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.