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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.