Bobby, our cute-and-useless "guard" dog

A planned busy week of professional interviews with teacher educators and observation of their lessons has been wrecked by Easter. Easter in Ethiopia is this weekend (one week later than at home because Ethiopia uses a different calendar) and it is a very big deal here. Easter is the main religious holiday and everybody travels to their home town to be with their family. Even on Tuesday a lot of students were already missing from the college, and some of the teacher educators, including three of my HDP candidates, missed my session on Wednesday. Initially I found this annoying as more than a week will be disrupted even though the only “official” day off for staff and students is Friday 21^st. I calmed down a bit when it was pointed out to me that travelling home for many people will take them two days.

We had an intense Amharic lesson on Tuesday evening. Spending an hour saying “the book is on the table”, “the book is under the table”, “the book is next to the pen”, etc was hard work, but we are getting there slowly. The Ethiopian attitude to any Ferenji who try and speak Amharic is to fall about laughing. This was initially unsettling, until we were told that they simply do not expect Ferenji to speak Amharic, and they appreciate our attempts so much they laugh. Hmmmm...

It’s now Thursday afternoon and we are home already after the college Dean decided to close early for Easter. There’s a definite holiday atmosphere in town. Easter also marks the end of fasting for Ethiopian orthodox Christians. Fasting here means no animal products for 55 days. The chickens have had an easy time of it since the fast started, freely walking the streets and growing in size. Well, on Sunday it’s open-season on chickens! Ethiopians go for meat in a big way when the Fast ends. There were several people in the street walking around with live chickens under their arms being approached by other people offering to buy them. It’s like watching people trying to score drugs from dealers on the street corner.

Gill received two parcels from home today containing lots of interesting goodies, such as birthday presents, DVDs recorded by a friend of two recent Formula 1 Grand Prix and lots of decent chocolate. The treats are so much appreciated. I’m developing a craving for chocolate I didn’t have at home. We have both lost weight since we arrived in Ethiopia. Occasional doses of diarrhoea speed the weight-loss programme along...as Gill has discovered all week.