It’s apathy day again! After the successes of yesterday, with Tibebu and I fleshing out a decent training plan for Monday, my motivation and drive have fizzled out. My digestive system has mysteriously started to behave itself but I still feel drained and tired. I can’t tell if the tiredness is due to a bug, understimulation at work or the combination of both, but I do feel forcibly reminded yet again of how much time and effort we seem to expend trying to make progress with anything. One of Gill’s Open University books is about the importance of self-awareness and reflection for an educator, and there’s a quote about how you cannot really change other people, you can only change yourself and act as an example which inspires others to want to change. I know the truth of that statement but I struggle to be good at applying it.

While having a coffee during a break this morning, I was sitting under a tree gazing up at the flock of sparrows, finches and weaver birds busily eating the flower buds and chirping away. Sitting bird watching under the sun took me back to rushed morning breaks at Rickmansworth School, in the Biology prep room drinking coffee with my colleagues while we tried to find space to sit in amongst the books and equipment. The frantic 15 mins of coffee making, conversation, processing of what had happened in the previous lesson while mentally gearing up for the next lesson, all with the noise of hundreds of kids outside, seems a million miles away and a long time in the past.

Gill and I have managed to come up with a simple diagram that shows the existing relationships between the Cluster Unit, the college and schools, while also allowing us to show clearly how these relationships could develop in the future. We have a plan to meet with the Dean and the Vice Deans to discuss the “vision” of the future role of the college in providing in-service training alongside pre-service training. How the college could develop in the future seems fairly clear to us, but it’s no use if we have a clear vision and the college doesn’t, or if it disagrees with ours.

The day ended with a slight improvement in mood. While in town after work we bumped into Gemma and blethered over juice. Her upbeat and positive mood contrasted nicely with my grumpy apathetic one.

My digestive system has been malfunctioning for the last two weeks: intermittent diarrhea. Time for another stool test, probably to be followed by a course of antibiotics.

This training for science teachers I’ve been battling to develop for the last few weeks just might actually happen. One of the college science teachers I’ve been trying to work with finally came up with the goods today. After he missed several meetings in a row he arrived for a meeting, on time, this morning with a plan he had produced. If all goes well, I think we have a good training day on our hands.

After a slow week we now have two new VSOs for moral support in the college. Norma has been busy trying to get her house sorted out and Jordan, a 21 year old from Canada, has started his 3 month IT support placement. On Friday night we all went out for beers, with Gemma, Steve, Joseph (German doctor) and Matt and Avi, two gap year Brits teaching English for two months at Azezo High School. I’m very impressed by Avi and Matt. At 19 years old and from rural Hertfordshire they have a confidence and social ease I totally lacked at that age.

On Saturday I had a great afternoon and evening chewing Chat with Joseph, Avi, Matt, Jordan and three Ethiopians, Milliom, Tadesse and Bogard. My second Chat session was better than the first: chewing a bag of green leaves seems to get easier with practice. The conversation flowed from shop talk to movies to politics and finally on to religion and the concept of forgiveness. Very stimulating and thought provoking, but then this is a place to think about meaningful things without the clutter of everyday UK life to distract you.

Sunday was rest and escape day: a whole day at home without leaving our compound. I spent the day reading and browsing the internet for useful info on science education and science & society issues. The evening saw indulgence in three episodes of The West Wing on DVD. After Gill made a remark about probably missing our frying pan when we eventually return home, I think we need a break soon!

Ever since we arrived in Gondar I haven’t been able to read my own blog (or anyone else’s). I can upload new entries but I cannot look back at what I have written in the past. I’m looking forward to one day reading through my blog to see if there are any patterns, because I think my (and Gill’s) experiences and feelings have become generally more cynical and critical in the last few months. If so, then I’m being honest, although I should spend more time describing the good things and positive experiences of which there are many. I can be fiercely critical and angry about many things here, but they are mostly to do with work. Am I claiming that the way we work at home in the UK is better than here? Yes, even if that sounds patronising. That doesn’t mean our society is superior to Ethiopia: there are many aspects to social culture where Ethiopia is more advanced than us.

Just as I was beginning to give up hope on developing Science training collaboratively with anyone, the Biology teacher I had started working with weeks ago actually turned up for a meeting. The fact he was more than half an hour late is a triviality. I felt pessimistic that we would get anywhere useful, but he had clear thoughts on how the training should take place and was keen to do some initial planning. Maybe I’ll get some joint training going after all.

It’s getting awfully hot in the afternoons (have I mentioned that before?!). There’s more cloud than usual and, as well as being hotter, the humidity seems higher. This is the “hot” spell until the short rains start in April.

I submitted my final grades for my students to the college this morning. The grades of course are a joke (almost all of the students got a ‘C’) and I do feel sorry for the one student (out of 162) who failed: many more should have joined her if any reasonable standards had been applied. The good part is that I no longer have to prostitute myself to a crap system, and I can try and push some recommendations for change towards whoever in the college might be open to suggestions for improvement.

Both Gill and I are very tired at the moment. We’ve both been speculating if we are ill with something, or maybe we need a break. The last decent break we had was when we went trekking in Bale Mountains back in September. In between there was the three day VSO conference, but we have had no holiday days off for over five months and it’s difficult to see us getting any time off in the next month or two. It’s not that we are constantly working at 100% like I used to at school in the UK, it’s that daily life can be so draining precisely because it’s so difficult getting anything done. I had to visit the Post Office in town this afternoon, and I unashamedly used the opportunity to sit in a café with a juice and book. I do feel a bit wrung dry. Like I have been giving, and dealing with, an awful lot without putting anything back in.

Another sweaty day. The heat is building up in the afternoons and I seem to be doing more running around the college trying to find people. I’ve had to accept that to get anything done requires persistence and lots of chasing people to get them to do things. It’s not that people don’t want anything to happen, it’s just that nobody seems to be too affected if things don’t happen. I returned the end-of-semester exam marks to my students this morning, which was a lot less traumatic than when I went through the mid-semester exam with them. This time I marked their papers in such a way as to almost eliminate the possibility of cheating when I returned the papers. I also managed to sit and have a bit of a post mortem with my colleagues, Meleshew and Mulugeta, about how we all prepared for the Maths training done on Friday and Saturday. A lot of the tension has gone and I think, although I’m far from convinced, that they are now more onboard with our training model and how we are using the training room.

Norma, the new ELIP VSO vol, is having a hard time with delays to her being able to move into her house. I have a lot of sympathy. Living in hotels for over two weeks certainly pushed my tolerance when I arrived here.

Despite the hassle and stress of the last week at work, I have also enjoyed the buzz. I feel a confidence at work and socially, which contrasts to how I felt often when I started in teaching.

Our training room ready to be set up

My time teaching physics to three classes in the college is just about over…fortunately. The teaching has been a good experience for me and has certainly given me more of an insight into the quality of training given to trainee teachers. Yesterday I met with the other physics teacher to go through how final grades for this semester are awarded. I expected a norm-referenced system (e.g. the top 10% get ‘A’, the next 10% get ‘B’, etc) but it was worse than I expected. First of all the grade boundaries are set so that the vast majority of the students get ‘C’. Secondly, each teacher makes up their own grade boundaries! i.e. no consistency across subjects or departments. As a result, out of the 160 students I taught, only ONE received an ‘F’ (fail). This despite many of the students being unable to talk in English (they are all going to have to teach in English), and many of them lacking basic skills and abilities in physics. I tried discussing the merits of a criterion-referenced system (students who meet the pre-defined standards for an ‘A’ grade receive an ‘A’ grade, regardless of how many, or how few, there are) but he gave me that standard Ethiopian look of accepted-hopelessness. “This is our system”, “we cannot change it”, etc. So, I have now awarded grades, feeling that I have completely prostituted myself in the process, and have to look at it as acquiring some necessary inside experience as part of trying to improve the training experience for the future. My aim now is to write some advice and recommendations, backed up by evidence, which I can give to the college for discussion. Perhaps college policies will not change, but maybe some individuals might think about how they work.

Today, Sunday, has been fun. We had breakfast with Norma, a new VSO vol who will work in our college in the English Language Improvement Programme (ELIP), at her hotel. She arrived in Gondar on Friday and is waiting to get into her house. She’s fascinating. She has done VSO twice before and, at age 73, was bored sitting around at home in Canada and decided to do VSO again. Just goes to show what you can still do with the right attitude regardless of age!

After breakfast I visited Gemma, with her partner Steve, as she was setting up an optometry clinic. Gemma is a volunteer with Orbis, an eye healthcare charity that does cataract ops, etc in developing countries, and she has been tasked with setting up a degree course in Optometry and with getting this new clinic up and running. Playing with all the new optometry kit was fun and I’ve learned a lot more about eyes!

At last, training has started! Gill has spent the last two days delivering training to 2nd cycle maths teachers. Doing the training seemed to be the fun part, getting set up for it was unnecessarily stressful. The lack of systems and procedures in the college coupled with the lack of experience of our colleagues at preparing and giving training meant we learned a hell of a lot the hard way. Sometimes it’s only when things get tough do working relationships get tested properly, and the cracks really started to show. After explaining several times how we were going to approach 2^nd cycle training, and writing a document for my colleagues to read and comment on, and my colleagues saying they liked our idea, etc, when reality hit home and we actually did what we said we would do (empty the never-used Pedagogical Resource Centre and turn it into a training room) one of my colleagues was clearly very unhappy. I could sense what was going to happen and when he blew up at me I was actually quite pleased. For once we had an honest conversation and he said what he thought instead of what he thought I wanted to hear. Unfortunately we didn’t get time to come back to it and talk more but maybe we can make progress in communicating more effectively now. Unfortunately this same colleague, after helping to get set up during the afternoon, refused to help anymore saying he was “tired”. I was feeling stressed and fed up at the lack of organization in the college and struggled to stay calm. If I’d had the power I would have fired him on the spot. Fortunately I don’t. So, I think we’ve all learned a lot: my colleagues, about organizing training, and me, about how to understand my colleagues a bit better. I’ve also started to notice that letting some of the frustration and anger leak out has a generally positive effect. Even more than at home, anger isn’t expressed here, so when I do get a bit angry everyone pays attention and tries to cooperate. The downside is I’m not meant to be getting things done by getting stroppy. I’m meant to be getting things done by helping to build the skills of my colleagues so they get them done. But, if I don’t get angry, nobody does anything.

Addis Ababa


A new Science Kit...


...and an old one.

I think I need some kind of holiday or mental break. I’m finding it difficult to deal with the frustration and anger, both of which well up and threaten to burst out several times a day in the face of the many inefficiencies, obstacles, difficulties and sheer amount of passiveness. There are many wonderful things about Ethiopia and Ethiopian people, but trying to work here is so painfully difficult and slow. I’ve been trying to understand why I’m having particular difficulty at the moment keeping my temper. I think it’s partly a response to the serene passivity of many of my colleagues when I feel like I’m doing all the caring on their behalf, and also a voice in my head that’s telling me my colleagues are expecting me to be producing large quantities of “results” and lots of “development”. I feel like I am responsible for making things better when actually the responsibility lies with them, but I feel helpless to help my colleagues take this responsibility when many of them just don’t seem to want to.

I visited a school today to look at one of their new Science Kits. These are wooden boxes containing 138 different items which, in different combinations, can be used to do dozens of different science demonstrations to school pupils. The key idea is that as much of the Kit as possible can be made from locally available resources. Unfortunately, many of the Kits are in a mess, are not looked after, are missing items or some items are broken and, apparently, cannot be replaced. There seems to be little discipline here when it comes to maintaining and looking after equipment, perhaps from lack of experience of using practical kit, and many science teachers don’t try and use the kits anyway. This is going to be a huge issue as I design training for science teachers: the training should use existing resources as much as possible. A large chunk of the afternoon was spent on the phone speaking to various people in the Ministry of Education in Addis Ababa to try and see if replacement items for the Kits can be supplied. I think I might have made progress.

We’ve found a decent café near the college, where we can at last get a half decent coffee. The café is also a good place for us to compare notes and discuss our overlapping work issues. On the way to the café this morning we walked past a familiar and thoroughly depressing aspect of life here. Lying by the side of the road, partially covered with a filthy blanket, was an old man begging and chanting prayers while waving his hands, which were missing all of the fingers. After a while it’s easy to stop “seeing” the many many destitute, homeless and desperate people begging along the roadsides. If I stop to think about them I feel overwhelmed by the total poverty and complete lack of hope. On the one hand I know what we are trying to give is supposed to help the country help itself in the long term, but that doesn’t seem to mean much when confronted by a starving, near-naked, crippled and homeless person lying in the road.

It’s amazing how rejuvenating a trip to Addis Ababa can be. Addis is far from being the nicest city in the world but it does make a refreshing change from Gondar. Refreshing, that is, apart from the incredible level of air pollution. The traffic is heavy and most of the buses and line taxis pour out thick black clouds of fumes which hang in the air leaving you feeling dirty and gassed during even a short walk. I flew to Addis on Monday to attend a volunteer committee meeting on Wednesday and meet the new intake of vols on Tuesday. I have to say that I loved it. I arrived in Ethiopia one year ago and meeting the new vols (28 of them) really brought home to me how far we have come mentally and emotionally, and how much we have experienced and learned. Gill joined me on Tuesday to do some work at the Ministry of Education and then we both took part in a workshop, on Thursday and Friday, for volunteers working in the school cluster programme. The two days of discussions and experience sharing were very stimulating and inspiring. It only occurred to me afterwards that the workshop provided something you can’t get at your placement: professional dialogue and debate with people with similar background and experience. What I miss is that staffroom chat with exchange of ideas and experiences, without which being a VSO vol can be a lonely experience. It’s hard to be the only VSO vol doing a particular placement when you don’t have people around you to bounce ideas around with.

After the Tuesday meeting with the new volunteers, I had a meeting with two Ethiopians who administer the education programme funded by USAID (an American government aid programme) at the Ministry of Education. Over the last few weeks Gill and I have done a lot of brainstorming and exploration of ideas around how to take our support of 2^nd cycle schools forward and also help to improve the quality of training delivered in the college itself to trainee teachers. There’s a clear need to beef up the quality of training provided by the college, which has been shockingly apparent to me when I have done some teaching (e.g. final year physics students who are supposed to be learning AC circuit theory but who cannot draw a circuit diagram!!!), but the college don’t seem to see the need. After several weeks of starting to feel like a lone voice in the wilderness, to hear the USAID people independently confirm everything we have discussed felt like a much needed vindication. The two USAID Ethiopians were very enthusiastic and had sensible ideas, I think, on what needs to be done. Hopefully having made useful contacts in the Ministry will help us to persuade the college to think about the training it delivers to teachers.

A trip to Addis is also a good opportunity to buy things you can’t get elsewhere. Top of the list is brown flour. It isn’t organic stoneground wholemeal, but it does have some fibre in it and enables me to make pancakes and soda bread. The 8kgs I bought should just about keep us going until our next scheduled Addis visit in April. Addis is also a good place to spend a lot of birr in a decent restaurant: 120 birr on a bottle of decent cold white wine. 120 birr!! That’s more than we spend on food for one week in Gondar!

Apart from the professional stimulation, the social stimulation is also good. Catching up with other vols, especially the survivors from the Feb 06 intake (all but one still here!), is fun, stimulating and generally nourishing. It’s reassuring when you discover that everyone has similar difficulties and frustrations. In your placement it’s very easy to lose touch with the wider development picture outside of your own small institution. I feel a bit more “plugged in” to the big picture now.

After the cynicism and pessimism of yesterday a refreshing change this morning. We went for a walk in the hills around Gondar with some other Ferenji volunteers. A group of ten, consisting of German trainee doctors, a physiotherapist, an ophthalmologist, a TEFL teacher and an Ethiopian friend of one of the vols took a line taxi (a clapped out minibus carrying more people than it was designed to) to a spot just outside the town. We spent the morning walking through a very dry landscape, which felt like it could have been in the middle of nowhere. The many people we came across were fascinated, and the lack of hassle was striking. We gained two other Ethiopians who just walked with us out of sheer curiosity, and they both turned out to be students in one of the schools I help to support. It’s fascinating to see how rural people live their lives (and a hard life it is too) and to get a better feel for what most of Ethiopia is like. Given that Ethiopia has the highest proportion of rural to urban dwellers in the world (something like 9:1) it’s good to see what most people here have to deal with.

One year!!!!!! One year ago today we arrived in Ethiopia. On one level I can’t quite believe that we have made it this far. The VSO volunteer rollercoaster has well and truly been memorable, in some ways worse, and in other ways better than I imagined. We have both been reflecting a lot on what we have been through and how we felt one year ago. I have vivid memories of waiting at Heathrow and feeling like I was about to jump into the deep end of a pool and having nagging doubts if I could swim. Well, swim we have although with an awful lot of splashing at times. We went out for dinner tonight with Lucy, the other vol here in Gondar who was in our intake. We wanted to celebrate making it to one year, although we seemed to spend most of the time sharing our frustrations and cynicism about how much of a difference we are actually making. One disadvantage of completing one year is that the initial naïve optimism we started with has taken a bit of a battering. Feeling cynical is seductive but increasingly hard to avoid. Our primary role here is supposed to be individual and institutional capacity building, but at times it seems to all of us that there isn’t really much capacity to build. There are many amazing and remarkable people, but there’s a deep deep resistance to change, even though everybody says they want to. It’s hard to stay positive and believe that we can make some kind of difference. So, a significant day for the three of us although tarnished by pessimism and frustration.