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.