Time passes

The season turns and we need a blanket on our beds at night now! The weather is lovely right now with cool, fresh evenings and mornings but temperatures up in the mid to high 20’s during the day. This is the cool, dry season and much of the vegetation does resemble autumn at home, with leaves falling off the trees and great seed pods of acacias and mimosa families hanging brown and pendulous. Our grapevine is definitely turning brown. Birds are less in number and variety and the ground is dry and very dusty. As a result our water supply is becoming more erratic and also the electricity. Last night we had neither from 6pm! They are linked as our water is pumped from underground supplies. We have a water tank, but well, it seems to be empty when there is no running water? 

The neighbourhood knows us well now and the multiple of young kids (high birth rates!) have quite a game with us. They know my name is Jacqui and I seem to be the focus of their attention and games when I’m around and all want to come to shake hands, be picked up and swung around (yes, ‘fraid I started that one!) and now they are taking to kissing the back of my hand and clinging onto my arms – quite embarrassing, especially if the mothers are around. Difficult to steer a balance between being friendly but not encouraging all this tactile attention. The echo of kids’ cries of ‘Jacqui, Jacqui’ down the neighbourhood pathways when I appear, followed by the stampede of small bodies careering my way, is flattering, but a little difficult.

Work is busy now I am in the swing of teaching, by myself, 50 staff on the Higher Diploma Programme. As ever, I try to put my very best effort into it and worry every day about how well I’m prepared, whether they liked the class and how successful the teaching and learning was and how many mistakes I might have made. I’m marking reflective activities, holding ‘surgery’ sessions to help them on a 1-2-1 basis, preparing new material for forthcoming classes and continuing to battle with the frustrations of lack of photocopying facilities, lack of management decisions and lack of resources that should have been in place etc. Oh well!

However, its better to be busy and to be into the swing of things. I have met so many staff now and am beginning to feel more part of the place. The staff continue to be a pleasure to work with and I feel for them needing to fit this course of study into their busy teaching schedules, the like of which staff at UK universities know nothing!

I was asked to participate last weekend, on a Sunday afternoon to take a session at one of the local primary schools, in fact the oldest in Dire Dawa. School teachers and university staff are happy to spend a weekend running and attending a workshop to help the teaching of mathematics at school level with no reward, compensation or even refreshments! No-one complained about their time and they were happily participating at 5pm on a Sunday afternoon! By the way, at the same time there was a class of small children, all in their school uniforms being taught over the other side of the courtyard. People work hard, long hours and at times that we would consider an invasion of our personal free time. The attitude is entirely different. They manage by taking everything in their stride, not getting overwrought, operating at a slower pace and just accepting and retaining a positive attitude. No-one moans here.

The school was interesting to see, somewhat Dickensian with very basic rooms, letting in little light, desperately needing a coat of paint, each with an old blackboard and old fashioned bench furniture. No doubt the children are happy, motivated and interested to learn!

There are changes at our neighbouring university of Haramaya as we are losing 2 of our colleagues up there as their VSO placements come to an end. This will reduce our opportunities for a social life at weekends and expatriate colleagues who are remaining are mainly young males whose interests at weekends are likely to be different to ours.

We are planning to get together with those colleagues at Haramaya who may be around over the Christmas weekend, otherwise it will be a non-event this year!

I would like to take a holiday at the end of the first Semester which is towards the end of February, so if any friends would be interested to join me hiking in the Simien Mountains and visiting nearby historical places, please let me know. Meet you in Addis Ababa. The more people we can get the cheaper it would be.

 

 

 

The Great Ethiopian Run and Visiting Lalibela

I was lucky enough a couple of weeks ago to get a week off work to meet up with friend Linda from South Africa who stopped off in Addis Ababa for 6 days en route back to Johannesburg from a holiday with friend Marissa in Egypt. While Marissa was working in Addis helping local eligible hopefuls prepare research proposals for acceptance by UNISA for higher study programmes, Linda asked if I would like to visit Lalibela. It was a fortuitous opportunity, a) to have a friend to travel with and b) because by co-incidence I had already booked to be in the capital the weekend she arrived, as a VSO team was entering the 10km Ethiopian Great Run, for which there were a total of 35,000 entries.

For the first time I travelled by coach from Dire Dawa to Addis and so was able to see the landscape as we covered 500kms in 10 hours. I wouldn’t like to do that journey too often, but from time to time it is interesting and the scenery is changeable and engaging for nearly all the journey. The first 4 hours is beautiful rolling mountainous scenery of the Chercher Mountains  and then here is the volcanic scenery of the Rift Valley, with great mounds of black soil and rock and lakes and classic volcanic mountains, which from some, the book says,  molten sparks can be seen at night. Finally there is a steady climb up to 2400m to the capital, situated on the west side of the Rift Valley.

The run has fun and I’m pleased to report that even without training and at that altitude I managed to run most of it, although the crowds prevent running at any speed, more a slow jog, hardly a personal best. It was good to meet up with some of the colleagues we arrived with in September again, now spread all over the country and we found most are feeling much the same about their experiences as Jenny and I – rather up and down at the moment. A colleague used the expression, ‘going through the curve’ and this sums it up, so I’m adopting that as a response now!

Lalibela is Africa’s Petra with a series of monolithic stone churches hewn, mainly, vertically out of the rock face, so most are vertically situated below ground level and accessed by pathways leading from ground level down into the space that has been hewn from the rock. The roof of some of the churches forms the original rock surface at ground level. Google Lalibela for more. As with the pyramids, how, in the Dark Ages of the 13^th century, did they do it? A lot of myth and legend surrounds the history of these churches so it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. For example, Bet Abba Libanos was supposed to be been completed in 24 hours by Lalibela’s wife who was assisted by a group of angels. There are 10 churches, or maybe 11 – the development is complex as they are interconnected by passageways and tunnels and one church maybe built inside another etc etc.

It is fascinating, photogenic and incredibly atmospheric. The big difference between here and somewhere like Petra is that Petra is purely a disused, historical site, now unfortunately overrun by just tourists. Lalibela churches nestle right in the small town and are a living part of the town and the lives of the people as a vibrant, active and very special site of worship and spiritual leadership and guidance. It is used daily for this purpose and of course at festival and special occasions it becomes overrun with Ethiopians from all over the country seeking spiritual objectives. It was built by King Lalibela as a symbolic substitute for the Holy Land so Ethiopians did not have to pilgrimage all the way to the Holy Land.

Tourism is growing, aided by the opening of a small airport situated 23 kms away because of the mountainous terrain. The area is beautiful and as well as being guided professionally around each of the churches we spent half a day, helped by a mule in Linda’s case, walking up to one of the peaks (over 3000m) overlooking the town. With the flat topped mountains, we were both immediately reminded of the Drakensberg mountains. The birds were amazing and as we are both interested in this aspect, it was great to spend quality time with an old friend (yes, in both senses of the word now I’m afraid!) enjoying aspects of the natural environment.

By default we also met quite a few of the local school children and nearly visited a school. Instead we met their teacher and in response to assertive and repetitive overtures about the need for books for their studies, I bought young 2 brothers (10 and 12) a dictionary/ encyclopedia which they wanted and would support their learning, albeit obviously simply rote learning. Their English was amazing and would knock spots off many of the adults in Dire Dawa, and they could tell you quite accurately what the capital of just about any country was – I think we all got stuck on Montenegro!  They were quite engaging and very genuine, like so many Ethiopians, in their passion for learning. Yet another example of how agonisingly disadvantaged these people are. Lalibela is a surprisingly poor town, despite rapidly growing tourism and the prices charged for entrance, guides and hotels. (does it go direct to the church, and to what extent does or can the church afford to support the local community?) The surrounding area is simply subsidence farming and it was evident people live in the poorest of conditions. So who can blame the obvious strategy of the local schools, of which I think there were 4 – education is big in Ethiopia, it’s the quality, not the quantity that needs to be questioned – of teaching their students good English (which says a lot for the teachers) as quickly as possible, and getting them to get out there and talk to and engage as many ferengi visitors as possible!

In her professional capacity Linda was also able to help the children. She noticed what she described as a parasitic growth on the faces and neck of the 2 brothers and thought she may have a cream to help. Under strict instructions for correct application, they obliged and already the next day we were amazed to see the improvement. Amazing what vaginal cream will do! We visited where they lived in the town with their grandmother, as their parents are farmers out in the countryside and we also met their older sister. I can not imagine the small one roomed rectangular mud hut will survive another rainy season, Linda thought the grandmother wouldn’t survive more than another month, and despite the boys’ obvious brightness, extravertism and education, the sister was shy, withdrawn, did not speak a word of English and clearly was uneducated!

What an all round, varied and rich experience we had in 3 days!

A SIMPLE LIFE

Searching for this seems to be a major driver for many people to do a VSO placement. I did not count it as such for myself, but I know that in our sophisticated, chaotic, over regulated and controlled society there is a recurring theme of searching for this idyll.

However, let us examine the reality of living in a society which in theory would seem to offer the concept of a simple life.

Another word could be narrow. Lives here could be viewed as lived in a narrow, unfulfilled existence where there is a lack of stimulation and interest, but this view sees these lives entirely with the eyes of one who can compare, whose concept of stimulation is very different to that of an Ethiopian. It assumes this is what is wanted and that the typical frame of reference here is the same as mine. This assumption would result in hundreds and thousands of indigenous Ethiopians being totally frustrated with their lot in life and hankering after – more to life. As you may surmise nothing is further from the truth. That description resonates more with our own western experience of life and we are the ones who have access to everything we could possibly want to satisfy our lives.

Firstly people here work hard and for longer hours and thus this fills more hours in the day than it does in more technologically advanced countries. There is no extra-curricula activity around clubs and societies, no theatres or art galleries, no organised community events and no opportunities for personal development and learning or holidays away. Please let me add, there may well be in the capital and I’m sure that there are specialised and isolated occurrences, but for the majority of the population, their lives consist of a lot of time spent earning a living, family, household duties/chores, engagement with their religion and its activities, and of course the ubiquitous TV (big satellite dishes are as common as water tanks around here). This pattern IS satisfaction, interest and stimulation in a developing country.

Is this a simple life or a narrow life, or just life for millions on our planet? These evaluative descriptions are ours alone, mine alone as I perceive, judge and evaluate the world in which I currently live, because I am able to.

A lack of resources, fundamentally monetary of course, drives this traditional pattern to a large extent, yet there is an acceptance, an equilibrium and balance to these lives, tailored to the needs of the environment and daily and seasonal patterns that leads to harmony, good relationships, roles for everyone, a sense of place, belonging and loyalty; all performed with the strong mortar of religious and societal mores or code of conduct. All very different to our diminishing value systems and reference points in the west.

We are so lucky that our wealth has created so many opportunities for us to find personal satisfaction in our lives and fulfil our interests, talents and potentials as creative human beings beyond what for many is not possible within paid employment, and I do not dispute that as societies develop and work becomes less dominant, human beings should be offered the opportunity of more choice and freedom over their lives with the commensurate opportunities for relaxation, recreation and personal fulfilment. But here is the trade off as ever, we lose that sense of rhythm and balance to life, a sense of certainty, feeling located and belonging, where our daily activities have a purpose and a meaning in the raw context of existence. 

Without these restrictions and structure many of us are inclined to wallow around trying to decide what we ought to be doing with our time and our lives and what the meaning to it all is. What a misplaced luxury!

So often external factors drive the outcome; we do what we think others expect of us, what external drivers say we ought to be doing or not doing, and of course the social status seeking and approval seeking outcomes are there also to differentiate ourselves rather than to belong. Lastly, those who are not capable for reasoning through an answer end up engaged in social or personal destructive activities. Anything that, in a misguided attempt, will help us avoid dissatisfaction with our lives and find happiness beyond ourselves. No chance of that sort of psychology here! Not many self help books sold here!

So what is a simple life? Again I would suggest this concept comes with the luxury of wealth, where with the freedom and money, we can pick and choose those activities we want to engage with and those we don’t, in an environment or setting that suits our needs, perhaps a rural retreat in France, with most mod cons! - lucky us!

I am musing on this as this aspect of life here is particularly challenging for me. Yes work is busy and quite demanding, but it has clear cut start and finish points, unlike my work in the UK, and outside of work, as we don’t have many household chores, have no family, or immediate friends around and are not engaged in religious activities, life is very – well, narrow! Very different to my life back home full of frenetic activity with plenty of stimulation. Lots of opportunity for learning here I’m sure!

What am I missing in this perceived narrow or simple life? I do miss intellectual stimulation – just being with and having decent conversations with friends and other interesting and stimulating people and access to the BBC and the British media! I miss an international perspective and feeling that I am linked to the rest of the world. We have discovered back copies of Time and Newsweek are sold locally and I am aware that I need to get a subscription to a British publication that sends overseas. Other ‘misses’ include going to the gym and being able to go for long walks/hikes, and visits to the cinema and theatre.

However, I also reflect on this on behalf of colleagues at the university.

I am conscious that at the university here there are so many astute, intelligent and capable people who can not realise their full potential and I feel that these people must be to some extent aware that there is more in life ‘out there’ that they could benefit from. This is where the description of narrow becomes more apt. I hope I will have an opportunity to explore this with some of them.

A BIT ON HIGHER EDUCATION IN ETHIOPIA

My first job, with the help of a colleague, Wondifraw, has been to develop and run a 2 week induction programme for new staff.

Some background to the university system in this country – as I understand it after 4 weeks is needed to set the scene.

Ethiopia has a handful of established, traditional universities first established by Haile Selaisse in the 1950’s. Addis Ababa was the first and another is the one close to us, about an hour away, Haramaya, where there are VSO colleagues along with quite a few expatriate teaching staff.

Akin to the UK’s experience, there has been a recent Government drive to develop higher education provision in the form of universities across the country. The Government sees education as the way out of poverty for its population and 24% of Government expenditure is on education. Twenty two additional universities are now in the process of development and operation, and it is one of these at which I am placed. Dire Dawa is enrolling 7000 students this academic year, starting at exactly the same time as the new UK academic year, (although interestingly the Freshers start a whole month later). They are building for a capacity of 10,000. All these new institutions need new staff resources and this year DDU is employing 80 new staff.

I gather that the education system is very centralised here and students are more or less assigned a university by the Ministry of Education; hence no UCAS system, no confirmation and clearing processes along with the annual nail biting challenges of meeting targets to avoid the penalties of over/under recruitment. However, this means there is also little or no choice for students, who presumably must go to where they are sent, and I believe in a lot of cases to study the subject they are assigned!

This also apparently applies to staff. There must be masses of job opportunities in the university teaching sector now and positions are offered to fresh graduates. Clearly, although these young people are qualified by subject, they have no experience of the outside world, and placements/work experience does not exist here, and also they have no pedagogical knowledge and skills.

The placement that I have here is as a Higher Diploma Programme Leader. The Higher Diploma has been designed and developed by VSO to meet the needs of teacher educators in Ethiopia, teaching at all school levels as well as at university level, to develop their teaching or pedagogical skills in order to improve the quality of teaching across the country, through developing the capacity of the teaching population.

Thus when the programme starts here this year, staff will be individually selected by their Deans to participate in this academic year long programme. They are likely to be staff that have been here for two years at least.

However, in the mean time there are 80 new staff arriving with no teaching experience. It makes sense to develop an induction programme for them to introduce them to basic teaching and learning concepts and techniques as well as inducting them in the policies, procedures, systems and expectations of the university.
So organising this as soon as I arrived has been a challenging undertaking, while at the same time trying to get used to living in very new and equally challenging conditions.

Wondifraw, my colleague has been fantastic and obviously he has had the main job of sorting out administrative requirements as well as contributing to the teaching input. He has a Masters in Pedagogical Studies from Addis Ababa University. Together we have muddled through to get this programme into shape.

The induction programme has now finished, so a few observations can be made.
Not only are nearly all of the staff straight out of university but they are almost exclusively male. This is interesting as there is no shortage of female students walking around the campus, indeed in some classes it appears that women are in the majority. They seem as at home on a university campus as do our UK female students and many of them dress in modern western dress as if they were in at a British university. Many of these are clearly Muslim students – which is pleasing to see and with their long black, often close fitting, gowns, slim bodies and perfect deportment, and frequently bright contrasting long head coverings, they look absolutely stunning.

The interesting contrast is that out of 80 joining staff, 6 are women! I haven’t got to the bottom of this, and there will be more on gender no doubt in a later epistle.

As the new staff come from all different parts of the country and climatic conditions vary enormously in Ethiopia, many if them are suffering as much as me, or more so, with the heat and dust. They clearly dislike the campus conditions and as Ethiopians are very conscious of cleanliness, they are very concerned about keeping fresh and will not sit on a chair or lean on a table until they have rubbed it assiduously to remove the inevitable layers of dust.

Despite the conditions and the long hours (all day, every day for 2 weeks), they worked incredibly hard. We were told to keep close records of attendance as the President believes, no attendance, no final certificate, so this may be a carrot to boost attendance!

The intensity challenged their ability to stick with English the whole time and as the teaching and learning sessions are all about active participation they are active learners in all the sessions – which is clearly new and quite uncomfortable to many.

I am starting to learn a bit about how this university works and the approaches and attitudes of its management, a little on the background politics and a lot already about how the culture impacts on the teaching and in the classroom, as well as the challenges it gives to me as a native English speaker as many staff are nervous and lack confidence to speak up in class in front of an English person. Difficult to deal with in active learning! Clearly many lack academic confidence also and given the impoverished resources here, I’m not surprised. Its is sad to think that many of these staff are without doubt incredibly bright and capable but may never be able to realise their full potential. We make the same observation about potential football stars here. All the kids, well the boys, play football around here (most with bare feet, otherwise flip-flops!) and clearly there is talent around, which is unlikely to ever be realised. Our staff coffee room sports a picture of Manchester United team 2009 on the wall, but Ethiopia is not noted for its football team talent – again probably just resources to make it happen. Thank goodness they have excelled in the sport of running at least – less resource intensive?

I will carry this learning forward into the preparation for starting the HDP in 2 weeks time.

As I gradually gain a better understanding of how things work here, I will be able to write more on this subject.

I think some of this learning is the same for new staff to this university in the desert! I think the Nike logo may serve me well – Just Do It!

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF

The nights are rarely silent. It is usually the sound of the packs of neighbourhood dogs that fill the nocturnal air and this can be quite frenzied at times with intense barking and howling reverberating around. One assumes all sorts of territorial battles going on. During the day they are as quiet as mice and sleeping off the maraudings of the night in a little shade.

Before dawn the first call to pray is heard. This is not a recording here and I marvel at the dedication of a handful of devout men who spend much of their day calling their Islamic faithful to pray. However, here it is very easy to confuse the tannoy calls from the mosque with those from the Orthodox church. Both compete for air space and between the 2 there are few times of the day when sermons or outpourings of some sort are not issuing forth through the hot and sultry air.

Dawn brings the first chorus from the birds. We watch as sparrow type birds land in the courtyard of the compound to compete for dead and dying nocturnal insect pickings. Sometimes a butterfly is caught and coloured wings are left lying on the ground as the juicy bodies are consumed. Black kites are plentiful overhead in this area and whistle evocatively as they sweep back and forth.

When we moved into the house I was delighted to see we had bunches of ripening grapes on our vine. However, despite watering, in time to our disappointment, they literally started withering on the vine. However the state of decay now appears to be just what the birds were waiting for and we now have flocks of mousebirds, sparrows and now glossy starlings diving into the thick vine for breakfast. The courtyard becomes increasingly covered with rotten, wet fruit.

Porridge for breakfast (tins of oats imported from Malaysia?), the first shower of the day and a twenty minute walk to the university campus at around 7.30am before the heat sets in. Gradually the nights are becoming cooler and thus the early mornings are relatively fresh. However by 8am the heat sets in and by 10am sitting in the office I feel the first flow of sweat issue from my pores.

On leaving we walk the small neighbourhood dirt road passing children everywhere all on their way to school. They are quite gorgeous and so polite. We are always the focus of attention and frequently a great deal of giggling, although I think the immediate neighbourhood is now used to these 2 ferengi older women living in their midst. The secondary school children mostly want to practice their few words of English and ‘how are you’ is a common greeting. The answer is ‘I am fine’ as this is the standard phrase they have obviously been taught. There is a range of uniforms and thus a number of different schools; white shirts and maroon bottoms, or lime green shirts and emerald green bottoms, pale blue shirts and dark blue bottoms. They so neat and clean and well turned out. Some are bold enough to come and shake our hand (hand shaking as a greeting at all times of the day is de rigeur in Ethiopia, which is lovely and so polite), and often you can tell that it is a dare!

We then hit the long straight ‘new’ road that leads to the university. This only opened 3 weeks ago as the new academic year started and it was a pleasure to walk along as it carried only people walking and it was common to see someone with his train of camels using the road.

Now it is open to traffic, it’s a nightmare. The scrub bushes and trees that grow besides the road have turned from green to white as the dust from the loose surface constantly spirals up from the multiple of taxis (bajajs) and other vehicles. So, it’s a long, hot dusty road to walk along and we were doing this morning, lunchtime, back from lunch and again in the evening.

In the heat of the day we hail a bajaj for the equivalent of 4p, but we are starting to learn (no-one tells us!) the times of the staff bus that take staff into town at lunch time and evenings, so this helps to cut down the amount of walking in hot and trying conditions.

We hit the campus and it is not pleasant. It is one enormous building site and remember that this is a university in the desert, so the sand, dirt, rocks that have to be negotiated mean that wearing normal shoes is quite impossible and tough sandals or trainers are a must. I wash my shoes and feet twice a day.
As the season changes and Ethiopia moves out of its wet season, in Dire Dawa the atmosphere changes from one of clarity and a relatively compact ground to a hot, dry dust filled haze which hangs heavily over the landscape. The dry wind whips up the dusty surface till your teeth are biting on particles of grit. Although this is the cool season we are entering, the lack of rain means the temperatures have increased, although the humidity has decreased which is easier.

It takes another 10 minutes to walk across the campus to our office and this is exactly like walking across a building site – enough said! As I was preparing for this induction programme, I was having to walk across the campus several times a day. This is very trying in the heat and the dirt and dust, with heavy vehicles and the noise of the contractors.

The lunchtime starts at 12noon and everyone disappears to the extent that the place is like a ghost town at this time. The exception is the student living area (most of the 7000 students live on campus in dormitories and are fed in a hangar like building with a sea of long tables filling the enormous space), where they are all washing from the outside banks of water troughs and then lining up patiently for their meal. Staff disappear home till 2.30pm when the afternoon session starts and work goes through till 5.30pm.

Jenny and I eat bread which we can buy around the corner fortunately with tomatoes, peanut butter and bananas as a regular diet, because its all accessible and available. We are able to rest a bit and I take another shower and feel MUCH better.

Leaving work at about 5.40pm is the most pleasant time of the day. The heat is now subsiding, as that electric heater in the sky is turned off. It is now dark by 6.15pm. Everything is quieter, calmer and the atmosphere is restful. The walk home (I will try to catch the staff bus at 5.30pm in future) is actually enjoyable. We have also discovered a ‘local’ where we can stop off for a beer on the way home, where the people are very friendly and pleasant and good beer costs 20p!

We have been living from hand to mouth as we still have not had our promised fridge delivered. Also, procuring the required items of food is quite challenging as choice is not great and the small market stalls and little shops (just the front of someone’s house) offer very limited and the identical range of items. Fresh vegetables are always available, but securing a source of protein requires trips further afield for us. We are not eating the local meat and so try to stock up with cans of tuna which can be found relatively easily, and pulses. Even beans and pulses – chick peas, lentils, pasta and rice have to be bought from bigger markets or shops. Eggs are also normally widely available and locally, but just when you want them, they may not be. So food needs to be planned and this is challenging with working long days and having no fridge, and not yet knowing where everything may be bought. Still we are getting there! We did a big shop this weekend, lets hope that we have what we need for a while. By the time we have cooked on our 2 electric rings, or our kerosene stove if there is a power cut, I am pretty exhausted and with the third shower of the day, I tend to collapse under my mosquito net to read something escapist, till sleep overtakes me by 9.30pm. We are warned by VSO not to be out at night, although DD is known to a very safe town, especially if we stay in the main areas and we have been out several times for meals and meeting up with people. We try to eat out once or twice a week to bring variety and a respite from our own meagre rations. The choice is limited as we are after ‘ferengi’ food of course. I love to try local food and usually love what the country has to offer, but I am not keen on Ethiopian food not least because its heavy on meat of dubious type and quality and because I have decided I do not like ‘injera’ the national staple ‘pancake’, described by some as foam carpet liner. Others may describe it thus, I could not possibly comment! The Bridge does good pizza and Paradiso does a passable lasagne of gargantuan proportion, which sits heavily on your stomach. Fish is often on the menu, but rarely available. The posh hotel The Samrat does an excellent range of Indian dishes, as it is owned by Indians. It also has air conditioning and international TV stations! I adore the freshly squeezed juices, currently its Payapa, avocado and ambershoh (a new and interesting fruit to me), with some guava coming in. What is popular is to layer each fruit in a long glass – divine! Roll on the mango season, and pineapple, and watermelon!!

Living here

It is early days, but Jenny and I, the VSO colleague assigned to the same institution, are sharing a compound which offers a very pleasant space. Each of us has our own bedroom and bathroom on either side of an open courtyard and we share a central kitchen. The courtyard has 2 small garden beds with shady trees and shrubs and creeping vine with grapes. It is located on a small residential dirt road where all the houses are protected by high walls and large gates (no not like the UK or SA!), some are very impressive and which open up to compounds with open courtyards in the centre.  It’s a very local suburb, full of regular inhabitants, and they are all starting to wonder about these ‘ferenjis’ that appear to have moved in with the local population !

As is the case throughout the facilities are quite basic and as this is accommodation which has been renovated and newly acquired by the university, we are starting from square one with furniture and fittings. In fact we had to stay in a hotel the first night as the accommodation was not ready.

Without a current volunteer here, we are having to learn the ropes by ourselves and this proving to be quite challenging. Firstly we have no idea where we live and we can not speak the language!  There are no maps, the roads here have no names or numbers and there don’t seem to be defined suburbs. As the town is very spread out its impossible to walk it also because of the heat, and little ‘bajajs’, or tuk-tuk taxis are the dominant form of transport. As the people are generally very poor here, there are few cars as such and the wide and impressive roads are mainly full of these little 3 wheeled, blue and white taxis. Other vehicles tend to be other forms of public transport such as cramped mini buses or contract taxis, lorries or the occasional impressive 4 wheel drive vehicle operated by the various NGOs working in the area. So the roads are quiet in comparison to other cities and mainly filled with scuttling blue an white ant like bajajs. Did someone say there were 40, 000 registered bajajs here? It wouldn’t surprise me.

There is no defined shopping area, or CBD and shopping is procured through a mix of road side stalls or just street traders, small shops  scattered along the different streets, the few small ‘supermarkets’ selling some western type produce, or the bigger markets. We really have not been able to suss all this out yet and are having some difficulty trying to buy everything we need from vegetables to buckets to fly spray to sheets. We have discovered a small trader who sells bread from  the house a few doors along and  few basic veggies are obtainable all over the place (fruit, apart from bananas, ‘muz’and oranges seem in short supply at the moment, but that will go with the season. I think Papaya is about to happen – joy!) We have now finished our supply of tuna fish and would love to find a source of fresh eggs. However, we are managing and learning as we go.

An insect expert would have a field day at our house. At dusk the army of nocturnal aerial firepower starts to appear. I must have counted 12 different types attracted to my desk light. So its difficult to work after dark with the light on as we do not have netting over the windows. There is very little that seems to bite, sting or pass disease, its simply a very active air space.

We will be meeting more colleagues from the university soon so, I will be able to update you on work matters soon.

Dire Dawa

As the plane descended from Addis Ababa on the morning of 22^nd September a very different scene unfolded before our eyes. The land was flat, dry and sandy with a savannah type vegetation carpeting the otherwise desert landscape with a sea of green flat topped acacia trees and associated species.  As we emerged from the small regional airport into a new heat, camels were evident amongst the landscape of low trees, many of which were on blossom. It had a distinctly exotic feel to it, including the temperature! 

The town is spread out and spacious with wide streets, mainly tree lined and many are dual carriageways. The scene is one of linked single storied settlements and communities and on the outskirts of town there was evidence of basic stone built dwellings with a mud coating and compound architecture so common in Africa and the Middle East. Architecturally attractive in many areas, with large ornate double doors hiding the dwellings inside the compounds. Nearer the centre there are more substantive colonial type architecture harking back to the early 20^th century when the French built the one and only national railway line from Addis Ababa to the sea at Djibouti through Dire Dawa. All this is in disrepair now and the line no longer runs from AA but starts at Dire Dawa and carries goods to Ethiopia’s one outlet to the Red Sea since Eritrian independence. Eriterian independence has been a growth stimulus to this town, now the second town of the country, because of the railway line. The old station in the centre of town is no longer used and like most of the buildings in the centre is in a state of disrepair. Along with the rest of the country, Dire Dawa does not support wealth to any extent and people are evident plying their basic wares on road sides or in small markets. The only higher rise buildings are the few more western style hotels and one or 2 Government buildings. Everything is very small scale and spread out, but there is a good network of roads and much of the town is pleasing to the eye. Economically the town is a trading point and is at a junction for several different tribes who come into town to try to make a living. It has a cement works and a Coca Cola bottling plant and with the airport is a gateway to the tourst attraction of Harar, an old Arab walled town an hour away up into the hills. One of the biggest employers in the town now must surely be the rapidly developing university. Dire Dawa is the location for one of the currently 22 regional universities being planned by the Ethiopian Government, and it is rapidly expanding. This year, in a week’s time 7000 students will enrol on what still looks like one enormous building site in the semi desert. The institution has been in existence for 3-4 years now, but its development is strengthening. The management is very stretched at the present time as in addition to the usual pressures of a new academic year and the arrival of a large number of students, they are also managing, or at least having to live with a massive building project, and their academic or administrative duties have to co-exist with and take account of, the inconvenience of unfinished buildings, no roads and few facilities. All this is taking place on a hot and dusty plain where the sun beats down relentlessly and goats wander around – some seen trying to get into one of the new lecture rooms yesterday. The odd camel train is also in evidence around the ‘campus’.

In Country Training (ICT)

20 of us arrived in Addis Ababa from Heathrow in the early hours of the 12th September to be met by 3 welcoming and cheerful volunteer representatives. We were taken to the Red Cross training institute which would be our home for the next 10 days of ICT. This is a delightful complex like a small college campus with several different sized training rooms, an accommodation block and a catering block, some offices and a smal IT room. The gardens are immaculate with manicured lawns and flower beds. The trees hosted a range of colourful birds which intrigued several of us. Over the next 24 hours or so were joined by further new volunteers arriving from different parts of the globe. In total in September 2010, 34 new ISO volunteers arrived in Ethiopia to work in the 2 country programme areas, Education and Health. We join the 65 currently here, which makes Ethiopia one of the top countries for VSO activity.

The training was fast paced and relentless and necessary. A lot was covered in a short space of time. We were bombarded with information, exercises and activity from early in the morning till sometimes quite late in the evening. Language learning was a major tenet of the ICT and that was very intensive. After a few days we were sent off to Addis on a 'scavenger hunt' with instructions to carry out a list of activitied and we had to negotiate local public transport in order to achieve this and negotiate a local language (well sort of!) to buy items as instructed. This was a lot of fun and a good learning experience.

We had most interesting talks from various incited experts on topics such as geopolitics, the Ethiopian development context, culture and customs. We were hosted by the British Embassy one evening where we were plied with generous selection of alcoholic drinks, and as the nationalities of the volunteers are various, other Embassies also extended a warm welcome to their nationals during the 10 days. Our nationalities include as well as British; a large Irish contingent, a Ugandian, Canadian, 3 from the Philipines, India and Australia.

However the time comes for us to move onto our placements and to scatter to the different and distant parts of the country to take up our various roles and responsibilities ant make a contribution as best we can as a member of the ever growing VSO family.

Am I ready?

Well, with a week to go, this is the key question. The pressure to extricate myself from this country and deal with all the necessary property, household, financial and family matters has really prevented me from preparing adequately for the place, the job and the people I am going to. With all the training under my belt and the expectations around continued self-briefing, there is potentially an enormous amount of information that I should by now have digested and resultant knowlege and understanding that I should have gained. I even took out 5 books on international development themes to read and subsequently took them back 6 weeks later, mostly unread - and that was before I started getting really busy!
Hence I have masses of files in electronic format to take, as well as a lot of hard copy material.
And that points to the next challenge, how to get all the stuff that I will need and am likely to need into the allocated weight limit!? Suggestions to bring a garlic press and a non-stick frying pan sound bizarre to me compared to items like suitable footwear, necessary toiletries and medical supplies and key items for the job, as well as the bare essentials for leisure time. Most of what is in the category of 'nice to take' has already been jettisoned! Of course when I arrive at the other end, despite lots of helpful advice and tips, I'm sure I will find that I have bought all the wrong things!
Separating myself from my house, which is being rented unfurnished is not a task to be underestimated, which in terms of time, organisation and challenge, I definitely have done! This weekend friends are helping me do the final furniture move, my bed has now been disassembled and still chaos reigns and still household items are to be found in nooks and crannies.
Its a very sobering experience when one considers that the basic problem is one of having too much and that probably even though a mass of stuff has already been thrown out, after a year in Africa, I will realise that half of what I am hanging onto is superfluous to requirements. No doubt as soon as I arrive I will remember things I have simply thrown out that would have been SO useful out there and could have helped someone no end. The frustrations of distribution and not easily being able to get things to the point at which they are needed even when the rich west/north is willing to let go. My small scale experience is an analogy for everyday behaviours at higher levels between nations. I have too much stuff, but its not easy to let it go and this has been a challenging process for me.

So, I don't feel as well prepared for what I will find in Ethiopia as I think I should be. I would have liked to have spent much longer learning, reflecting and understanding in some depth some of the issues covered in the training courses. However, another point of view may argue that this may lead to fixed ideas and that the situation, particularly the job, is likely to be very different to what may have previously been described in writing. So, I will have to start a steep learning curve once I'm there and simply absorb everything, trying to make sense of it all and respond appropriately.

Final thoughts - what will I miss? How do I feel emotionally now?
Having been through the intense preparations of the last 2 months, I've reached the point of no return. What is about to happen is the inevitable consequence of what I have been through. This experience has got to come, got to happen and yes, I am ready and reconciled to that, no regrets. I have spent so long preparing for this and eventually it is upon me. However, I feel tired and rather emotionally drained from the preparation and am hoping that I will be able to cope with the demands of the new situation, and that it will not be too overwhelming early on and that I will be able to take things in my stride.
I know I need to do this and I just go back to my original reasons for wanting to do VSO and they are still very firmly in place.
What will I miss? I honestly don't know as I sit here, I haven't had a chance to think about it. I will let you know as time goes by. I am concerned about operating in 40degreesC without airconditionning and trying to keep fit and healthy at the same time, but that doesn't mean I shall miss the British climate!

Pre-Departure Training No.2!

The next on-line course was called ‘Realities of Volunteering’. In this we did some hard hitting work on power and corruption and the day to day realities of potential encounters. VSO expect their volunteers to take responsibility for their own decisions when it comes to potentially corrupt practices and behaviour and we were taken purposefully through different scenarios that built from the bureaucratic nuisance factor imposed by officials through to the highly organised institutional corruption – all the time being asked, what would you do?

A short guideline was useful in terms of considering an appropriate response to a given situation;

Comply?

Circumvent?

Confront?

While all the time considering the Consequences.
Transparency International ranks Ethiopia 120 out of 180 listed countries in terms of corruption, where 1 is whiter than white - Norway! Doesn't bode too well.

We were able to reflect on the power that we may, or may not have and what this would be based on and what the dynamics of that may be. Learning gained for me included the need to develop good relationships at an early stage, culturally assimilate asap and learn the language. No great expectations there then! Should be easy!!!
The last F2F training course really packed in a lot of information. It started at 1pm on Saturday and we finished at 9pm, and for the next 2 days we worked pretty much for 12 hours from 9am to 9pm. There was the sense, for me, that this is important and if you don’t get the message now, you may never and it could ruin your placement.

The first afternoon was a Health and Safety Workshop, where I learnt that I won’t be touching another dog for a year! Withdrawals symptoms immediately!
The rest of the 4 days was this workshop entitled ‘Skills for Working in Development’ or SKWID! Key words like, sharing, empowerment, participation and facilitation dominated the sessions and the associated exercises. We are not teaching, we are facilitating. We are sharing our skills and knowledge and finding out what works best in the local context and we don’t know that. In this connection, we had all done some preparation in advance on well known writers who have developed and advocated/preached participatory approaches in different contexts in development situations. Examples include Paulo Friere and his work on participatory approaches in education, Sherry Arnstein and her work with civic representation in local communities, and Linda Mayoux and her work with women, enterprise and small businesses.

It shook me to realise just how inherently and implicitly I may automatically assume the role of ‘teacher’, while the key skill is to work with (facilitate) in order to draw the solutions from those who are facing the problems/issues. As a result motivation and a sense of being in control, taking charge (lets not use empowerment) hopefully results.
My situation is a good example here. I will be the third VSO Volunteer in Dire Dawa leading the Higher Diploma programme. I sense that VSO want that situation to move on and that we should be ensuring that we make ourselves redundant as soon as practically possible. (Is there an analogy here with the Afghan army?). It was mooted to me that I may be the last volunteer in this position in this location, and I think that this would be an objective to work towards, if realistic. Thus participatory approaches are the only ones that will bring this about.

We had to prepare 2 practical skills sessions where we were expected to facilitate a learning session and demonstrate a participatory approach, working with colleagues and receiving and giving feedback. This was challenging, but great learning. The value of this sort of activity is maximised through a good tutor (facilitator?!) and I think we all felt that the training course leaders were excellent.
Did you realise that in an exercise that requires you to build a bridge, (groan! seen it, done it, got the T-shirt!) that actually it doesn’t matter if you don’t build a bridge as long as you build relationships. Are we too task oriented in the west? How do we marry the need to focus on people and relationships, with the fact that we are here to do a job! For those who know me, you will understand how this is going to be a useful challenge for me!
Finally, thought you may like to ponder on the roles that I am likely to be engaging with while in Ethiopia as a volunteer;
Facilitator, change agent, trainer, co-trainer, mentor, learner (big one), Project Manager, Planner, Service deliverer, catalyst, motivator, networker, advocate, role model and tourist.

Overall, the key challenges that emerge for me include; getting a grip on cultural nuances, spending time to get to know people and understand them and situations, building relationships, (while avoiding any faux pas!) and identifying quickly any difficult situations that have corrupt overtones and knowing immediately how to deal with them.

Within the job, I believe it will be motivating participants and this involves putting them in the driving seat in a way and to the extent that is practical and realistic, judged by the situation while finding innovative and creative ways to fulfil my role as facilitator, change agent and trainer.

And its going to be hot!
Wish me luck.

Pre-departure training

VSO take a very thorough and professional approach to ensuring their volunteers have the right skills and knowledge for working in development before they leave for their placement.


In 2010 I was expected, (its mandatory) to participate in 2 on-line training courses and to attend 3 courses at their training centre in Birmingham.
The training ‘season’ started with the on-line introduction, Volunteering Starts Here. If I recall this was more about learning to work on line and how to communicate as a team using the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment technology. For my Bournemouth University colleagues this will bring a smile to their faces when considering the years spent working with BU students, learning to engage with the VLE! As well as being on the other side of the fence with technology, did you know I have had a Placement Advisor!!

All the exercises are very practical and participative and the use of case studies, videos and images are widely used. As well as exploring what we, and VSO mean by development, on-line we were introduced to some concepts around culture and all those who have done it may remember, in particular, the iceberg diagram with the seagulls flying overhead representing the volunteers who fly in and are able to fly out again and interact with the place while they are landed a bit like a bird, picking up what they want in a potentially selective and superficial(?) way. However, like birds we have the choice of the extent to which we wish to make the land our home.
The fish swimming around below the iceberg are native to the waters, immersed in the culture and with a perspective that is submerged.

The key animal in this metaphor is the penguin, who has the ability to dive into the waters, or local territory and who are very familiar, comfortable with the environment and culture, and who can also move around on the land and relate to the birds who come in to land. The key message is to find your penguin to help good cultural assimilation! Someone who has local knowledge but who also is able to assist and relate to the birds, or VSO volunteers.
The first residential course was entitled Preparing to Volunteer, and having discovered that VSO is big on acronyms, its more usually described as P2V.

This course introduces us to issues around development, including the historical context of aid and trade including the background to institutions such as the World Bank, WTO and IMF. Through some very hard hitting exercises (eg The Trading Game) we learnt about the debt crisis and Structural Adjustment Programmes and the cycle of disadvantage, and how it feels to live in Tanzania, as opposed to America for example, from the point of view of trade advantage.

Then we moved to consider ourselves as volunteers in this context, the role that VSO plays, its strategy and focus and aspects of the work it does and how this changes to reflect the changing environment. VSO currently has 6 main areas of contribution: education, HIV and AIDS, disability, health and well being, secure livelihoods and participation and governance. I will be working in the education area.

I recall a particularly powerful practical exercise that reinforced how it might feel to be culturally incompetent and learnt the importance of mirroring the behaviour and language of the person you are interacting with.

We spent time reflecting on what we could bring to the work of VSO and the extent to which our values, approach and skills are consistent with that of the organisation we will be representing. The assessment criteria that we were all selected against were used in this context, and it was a sobering thought that we were all still being assessed against them during this early training.

The course finished with more personal reflections about how we may cope and how we might organise ourselves and our lives in our new environments to ensure an easy adjustment, - the Me Map.

The course was meaningful in helping us to see everyday life through the position of disadvantage and gaining a better idea of the causes of that disadvantage, and then to locate ourselves in that context as a VSO Volunteer.

Introduction

This blog is set up to tell you stories from my Ethiopian adventures. Stay tuned and find exciting pictures and stories which will be on the way vey soon!