Wednesday, November 22, 2006

So here we are in Gondar, at last! This time last Wednesday we were frantically packing our stuff with the added burden of having to take the pots, dishes, water filter, etc with us. The college hired a minibus and driver to take us to Addis Ababa where we stayed on Thursday and Friday nights. Addis meant the familiar pleasure of staying at the Yonas Hotel: a second home for all VSO vols. There’s something really nice and touching about walking into a hotel lobby/bar area and all of the staff immediately greeting you by name with smiling faces. The highlights of our visit to Addis included a haircut, visiting the dentist (easily the BEST dentist I’ve ever seen), fish kebab at the Yonas, bumping into Trevor from our intake (he’s been in Assosa near the border with Sudan since February and is now based in Addis) and going to an Indian restaurant on the Bole Road (a road full of Ferenji restaurants and hotels).

Saturday brought another first for us in Ethiopia: flying to Gondar on Ethiopian Airlines. Ethiopian is regarded as the best airline in Africa and I was very impressed. Their aircraft are modern and the service is good. Our flight was via Bahir Dar (55 mins) and then a 15 min hop to Gondar, on 55 seater twin-prop plane. Gondar airport, although small, is the nicest looking airport I think I’ve been to. Gondar is on the tourist trail for foreign visitors and you can tell from the Ferenji-friendly design of the airport.

Seraye, the Dean of Gondar CTE (College of Teacher Education), picked us up and took us to the Red Fox Hotel where we stayed for two nights before moving into our house on Monday. Gondar is very old (an ancient capital of Ethiopia for a few hundred years) and hilly, and most importantly the climate is perfect. It’s sunny all the time, with the odd cloud, warm, slightly breezy and cool. At night it is actually cool enough to justify wearing a fleece when outside. The climate, “feel” of the air, colour of the sky and just general atmosphere is very much of the mountains, which we are: Awassa was on the floor of the Rift Valley at 1800m and Gondar is in the Highlands at 2300ish m. Perfect!

We started work at the college on Tuesday afternoon. My initial impression is positive and there seems to be a lot to do. More tomorrow hopefully.