Identifying the key people in your placement institution is vitally important to actually achieving anything. These key people are not necessarily the obvious ones, such as your boss or your immediate colleagues. Sometimes a key person could be an admin worker who guards the photocopier or the Dean’s secretary. At Gondar College the most important key person so far has turned out to be the telephone operator. Her name is Birtukan, which is the Amharic word for “orange”. I tried to stifle a laugh when I was introduced to her (although I failed) but naming your children after food doesn’t seem to be that unusual. In Awassa I met a man called Atkilt, which is the Amharic word for “vegetable”. I don’t think it would be a good strategy in English – I think a child named “turnip” or “banana” might have problems in life. Anyway, Birtukan spends her day sitting in a tiny room, basically a cupboard with a window, with “the” phone. If anyone, apart from the Dean and Vice Deans who have their own phones, wants to make a call, they go to Birtukan, she dials the number and gives you the handset. All of the staff have mobile phones so the “system” for getting hold of anyone is to ask Birtukan to phone them on their mobile. Birtukan is very nice and happy to help, and it is definitely worthwhile maintaining a good relationship with her. The added bonus when seeing “the orange”, as Gill and I describe her, is that I get to marvel at the electrical wiring in the phone room. It’s the one room I really really want to photograph. There’s dozens of wires literally dangling out of a hole in the wall, some of which are attached to a voltage surge protector, some to a phone socket, some to a light fitting in the ceiling where the bulb has been removed and some just seem to have no purpose. What really intrigues me are the ones connected to two car batteries on the floor. When we get blackouts, which happen a few times every day, the phone also stops working. When Birtukan isn’t dialing phone numbers she sits at the desk and does her knitting. It’s a tough life being an orange.

The high point of today has been teaching physics this morning. The low point has been waiting in frustration to find out who in the Science Dept I’m supposed to work with to develop Science training for teachers. Three days have now passed with no result and I’m fighting the urge to just plan it all myself, which I’d be very happy to do, which goes against the whole idea of sustainability. If I plan with a counterpart then together we can develop training which might be more appropriate for the teachers than what I would produce myself, and more importantly helps to set up a training model which the college instructors themselves have ownership of and might be inclined to develop further and use in the future after I’m gone.