To go home or to not go home, this has been the issue for us over the last week. We both need a break and want to visit the UK. We have to go to Addis Ababa in mid-May for a VSO workshop so had thought we would go home from there. However, after lots of discussion and thought we’ve decided that it’s better for our colleagues and the work we are trying to do to stay until the end of the academic year at the end of June. On one level waiting feels right, but I’m also a bit daunted at another two months.

The week started badly with a rapid plunge in spirit and energy, improved on Friday morning and then threatened to plunge again. I sat with my two Ethiopian colleagues and had a pretty honest conversation with them about what has worked well this year and what hasn’t. There have been many successes and I was pleased that we could also identify several things that could have been better. What I need to do is work towards supporting them to take more initiative instead of waiting for me to issue instructions all the time.

Two things are exhausting me at the moment: the heat and the emotional roller coaster. The trouble with being on the roller coaster is that when I descend into the lows I expect them to last forever. I came back from Addis on a bit of a high, full of ideas and inspired to push forward with teachers and the college. The high rapidly turned into a low on Monday. The apathy and passivity in college can be very infectious, and it can be so difficult getting anything done that the college can feel like an energy vacuum. Tuesday wasn’t much better and left me wanting to pack it all in and go home. Today, Wednesday, started off the same way until my colleague Meleshew arrived from Addis and we were able to do some planning for the next few days together. Once I had something to get on with my energy level and motivation started to pick up. Since the conference, and partly because of what I learned about effective professional development while preparing for my session on training, I’ve had some ideas about how to work with the Gondar teachers more effectively. I think we should work intensively with teachers in one cluster of schools until they are able to independently implement sustainable improvements, and then move on to another cluster while continuing to provide support to the first. This way we don’t spread our effort, and therefore effect, too thinly. However, my colleagues are not going to like it. Disagreement I can handle, in fact I can enjoy it as it leads to a dialogue about the best way forward. Unfortunately, the tendency here is to simply agree, or even to say what you think the other person wants to hear, instead of voicing your concerns. I know Meleshew is not quite happy about how I am using what was the Pedagogical Resource Centre as a training room, but she will not say anything to me about it. However, one of the conference sessions called “From Vision to Plan” was very useful and has given me some specific ideas on how to plan collaboratively with my colleagues for next year. We really need to explore our roles again and I need to be better at helping Meleshew to identify what she can get on with without waiting for me to assign tasks to her.

A group of shoe-shining boys

I seem to go to Addis Ababa so often that the journey is starting to feel like a commute. I’m not complaining as any opportunity to get away from your placement is valuable. Thursday and Friday were a VSO Cluster Conference. All VSO vols involved with the programme, their Ethiopian counterparts and other people in placements related to Clustering were involved, and the two days were a good experience for all concerned.

Different vols had volunteered to lead a session and, because Gill didn’t go, I ended up leading a 90 min session on “Best Practice in Training” and a session on the second day about “Future Plans”. Preparing for my Training session turned out to be a very valuable and stimulating experience, and made me realize that I enjoy thinking and reading about educational theory. I also enjoyed delivering my session.

The really enjoyable part though was feeling part of something that’s bigger than my own small world at Gondar College. It’s so easy to stop feeling connected to the big picture. It’s also very easy to feel isolated and I know I’m especially prone to feeling self critical about how much I’m achieving. Being able to engage in professional dialogue with peers and discover you are not alone in your worries gave me a real emotional lift. I miss that daily contact with colleagues, and the stimulation of sharing ideas and criticisms. I have an important role here in trying to work with my Ethiopian colleagues to help them develop their skills, but it can be a lonely experience.

As usual, any trip to Addis demands a trip to Zebra Grill for bean burrito and an evening at the Yonas Hotel, the usual VSO haunt, to blether over beer and fish kebab!

Back in Gondar, Gill and I watched the London Marathon on the big screen at the Red Fox Hotel, about 40 min walk away. Last year we saw some of the marathon while were in Yirga Alem visiting Fasil’s (our landlord) family for Easter. I still feel a little bit amazed we have lasted for over one year at times. Seeing London in the sunshine while listening to the Brendan Foster on the BBC coverage made us both feel a bit homesick. I have no intention to live or work in London again, but on TV it looked just beautiful. There were many Ethiopians also watching I norder to see how well Haile Gebreselassie did. How disappointing to see him drop out. I know he’s popular in the UK but he’s a real hero here: an Ethiopian who has made it “big” in the World.

After a quiet and introspective weekend the VSO Cluster Conference approaches. On Wednesday I go to Addis Ababa to take part in a two day conference intended to bring together all the VSO vols involved in school teacher development and their Ethiopian counterparts. When we discussed the conference idea during the last VSO meeting in Feb, I agreed to facilitate & lead two sessions, on designing effective training and on exploring our future plans. After doing some literature searching on the internet (I can’t imagine surviving here without the net!) I’ve learned a lot about effective training and teacher development and started to crystallize the ideas and experiences I’ve acquired as a teacher and as a VSO vol. All I have to do now is produce a presentation and facilitate the rest of the session.

Liddeta Alternative Basic Education School


Stones for seats


Some of the farmers who support the school

Sometimes I lose sight of the scale of the problems here and also how positive people can be in a situation that looks awful. This morning I went with Meleshew, Jan (previous VSO vol) and two people from the Link Ethiopia charity in the UK, Matt and Ashley, to visit Liddeta ABE school. Link Ethiopia is a charity set up originally at Dr Challoners School to build links between UK and Ethiopian schools, and to channel donations raised in the UK to fund improvements to schools in the Gondar area. An ABE school (Alternative Basic Education) is a simple school set up in a rural area to provide a reduced-curriculum primary education to children who otherwise cannot attend a regular school, often because the children are needed to work on the family farm when they would normally be expected to go to school. ABE schools are largely funded by their local community and have no resources or facilities. Liddeta ABE school has around sixty Grade 1 students and is lucky enough to have a roof over the “classroom”. The local people want to build a second classroom and each family has already contributed 30 birr towards the cost. Hopefully now Link Ethiopia will provide more funds to build better facilities. The kids were busy engaging with a maths lesson when we arrived and were fascinated by the sight of four ferenjis coming to see their school. There was something quite moving about seeing such a stereotypical sight of children being educated in a “developing” country and realizing that this wasn’t a picture in a book but is actually how some children have any chance of an education.

After Liddeta ABE school we paid a brief visit to Andinet 1^st cycle school and set off back to college. On the way back we called in to say hello to the Director of a 1^st cycle school that Jan has established a link with her school in Cornwall. We wanted to get back to the college and managed to persuade Meleshew to tell the director that we would stay for a quick cup of tea and then would have to leave. Meleshew’s knowing smile made sense when the spread of food in the living room reminded me of the importance of Ethiopian hospitality. Our “brief cup of tea” turned into lunch followed by a coffee ceremony. Neither the Director or her husband spoke any English, and yet accepting their hospitality and honouring them by staying and eating the food they continually pushed on us clearly delighted them. We just chilled out and accepted that we were making their day. Both of them looked so happy that we had graced their home that the total lack of conversation with them seemed completely unimportant.

The afternoon was mundane in comparison. Meleshew, Mulugeta and I spent some time trying to put together a budget request from the college for next year, even though we are nowhere near being able to plan what we need to do next year. Ah well, just ask for a lot and see what we get.

Simien Mountains World Heritage Site


Dinner time at Chenek


Chenek camp (we had walked here along the ridge on the skyline the previous day)


Gelada Baboons


Ayeho, the master chef of basic ingredients


Mahbo, the "scout"


Giant Lobelia


Dawn over our tent at Gich campsite




A mountain village


Bemused onlookers

Simien Mountains National Park will stand out for me as one of the amazing non-working experiences of my time in Ethiopia. Memorable features included the scenery, feeling fitter and stronger than expected, camping in the mountains, good company in the form of Gemma, Steve, Shira (Gemma’s sister) and Jen (Shira’s friend), being eaten by fleas, fantastic food and being in an amazing environment.

The dreaded Amoebae behaved themselves and dutifully died in the face of a drug called Tinidazole, which left my mouth with a bitter metallic taste for days afterwards. The six of us shared a minibus for the two hour journey north to the town of Debark, the gateway town for Simien Mountains. The unsurfaced rubble road contributed to the mood of heading off for an adventure. In Debark we were joined by Tadelle, a guide, and Mahbo, a “scout” who has to accompany all visitors. Completing our party were Ayeho, cook, and Mesfinant, cook’s assistant. This was to be a luxury trip where all the cooking was done for us and this turned out to be an absolute treat. During the walk to the first campsite (Sankaber) we were stunned by the views and the hundreds of Baboons which are native to the Simien Mountains. The campsites were good and had enough space to accommodate the other groups of Ferenji tourists. After more than a year here the pit latrines were just part of the charm, and our first experience of Ayeho’s cooking threatened to become the highlight of the whole trip. He used the same ingredients you can get in Gondar but managed to add something special (minestrone soup, pasta with garlic & tomato sauce, steamed spinach with onion and garlic, followed by banana fritters – all prepared from scratch in a thatched hut at the campsite using an open fire and a kerosene stove).

The second day was breathtaking (sometimes literally with altitudes of over 3500m) and ended with Gich campsite, which was for me the best: open and exposed. The unbelievably violent and sudden hailstorm just as we finished pitching our tent was mesmerizing. The heavy rain that followed led to us to spend the evening in a building which could have been a bothy in Scotland. The place filled with wood smoke, but through stinging eyes we managed to enjoy another stunning meal (coleslaw being one of the highlights!) and play cards. The night ended with us watching and clapping as the Ethiopians spontaneously broke into traditional dancing and singing round the fire.

Despite the views the part of the trek that really moved me was Sunday morning as we walked away from Gich towards the final campsite of Chenek. We walked through a grassy high altitude landscape dominated by Giant Lobelia plants. I managed to walk alone behind Tadelle, Gill and Steve, who were several hundred metres in front and the others, several hundred metres behind, and had one of those spiritual moments of pure happiness and complete connection to the landscape. The beauty of walking alone is being able to stop and really hear the small sounds, such as the breeze in the lobelia leaves and the distant cries of birds, that just get lost in the chattering and rustling that people make when walking together. I enjoyed the company of a group, and we had a good laugh in the evenings, but it was the moments of not talking and silently drinking in the landscape that were really special for me.

We spent the final morning exploring around Chenek campsite, accompanied as ever by Mahbo with his Kalashnikov. I doubt he’s ever fired his gun but despite poor English he was a great guide. This guy spends more than 330 days a year walking with groups in the Park and had the uncanny ability to spot a Walya Ibex or Menelik’s Bushbuck (two endemic species of antelope) without binoculars several hundred metres away. He could “tune in” to the landscape and animals in the way only somebody born and brought up there can do.

While we had been walking to Chenek, Ayeho had not only baked a cake using the open fire (a good cake as well) but had covered it in “icing” improvised from mayonnaise mixed with lime juice and sugar.

Ah yes, there were also the fleas and/or bedbugs that invaded our sleeping bags.

The traditional dancing and singing during the last evening by people who really know how to spontaneously enjoy themselves had to be experienced instead of described. The fact that a nearby local complained that we were “disturbing the sheep” simply added to the slightly surreal atmosphere.

After four days of camping without washing (the smells…) the minibus picked us up at Chenek and somehow managed to survive the sort of rubble-surfaced and steep road to Debark that you would only contemplate taking a landrover onto in the UK. After dropping off Tadelle and Mahbo in Debark we made it back to Gondar by Monday evening for the usual post-camping explosion of dirty kit in our house.

Sharing the trip with four other people, two of which we hadn’t even met before, added a whole layer of interest and complexity, and evening entertainment. I feel spiritually lifted and reminded of how much I love the whole mountain experience.

Amoeba: a dreaded word for a rookie Africa visitor like me. Following tonsillitis and then ongoing inexplicable back spasm at night, I was hit with diarrhea (again!) on Monday and Tuesday. As we were contemplating going trekking in Simien Mountains over Easter weekend I went to the doctor to have a stool sample tested. “Stool sample”: there’s another phrase that gave me the creeps before I came here. However a stool test is just another part of living here to the point where everyone talks about them. “Have you had a stool test?” a total stranger will ask if you mention being even slightly ill. After a few minutes of peering through a microscope the doctor said the dreaded phrase: “you have an amoeba infection”. Drinking coffee or juice from a wet glass, or eating contaminated food, or from one of dozens of handshakes which form part of everyday life is most likely the culprit. The treatment is four tablets together in the evening for three days. One of the side effects is an unpleasant strongly metallic taste in my mouth, but after two days I feel completely different. My digestive system has settled down, but more importantly I feel more positive and upbeat, and last night for the first time in over a fortnight I had no back trouble during the night. My back feels completely normal after feeling like being threaded with planks of wood. My digestive system has been misbehaving for weeks and weeks, and I now realise I’ve probably had an amoebic infection for a while.

So, Friday morning we set off to the town of Debark with Gemma & Steve, Gemma’s sister and her sister’s friend and return to Gondar on Monday. The plan is to travel in luxury (a private hire vehicle!! no sardine-can wreck of a bus for us!) to Debark, where you are allocated a guide and donkeys to carry your kit and food. We will even have our own cook! Simien Mountains National Park is one of the wonders of Ethiopia, and is the most popular place for international tourists to go to. As we have been living at over 2200m for several months the 3500m+ altitudes shouldn’t bother us too much. I feel unfit and a bit weak but three days in the mountains, good company and exercise should be a treat.

Something has really shifted for me these last few days. Maybe it’s temporary, but I’ve felt a drive and commitment today that I haven’t felt for a while. Working directly with the teachers on Friday and Saturday and feeling that I really can do something with these people, that they can get better at what they do has lifted me spiritually today. I’ve managed to deal with a long list of small jobs, spent some time talking productively with Mulugeta and Meleshew about how we support 1^st cycle schools, and also spent an hour with Hiwot evaluating the training and how we can improve it. After four months of feeling like I’m fumbling around in the darkness I’ve suddenly caught a glimmer of light and realized I may be in a tunnel that is actually going somewhere useful.