Awassa


On the road to Addis


Gondar

To misquote Arthur C. Clarke, if working in the UK is like swimming in the sea then working in Ethiopia is like thrashing through treacle. Starting a new job in the UK will seem easy in future. At least you usually have a job description and your boss might have some clear and detailed (if not always correct!) ideas about what you should be doing. Here the bosses have general ideas about what should be done and take the view that you are a ferenji, i.e. an “expert” from a mystical world where everything is perfect, and will just know what to do and will get on and do it. Meanwhile most of my Ethiopian colleagues seem quite happy for the ferenji to tell them what should be done and to accept this without question. I haven’t met many Ethiopians who have the confidence to question, digest and debate while believing that some of their own ideas and experiences are valid and better. There seems to be a big muddle amongst my colleagues about what our roles are. On the one hand we are all equal but they will tend to defer to any thoughts I might have. This is tricky to deal with. My central role is to help build my colleagues confidence and self-belief so they run the show, not me. However, some of my knowledge and ideas are better than theirs, but I don’t want to fall into the role of “wise” foreigner telling “ignorant” locals what to do.

Meleshew, one of my colleagues, took Gill and I to visit the Gondar Town Woreda office. A Woreda is a bit like a Local Education Authority at home. We thought the plan was to meet the Woreda officials and the supervisors of the ten school clusters in Gondar Town Woreda in a getting-to-know-you social visit. What actually happened was that they all wanted Gill and I to discuss the action plan for this year! Fortunately a productive meeting ensued, with each supervisor selecting a “key teacher” for maths and science from each 2^nd cycle school to attend a meeting next week at the college, where we can work with them on a detailed needs analysis. After the Woreda office we visited two primary schools and met the Directors (Headteachers). Visiting a school here is like being slapped in the face by Ethiopia’s problems: drab, dirty, run-down, chronically under-resourced with class sizes of over 70. The cheerfulness of the kids seems unjustified given their surroundings.

Another school visit in the afternoon didn’t happen so Gill and I spent some time brainstorming and sometimes arguing about what the hell we are supposed to do. In the end, I think we have arrived at some ideas on how to approach the key people to explore what our roles should be. This placement will raise some interesting challenges for us personally. In Awassa we had identical roles, shared an office, etc which had its good points but is also not good when you also live together (during our June UK visit, the wife of a good friend of mine exploded with “how BORING!” when I explained that we worked together!). One of the attractions of these Gondar placements was that our roles would be separate with a small overlap. I am supposed to co-ordinate/lead/support/advise (depending on which piece of paper or person I consult) the School Cluster Unit, while Gill is supposed to develop Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for college teacher educators and extend the GEM project (Gondar English-teaching Methodology), which was started by two VSOs last year, into Maths. In reality our roles overlap a lot. This is where ground rules become important. To stop us sliding towards mutual boredom, relationship self-destruction and becoming social outcasts there will be no “shop talk” at home. At least we have separate offices!

As if working here isn’t frustrating enough there’s the thorny issue of computers. Not surprisingly, there aren’t too many up to date PCs here. Luckily I have an up to date PC which was installed, brand new, in June. It’s a Pentium 4 running Windows XP Professional. Very nice. The problem is the antivirus software (Norton) is TWO YEARS out of date. The PC is a standalone so there’s no chance of updates over the internet. It’s also infected by viruses which so far have prevented me from printing and do other annoying things e.g. opening the Command Prompt window causes the machine to shutdown. Not so long ago I had a certain admiration for the ingenuity of virus writers. Now I hate people who write viruses. The damage they cause to people in countries with limited resources is despicable. I’m getting a free up-to-date antivirus from the Dutch VSO IT vol here this week. An original version of Norton antivirus costs over 1000 birr, but you can buy a “cracked” version (an illegal copy) for 100 birr. As for virus writers – absolute scumbags.