One of the teaching blocks at college


The college library. Most of the books are on the shelves in front of the windows.


The Higher Diploma training room


A donkey garry at college


Sports hall and science labs under construction for the degree programme


The main college building. The wooden structure is a temporary building for the Certificate course graduation next weekend.

Every day has brought a new aspect of Ethiopian culture to think about. Today it’s coffee sprice. This is a mixture of tea and coffee. Apparently it’s very common and is, of course, consumed with an appropriately Ethiopian dose of sugar. I don’t see the point of mixing the two drinks together and any potentially interesting flavour that might result is drowned out by sweetness. Ethiopians drink sugar. Tea and coffee are served in small cups, not much bigger than espresso cups, and two heaped spoonfuls of sugar is the minimum any Ethiopian will have. Some of my colleagues add four spoonfuls of sugar. Four! Even stranger to me is that some Ethiopians prefer their coffee with salt instead of sugar. I’ve tried it and can simply describe it as a complete waste of good coffee.

While having a break with some colleagues recently, I tried telling them how much sugar is in the Coca Cola they love to drink. They were amazed and a bit sceptical that their bottle of coke contained more sugar than the super-sweet coffee they usually drink. I then tried to tell them about the increasing concern at home about obesity and diabetes. They hadn’t even heard of diabetes and struggled to comprehend my stories about the soaring obesity rate we have at home and how common diabetes is becoming. Their visions of the West (or the “North” as they refer to developed countries as) are of a paradise of opportunities and affluent lifestyle. The fact that so many people at home are slowly killing themselves as result of indulging in that heavenly lifestyle is incomprehensible to most Ethiopians.

Today was my last HDP session before we head home for a break. We fly to the UK on Tuesday for two and a half weeks in the UK. I’ve never looked forward to being at Heathrow airport so much. The last week has seemed very slow and the teacher educators I work with have seemed to be in end-of-term mode. The students have finished their exams and the college is very quiet. The summer school programme doesn’t start until mid-July so a lot of staff are simply not here. Out of 26 candidates I had only 18 today, and one of them disappeared at the break! It’s like having a problem pupil in a class to deal with. I made the mistake of describing our trip as a holiday. Here holiday literally means a “holy day”. Ethiopians don’t have holidays in the way we mean them. Even weekends are not seen as a break as they are at home. There is no Amharic equivalent to “have a good weekend”.

Yohannes, who I am giving English lessons to, seems to be enjoying our time together. Despite my complete ignorance about how to help somebody improve their English, we are improvising our way through some interesting sessions. He is an art teacher and I used a picture of Holbein’s “The Ambassadors” from the Guardian newspaper as a subject to practice talking about. As soon as he saw the picture he just lit up. His face and body language brightened up and once he started to describe the picture I couldn’t hold him back. It was amazing to sit with him as he explained features about the picture I hadn’t even noticed. Despite his poor English his interpretations were vivid and sophisticated. He really does see the world with an artist’s eyes. He knows a lot about western art and it hit me that he has never seen any original works by the famous artists he can talk about. He has only seen pictures in a very small number of books. In London anyone can walk into the National Gallery and see a rich collection of artistic masterpieces, for free!!!! Surely being able to do that is a better sign of a “developed” culture than how many cars people own.

The weather has cooled as the long rains approach. In the evening it’s almost cool enough to need to wear a jumper. At night I’ve had to resort to sleeping with a sheet over me instead of nothing at all.

I’ve felt slightly better nourished this week. One of the physics teachers at the college is a woman called Aloka, from India. Her husband teaches economics at Debub University. There are quite a lot of Indians teaching at the University, and Aloka and her husband have been living in Awassa for four years. They invited us to dinner last Saturday. She had cooked a vegetarian Indian meal of several different dishes including chana massala, rice, raita and freshly made pooris. At home, I love that kind of food, but here I could have wept with gratitude at tasting something different after four and half months in Ethiopia. The food was simply fantastic. She can get all the necessary Indian ingredients and spices, and knows how to use them. I actually felt physically and spiritually better afterwards.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on what we have achieved here and what I personally have gained. The feedback we have had from the staff at the college has been very positive and warm. I do think we have started to make a difference, perhaps not so much to their teaching but in their attitude. None of them wanted to be teachers and they received no training and development once they completed a very basic teacher training. A lot of them have said they have never experienced anyone work in the way that we work e.g. we are consistently punctual, we listen and encourage them to share their ideas, we are informal, enthusiastic and interactive. At my low moments (and there have been many of them) I’ve tried to hold onto a belief in the cumulative power of small changes. Hopefully, by role modelling how they can be as teachers and always trying to be positive, we are planting “seeds”, ideas that might influence them later and they might pass onto their students, who will in turn be better teachers than they might have been. A lot of the time, I feel very selfish and wrapped up in my own feelings about being here and how hard it is for me. When my motivation is low I have to remember that this is supposed to be about them and what we can give.

Another week without a telephone line. This time we were cut off for not paying our bill, even though we didn’t know a bill was due. Ah well, we are now back in communication with the rest of the world. The high point of the last week was attending the graduation ceremony for the final year Diploma students. The low point has been yet more illness: a common cold of all things. We both feel malnourished. I feel a need to pig out on food when we get home.

Graduation: a special day for the students and a tedious bum-numbing experience for the audience. I’m being overly cynical, but my tolerance for sitting in an uncomfortable chair for several hours is limited. The Diploma students graduated on Saturday after three years of study, and we were invited to attend as part of the college academic staff. The fun part was wearing full academic robes and hats. The gowns were exactly as you get at home, so were therefore inappropriately thick and heavy for a hot climate. The graduation ceremony was held in a large hall which is used as the local cinema, and we were told to assemble with the staff by 8.30am. When we received the programme the day before, we knew from experience that the timings were largely a work of fiction. Punctuality is widely talked about as a good idea everyone should practice, but rarely actually practiced. So, we hung around as staff slowly assembled before taking our seats for the ceremony to start at around 10.15am. The guest of honour was going to be the President of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) and he turned out to be late. A student band entertained the audience while we slowly cooked in the hall. I was wearing a shirt-and-tie, suit jacket, thick gown and mortar board hat. I could feel the sweat soaking through my trousers. Just as the student with the best exam performance started making a speech on stage, all of the staff left the hall to receive the SNNPR President. So, the ceremony finally got underway and finished by 12.30. Outside there were the usual groups of family members jostling in the crowd to get photographs of the graduates. I found myself in the awkward situation of being literally grabbed by students who I have never met and being expected to pose with them for photos. In years to come I will be able to think about some people in Ethiopia with a photo of themselves, posed with a Ferenji they never knew wearing a fixed, polite and bemused smile on his face. We really appreciated being invited and treated as part of the staff, and I’m glad I’ve experienced graduation. The Certificate students (nearly 3000 of them) graduate in two weeks. Although we would be expected to attend, tragically we will be on our way to the UK for a break. I’ll be thinking of everybody slowly cooking in uncomfortable chairs, waiting for a distinguished guest who will inevitably be late. While I am being rained on in the UK I’ll also be thinking of the students, who deserve every minute of their day of excitement. They struggle hard for a basic education few people even have access to. That’s worth being cooked for several hours. I’m just glad I only have to do it once.

World Cup fever has hit Awassa. Even here, everybody is football mad and any café with a TV is packed out with Ethiopians cheering wildly about every goal. The African teams are supported by everyone, but ask an Ethiopian who they want to win the World Cup and they all say Brazil, with a few trying to be diplomatic and saying England. I’ve tried many times to explain the difference between Scotland, England and the UK, but with little success. I’m resigned to people outside of the UK thinking of me as English and that I should be very happy about England’s victories in the World Cup.

“Illness” is definitely the theme of the past few days. After I recovered from my dose of diarrhoea on Thursday, Gill became ill again. We spent Saturday feeling drained and sorry for ourselves. Sunday was my turn to feel crap, again. This time I experienced a miraculous improvement around mid-afternoon. At the same time the weather freshened, the wind started, the temperature dropped and a storm rumbled in the distance. Coincidence?

My HDP group spent the Monday session considering the topic of “disadvantage”. Our sessions are two hours, and the emphasis is on modelling active learning methods the teacher educators could use with their students by using the methods to explore educational issues. At home, special educational needs (SEN) is an important topic which has become more and more prominent. Here SEN has barely featured in the educational system. Given that less than 50% of children even go to primary school (less than 30% of girls receive any education) then it’s not surprising SEN is not really on the agenda. What struck me was the acceptance of institutional failures without any apparent anger or sense of injustice. The college has no SEN policy and does nothing to identify or support disadvantaged students, or support the staff that might have to teach them. The teacher educators I work with are aware that they will have disadvantaged students in their classes, but feel unable to push the college into helping them work more effectively with them.

One of the Higher Diploma moderators arrived today to spend two days checking that our work conforms to national standards, moderate our marking, discuss the course with our candidates, etc. The moderator is a VSO vol based in Addis, although in future moderation will be handed over to Ethiopians based in regional universities.

I conducted my first English lesson with my HDP candidate with poor English skills. I have no training or experience in TEFL teaching but with a bit of improvisation we made some progress. Despite my ad hoc approach, he seemed to enjoy it and actually improved his pronunciation of a range of words. I now need to do some homework and figure out a work scheme that will help him in the time I have left at the college.

Just when we thought we had become used to the wildlife, something new arrived. Yesterday morning Gill found a moth on the doorframe of the bathroom. I thought I’d seen large moths at home (and I admit to not liking them) but this was LARGE. It was almost black, and so big we thought it might be some kind of bat. Its wingspan was about the same as a CD. After grabbing a pillow case and agreeing a plan to gather it up and release it outside, it fluttered out of the bathroom window. Given I am many times bigger than it and I’ve never heard of anyone being savaged by a moth, my level of squeamishness was way over the top.

It’s Friday night and I’m knackered. A combination of heat (that old subject again…), work and illness has drained me. I feel a need to just blob in front of some trashy TV.

I’ve spent part of this week consulting with the college about their new science labs. We have watched a new building containing three science labs, a language lab, a computer lab and sports hall take shape since February. The buildings are to enable the college to start offering degree courses and become a university. Once the degree programme is up and running, students intending to teach in secondary schools will be training alongside students for primary (1st and 2nd cycle) teaching.

Like everything else in Ethiopia, watching people go about activities we might not give a second thought to at home is endlessly fascinating. Scaffolding here is made of the trunks of young trees, and is tied or nailed together. Building sites are a health and safety nightmare. There was a man using an angle grinder in one of the labs, but the nearest electricity socket was in a nearby building. So, the power cable snaked across the floor and ended in a standard two-pin plug which was lying in the mud outside. A cable had been plugged into a socket in another building and trailed across the ground, ending in two bare wires. These bare wires had been wrapped around the pins of the plug for the angle grinder. Men will be digging trenches with just a pickaxe while wearing flip-flops. At least construction is one of the few occupations where there is near-equality between men and women: a lot of the labouring, digging and brick-carrying is done by women.

The building work is nearly finished and must be completed by Monday, so despite being available to offer advice since February, the college decided to ask my views on the layout of the physics lab on Wednesday. Fortunately the physics lab is still a shell. Their original plans were for a similar layout to the chemistry and biology labs, with two long, fixed benches. Along with one of the physics teachers at the college, we have come up with a plan with moveable benches. After an evening in front of powerpoint drawing a plan (there are no plans for these new buildings!) I gave some recommendations to the college. It’s nice to be able to say that I am largely responsible for the design of their new physics lab.

The whole experience has been very revealing about how projects like this are approached. At home, the interested parties would get together and discuss factors such as number of students to be accommodated, long term requirements, etc. Then (hopefully) the relevant people would discuss needs and agree detailed plans. Only then might construction start. Here the college investors decided to build first, then think about internal layout and skip the consultation-with-users part.

Having said that, what they are trying to achieve is really amazing. The five investors in the college have grand ambitions and are thinking big. Debub Ethiopia College of Teacher Education (DECTE) will be the only private college in southern Ethiopia offering degree programmes in sciences, and having an indoor educational sports facility. The language lab will be the only language lab in a private college in the whole country. Private colleges are much more important here than at home. Government institutions are bloated with bureaucracy while private colleges tend to be much more efficient. The private sector fills a need here that the government simply cannot meet. The five Ethiopians who put money into the college are incredibly motivated to provide a service to their country (while also making a profit!). The language lab can take fifty students, with each desk equipped with headphones and microphone all connected to a console on the teacher’s desk. Everything has been made in a small workshop on-site. Local people have been used to install the wiring and we have watched each day as the tables and chairs have been made by hand from wood and metal. The result is a language lab a school at home would be proud of, for a total cost of 25,000 birr (approx £1,700!!!). To buy from a commercial company and have it installed would have cost 1,000,000 birr!

The excitement about being involved with the new buildings has been dampened a bit by being ill. Gill was clobbered by diarrhoea and general unwellness on Wednesday and stayed at home all day. After reading the health advice we were provided with by VSO, we thought we had better check the possibility of malaria. A quick trip to the clinic and one blood test later the result was negative. She started to recover a bit just as I felt awful on Wednesday evening. Thursday was my turn to enjoy the delights of diarrhoea and general feeling of awfulness. I spent the afternoon at home with my feet in a bowl of cold water and sponging myself to try and keep cool, while my insides gurgled and erupted away. The funny side of it all is that if you mention feeling unwell to an Ethiopian, they automatically ask you about your bowel movements and are big fans of stool tests. Not quite the passing conversation you have with colleagues at home.

At last, it is raining! I love the sound of heavy rain on our metal roof.