subjects too, which is something that we’re trying to encourage. I was also impressed but hope that she’ll go beyond Bingo. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen at other schools as well causes me to be a bit worried that we may be entering an era of Bingo overload.
The end of meat...
As I write this, I can hear the Easter sheep crying outside. My landlady, like mostEthiopian Orthodox Christians, is ending her fast (the no-meat time before Easter) and has bought a sheep. It cost 250 Birr and will probably feed the family for about a week. A larger sheep would be more, and a goat would be closer to 500 Birr. A hen costs about 30 Birr, and there are a lot of those around too. Compared to this, a family could eat shiro (beans) for a month for about 10 Birr. I’ve promised a few people (or so they tell me) that I might eat meat at Easter. While so many people eat a pure vegan diet for the fasting period, they do this rather stoically, looking forward very keenly to Easter so they can eat meat again. The idea of being vegetarian full time is rather shocking to most people.
My main argument for not eating meat in Canada is the poor treatment of the animals, as well as the environmental impact of raising meat, and the fact that I just don’t want to. Although there are few factory farms here, animals are not necessarily treated well. I saw a horrible attack on a horse the other day. Cats, and other smallish animals, are routinely kicked when they’re in the way. And it’s obvious that the final days or hours of a goat or sheep’s life are not happy. They lose their freedom, no longer wandering through the streets or the field but tied by a rope. They dig in their heels quite literally, and often fall down or go backwards. Sometimes a child is leading the animal and isn’t strong enough, so he will resort to kicking or pulling it. And then the animal waits, tied up in someone’s compound, until it’s finally slaughtered. Apart from the issue of how animals are treated, there are the environmental implications, and in this place where soil erosion is so serious, it’s not really something I want to contribute to.
Cluster News
My boss has taken a job at Axum university. There’s a bit of competition, I think, among other higher-up people at the college who would like to take over his position, as the Cluster programme is a little bit prestigious, and also, given the state of the college, the only position that is (more or less) guaranteed to exist next year. I want my two lower-down colleagues to be moved up to a more senior coordinator position, which they’re very capable of handling, and would be very good at. Unfortunately, there’s so much awareness of status that this is going to be a bit of a challenge. However, during our visit to Dessie, we learned that the Cluster coordinators there also had lowly roots as pedagogical centre workers (like my colleagues, the people who make teaching aids, as there’s no Scholars’ Choice to order them from), so hopefully this will work in our favour.
Efforts to get the college academic staff more involved in the Cluster programme are continuing. Most staff members will be spending the coming week visiting schools and providing feedback to teachers. I’m hoping that their feedback won’t conflict with the training we’ve already given. Although the college has been training grade 1 to 4 teachers, almost none of the college staff have any experience teaching at that grade level. Many of them are in their very early twenties so their experience of any teaching is very limited. They are aware of their need to learn more, which is good. And I’m hoping that involvement in the cluster programme will help them develop their skills as well as helping the teachers in the schools (hopefully it will help the teachers in the schools).
Ethiopian English Gem
Meressa moved his bicycle into the shade because it (the leather of the seat) was being attacked by the sun. (does it still sound funny in writing?)
How is my Tigrigna? Well, when I asked the cost of a kilo of carrots in the market today, the children selling tried, and failed, to answer in English. Then the lady beside me chided them for not using their common sense and responding in Tigrigna, as I had asked in Tigrigna. So they did, and I bought my carrots, and all was well. So, I can speak enough to function in the market and when people use gestures and simple words and numbers to speak about predictable things, I can understand their gist, but other than that, I have not really been studying responsibly. While I can laugh at Meressa’s English mistakes, there’s not much to laugh at in my Tigrigna because it’s pretty much limited to Good morning, Good afternoon, Thank you, small, big and How much? (although, come to think of it, some people do laugh, just finding it quite thrilling that I can say anything at all.)

2007-04-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday April 1, 2007

Thankfully, this weekend is a public holiday (the birth of Mohammed and also Hosanna/Palm Sunday) so we have no workshops. We came back on Monday from our trip to Dessie and since then I’ve been busy with a follow-up workshop for the college staff as well as ELIP and catching up on paper work and what not. I was very tired and ready for a weekend off.
Most colleges take an annual college tour so that the staff can share experiences with another college. We went to Dessie, which has a very well established Cluster programme (in-service teacher training, what I do) with a busload of college staff and the directors of the cluster centre schools we work with and the woreda school supervisors. It was a week of driving on Ethiopian mountain roads, some paved and some not, and almost all very curvy and bumpy and narrow. Even the high-end college bus couldn’t make it comfortable - and there were a few carsick people - although it was certainly a lot better than a public bus.
Lately I’ve been noticing that there’s not a lot of variety in Ethiopian food (okay, by the end of the trip, eating out every day, I thought I’d go crazy if I had to eat shiro again), but there were a few moments (few and far between) on this trip when I encountered new and exciting foods, like the porridge in Adi Grad (see pictures) and sugar cane in Alamata. Also peanut tea (heaven) and ginger tea - both of which I think you can get here too, but since I don’t go out that much here, and when I do I usually go for machiato or regular tea - I wasn’t aware of these options. Apparently, the peanut tea is mainly a fasting time substitute for machiato (many Orthodox Christians don’t consume any animal products in the fifty or so days before Easter).
We saw some of the rock-hewn churches near Wukro, as part of the tour. These are ancient churches (the priests claim that they were built around 350 C.E., but others have argued for later dates) that are still in use today, and that were actually carved out of the mountain rock. They’re incredibly beautiful and it’s amazing to think of how they were built. It’s also strange to me that they’re not a bigger tourist attraction. With some of the other VSOs that I stayed with in Dessie, we were talking about how strange it is that nobody knows about the incredible wonders of Ethiopia, outside of Ethiopia.
It’s very dry in Adwa. I’ve been feeling this more and more lately, I guess as we get deeper into the dry season, as my skin gets drier and a walk down the street always means dust in my face. But I could really see the difference when we got to the southern part of Tigray region and into Amhara region, and everywhere we looked it was lush and green. There are two rainy seasons in most of Ethiopia, but in this part of Tigray there’s only one. (We did bring some rain back with us, the first rain in about six months: big thunder and lightening storms last week, and lengthy power outages, but I’m told that this is just a tiny taste of what’s happening to the south, and that we won’t have a proper rainy season till about June.)
It was interesting to see Dessie’s cluster programme. The organization of schools in Amhara region is a bit different than in Tigray, and that was good to find out about. There are two volunteers and two Ethiopian cluster coordinators in Dessie, and the programme is well established. They even have their own office photocopier (no chasing down the photocopy guy, and then finding he’s somehow managed to copy the wrong page!) One of the goals of the trip is to inspire college staff to be more involved in the cluster programme, which is a good idea for always, but especially now that they’re being paid for signing in and doing nothing. However, as I found at the college staff workshops I did last week, and as I feared already, coordinating them to do this is going to be a very difficult task.
When we got back, one of the college staff members invited everyone for his daughter’s baptism celebration. In Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, baby girls are always baptized after 80 days, and boys after 40 days. I was so surprised when I heard the invitation, and thought at first that there was some kind of language gap. This staff member is someone I work with quite closely, and I had had no idea that his wife had been pregnant or had a baby (in fact, I hadn’t realized he was even married because he had been referring to his wife as ‘my fiancée’… apparently in his understanding of English, since he and his wife were not living together for financial reasons, he thought fiancée was a better time than wife). But it wasn’t just me (that could be explained by the language gap) - almost everyone at the college was surprised by this baby. Just as I was trying to figure out why my friend would keep it a secret, I found out that another college staff member was also celebrating his new son’s baptism, and had also kept his birth a secret (actually it’s still a secret – sometimes I get left out of things because I don’t know the language, and other times I get special information because I guess I’m considered different). So are these two isolated cases or is there an epidemic of Ethiopian men keeping quiet about the births of their children? Hmmm

2007-03-06T20:22:00.000-08:00

I’ve been in Adwa for six months and I walk through the town almost every day. Yet it’s still a rare event to not have children, or even teenagers and adults, yell “Money”, “Ferenji” or “China” (a lot of Chinese road builders means that any non-Ethiopian is Chinese), or just to give a really long stare. It still really drives me crazy, even when it’s done in a friendly or innocent way. I think mostly it reminds me that no matter how long I stay here I will always be an outsider.

Often adults I don’t know will greet me, in English or Tigrigna. This drives me crazy too, although it really shouldn’t. I complain about how unfriendly Toronto and western society are, but I’m a product of that society (rather an exemplary one, at that). I rather like walking down the street in anonymity, without people noticing my every move. Of course, I also like the warm greetings of the people I do know. I have one shop that I often go to, and the owner is always friendly and welcoming. Last time she invited me to have coffee in the back. It actually wasn't the best coffee, and it was a tight squeeze for three people in the tiny space behind the counter, and our conversation was limited to what we could say in my broken Tigrigna and their broken English, but still, it was nice. And now, we greet each other by name and more warmly than before.

My landlady’s servant is divorced. This is not as rare as you might think. Divorced men can remarry, but women are on their own. She has one son already, and her husband has remarried. However, he led her to believe there was a potential reconciliation... She is still alone, but now she is pregnant. When the baby comes in July, she will have to stop working and go back to the village where she will live with her mother and son.

2007-03-02T20:14:00.000-08:00

Today was Adwa Victory Day, a holiday to celebrate the Ethiopian defeat over the Italians in 1896, which made Ethiopia the “only” African country not to be colonized by Europe. It’s a relatively small holiday in most parts of the country, not having any direct religious connection, but if one happens to be in Adwa, of course it’s quite a big deal. Yesterday afternoon, there was a public celebration at the town stadium, with children from all the schools and all workers from the various local institutions (the college, the hospital, the textile factory). It was quite a big crowd. I brought Mickey with me and we joined the college contingent. It was very hot so we were lucky to be able to go in the college car. Unfortunately Mickey, being a ferenji-influenced child, is not very well behaved compared to many Ethiopian children, and drove my colleagues crazy with putting his head out the window and what not.

Today, the actual day, started with Adwa’s Great Run for Victory and Development. As this is the millennium year in the Ethiopian calendar, and the 111^th anniversary of Adwa Victory it was rather a big deal (any excuse for a celebration). This is the first time Adwa has had a run, and it got off to a rather bumpy start. I woke up at 5:15 to be on time for a 6:00 start at the stadium, and found instead a 7:30 start downtown, in part because many people had been told to go to the stadium and needed to be herded to the right place, and in part, I don’t really know why. The run was public, for anyone who had 7 birr to spare, and well turned out with the fast and the slow, like me. After the run I went home and showered and ate, and made it to the 8:00 ceremony by 10:00ish when it was just getting started. It was by invitation only, and most of the college staff had received invitations. I ended up getting a good seat, thanks to the UNMEE people, close to the official guests, Regional leaders and the Orthodox Christian priests from Addis.

2007-02-25T19:03:00.000-08:00

The Cluster programme has gotten our funding back, although the direction of the college is still not decided. This happened quite suddenly, just before I had to go to Addis for a cluster meeting. So I’ve been really busy since then catching up on the workshops that had been postponed, as well as doing school visits and an action research project with some of the teachers and writing funding reports.

I spoke to the Regional Education Director. Apparently there were a lot of teachers from Tigray region working in other parts of the country, and during the upheavals after the election a year and a half ago there were threats against them. There was doubt about the fairness of the election. Since the government is mainly Tigrayan, there was some negative feeling towards Tigrayans. Many people fled back to Tigray region, creating a surplus of teachers.

So no new students have been admitted to any of the teachers’ colleges in Tigray and a commission has finally been launched to explore what should be done with each of the teachers’ colleges. To me, it seems a little short-sighted to shut them down, but we’ll see what happens.

Meanwhile, whether or not I can stay in Adwa for a second year depends on this decision, which has been two weeks away ever since I arrived in October.

Although education is improving in the country as a whole, much of this progress is led by improvements in Tigray, Amhara, Oromiya and even SNNPR regions, where probably the majority of children get some education.

But in the so-called “emerging” regions of Afar, Somali, Beneshangul-Gumuz and Gambella, around 30% - sometimes less - of school-age children are attending school. Partly this is because people live a nomadic lifestyle that makes regular education difficult. In the south. Last year’s continuing famine has meant that many people have been forced to move, and schools have been shut down. In Somali region, there are security issues. In Gambella, near the border with Sudan, there has been ongoing conflict, which I think is starting to improve. VSO (and many other aid organizations) doesn’t operate in Afar, Somali or Gambella. In some ways this makes sense, because international volunteers and workers expect a degree of security and pre-existing infrastructure, yet it’s disturbing to think that the areas where the need is greatest are not getting the same attention as places like Tigray. At the same time, a nomadic culture is so different from that in which the traditional education system works that it is a huge challenge to implement an effective education system that works with the society and doesn’t destroy what is positive about that culture. There are some informal education programmes whereby teachers move along with everyone else.

* * * * *

I know it's been quite some time since my last blog. My apologies.

Part of the reason for my hesitation is that in practice I have been sharing my personal reflections on all that is right and wrong about Ethiopia, and to a lesser degree about the personal lives of some of my associates. I wonder whether a public forum such as this blog is an appropriate venue, especially when many of those views seem to be changing constantly. Whenever I start to write something I find myself second-guessing it.

I'm open to the thoughts of my readers on this issue.

2007-01-30T11:15:00.000-08:00

I’ve started tutoring my landlady's cousin (servant) in English every evening. She is in grade 9, and struggling. In Grades 9 to 12, all subjects except Amharic and Tigrigna are taught in English. For someone who still doesn’t know all the letters and can barely read a sentence, let alone understand what she reads, this means the heavy load of Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Geography, History courses is nearly impossible. On top of that, the classes are large, the teacher is only present for 10 out of the 40 minutes (the notorious video lessons) and the textbooks are poorly written and organized.

2007-01-24T15:14:00.001-08:00

Recently, I've become better acquainted with ferenjis in Adwa. The ferenjis themselves are interesting, but even more is the general thrill of finally meeting other foreigners living in Adwa after about four months of relative isolation.

About two weeks ago, I met an Italian woman who with her husband has started an orphanage here. They’re about my age, and have basically committed their lives to running the orphanage here, with regular visits back to Italy. On Friday, a holiday, I visited the orphanage. Although I only had a fairly short visit. I will write more about it, as I know the babies will draw me back.

On Saturday at the market I met the wife of the new manager of the road construction project. And on Saturday afternoon I met the Chinese engineers who are constructing the road. I walk past their building all the time but almost never see them. After getting inside the building, I finally know why: each person has office, bedroom and bathroom all in one room. And they have their own Chinese cook. There’s no need to step out into Ethiopia if you don’t want to.

On Monday I was invited with Furwaini to a wedding in the rural area outside of Adwa. We waited for a long time for a line taxi and finally happened to meet the car belonging to Medecins du Monde (not to be confused with the better known Medecins Sans Frontiers), a team of French doctors formerly based in Adwa but unfortunately now in Axum. We got a ride in the car: the driver was picking up from school a little girl from Sri Lanka who has been adopted by one of the French doctors.

On Monday afternoon, after we returned from the wedding (they danced till midnight but I missed all that), Furwaini’s brother came with some visiting philanthropists who have been funding several projects in Ethiopia. Go to www.aglimmerofhope.org and www.clintonfoundation.org to see more.

And that’s it for now.

2007-01-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

"Looking back at our own educational experience" was the topic of a recent ELIP (English Language Improvement Programme) session I’m running.

The rate of enrolment in education in Ethiopia is 85% as of October 2006. This compares to 27% in 1991, which of course is when the current government came into power. It’s clear from my discussions with teachers and others that progress has been made in recent years.

Many teachers recalled classes conducted under trees, and walking several hours to school.

Now, although there are some dass (temporary structures) and many dark and dingy classrooms, and classrooms without desks, there are also many quite decent school buildings. I have never seen a class under a tree. I could be wrong, but I would guess that they don’t exist any more in Tigray region, at least not in the formal education system.

Work is still needed on access to education: 15% is not a small number, and in some regions the figure is much higher. But quality of education is now a big focus, through programmes such as cluster and higher diploma (training for teacher educators).

2007-01-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

For me as a shyish person, there are some things about life here that are easier than at home. I sometimes wonder if this is a good thing. As the only foreigner at the college and one of very few in the town, I stand out and get attention and recognition without really earning it. For social events like holidays I’m assured of an invitation. Of course, Ethiopians always greet each other warmly; I'm included in this too. I have wonderful colleagues in the Cluster Unit, and as we’re going out regularly on school visits we’re getting to know each other well. And when my social calendar is empty, as it is many evenings, I can always rationalize, completely legitimately, that I’m a stranger in a strange land with a strange language, all the volunteers in isolated placements experience the same phenomenon, and few women here go out at night anyway.

2007-01-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

Another happy day on the rural school visit circuit. We saw a very nice measurement lesson, which added fuel to my theory that there’s an inverse relationship between the quality of the teaching and the condition of the school building, as this was another classroom sans-desks where the students sit on dried mud platforms.

I always feel uplifted when we watch a good teacher – it’s inspiring and reassuring, and also a great break from watching students do NOTHING for 20 minutes while the teacher checks everybody’s book, or listening to teachers and students scream “This is a cat. This is a cat. This is a cat.” (The drill approach is very popular in all subjects, but especially English.) Anyway, we saw this wonderful teacher and Meressa, my lesson-observing partner, called some students up to read in Tigrigna (very few Grade 2 students can read in English) and they were all able to read. This was a stark contrast with the previous Grade 2 class where only one out the four students we called was able to stumble through what she had copied into her notebook. As a teacher, I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a connection between good teaching and good learning, but it is rather gratifying to see.

Furwaini’s brother is visiting from Canada where he has been living for the past three years. He’s complaining about the backwards way people live here: cooking food on coal stoves outside and washing their laundry in basins (even though, as Furwaini says, he doesn’t have to do any of this work himself). Furwaini herself doesn’t mind, and she has brought me into it as a Canadian who doesn’t mind the traditional ways either, although I think with my electric burner and my running water I’d really better stay out of the discussion.

I have no intention of idealizing poverty. Even Furwaini’s life is much easier than that of many people, who have to collect their own water, or go to the river to wash, or who don’t have servants to help them. And there is nothing romantic about water-borne infections, or protein-starved children, or walking three hours a day with a load of wood on your back, or futures disappearing under a bad education system. Yet there is still something about a group of women cooking together, and preparing food from start to finish with their own hands, that I love. There’s something about children playing together on the street with homemade balls and games. People dropping in and coffee being prepared. People walking (or taking the bus) everywhere they go. These are things I love and I wish that I could bring a little bit of them back with me when I go home.

When we visit classes to observe teachers, we always ask the teacher to talk with us afterwards so we can give her or him some feedback on the lesson we saw. So we step outside the classroom, find a rock or something to sit on, and talk. Meanwhile, the 40 or 50 children are left inside the class (no supply teacher coverage!). At first I was quite resistant to this. It goes against my ingrained sense of responsibility and liability to leave children alone in the classroom. Yet after a few occasions it became very clear that the children were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Sometimes the teacher leaves a particular child in charge to lead a lesson. Other times the students are just expected to work independently. I don’t know how much work gets done, but the behaviour is always excellent. Once we spoke with a teacher for about fifteen minutes while her class conducted their own Physical Education class outside, playing a game together without any problems. To be fair, I sometimes wonder whether a fear of punishment plays a role in the good behaviour. But I also think there’s a sense of cooperation among the children, and also an independence and self-sufficiency from both the children and the adults’ expectations that I admire and would like to bring back with me.

2007-01-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

This morning, I went with the college staff to the funeral for Fesseha’s uncle. It was the first funeral I have been to, and there are many things I don’t understand about the ceremony, yet there were of course many similarities with western Christian funerals. Funerals, like baptisms and births and other milestones, are very public events with all the family and neighbours and colleagues participating. Everyone assembled outside the uncle’s house and followed the coffin and the priests to the church. The men and women were separate – men at the front and women at the back, even the wife and the close female relatives were at the back. I was only able to identify the wife because she was the one being held up and consoled by other women. Many of the women were crying and wailing in a way that I think is ceremonial as well as sincere, and that is strange for me from a slightly less explicit emotional culture. Yesterday was Ethiopian Orthodox Christmas (December 29^th in the Ethiopian calendar, which falls on January 7^th in the western calendar). It was a rather quiet day with everyone celebrating with their own families. Many people have been fasting (eating a vegan diet) for the 35 days leading up to Christmas, so there was much enthusiasm about killing the goat or hen or sheep for Christmas. Haile Michael, one of the college staff, who takes very seriously the responsibility of ensuring my entertainment, invited me to his house, and provided me with shiro (vegetarian food) and I also joined Furwaini (my landlady)’s family. Her brother who lives in Ottawa is visiting and it was nice to have a little feeling of Canada. There are pictures of both family celebrations on flickr.

2007-01-04T13:37:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, some of the teachers who come to ELIP and cluster workshops invited me to have porridge for one of the teachers who had just had a baby. I was a bit mystified as I had never been invited for porridge before. Four days after a baby is born, the family invites people over for porridge.

(I can’t remember the name in Tigrigna, but in English it’s called porridge, which is a bit misleading – if you’re familiar with West African fufu it’s actually rather similar to that although it’s made of flour instead of cassava).

The mother and baby (a boy, number 6) were comfortably ensconced on a bed, and the cooking and serving were done by other women – friends and relatives. I like and envy the way people take care of each other and celebrate together. All the women in the neighbourhood were invited, as well as the teachers and other friends and family, and the house was full of women, in small clusters sharing huge mounds of porridge topped with berberi (peppery sauce). Another group of women helped cook more porridge in a huge pot outside. This is not a food I’d had or even heard of before (a meal without injera? oh my!) The women told me that although it’s eaten sometimes for breakfast, porridge is mainly eaten when celebrating the birth of a baby, and is considered very nutritious and fattening in a good way. It was quite nice, very comfort-foody. When everyone had had enough, each woman in the group picked up the plate and kissed it in thanks for the food and everyone ululated (is that the word for a throaty, yodeling kind of singing?). There was a lot of celebratory ululating going on throughout, as new guests came and left and food was served. Hopefully at some point I’ll have the chance to take pictures, but sometimes I feel like taking pictures is disruptive and underlines my foreignness, and I’d rather just enjoy the experience.

It must be baby week, because on Saturday I went to a baptism party for another baby. In Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, boys are baptized after 40 days and girls after 80 days (I don’t know why) and the church is quite strict about baptisms happening on time. The whole neighbourhood is invited and people come in and out as in an open house. The grandmother and aunts were busy serving the food (the usual – injera and wot) while the mother and baby rested.

2007-01-02T13:25:00.000-08:00

What of this business of not doing any weekend workshops? Well, most of the Cluster Unit’s budget comes from an NGO called TDP (Teacher Development Programme, funded by several EU countries). As I wrote a few weeks ago, some uncertainty has arisen about the direction of the college, and therefore TDP has frozen their budget until this is sorted out, which means that the only part of the college which is actually active is now facing something of an obstacle.

(The college staff themselves are paid by the government and so are still being paid even though there are no students and there’s very little to do. This seems a bit odd, but the thing is that as there’s no social security net, if the college staff were not to be paid, Adwa’s fledgling middle class would practically vanish. So they keep themselves busy running workshops for each other and planning classes, but they are started to be quite frustrated.)

The cluster unit still has small allocations of money, like the BESO funding for videotaping and for such specific things as a Computer workshop for teachers (oh, the waste of time!), but the bulk of our money is frozen. So workshops that require paying a per diem to the teachers are really impossible. I’ve just started doing ELIP (English Language Improvement Programme) with the Adwa Town teachers two half days a week and it is difficult to get them to come, purportedly because we’re not paying a per diem, even though it’s only half a day and they don’t have that far to travel. (I also think that the first session was not very smooth and this has turned them off coming, but my colleagues are very attached to the per diem explanation. Anyway, today was a lot better, so we’ll see if attendance improves or not.)

I’m sure people will disagree with me about computer training being a waste of time. BESO certainly thinks it’s worth getting on the IT bandwagon. Although I definitely find computers useful, and I couldn’t manage without email, I’ve never been a fan of computers in the classroom. I certainly don’t think they’re essential to effective teaching. As none of our schools have computers, and little prospect of acquiring computers in the near future (many of them have no electricity), I’d rather see the money go to something more useful rather than computer training for a mere 16 teachers (8 teachers and 8 directors). But there’s no point in arguing, so yesterday I and the college’s IT person were thrown into computer training (every evening for three weeks straight as the BESO budget reporting period is very short). It was actually quite interesting to watch and work with the teachers, who had rarely seen and never touched a computer before: a mouse is a very tricky tool to get used to. Still, I wasn’t upset to find that there was no electricity today.

2007-01-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

My dad has asked for a clarification on why we go out into the rural areas to visit schools. This is a very good question, as it certainly would be easier not to spend hours driving across bumpy roads spewing diesel fuel into the air, and sitting in freezing - in - the - morning and boiling - in - the - afternoon classrooms, and rationing water consumption in order to avoid the yucky (or more often, nonexistent) toilets. And whether the lesson is good or not, it can be quite tedious to watch other people teach when you’re used to teaching yourself. So, why do we do it? About a month and a half ago, we had an experiencing sharing visit from the cluster unit at Abi Adi CTE, which included VSO volunteer Jenny, who has been in Abi Adi since last February, and the Ethiopian cluster coordinator Yikono. Having been busy planning workshops and whatnot, I hadn’t spent much time in the schools since the first weeks of being here and had kind of forgotten or not realized how important it was to be on top of what’s happening in the schools. We went out to show Jenny and Yikono some of the schools in Adwa town, and sat and watched a couple of lessons. Now that I wasn’t quite as freshly arrived, I think I was a bit more ready to critically observe the lessons. As I took in the enormity of the task ahead of me, instead of crying, I thought to myself that it would be very helpful to provide ongoing support and mentoring to the teachers on an individual basis. Soon afterward, Jenny described how in Abi Adi they have just started spending two full days visiting the schools, and since this was so closely aligned with what I was thinking, I immediately proposed it to my fellow co-ordinator Tigistu, who agreed with surprising ease, and we proposed it to Feseha, the dean.

There are no rules for exactly what needs to be done by each cluster unit, and there’s a lot of variation from one to another, which leads to flexibility, but can also leave you floundering a bit if you don’t have enough support or direction. Fortunately, that’s not the case here.

The original plan was to spend one day a week, but now that we are not doing weekend workshops (see below), it has gone up to two days and occasionally. We’ve finished our first set of workshops, on active learning / setting up your classroom for active learning, and it’s very interesting to see to what extent the teachers are using the strategies taught in the workshop. For the most part they are using them, but often need a little bit of guidance to use them properly, which we give as part of our feedback. For example, it’s great to use stones to model addition, but the students themselves need to use them as manipulatives, not just the teacher.

Another benefit of visiting the schools is that it allows us to identify good teachers. We have some money from BESO (Basic Education System Overhaul, under USAID) to videotape five good teachers, so as we visit schools right now we’re looking for those teachers. But also as we identify teachers who are strong in various areas we are able to advise other teachers to visit and observe them, and begin to contribute to an informal system of mentoring and support among the teachers in the various geographic clusters. Although not impossible. this is difficult for teachers to set up on their own because of the lack of communication infrastructure. I don’t think any of the rural schools have phones, the distances between schools can often be quite large, and of course the teachers don’t have access to vehicles other than the odd bicycle. For the young teachers at the rural schools, it can be a very isolating life. They generally live in a teachers’ residence at the school or they rent space in a nearby farmer’s home. Some schools are in villages or very small clusters of homes but others are completely on their own, away from their families and a long walk from markets, shops and amenities and entertainment. In addition to their low salary, these are some of the reasons why few people want to stay in teaching. When they do, as they accumulate years of service they select out of the rural areas. This is why Adwa Town has almost only teachers in their forties and fifties and the rural areas have almost only teachers in their early twenties.

There are 62 schools under our cluster programme, which is a lot. Eight schools are in Adwa town itself and the rest are in the rural areas, which means we’re spending a lot of time on those bumpy roads. Some are reachable by car but others are not, and of course the harder to reach schools are the ones in the worst shape, at least in terms of materials and the conditions of the buildings. We walked about a kilometer or so after the road ended to get to one school a few weeks ago. One of the classes had desks but the others didn’t so the children sat on stone stools on the floor. This was the easiest of the hard to reach schools though and my colleagues seem to think that the other ones are too much for my ferenji feet. Unfortunately, they’re probably right, but I hope to work on getting there at some point.

2006-12-27T14:56:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-12-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

I wrote some time ago that there are no students at the College, but that fortunately this does not affect me as I am working with the inservice teachers in the school cluster programme. Unfortunately, it seems I spoke too soon. The absence of students has turned out to be a symptom of a greater reorganization at the Regional Education Bureau of Tigray – that institution which decides not only where grade ten finishers will go for teacher training, but also what each institute of higher education will teach. At present, although we are several months into what should be the current school year, it seems that the REB is trying to decide whether Adwa CTE should continue to be a teacher training college, and if so whether it should be First or Second Cycle, or whether we should instead become a campus under the new Axum University, due to open in January, or whether we should become a tourism and hospitality industry college.

Institutional disorganization is one of the most frustrating things about working in Ethiopia. Even before this problem became clear, I was beginning to dread running into Feseha (the dean), knowing that he would tell me that the BESO budget or TDP budget (aid agencies) for the cluster programme had changed and we had to do this, or couldn’t do that, or needed to plan for something new. Now, the bulk of our budget is frozen, as apparently the REB has not released any of the money that I think we were counting on, and won’t release it until they decide what to do with Adwa CTE. So when next weekend’s Model Classroom training is finished, our activities will be on hold – no more training. I don’t know what will happen if we become a tourism college; I don’t relish the thought of our beautiful model classroom being turned into a model hotel room. I am a bit worried that my one year or two debate may have become moot (indeed, I am a bit worried that it may not even be one year in Adwa, but I will wait and see what decisions the REB makes over the next few weeks before I panic).

2006-12-03T06:33:00.000-08:00

You know you’re out your depth when… At the end of the workshop on how to set up a model classroom, I ask the teachers to sketch their plans for their classrooms. When we came to this point in this weekend’s workshop with the teachers of Lalay Maychew and Tahay Maychew woredas (districts), about a third of the teachers had a slight problem - they have no classrooms. They’re teaching in what’s called a dass - under a tarp or a roof of sticks and leaves. I knew that such schools existed, but I was a little surprised by how many of them there are, and how many students and teachers are involved. And as I sat there talking to these young teachers, with as many as 62 grade ones and no walls or desks or books, trying to figure out if there’s anything they can do to improve their classrooms, I felt incredibly powerless.

I do think the training is effectively geared towards teaching with very limited materials and locally available resources, but it does carry the assumption that teachers will have a wall on which to post an alphabet and hang the paper pocket chart we give them, and perhaps the comfort of not being open to the wind all day.

I feel a little bit guilty that it’s been two months and I still haven’t seen any of these schools without buildings. I don’t think my colleagues have been too keen on visiting them - given how difficult it is to get to the rural schools that do have buildings, I’m not looking forward to the trip to these more isolated schools. Anyway, it has now been moved to the top of the list.

Even though their teaching situations are difficult, I found this group of teachers quite keen, like the Ahferom group. Last week’s workshop was for Adwa town and Geter Adwa teachers, and those teachers were much older and seemed to be much more resistant to change. The last Model Classroom workshop is next weekend, and then I will have met all of the teachers in our cluster programme.

In recent years, the government has made an effort to make education more accessible, which means building more schools in the rural areas so that children don’t have as far to go. In most cases now, children in rural areas have up to a 4 km walk to school, whereas in the past it would have been 8 to 10 km or more to the nearest school, and this would have been prohibitive for most children, especially those in the younger grades. But it seems that the budget only goes so far. Thus there are many new schools that don’t have proper buildings yet.

I went to Mekelle on Tuesday to Thursday for VSO’s workshop on Mainstreaming HIV/AIDS. It was nice to see the other Tigray Region volunteers and get away to the big city. The hotel was ridiculously expensive (by Ethiopian standards) and not cockroach free, but it was still nice to eat out and have ferenji food and coffee for a change. Two College staff were invited so we took one of the college cars. The college has three cars (and three drivers) and unfortunately the best two were in use, so we had to take the oldest car and driver. Wehab, the vice administrative dean, in describing why we were so late arriving in Mekelle, said “The car is old, and the driver is old too.” It probably doesn’t sound funny to you, but when it’s 7:30 at night, and you should have arrived by 6:00; there’s no light; you’re on a rocky, curvy mountain road; the car is lurching along doubtfully; and it’s just made contact with a cow; the calm understatedness of this explanation is rather overwhelming.

Anyway, although I didn’t think I complained too much (granted, I did make a noise of some surprise when, just after dark, the driver maintained speed and didn’t honk his horn as we drove into a herd of cows, who managed to meander out of the way in time for one to be merely grazed by the car; and perhaps once we arrived in Mekelle and limped along at about 5kph I wondered aloud whether this old car would be able to get back to Adwa), Wehab decided that our car was not suitable for a ferenji for the trip back. So he generously arranged for me to go back as far as Abi Adi in their college car. (Abi Adi is halfway between Adwa and Mekelle.) There are four VSOs in Abi Adi and three of them had come to the Mainstreaming workshop, plus several of their college staff. So in the Abi Adi car, we were ten: three in the front, four ferenjis in the middle, and three more staff and our bags in the little back seat. It was just a little tight. Anyway, the idea was nice, and it would have worked well had we left when we said we would at 7:00 in the morning. Unfortunately, we didn’t take into account the Abi Adi sense of time, and although they picked us up at the hotel just after 7:00, by the time we had picked up 100kg of teff, purchased many new car parts, experienced and repaired a blown tire (okay, that couldn’t have been predicted) and done a number of other mysterious tasks, it was 10:00. We arrived in Abi Adi at noon to find that the Adwa people had been waiting for me for two and a half hours.

I’ve been to Mekelle twice now, once by car and once by bus, and both times I’ve been sick after getting home. I don’t know if it’s breathing the fumes or the dust or if it’s some kind of low grade whiplash from the constant bouncing around. The view is nice, at least for the most part, but otherwise it is not a pleasant trip, and the experience does not add to my enthusiasm about visiting the rural schools.

So what about this HIV/AIDS conference? Well, it’s basically to encourage the college and the volunteer to mainstream HIV/AIDS within the college’s activities. The most useful, although most frustrating, part of the conference was just finding out from Wehab and Gibretensail, the HIV/AIDS focal person, what the state of HIV/AIDS programming is at the college. I and my co-VSOs were a bit shocked to hear about the Virgin Award. Apparently, last year the college awarded a prize to the 200 female students who were virgins. Out of 500 female students, 210 agreed to be examined at the hospital, and of these, 200 passed, and received a prize. Of course, although the students “consented” to the examination, it’s a forced consent, because it’s implicit that those who do not agree are not virgins. Secondly, the perpetuation of exams of this kind has been found to lead many girls to choose anal sex in order to preserve their hymens, which is problematic for many reasons, including greater risk of HIV transmission. Thirdly, rape and sexual assault are relatively common, especially when girls are on isolated rural practicums; so not only are the girls assaulted but then they are blamed for not being a virgin. And it promotes gender roles that women are expected to be virgins, but men are allowed to get away with anything, and I’m sorry to say that from my line of sight, it’s the behaviour of men that is behind most of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Anyway, if we ever get students (yes, we still have no students), the plan is to conduct this award process again. And I need to find a nice way to say that I think that this is counterproductive if the goal is to reduce HIV/AIDS transmission.

The state of the HIV/AIDS situation in Adwa is not completely clear to me. One of the first things that we will do under HIV/AIDS mainstreaming is survey the staff to find out their knowledge and attitudes about HIV/AIDS. I don’t believe it’s an overwhelming problem here, but I do know that it exists. Every once in a while, a relative of someone at the college has died, and when I’ve asked what they died of, the answer has been very mysterious, usually just that they were sick for a long time. I don’t know if this always means AIDS but I do think it often does. A few days ago I met a cousin of Furwaini’s who works as a nurse in the ART (anti-retroviral therapy) clinic at Adwa Hospital. It’s only a couple of months old and it’s relatively small as many people from the Adwa area are continuing to go to Mekelle and Addis for treatment in order to maintain their privacy. He seems to think, as I’m beginning to conclude on my own, that the big problem is unfaithful husbands, which means that there’s a double burden on a woman who is diagnosed with HIV. According to his sources, the HIV infection rate is around 6% in Adwa and the surrounding areas.

2006-11-26T06:26:00.000-08:00

One year or two? The decision doesn’t have to be made till around February but it is a constant question. Here are my pros and cons.

For staying:

Training weekends

School visits

I want to really know Ethiopia, and Adwa, and I’ll need more time to do this, and to adjust more fully

Coffee ceremony invitations, which always seem to include lunch

Children I barely know coming up to hold my hand

Mountain scenery

For going:

Being alone every night

A diet of white bread and shiro

Having to have a translator for all my workshops

Children I don’t know yelling “Money, money” at me

Not seeing Nicholas (my nephew) growing up

Training weekends / 7 day workweeks

Ethiopian English

Cockroaches and fleas (while my populations are more or less under control, there’s the constant fear of a resurgence)

Last weekend I was certain I would stay for two years, and this week I’ve been pulled towards one year. Nothing bad has happened; I just seem to be struck by a rather strong feeling of homesickness and tiredness. I know I’ll continue to bounce the decision round right up until it has to be made… Onto other news… macchiato and goiter.

The College has purchased two large espresso/macchiato machines, one for the Staff Lounge and one for the Student Lounge (we still have no students). Much of the College budget comes from aid programmes (USAID and TDP-Teacher Development Programme- from several EU countries), so I find it quite difficult not to question this purchase, especially when we can’t afford decent books for the cluster schools and we’ve just been told to scale down our English training for teachers. Maybe this isn’t fair, but I think an aid budget is different from a gift: it needs to have strings and responsibilities attached. Of course, I say this from the comfort of my shiny indoor bathroom home, rent paid by the College. Anyway, my conscience has yet to be tested on the macchiato issue, as nobody knows how to work the machine or read the instructions, so we’re still enjoying traditional coffee.

At the Ahferom workshop, I noticed that most of the women have a goiter. Apparently, soil erosion is contributing to iodine deficiency. The problem mostly affects rural people, and more so even in the south of Ethiopia than in Tigray. Goiter itself is essentially a cosmetic problem, but I understand that iodine deficiency is the number one cause of preventable mental retardation in children. There is iodized salt available in Adwa but in the rural areas it’s not usually accessible and people often don’t know the connection.

2006-11-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

I had my first real training session on the weekend. It took place at Enticho Elementary School in the village of Enticho, for all the key teachers in the woreda of Ahferom. Many of the schools are very rural and very hard to get to. I realized what a skewed perspective I’ve gotten from the Adwa Town schools and even the more accessible rural schools that we’ve visited so far. In Enticho School, the walls of the classrooms are practically bare, although both key teachers do have charts of the Tigrigna alphabet which is good; the more rural schools have far less. The problem in Adwa Town is almost the opposite: they have received so much inappropriate material, and misdirected training, that the walls of some of the classrooms are covered in useless, confusing and misspelled charts.

The official class size limit for grades 1-4 is 50 children, and so far in Adwa Town I haven’t seen any class above 50 (at least not in grade 1 or 2, at which training is focused). So I was a bit surprised to find that at Enticho there are 70 children in grade 2 (51 in grade 1). As they were planning and sketching their classes I asked one of the teachers from one of the rural schools how many desks he had, and the answer was none. Apparently, some of the schools that don’t have desks have built raised benches out of clay right on the floor (like at the library at Bete Yohanis School, but in the classrooms), but not at this particular school… in some ways, it does make it a lot easier to set up your classroom when you have no furniture.

In Adwa Town, the problem is more that the teachers think they are doing active learning when they’re not, and they have all their tables in groups but some of the groups have 12 or 13 children in them, and they don’t do any group work anyway. In the rural areas, the teachers are fresh (as my Ethiopian colleagues would say), and although they seemed to struggle with some concepts, I think they enjoyed the training and are interested in trying out active learning strategies. The training we’re doing is called Model Classroom and it’s a topic that most Cluster programmes cover as standard; it’s basically about how to set up your classroom with materials that promote active learning. After visiting the Adwa Town schools I realized that we would have to focus on active learning strategies rather than materials, so that the teachers would really understand, and then hopefully be able to make informed decisions about what materials they need. This is especially important for the rural areas where there are very few materials provided at the schools. Teachers also need to recognize the simple materials around them and let students use these materials. While some teachers use bottle tops in their classes as counters, they’re only for the teacher to hold up to demonstrate. So one of the key points of the training is that in model classrooms you need simple locally available materials such as bottle tops and stones for students to use. The need for active learning, or some kind of improvement to mathematics teaching and understanding is obvious: although basic multiplication is on the grade 2 curriculum (children are 8 in grade 2), many teachers had a lot of trouble with the multiplication lesson I demonstrated. They may know their multiplication facts (although many don’t), but they don’t know what it means: one example of many is that several teachers at the Ahferom workshop, one of my training colleagues, and a Grade 8 Physics teacher have all used bottle tops to demonstrate multiplication as if it’s addition, eg.: 2 x 5 as (the asterisks represent bottle tops) ** x ***** .

Although teachers of grade 1 to 4 are expected to teach English (which is a very questionable expectation), most of the teachers at this training had extremely limited English (some probably about as much English as I have Tigrigna). Again, my expectations were based on the Adwa Town teachers, but after about the first five minutes it became very clear that I’d have to have one of my colleagues to translate everything I said. This certainly makes things a bit bumpier, but it was manageable.

There are a lot of complaints among administrators and college staff about the unmotivated teachers who won’t come to trainings unless you pay them a perdiem. And I was quite frustrated about this at first. However, what I’ve found at both the Pedagogical Centre Training and the Model Classroom Training is that there is perfect attendance (this is for 2 or 3 day workshops away from home!) – whether this is because of the perdiem or fear of consequences if you don’t attend or genuine interest I don’t know – the teachers are always enthusiastic and hard working, asking questions and spending their breaks visiting our model classroom and writing down ideas. Many of the teachers are quite young (probably all the men are very young, because they tend to climb the ranks as they get older; there are some older women, but the majority are probably under 25 and even under 20). The starting salary for a Grade 1 to 4 teacher is 400 Birr/month, and I think the maximum is about 900 Birr (compare this to my “volunteer” salary of 1200 Birr plus accommodation with no one to support other than myself).

We’re reducing the perdiem by providing most of the trainings for teachers at four different sites, like Enticho, instead of at the College, so that the teachers don’t have as far to come. This was the first Model Classroom Training so there are three more to go. I quite enjoyed it, and am looking forward to the one next weekend. It will be for Adwa Town and Geter Adwa teachers, so I think the level of experience and English will be a bit different than Ahferom, and than the last two training groups, so that will be interesting.

Probably the most frustrating part of the training was working with my two colleagues who are supposed to be Cluster trainers. Although I did most of the workshop, they did a couple of sessions and it was very obvious, not that I was surprised, that they had a lot of difficulty understanding active learning and how to plan a lesson that would help the teachers understand active learning. My problem is I had been tending to forget that part of my job is to train these colleagues, and I was becoming quite frustrated that they weren’t doing it properly. And my fear was that they would not be open to feedback. But today we spent most of the day together revising and replanning their parts of next week’s workshop, and although I’m not expecting perfection (I certainly can’t expect it from myself), I do think it was time well spent, and I think we all felt happier afterwards. (Unfortunately I have so much paper work and training manuals that I’m expected to write that spending a whole day away from my computer was a little unsettling, especially as I got so little work done last week because we had visitors from Abi Adi: both Jenny, VSO volunteer, and her habesha (Ethiopian) colleague were here to “experience share” about the Cluster Programme, which was actually extremely useful and it was nice to have a houseguest, but no Continuous Assessment Manual, or any other concrete product, was produced.)

Books and Money for Ethiopia!

The question has been asked, I think after I posted a picture of one of the school libraries, about whether you should send books. As the Christmas season is coming, and many people like to share their wealth at this time, I thought I would answer this question, and as usual, it’s in my complicated way.

If you’re interested in making a very large donation, it’s better not to send books because of the high cost of shipping. There are some organizations that will accept donations of money and will then buy books internally or in bulk for Ethiopia, including books in Amharic and other local languages, and I encourage you to explore such organizations.

If you would like to make a donation more generally, I continue to believe (perhaps it’s just that I read Stephen Lewis every night before I go to bed) that UNICEF is the organization most poised to make significant structural and systemic change for children in Africa. Finally, although I think I have pretty much reached the $2000 mark, you are certainly still welcome and encouraged to make donations to VSO, which I do believe is supporting good work in Ethiopia and the other countries in which volunteers work.

Finally, however, I came here with only three children’s books (Eric Carle) and I would like to have more books to share both with the children on my street and with my colleagues as samples of the kinds of materials we should seek out and promote. So if you’d like to send two or three books to Ethiopia, I will happily put them to use. In Adwa Town, we already have stacks of books - many of them never opened - about snowmen and other materials that are completely inappropriate and inaccessible for Ethiopian primary school children, so I’ve been trying to think of books I know that are likely to be interesting and relevant to young children in Adwa. Here are a few. You can probably think of more.

The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch

Swimmy by Leo Lionni

Something from Nothing by Phoebe Gilman

Planting a Rainbow and Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert

Aesop’s Fables

Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.

The Lorax and other books by Dr. Seuss

Counting books and math themed books

Children’s picture dictionary or word books

Children’s atlas

Nonfiction (there are some good books by Claire Llewellyn, especially those with an environmental theme)

Postscript: I’m sending this on Tuesday afternoon. We’ve just received some money to buy books for the satellite schools, and although it was surprisingly easy to convince my colleagues that we need to buy story books and information books rather than grammar books, our problem is that we can’t find any place that sells such books (in English or Tigrigna), and our funds are rather limited. I’ve just spent the whole afternoon visiting Adwa’s single bookstore and (slowly) scouring the internet, with limited success.

2006-11-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

I’m writing this at lunch time and I have to rush to get back to work (I do get a 2 hour lunch break, which balances out my 7 day work week). I thought my laptop wasn’t working because the battery wouldn’t charge, but I think it was a problem with insufficient electrical current rather than the computer, as it’s okay now. I had to write Friday’s entry by hand and then type it in. The problem was that my stabilizer started to smoke last week and so I’m understandably afraid to use it. It happened as I was ironing my sheets. Ironing your sheets, you ask? Yes, since coming to this house, I’ve been engaged in an ongoing battle with fleas. I’ve been trying to outdo them through ironing (sheets, underwear, my mattress, my clothes ..... ) and very frequent laundry washing. However, shortly after the smoking stabilizer incident, I finally gave in and used bug spray. I’m not happy about it, but I believe I have had a few flea free nights since then, and it’s very nice (it’s hard to say for sure though, because flea bites seem to last for quite a while, not to mention the new bites that I get whenever I’m outside in the evening, or in my office, or Furwaini’s cat rubbing up against me ..... Anyway, if anyone has any insight into environmentally friendly solutions to the flea problem, I’d be happy to hear them, because although the battle may be won, I think this will be an ongoing problem.

We had the Pedagogical Centre Workers training on the weekend for teachers who also work in the pedagogical centre – making teaching aids and instructional materials for the school as there is no catalogue from which to order such things. Again, it was very frustrating to see that a lot of teachers had a lot of trouble recognizing what’s useful for active learning. Part of this is Abebe and Meresa’s problem too. What is the point of spending two hours carving fruit out of Styrofoam (granted, you’re reusing materials) to make a chart of healthy food when you could just draw them or have students bring in fruit and vegetables? So, this is my challenge.

2006-11-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

I spent most of the week working on setting up the model classroom (a room at the College that’s supposed to look like a Primary classroom, more or less, where we do most of the teacher training). I enjoy this, and I do think it’s a very important training tool. Yet I feel a bit like it’s part of an imaginary model world that doesn’t have a lot of bearing on real people’s lives ..... I go to buy mats for the model classroom and we drive past a little boy who looks like he can hardly stay upright, pushing a cartload of something, and I do nothing. Was there anything I could do? I don’t know.

Most of the rural schools have shut down till early next week as all the children are helping their parents bring in the teff crop before it rains.

Anyway, the model classroom is now up and running. Even for the College instructors I think it will be useful in terms of building understanding of active learning, a term that’s much used but little understood. Working with Abebe and Meresa this week has been nice but frustrating. I don’t know how much they’re understanding when I say instructional materials need to be produced that can be used by students and for multiple purposes. They seem quite keen, but then the manual for the Pedagogical Centre Workers Training contains more of the same. So much material, time, money and learning opportunities have been wasted by Pedagogical Centre workers making useless materials, or things that the students could be making themselves.

In one of my brief forays onto the internet, I was reading on All Africa News that Ethiopia is expected to be one of the African countries hard hit by climate change – in fact it already is. You can’t escape climate change and environmental degradation anywhere you go. Even before I read the article I was thinking about it – the unseasonable rains that are wreaking havoc with farmers, the floods in the south of the country that have killed thousands, the soil erosion that even I can see on the drive to Mekelle. And as Western technologies and values and materials become more common here, the lack of infrastructure to support them is evident – there are batteries but no safe disposal system (although Abebe and Meresa tell me that they will take them apart and use the carbon (?) inside to make blackboard paint), same problem with the aerosol cans, and of course there’s no recycling of any kind for paper or other materials, although most people are a little more innovative about reusing them than we are in the west ( and pop is only sold in refillable glass bottles). There’s no system of composting so for those who live in cities and towns all those great vegetable scraps end up in the garbage.

It is very worrying that Ethiopia is building up many of the same practices that in the west have already led to global climate change and overuse of resources. And yet in the model classroom and in so much of teacher training, although the focus is on using locally available materials, it’s still on using materials: using more, having more paper, more things in your classroom. It’s only fair that children in developing countries should have as much access to teaching aids (and quality teaching) as elsewhere, and yet ..... there needs to be attention to the environment and to resources at the same time ..... probably in western schools as much or more than here.

2006-11-01T20:08:00.000-08:00

Allen, one of the VSOs from Abi Adi is visiting Adwa TTC this week to provide some training in writing newsletters on the computer. Abi Adi, Adwa and Mekelle are the three places in Tigray Region where there are currently VSO volunteers. Although Abi Adi is only a little more than half the size of Adwa, there are 3 (soon to be 4, then 3 again, then 2) VSOs at the Teachers’ College there. (I’m the only one in Adwa, although the TTC has submitted a request for an IT volunteer, who is desperately needed.) I haven’t visited Abi Adi yet. Allen says that there is no electricity until 5:00 in the afternoon. Again, I feel like I’m living a life of luxury here in Adwa.

It’s not that there’s not poverty, there is. But increasingly there are improvements to basic infrastructure like electricity. But relatedly, and most importantly, if you have enough money, which even as a volunteer I do, there’s decent housing to be had, and the food, although somewhat limited in variety, is nutritious and delicious (so much so that I’m becoming very worried that I’ll gain more weight in Ethiopia rather than lose it). The problem of course is that the majority of people in Adwa and especially in the rural areas don’t have the security of a decent, stable income. Some NGOs, especially the Catholic missions, as well as government programmes, provide food aid to people in and around Adwa, like both my maid and my guard. I don’t know whether people in the isolated rural areas receive food aid. Lately, there have been some heavy rains that were unexpected as the rainy season ended over a month ago and it’s now the time of harvesting teff. Almost everyone has been saying that this is very bad for the farmers as their harvested crops are likely to be ruined.

2006-10-31T15:09:00.000-08:00

Whenever I introduce myself as being from Canada, invariably someone will tell me that they have a brother or sister there, usually in Ottawa or Toronto. In the case of Furwaini’s sisters, and I think in many cases, they have lived in Canada for a long time and are Canadian citizens, having left Ethiopia as refugees during the time of the Derg.

I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies in this brief summary of recent Ethiopian history. The Derg was the communist government that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and held power until 1991. I believe the same Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, has been in power ever since then.

In general the Derg regime was not a pleasant time. In Tigray Region and Eritrea (which was then part of Ethiopia) there was unrest and agitation for independence, which the government responded to with military repression and, during the droughts of the early 1980s, with the withholding of food aid. The effect was the infamous Ethiopian famines of 1984.

The current government is relatively and generally stable (except for the 100 000 soldiers killed in the war with Eritrea, ongoing conflict in Beneshangul Gumuz and Gambella Regions, repression of Somalis in Somali Region and last year’s protests over election irregularities; still all these issues have remained isolated and contained and Ethiopia as a whole is enjoying relatively stability, compared to its history and compared to many African countries). However, it has taken people some time to adjust to the stability and freedom: for example, during the Derg Regime, people could not travel within the country, and it’s only in recent years that people are starting to feel comfortable enough to travel and visit historical sites within Ethiopia.

In Canada, U.S., Australia, England, and many Arab countries, there are significant populations of Ethiopians who left as refugees during the Derg Regime, and because Tigray was one of the areas most badly treated by the Derg, many of them are from the Tigray region. The positive (I think) effect that’s been felt in the past few years is that now that things are stable in Ethiopia, some of these people are returning to places like Adwa and Mekelle to invest their money and build high-end homes.

2006-10-29T20:36:00.000-08:00

Today I was invited to my colleague Tigistu’s house for lunch and coffee ceremony. I’m starting to get used to it, but it is still awkward and a bit unsettling: at least every time I’ve been invited to someone’s house so far, the wife serves the food and then prepares coffee while the husband and the guests eat, and she doesn’t eat until the guests have left. Men and women are always saying, as if it’s some kind of religious exhortation, that only women can prepare food.

People recognize that girls don’t do as well at school because they have so many responsibilities at home, and yet, even among those who recognize this, it doesn’t seem as if much is done to change it even within their own homes.

Our first training took place yesterday for school directors (principals) and woreda supervisors. Again, on the subject of gender, there were seven women out of about 80 directors and supervisors. Although low, this was more than I had expected based on my school visits; it seems that the women directors are all in the rural areas. Tomorrow we will meet to evaluate how the training went, which should be interesting as I am recognizing that my definition of active learning and the definition that Tigistu is following are quite different.

I’m finding that it’s a constant struggle between expressing my opinion and holding back in the recognition that this isn’t my country or my culture, I don’t understand everything and millions of successes have been achieved before me. This morning, I participated in a workshop on setting standards for primary teachers, and I was constantly struggling with this. I tried to just watch and let my group do their thing, but somehow my mouth just kept opening.

I’m afraid that sometimes people think I’m right and they’re wrong simply because I’m ferenji from a developed country, which I think does more harm than anything else, but sometimes I do feel like I’m right. In fact, the worst thing is that sometimes I think I’m right and they’re wrong.

Other times, I think people just pretend to agree with me to be polite to the ferenji, but then they go ahead and do what they want to do anyway.

There were two other workshops at the college yesterday in addition to the supervision training. This was the busiest the college has been since I’ve been here, and from the smell of things, it was a bit of a strain on the latrines. The college has not been too busy so far, because there are no students. What? you say. Yes, students are assigned to colleges centrally by the Regional Education Office in Mekelle, and for some reason, although the school year should have started about a month ago, students have not yet been assigned. At other colleges, the second and third year students have already started, but because Adwa TTC used to be a one-year certificate institution for First Cycle teachers it doesn’t have any second and third years. If the new students ever arrive, which I keep hearing will be “next week”, Adwa will be changing over to a three-year diploma programme for Second Cycle teachers. Fortunately for me, my job involves in-service teachers so I am not really affected by any of this.

Anyway I know this blog/journal has been a little bit scattered and rambly. So I will take it as a sign and put myself to bed.

2006-10-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we visited Tsion Elementary School. I walked into the classroom and wondered if I had landed in the wrong country. There was a carpet on the floor and children were sitting on it. This was the first class I had seen with such a thing. We stayed to observe the lesson. With each student-centred moment, I was in a constant state of anxiety – would the teacher suddenly break into a lecture? But the entire lesson, albeit a rather simple Tigrinya alphabet identification and printing lesson, was student-centred active learning. (Words which I’ve heard more times here than ever at home, but this was the first time I’d seen them truly put into practice.) There was teacher modeling, group work, whole class practice, individual practice and ongoing assessment and correction. The teacher was patient and thorough, the children were engaged and talkative. And for us who complain about class sizes, it seems you can use a student-centred approach in a class of 45 grade ones!

The principal of this school had visited the town of Dessie last year, and brought back these great ideas and has begun to put them into practice. The cluster training programme at Dessie is about 6 years old, and it has been extremely successful, acting as a centre of excellence for primary education in Ethiopia. Would that we can be as successful here!

Many of you have asked about how the actual teacher training is going, and the disappointing answer is that it has not really started yet. … My actual title is Cluster Coordinator (not Trainer as I was told before I arrived), and while some training did take place last year, there were some difficulties with the organization and implementation. So myself and my co-coordinator, Tigistu, have been spending a fair bit of time visiting schools and conducting needs assessments and preparing and revising the annual plan. The first training, for school directors (principals) and woreda supervisors (woredas are like districts) will be this weekend, but Tigistu will be leading most of this training and my role is relatively minor. I will be doing Model Classroom trainings for teachers in a few weeks – how to set up your classroom for active learning, followed by trainings on Planning and Assessing and various subject-specific trainings. I will also be doing ELIP (English Language Improvement Programme) for teachers from Adwa Town schools every week starting in a couple of weeks. Right now, I’m keeping busy preparing for these things, and also providing ELIP for the academic staff at the TTC. It really seems like it takes a lot of time to do every little thing, and it’s also taken Tigistu and me a long time to get on the same page, which has been a bit trying for both of us.

In Ethiopia, the class size for First Cycle (grades 1 to 4) is meant to be under 50, and in most cases, especially in the urban/semi-urban places like Adwa, this seems to be respected. In rural areas, it’s a little bit more difficult. First Cycle teachers have had a Grade 10 education plus one year of teacher training. For Second Cycle (grades 5 to 8) teachers have Grade 10 plus 3 years and for secondary school, teachers have Grade 12 plus additional training. There is some flexibility here because there’s a shortage of teachers, so, for example, a teacher only trained for First Cycle may end up teaching Second Cycle. Teachers are generally not well-respected and of course, the First Cycle teachers are at the bottom of the barrel; most of them are teachers because they did not do well enough in the Grade 10 exams to go on to Grade 11; the best ones are trying to upgrade so they can move up and out of the First Cycle. When I tell people that I teach Grade One at home, I always feel like I have to add that primary school teachers are respected in Canada and that all teachers have a university degree.

One of the curious things about the education system here is that despite having a serious lack of respect for teachers, the expectations for them are, sometimes, unreasonably high. First Cycle teachers are expected to teach all the subjects, including Tigrinya (or the local language for the region), Amharic and English. This means that while many teachers can hardly speak English themselves, they are expected to teach it… well enough that by Grade 9 students are supposed to be so proficient in English that all subjects are taught in it. As if this wasn’t unreasonable enough (I’ve talked to Adwa teenagers and adults in English…it’s unreasonable!), the high schools have now been taken over by plasma.

What is plasma? Plasma underlines the fact that poverty in Ethiopia, and Africa in general, has far less to do with lack of money than with the way it is spent. In the past couple of years, millions of dollars have been spent equipping every high school classroom with a giant television screen (they call this plasma) and preparing video lessons for every single day of every class. Except for the screen the classrooms are practically bare. In theory, plasma might sound promising, high-tech, multi-media. In actual fact, teachers leave the classroom while the plasma is on, don’t use the teacher’s guide, don’t have the teacher’s guide, play three lessons at once, and provide no feedback or support for students.

And again, while in some ways the expectations are high for teachers, they’re so unreasonable that I think there is no real expectation that teachers will actually achieve them. A big example of this is that although all teachers are paid to teach a full day, they teach in shifts and only actually stay at school for their shift. It is very difficult to get teachers to work in any capacity or even engage in training outside of their shift, even though they are paid to be at work for the whole day. Granted, their working conditions are difficult and their pay is low, but it seems strange to have institutionalized a system where teachers are not doing what they are paid to do.

This is one of the difficulties that the cluster programme faces in providing training. Many teachers are resistant to coming to trainings unless they are paid a per diem, even if there are no real expenses for the per diem to cover, or if the training is taking place during their free shift, when they should be working. In Dessie, they have managed to overcome this but it has taken several years to create a culture where learning is recognized as a purpose in itself. In addition, for the rural schools, it is necessary to conduct trainings on the weekends as it is impossible for teachers to get to a training centre school and back to their school within a day because the schools are so isolated and far apart, and most teachers are traveling several hours by foot.

2006-10-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

I’m in a perpetual time and date fog, and it’s a very good thing the computer knows the date. The Ethiopian calendar is not the same as the calendar used in much of the western world. In the Ethiopian calendar it’s the 14^th of Timkut, 1999. The system of telling time is also unique with 6:00 am being 12:00 in the morning, noon being 6:00, and the system starting again in the evening with 6:00 pm being 12:00 and 7:00 pm being 1:00. It’s relatively easy to get used to adding or subtracting 6 to tell the time. The trouble is in remembering to check whether it is Ethiopian time or European time, as some people, especially those who spend a lot of time with westerners like me, tend to switch between the two. It’s very easy to be invited for a meal at 6:00 and then wonder if you’re supposed to show up at lunchtime or dinnertime.

I went to Mekelle over the weekend. It was a holiday on Monday for Eid. It was strange to me that everyone took the day off even though hardly anyone here is Muslim; although the country as a whole is at least 30% Muslim. Ethiopians pride themselves of recognizing and honouring each others’ religious practices.

The bus ride to Mekelle takes about 7 hours, which is all about the condition of the roads and of the buses, as you could probably do it in less than four hours. I stayed with Jane and Geoff, a British VSO couple a bit younger than my parents. Mekelle is the regional capital of Tigray and it’s a very different place than Adwa. After beginning to think that Adwa is reasonably advanced, it was a shock to compare it to Mekelle. With only about double the population, it has all the amenities that Adwa doesn’t have: paved roads, bakeries, an incredible number of stores selling everything you’ll need – kitchen supplies, electronics, jewelry, that cheese wrapped in tinfoil – elegant hotels, cultural restaurants, sidewalks, and a bit of a European flavour; also a university (with 60 international professors), a hospital, and a school for the blind (apparently NOT a pleasant place).

There are 7 VSOs in Mekelle, as well as several volunteers through other organizations. We met an American family with four children. The husband is teaching Veterinary Science at the university and the wife is home-schooling the children, aged 5 to 11, one of whom is an Ethiopian boy they adopted. There’s a relatively large handful of expats that I’ve run into or heard about who have children with them.

2006-10-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

One of the many difficulties in accessing the internet
in Ethiopia is that dial-up here is way too slow for
the Blog programme I had planned to use, and for many
reasons it's taken me a long time to sort something
else out. At last, I'm halfway there! To see my
pictures, please go to
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebeccainethiopia/

I'll try to send or upload my blogs in the next few
days.
If you've emailed me and I haven't gotten back to you
yet, I'm sorry. I will try to do so soon. It's just
that it can take up to half an hour to access and
reply to one email, and that's when the internet is
working at all. But I'd still love to hear from you.

Thanks for your patience,
Rebecca

2006-10-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-10-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

Still writing at home.

I am working for the Adwa Teacher Training College as In-Service Cluster Coordinator. The Cluster programme is being established throughout Ethiopia and is basically a cascade model where schools are geographically grouped into clusters; training is provided to Key Teachers at these schools, and these teachers are meant to share their what they've learned with their colleagues. Adwa TTC is responsible for training First Cycle teachers (Primary - Grades 1 to 4) for 9 schools in the town of Adwa and over 50 schools in the surrounding rural areas.

Over the past few days, I've been meeting with my training colleagues/counterparts at the College to try and sort out our plans for training for this year. It has been a bit of a frustrating process for all of us, but I think finally we're converging towards a common understanding. Patience and willingness to change have been exercised on both sides.

Yesterday we visited two schools in and around Adwa. Cluster training started last year, and the results were quite impressive. In almost all the classes we visited, it was obvious that the teachers were trying to put the students into groups instead of rows, the walls were decorated with charts, and there was a hint of active learning. Ademalekah School in Adwa Town was particularly nice; Bete Yohanis School on the outskirts was admittedly quite rundown and the classrooms were very dark and small, but even so the teachers and students appeared keen, and all the classrooms we visited were striving to be model classrooms. (Model classroom is the name given to classrooms that are set up and decorated in a way that's meant to support active learning. I'll write more on this soon, but I'm beginning to suspect that many classes are adopting the trappings of model classrooms but are finding it harder to adopt the actual principles of active or student-centred learning.)

Today we decided to combine a visit to Axum, the historical centre of the Aksum/Axum Empire, with a visit to two rural schools that were meant to be on the way. Up until now, if I've been surprised it's been more because the level of development was greater than I expected. Today, that changed. I'm beginning to get a sense of what rural means, and the huge difference between life in rural and urban or even semi-urban communities. The two schools we visited today are not the most isolated and yet, after leaving the main road, it took us close to an hour to get to each school, navigating narrow, rocky trails through bush, mountain and even over a stream. We only made it because we had a four-wheel drive, and because our driver is amazing. The roads are probably easier to travel by foot than by car, and I'm not sure we could drive it at all during the rainy season. My head is still jiggling from the drive through those mountain roads. Now that I've had a glimpse of rural roads, I'm feeling a bit of dread about all those schools we have to reach.

At one school (I can’t remember the name right now), the teachers have to walk from Axum, at least a one and a half hour walk each way. At Maiwoney School, there's a teacher's residence on the school site which is good especially because many of the teachers are very young and are often not from the local area; and if they lived in Axum it would take hours to walk to school. I took a picture of the home shared by two of the male teachers. It's a single room the size of a small bedroom, with two stone beds built into the wall, and it serves as storage, dining room and bedroom for two. I don't think there was electricity in the rooms, at any rate it was very dim. Even by the standards of my Ethiopian colleagues, this home was quite small; I'm not sure if the picture I took accurately reflects its size and misery. The teachers were friendly and kind anyway.

2006-10-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

Friday evening, I'm writing on my offline laptop at home, in the hope that someday, somehow, I will be able to make an internet connection that is fast enough to set up my blog. This internet situation, along with the phone situation (I don't have one) is more frustrating than I had expected. Adwa has had internet access for about two months (it's very slow dial-up - there are only a handful of places in the country that have anything other than dial-up). If I haven't responded to your emails yet, it's because it takes about 10 minutes to get into my email, another ten to open one message, another ten to get the reply screen and another ten to send the reply. This may sound like an exaggeration, but in fact, it's more likely an underestimate. But please do keep the emails coming. I am quite desperate to stay connected to the rest of the world, and will manage it somehow.

I arrived in Adwa on Wednesday and was picked up at the airport by Fiseha, the dean of Adwa Teacher Training College (TTC). The drive through the mountainous countryside from Axum to Adwa was very beautiful, and I can't wait to do it again soon. My landlady greeted us with the traditional coffee ceremony. This was a celebratory ceremony with flowers strewn on the floor, but the regular coffee ceremony with incense and often popcorn is a part of the day for most people. Over about ten minutes, the raw coffee beans are roasted and then ground and filtered. At coffee shops you can have coffee with milk, which is heaven, but at coffee ceremony it's just a tiny cup of very strong coffee with lots of sugar, which is starting to grow on me. Ethiopia is the place where coffee originated, and it really is the best coffee and I've been sucked in - from being a very irregular coffee drinker to one or two (tiny but strong) cups a day.

My accommodations are very nice. My landlady has provided housing for many of the international volunteers (VSO and other) at the college. It's less than a five minute walk to the TTC. Extremely large, the top two floors of a three floor building, my landlady, her son and her cousin living on the first floor, it's typical African meets Western (spacious, sparse and secure). It's quite luxurious with a shower with electric water heater, a full gas cooker (of which I have a rather irrational fear), and typical lacy flowery bed covers, and, so I'm not lonely, cockroaches - a small cockroach population is to my mind unavoidable and more a sign of life than of dirt, and fortunately due to the slight altitude, they're the medium-sized variety. It's very noisy with dogs barking and mysterious doors shutting all night; probably not worse than the streetcars on Kingston Road, I just need to get used to it. My landlady, Furwaini, is very nice and has been very helpful. Her brothers and sisters are all Canadian citizens living in Ottawa. Her English is pretty good, which doesn't help my Tigrinya but probably does help my sanity. She's helped me hire a maid, which is kind of expected, and also rather necessary for things like laundry which is of course more time-consuming than throwing it in the machine. I also have a guard, more for employment-generating than security purposes, as the broken glass-topped stone fence and gate are quite effective, and Adwa really is a safe place.

In contrast to Addis, where the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict almost seemed like a non-issue, here there are signs of it everywhere. Furwaini's husband is Eritrean and he was taken away by force about six years ago, I think before her son was born, and she hasn't heard from him since. (Her siblings in Canada contacted his family in Eritrea and they haven't heard from him either. No one knows if he is in prison or what). One of the College drivers was living in Eritrea until the war and then was forcibly repatriated along with his Eritrean wife. Last night we went to dinner at the Holiday Hotel and met men from the UNMEE (UN Mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea) whose task it is to demine the border areas. They were working on Mount Soleda, the small mountain that overlooks Adwa, for the past couple of days. They travel around the border areas on both sides, spending a few days demining in each place. They were saying that conditions in Eritrea are not good, worse than here. The roads in Eritrea are worse than here (!) and so there are still a lot of landmines left over from the war. Here, most of the old landmines have been collected, but for some mysterious reason, new ones are still appearing, so they need to continue to revisit old places. The UNMEE men were all African, two or three white men from South Africa, one man from Mozambique and another from I'm not sure, maybe Kenya.

Adwa is a biggish town, bigger than I had expected after everyone (Ethiopians and volunteers) had warned me of how remote and isolate it is. The road from Axum is gravel, but once you get to Adwa there's one main paved road and the rest of the roads are gravel, some not very good. (I don't know if it's for job security or what but Ethiopian drivers seem to need to demonstrate that they can negotiate the most challenging, questionable feats of driving, driving through narrow alleyways, negotiating potholes, and swerving around construction sites, in order to drop a person off directly in front of their door instead of letting them walk ten extra steps.) There are not too many cars, and most are four-wheel drives belonging to institutions or businesses or the UN, rather than to individuals. Instead of cars, there are quite a few horse-drawn carts, and of course donkeys for carrying smaller loads. Most animals - cows, goats and sheep - look reasonably healthy, but the horses, at least those I've seen so far, are very miserable looking.

Like Addis, there are small huts next to great compounds like mine. There is poverty, but what I'e seen so far doesn't seem too severe. Most of the children look reasonably healthy, even if their clothing might leave something to be desired. And the children are really nice. In Addis, the children on the street, those who needed money, those who didn't, and even children who were barely old enough to walk, always had their hands out for money. Here, there was some of that in the central area yesterday, but today I met a lot of children on my way to and from work who just wanted to meet the ferenji (foreigner) and were very friendly and sweet, shaking and holding my hand and practicing their English. I haven't had time to walk around very much yet, and I really have been feeling a bit anxious about this because, as irrational as it may be, I hate being stared at and called ferenji and asked for money, but people, both children and adults have been very friendly, and I have gotten a little braver about saying Selaam (Hello) and Dehan deha/dehee (How are you?) so I'm feeling a little more comfortable, although I know the staring will always happen. Tomorrow is Market Day and Furwaini is going to go with me as it's my first time, so that will help.

It's a lot hotter here than Addis, and it can be quite tiring during the midday. Also, there are sometimes a lot of flies. Honestly, when Westerners see pictures of African children with flies crawling on them, it's true that there's severe poverty and disease, but the fact of the matter is, if you swish one fly away, another one's just going to take its place.

If you've made it this far, thanks so much for putting up with my rambling. I really do want to hear from you, especially if you have any questions, things you want to know more about, or things I've poorly explained, or if you have words of wisdom that will help me be a little more patient. Also, one thing I'm starting to discover is that what I think one minute, or one day, in a new culture and especially a developing country, will change the next minute, or the next day. With love from Ethiopia, Rebecca

2006-10-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

I'm nearing the end of my time in Addis and I wanted to show you some pictures of Addis and write a bit more about it before I head off to Adwa. In Addis for the in-country training, I’m a bit of a tourist and I find it hard to take pictures I’m happy with. Taking pictures of people I don’t know is not always safe or respectful, especially when I’m ultimately using the picture to show how poor their country is. And also, because I don’t know them there may be a context to the picture that’s getting lost. At any rate there are a few pictures here that I hope will show you a bit about Addis; and for what it’s worth, the children gave their permission to have their pictures taken.
Last weekend we took a little hike up Mount Entoto, the small mountain peak overlooking Addis Ababa. You can see a picture that shows a part of Addis. It's a huge city of about 4 million people. Because most buildings are relatively low - not more than six or seven stories - it's very spread out. Addis is not very high - only about 2000 metres, but the altitude has still been felt by many of us, and we took the climb pretty slowly. It was a good chance to get out of the city and breathe some fresh air. Because diesel is cheap, almost all vehicles in Addis run on it, and there’s constant fumes and haze. As we’re ferenji (foreigners), a little group of boys excitedly accompanied us up the mountain; once up there another cluster of children watched us with curiosity. I took pictures of both groups, and I’m sure you can see a difference between the two - the one group hamming it up for the camera and the other group possibly not knowing what a camera was. The real extremes of poverty and luxury in Addis are actually much greater.
I'm also including pictures of the Meskel Celebration, and bonfire lighting at our hotel, on September 26. My birthday was celebrated twice, flowing into the Meskel Celebration. Meskel is one of those unique Ethiopian Orthodox Church celebrations; it's supposed to honour the finding of the true cross, and that's about all I know. We went to a huge gathering at Meskel Square, and the performances were amazing.
You'll also see pictures of the view from the British Council office in the centre of Addis. I didn't get any pictures of the goats, sheep, donkeys and cows that are pastured in empty lots and highway medians and herded throughout the city, but they are numerous. You will see a picture of an aluminum crate. These are found throughout the city and are slept in by one or two people or even whole families. They are a step up from sleeping under a tarp.

2006-09-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted to show you some pictures of Addis and write a bit more about it before I head off to Adwa. In Addis for the in-country training, I'm a bit of a tourist and I find it hard to take pictures I'm happy with. I don't like taking pictures of people I don't know; especially when I'm ultimately using the picture to show how poor their country is. And also, because I don't know them there may be a context to the picture that's getting lost. At any rate there are a few pictures here that I hope will show you a bit about Addis; and for what it's worth, the children gave their permission to have their pictures taken.

We took a little hike up Mount Entoto, the small mountain peak overlooking Addis Ababa. Addis is not very high - only about 2000 metres, but the altitude has still been felt by many of us, and we took it pretty slowly. It was a good chance to get out of the city and breathe some fresh air. Because diesel is cheap, almost all vehicles in Addis run on it, and there's constant fumes and haze. As we're ferenji (foreigners), a little group of boys excitedly accompanied us up the mountain; once up there another cluster of children watched us with curiosity. I took pictures of both groups, and I'm sure you can see a difference in the income level between the two, and the real extremes are actually much greater.

2006-09-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm finally here in Ethiopia, as a volunteer
teacher trainer with VSO. I'll be here in Addis Ababa
for in-country training till about the 3rd or 4th of
October before going off to Adwa, Tigray region which
will be home for the next year.

The internet at the VSO office in Addis is quite
terrible, so I haven't sorted out my big blog yet but
I'm hoping that I'll be able to do this in the next
few weeks, and then you'll be able to enjoy some
pictures and more news from Ethiopia.

Addis is definitely a
city of contradictions. There are highways and some
nice buildings, including the very modern NGO building
where VSO holds the in-country training (it doesn't
belong to VSO; they're not quite so liberal with their
spending). There are Lexuses and high-end restaurants,
and the British Embassy is ridiculously posh. Then,
there are shacks the size of a small bathroom, beside
ordinary looking houses, beside more shacks, and
ramshackle shops. There are pack mules carrying goods
along main streets, and herds of goats and sheep
grazing in the city. There are people dressed in rags,
and people dressed in the most current fashions. There
are hungry people begging - mostly mothers and small
children,
elderly and disabled people. It’s hard and strange to
walk past mothers begging for food and not give them
anything. (I do sometimes, but not all the time.)

It's the end of the rainy season, and because of the
altitude in Addis, it's actually quite cold. You do
see the sun every day though, even if only for a short
time. Today, it started out quite warm and nice, and
then around noon, the heaviest, loudest rain I've ever
seen started pouring down, along with intense thunder,
and now it's clear again.

I'm looking forward to going up to Adwa and getting
settled there. I will be the only VSO volunteer in
Adwa but I've met all the volunteers who will be in
Mekelle, the nearest big town, and they are very nice
and it's only a couple of hours bus ride away, along
pretty decent roads. My house in Adwa is apparently
quite nice and quite large, with running water etc.
(So, if you are planning a trip to Ethiopia there will
be a room for you in Adwa!)

For those who have been following the great condo
saga, it's finally sold!

2006-09-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

4 days to go! The anticipation, and the panic, are mounting.

This is a test-blog to make sure it works. (I've never had a blog before; it's almost as exciting as the trip itself!) I plan to update it while I'm in Addis for two weeks of in-country training. Unfortunately, I've received mixed reports about internet access in Adwa so I can't guarantee regular updates once I get there.

If you haven't yet made a donation to VSO Canada, and would like to, you can do so online by clicking on Donate to VSO Canada. Thanks!

These are the books I'm bringing with me, if I can fit them in:

The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid isn't Working by Robert Calderisi
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
Race Against Time by Stephen Lewis
The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith