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.