Xmas kitchen

Xmas night with our tuna tin and tomato puree tin candle holders

Merry Xmas! If it were not for the BBC World Service I would probably forget its Xmas Day. Actually the World Service only occasionally mentions Xmas, given its global audience, which is good. When I woke up this morning I felt instantly a bit lonely and down. It’s not that I particularly care about Xmas as such (and it is genuinely refreshing to be away from all the revolting Xmas commercialism), it’s just that work-as-usual doesn’t change the background feeling that there is something special about today that resonates from childhood. At least the sunshine and the heat (this must have been the hottest afternoon yet in Gondar) go some way to neutralizing Xmas feelings, as does the ignorance of many of my colleagues that today is Xmas in much of the World. Ethiopian Xmas is on our 7^th Jan and is supposed to be quite a spectacle, but as it’s a Sunday there’s no holiday associated with it. At least we marked Xmas Eve by going for drinks at Olaf’s house (a Dutch VSO IT volunteer) last night. Us four VSOs were outnumbered by a new contingent of German trainee doctors doing internships at Gondar University Medical Faculty. We were also joined by an Ethiopian who works as an official tourist guide. He told us that the tourist trade here has plummeted recently because foreign tourists have been scared off by the involvement of Ethiopia in Somalia. Every day we’ve heard on the World Service about Ethiopian troops fighting the Union of Islamic Courts inside Somalia, and it seems the situation will only get worse. There’s a long history of tension and war between the two countries, and there is a large Somali population in the east of Ethiopia. Given Ethiopia’s long tradition of Christians and Muslims living together without any problems (surely unique in the world?) there is understandable concern here about the effect of Somalia becoming a radical Islamic state.

As for work today, the theme was the common one of “frustration”. I tried to see my line manager, only to discover that he was missing as usual, and the IT support guy about getting the Cluster Unit printer working again, only to discover that he couldn’t fix the problem. Gill and I started to plan some training for maths and science teachers. Many of the science teachers I’ve met have identified practical work as a particular difficulty. Hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll work with Mulugeta to develop basic science kit which can be easily made from local resources. The other physics teacher who is also teaching Electromagnetism & Electronics came to see me to make sure I will finish teaching “chapter 2” by Sunday, when the students will have a mid-term exam, i.e. in one lesson I am supposed to teach a half-terms worth of physics. I want to meet with him regularly to share ideas and develop the module, but he wouldn’t commit himself to fixing a time. The system for meeting here is described as “informal” i.e. staff wander around trying to find each other if they want to meet. The sheer inefficiency of many of the working practices just leaves me wanting to scream with frustration at times.

By the end of the day I could identify some small successes, but it’s so hard and time consuming getting even simple things done. For our Xmas dinner we went to a local hotel for pizza, only to be told there was “no pizza left”. Fish Cutlet was the only alternative, which turned out to be wafer thin fish covered in copious amounts of breadcrumbs. At home I made custard to go with a cake we bought in Addis and we opened a bottle of Ferenji red wine. The evening was finished with one of Ian’s DVDs supplied during our UK visit, an animation called “Valiant”. Ian – we love you but you have the weirdest taste in movies.