After feeling a bit seriously stretched thin for the last few weeks (I’m sure there’s a quote from The Lord of the Rings somewhere about feeling “like butter that’s been spread over too many slices of bread”) today is a day off, a holiday. It’s Ethiopian Patriots Day, which is an official holiday to celebrate the Ethiopian victory over the Italians at the Battle of Adwa, in the 19^th century. I couldn’t care less about the reason because it’s been really good to slob about all day at home instead of being at college dealing with a 101 Frustrations. Despite all the good work (hah!) I’m trying to do at college I do increasingly feel the need to be doing something that’s mind stretching. Gill has started an Open University course on maths and education, and I’d love to be doing something about science education. All being well, Amazon are going to deliver to me here some books about science to get my teeth into during the evenings when I need to switch off from college.

Another good reason for enjoying today off is that I’m delivering training all day tomorrow to 2^nd cycle science teachers. At last, after over three months, I’ll be doing something which is hopefully useful to teachers. After delivering a second day of training on Monday, I’ll be busy on a program of visits to every 2^nd cycle school in Gondar (all 32 of them) to observe lessons and monitor the effect of the training. I can’t wait to get into schools on a regular basis and work directly with teachers. There’s so much potential for helping teachers to improve their practice. It will be good to be working outside the college and be exposed to a range of different attitudes and needs.

A third good reason for enjoying day off: my colleague, Mulugeta, who was supposed to be helping me yesterday afternoon to get some resources together for the training day, buggered off during the afternoon and never came back. I was furious, especially as he did a similar thing while we were getting ready for Gill to deliver maths training two weeks ago. I need to try and understand him better, because I don’t think it’s as simple as him being lazy. He says all the right things, but I think he is struggling to deal with our different way of working, and our belief that by working with teachers we can change how they do things. Like many people here, he seems to think that we cannot and should not try and involve ourselves in how other people work and try and change anything. Perhaps this is a simple reflection of the widespread philosophy here of stoically accepting adversity and low quality instead of deciding not to accept and then trying to make things better. It’s this attitude that makes working here so difficult. We Ferenji are supposed to deliver radical change and make Ethiopia a better country, but few people seem to understand the change of mindset this requires.