Some views from Tabor Hill of Awassa and the lake:

After writing about power cuts recently, we’ve had several unusually long ones in the last few days. We have had a few evenings of cooking by the light of our headtorches. Most of the blackouts coincide with severe storms. I don’t mind and it’s actually enjoyable; there’s something about living in a more primitive way.

We managed to let VSO wind us up on Tuesday night after they tried to take some of our furniture. A new short-term volunteer (Keith) arrived on Tuesday. He will be here for six weeks at the same organisation as Fiona (working with women with HIV), on secondment from his VSO placement in Zambia. One of the VSO drivers who had brought Keith from Addis, came round to take one of our tables. This was fair enough, as we had three which is more than our entitlement (VSO often store unused furniture in volunteers houses, so you might think you have lots of furniture but technically you don’t). On arrival at our house, it turned out they were also supposed to take one of the wardrobes, which was news to us. I know this probably sounds really petty, complaining about wardrobes when working in Ethiopia, but your home is a sanctuary, more so here than in the UK, and it’s not very nice when people turn up take a table and then try to take other stuff as well with no prior discussion. Anyway, Keith didn’t want the wardrobe and everything was settled. It’s not the losing furniture that bothers me (we have more than we are entitled to) it’s the lack of sensitivity (and organisation) on the part of the VSO office.

The glut of lessons observations is nearly over. In amongst the tedious bum-numbing lesson experiences there have been a few teacher educators who have taken everything the HDP has thrown at them and really worked on their own technique. I’ve been very impressed and also humbled, given the starting level that many of the teachers have come from.

One aspect that leaves me increasingly unimpressed is poor punctuality. A lot of the college teaching staff are often15 mins late or more for their own lessons. Given that they are acting as role models to their students, they can hardly complain when their students trickle into lessons late. What really winds me up though is when they are late for our HDP sessions. Punctuality is given prominence in the HDP assessment, and yet despite everything we have done about time management, more and more of my candidates have been arriving up to 15 mins after the start time. On Wednesday I got really fed up and let them know it. I talked with them about how much of a problem it’s becoming and how I feel when they are late. I think some of them just don’t “get it”. The cultural attitude to time here is simply different from what we are used to, which is not surprising given how difficult it can be to travel anywhere. Most people have more to deal with in their lives than being in a certain place within one minute of the agreed time.

One of our most important pieces of equipment: a water filter. We boil water, let it cool overnight and pour into the top half...


...where it slowly filters through two ceramic "candles" into the bottom half. The layer of sludge that builds up on the candles is several mm thick after four weeks or so.

After doing twenty two 1hour lesson observations in five days, and the same number of 20 minute feedback meetings, I reached a point of mind numbness on Friday night that’s hard to describe. Observing can be very interesting and inspiring, but is often dull and tedious. The good news is that almost every teacher educator I’ve observed has improved their planning and teaching since the start of the HDP, some have made very impressive progress. I’ve finished the week inspired and encouraged, while also feeling a bit brain dead and mentally weary.

Today though has been a restorative Saturday. I’ve been to the local shops and bought veg and kerosene, made pancakes for lunch, made coffee, sat outside on the porch in the sun and read a book. The pancakes, by the way, are not simply a nice treat, they are the easiest way to make something with the wholemeal flour we bought in Addis. At home I’m generally useless at just “being” and relaxing without feeling a compulsive urge to be “doing” or achieving something. Here though, I’ve finally started to learn to sit and chill out. The climate of course helps: it’s been sunny and warm all day, but cool enough to sit in the sun and not bake. It’s nice to have time to reflect and be aware that our quality of life here is better in many ways than in the UK. Although I’m missing physical exercise, I don’t miss the stress and hassle I used to have in school at home. Today has been thoroughly enjoyable because I have been able to just feel time pass without having to do anything in particular all day.

I’ve been reading a book about making pieces of science equipment and other resources out of locally available materials, by VSO called “The Science Teachers’ Handbook”. It’s about doing the kind of thing I used to imagine a VSO vol doing if they were teaching in a rural school in the middle of nowhere e.g making a microscope out of cardboard and a water drop and making glues out of foodstuffs and common chemicals. I want to use some of our three week break from the HDP in September to try some of the ideas.

This evening has been spent by candlelight. One of the many complications to life here is frequent and random power cuts. In some parts of the country the electricity is turned off overnight. Here in Awassa, we get random blackouts that usually only last a few minutes, but might happen three times in a day. At home we might stress about the power cuts, but here it’s just part of everyday life. We’ve had a few candlelit evenings and it’s been a healthy experience learning not to rely on electricity supplies. We have kerosene stoves for cooking and our radio can run on batteries. With no fridge, TV or need for heating it’s actually quite nice doing without.

The new physics lab in action


The physics equipment store...


Investigative group work

Getting hold of decent chocolate here can be problematic. It’s strange but true that chocolate made in Africa is usually poor quality. Fortunately we can get imported stuff although even that can be hit and miss. Snickers is best, Bounty and Twix are OK, Mars Bars leave an unpleasant aftertaste and Kit Kat is inedible. We’ve finished today at college with a Twix followed by a Bounty between us, the job of the Twix being to provide an instant energy hit and the Bounty chaser to cancel the weird aftertaste.

The now daily diet of lesson observations was spiced up a bit by observing a practical physics lesson in the new lab. The summer programme students do four practical physics sessions and today, the third, was on Hooke’s Law. The task was simple (find the spring constant of two springs connected in series) but the execution was messy. The students have very little practical lab experience, and despite their enthusiasm they went about gathering data while making lots of basic errors. Frustratingly, their teacher lacks experience of how to work with the students on developing their practical skills. The approach here seems to be to assess the students on their final written report of the experiment, instead of intervening and working with the students on their skills during the practical. The physics technician, who has very little experience, spent most of his time helping the students to take the measurements while the teacher passively observed from a distance. This appears to be normal practice during science practical work and will be worth exploring.

Break time!


My HDP group in action


(l to r) Elias, Aklilu and Mitiku


(l to r) Tesfaye, Mesfin, Regassa, Gobeize (white shirt) and Abayneh


Most of my HDP group

Sometimes the best moments when you are teaching or training are the moments when you ignore the plan and go with the flow. Today’s HDP session was supposed to be an opportunity to work in groups on an Action Research project they started two weeks ago. I wanted to spend some time working with them as a group, so I started by asking for any questions they have about English words or phrases. In the previous session on Monday, I had put together an activity to discuss some common mistakes in English usage I’ve noticed so far, the classic being the widespread use of “as to me” instead of “as for me” or “to me”. After the usual pause where nobody wanted to put themselves forward, somebody asked about the phrase “it’s a small world”. This started the ball rolling and was followed by “brainwashing”, “pulling your leg” and “flirting”. A fabulous half hour followed discussing what these phrases mean and when they would be used. The laughter about flirting really made my day. I took some photos of my group during our session and was reminded about how much I like them. Working with them can be frustrating as hell when their concept of deadlines and punctuality conflict with mine, but they are a great bunch of people who are always tolerant, patient and good humoured.

Our HDP session lifted my spirits after another day of back-to-back observations. Highlights of the last two days were observing Anteneh and Gobeize. They both had that special ingredient of conviction when they taught their lessons. They clearly knew what they wanted to achieve and how the students were going to achieve it. Gobeize really showed how to do group work with students, during a lesson on how different countries have influenced the Ethiopian education system. Not only did I enjoy it as an observer, but I also learned more about Ethiopian history. I felt very conspicuous when one group of students presented to the class about the influence Britain has had on Ethiopian education (not that a Ferenji lesson observer could be inconspicuous!). His manner and well thought-out use of a variety of active learning methods was very impressive. Inspirational stuff.

Typical Ethiopian food: injera (a pancake made from teff flour) with a selection of wots (stews)

I’ve written before about the Ethiopian calendar versus our calendar (the Gregorian calendar) e.g. today is 21^st August 2006 in our calendar (GC) but it’s 13^th Neuhase 1998 EC (Ethiopian Calendar). An added complication is that Ethiopia uses “Ethiopian time” (also used elsewhere in Africa and known as “African time”) which simply means that 6am (our time) is 12.00 (Ethiopian time), 2pm (our time) is 8.00 (Ethiopian time), etc. It took us a while to get used to but there is a pragmatic logic to it. Since it is daylight for approx 12 hours, the day starts at 12.00 (6am our time) and ends at 12.00 (6pm our time) with midday at 6.00. After some initial confusion and missed appointments we now work in Ethiopian time, and have learned the hard way to always check, when making arrangements, if we are all talking in “Ferenji” time or “Habisha” time. So, right now it’s 3.30 in the evening of 13 Neuhase 1998!

Making pancakes using our kerosene stoves.

A Saturday morning spent at college observing two lessons: Chemistry and Geography. The chemistry lesson consisted of a blizzard of chemical equations, group work to solve symbol equations and then one demonstration by the teacher to show the effect of an acid and an alkali on litmus paper. During my subsequent feedback discussion with the teacher I naively questioned why she didn’t at least give each group some solutions and indicator papers to test for themselves. The answer: they cost too much. Hmmmm...there’s definitely scope for trying homemade versions. The geography lesson was about working out map scales. It would have been interesting if the students had actually had any maps to look at.

One issue that comes up again and again at college is the quality of the English language used by the students. The summer programme students are all school teachers. The instruction in the college is all conducted in English, and all the students in theory have a good level of English. The reality is somewhat different. When I talk with students, they struggle to understand much of what I say and vice versa. Trying to correct students’ English (and that of the staff) is often tricky because my knowledge of the rules of English grammar is rubbish. When I try to correct some particularly mangled phrase, usually the best I can do is go through the correct version and reassure them that I am correct, even if I can’t really explain why. There are plenty of resources I could use but, call me fussy and narrow minded, reading about subjunctives, conjugating verbs, etc bores me beyond my grammatical ability to describe. Give me a physics book any day.

Outside our compound


Round the corner from our house


The main road near our house on a wet afternnoon


A day of two halves: warm and sunny until 3pm (9.00 in Ethiopian time) and then heavy rain. When it rains, the streets turn into a slippery muddy quagmire. After another day of observing lessons, a couple of hours escaping in front of the laptop with a DVD is required.

Cooking in progress


Green oranges (oranges are green or yellow here; our colleagues were amazed when I explained that, at home, oranges are orange!) and our Jubuhna, a clay pot used for making coffee.

Dinner being prepared

Although our work can be tedious and frustrating it does have its rewards. I’ve been busy observing lessons in the college and I’ve seen some very encouraging things. Given their starting level in April, many of my HDP candidates have developed a lot and are implementing some of the methods we have explored on the course. There are a lot of rough edges in their technique but some lessons, such as Fekadu’s maths lesson I saw this morning, are right up there with a lot of lessons you might see in the UK. I learn a lot about my own teaching and at times I’d love to be back in a UK science lab teaching physics, as I would be a much much better teacher than I was six months ago. I had a “moment” during an observation this afternoon when I remembered photographs from VSO courses of volunteers in bare overcrowded classrooms in Africa, and realised that I am one of those volunteers. It’s easy to stop “seeing” what’s around you as your way of life becomes routine and familiar.

Our main problem at the moment is a lack of urgency on the part of the college management about reducing the workload of our tutors so they can take a bigger share of the lesson observation burden. The tutors are candidates in our HDP groups who we are also training up to become the Higher Diploma Leaders of future groups, after we have left the college. The tutors (there are three for Gill’s group and two for my group: Mesfin and Gobeize) are supposed to be given a reduction in their teaching timetable so they have time to work with us on preparing sessions, and also to conduct observations of their colleagues. Each candidate is supposed to be observed four times during the course i.e. for my group that’s 104 lesson observations. Sharing the observation load with the tutors is not just about making my life easier; it’s a key part of their professional development towards being Leaders of groups in the future. Despite meeting with the college management and agreeing workload reductions, the promised reductions have yet to happen. With only two weeks left of the summer teaching programme, and knowing that the next academic year doesn’t start until October, we are becoming increasingly worried that we will not be able to finish the course.

The weather today has been beautiful. It’s been warm and sunny all day, and at 5pm that familiar dark wall of cloud on the Eastern horizon appeared. With thunder rumbling in the clouds above my head, a vivid rainbow and a beautiful golden glow due to the approach of sunset, torrential rain started. It’s been hammering down all evening. Amazing.

A wet and dreary Addis Ababa


Mesfin and family


A "line taxi": the Addis version of a city bus. They should seat 11 passengers but often carry 17 or more!


Mesfin being congratulated by Gobeize, another colleague.


Mesfin and guest ferenji


The John F Kennedy library in Addis Ababa University, gifted by JFK himself. The biggest and best equipped library in Ethiopia.

After spending the last few days in Addis Ababa I’m back home. Yes, our house in Awassa really does feel like home, much more so than our house in Hertfordshire which is currently somebody else’s home. It’s also nice to have sunshine again. The weather in Addis is grey, wet and generally dismal at the moment. At least one blanket is needed at night.

I travelled to Addis on Friday afternoon, which involves a six hour ordeal by bus. I’m feeling quite practiced at travelling by bus here, and I don’t think I’ll complain about public transport at home again. I eventually arrived at the Yonas Hotel at 8pm. I think I’ve written about the Yonas before. It’s a real institution for volunteers as VSOs stay there when in Addis, and if you hang about in the bar you’re bound to bump into another vol you haven’t seen for a while.

Mesfin, one of my HDP candidates, had invited me to attend his Masters Degree graduation at Addis Ababa University on Saturday. I felt very honoured as he could only get two tickets and I received one of them instead of several other members of his family. The University is the oldest in Ethiopia and certainly the biggest. Over 1000 people graduated with Master’s Degrees during the day and the place was filled with family members brandishing cameras. The afternoon was spent at his sister’s house where a huge spread of food was laid out in celebration.

On Saturday evening I bumped into Jerry, Mura and Emma at the Yonas, who were in the February intake with us, and spent the evening with them. They are in Asossa which is way out in the West close to the border with Sudan. On Sunday morning they were supposed to fly back to Asossa but soon returned from the airport after missing their flight due to a schedule change nobody told them about. As the next flight to Asossa is on Thursday this was a bit of a frustrating experience for them!

Gill travelled to Addis on Sunday and we attended an HIV & AIDS mainstreaming workshop together, with three of our Ethiopian colleagues, on Monday. Monday night was another social evening with other VSOs in the Yonas bar followed by a 5.30am wake-up call to get the bus back to Awassa. I’m knackered from the travelling but it has been a very good few days and very social. There’s a real bond between VSOs who arrive together in the same intake and seeing some of them, who we haven’t seen since Feb and have no idea when we will meet again, has been a rejuvenating experience and a lot of fun.

It’s not even 9pm yet but I’m off to bed.

After three weeks in the UK in June/July it looks like we will get another break in September. Such is the low level of forward planning here that we have only found out in the last few days that everybody travels to be with their family over the holidays (literally “holy days” here) of Ethiopian New Year and Meskel. Actually if we had done some more determined probing about the college year, we might have found out sooner. When we showed our planned schedule at the start of the course, nobody raised any objections, but then we didn’t specifically ask about the holy days. As we were told during in-country training: if you don’t ask Ethiopians for information they tend not to offer it! Ethiopia uses the Julian calendar consisting of twelve months each with thirty days and a thirteenth month of five days, or six days in a leap year. Not only do the months have different names from the ones we are used to (in our Gregorian Calendar) but the year starts on what is, in our calendar, the 11^th September (this is why none of the Ethiopians who worked in the World Trade Centre in New York were killed, as they were all on holiday). In Ethiopia it is the year 1998. New Year is the 1^st Meskerem (11^th September) and is followed by Meskel on 17^th Meskerem (27^th September). So, after planning our usual HDP sessions we have found that most people will actually not be here for a period of three weeks. Given that it can take more than two days for people to travel to their home town it’s not surprising they don’t come back to Awassa between the two holidays. After some creative re-scheduling of our sessions, so we can still finish at the end of October, we now look like having three weeks at college with absolutely nothing to do.

The one good thing about this is the possibility we can do a trek in Bale Mountains National Park. The park is approx 80km to the East of Awassa and covers a large area of high altitude (over 3500m) plateaux. We had hoped to go there in November, before moving to Gondar, but September is a better month to go and we now have time on our hands!

The college is a slightly crazy and very frustrating place to be at the moment. When we went to the UK in June there was no teaching going on and the place was pretty dead. Once we returned in July the summer programme was supposed to have started, but as with a lot of things in Ethiopia last-minute changes were made. All government-employed teachers were required to attend two weeks of political “workshops”, which meant students were late enrolling for the summer programme, etc. The programme is for existing 1^st cycle primary school teachers, who are only qualified to Certificate level, to upgrade their qualification to a Diploma, and therefore be able to teach in 2^nd cycle primary schools. 2^nd cycle teaching is higher status (i.e. less poor than the lowest-of-the-low 1^st cycle) and only badly paid instead of really badly paid.

Gill offered to teach one of the summer programme courses on Spoken English. She quickly discovered there was no workscheme and worse was to come. The planning of the timetable has been a classic example of an institution not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery e.g. the evening before teaching was due to start, staff timetables were issued at the end of the day when most staff had gone home. After a generally very positive experience of the college since we arrived, our opinion of the management’s ability to plan and organise has hit rock bottom. The senior staff are great people, but there is a shocking lack of strategic planning and co-ordination. When we finish at the end of October the college would like us to stay and would try and find jobs for us. However the real need is management and leadership, which the college itself doesn’t see.

One of my colleagues was asking me about our visit to the UK. He was particularly fascinated by the change in the number of daylight hours throughout the year at home. He explained that in Ethiopia people in rural areas tell the time by noting the light level, as sunrise (approx 0600) and sunset (approx 1830) hardly change at all during the year. He wanted to know how people can tell the time at home if sunrise & sunset times vary. He was astonished about most people at home using watches: “even in rural areas?!” was the response.