The absence of one of my colleagues for the last two days was explained when she slowly shuffled into the Cluster Unit this morning: headaches and dizziness. A doctor has diagnosed anaemia and and prescribed lots of meat, milk and soft drinks (soft drinks for anaemia?). Any mysterious symptoms here must be a cause of worry when there isn’t much of a healthcare system to speak of. Ethiopians tend to have a hefty dose of stoical fatalism about them and I can see why.

I spent part of yesterday afternoon chatting with Norma, a Canadian VSO volunteer here in the college who is supposed to be setting up an ELIC (English Language Improvement Centre) as part of the ELIP (English Language Improvement Programme). Since she arrived in February she has achieved almost nothing. The reason is simply lack of drive, leadership and vision from the college. Much to Norma’s frustration she spends an awful lot of time doing nothing while waiting for people to do important things necessary for getting an ELIC established. We both blethered for a bit about a curious aspect of professional Ethiopian behaviour. People here (generalising of course) simply will not assess themselves as anything less than “good” on a self-assessment task. Norma’s needs-assessment questionnaires, which she sent out to the staff ages ago, were returned with self-assessed English proficiencies of “good” or better. Yet, it is so obvious to us that that isn’t true. During conversation, Ethiopian colleagues will say they want to improve their English, but that sentiment is simply never translated into action. One of the many curious policies (tragedies?) implemented by government is that Grade 7 and above in schools, and all instruction at college level, must be in English. The English of most instructors, and cetainly most students, simply isn’t up to it, but this difficulty, which most people are aware of, doesn’t result in a demand for support with language skills. The passivity is striking, but I have to remember that government regimes in the recent past have hardly encouraged actively questionning or pushing for change. Unfortunately knowing this doesn’t help with the frustration. Both of my colleagues want to improve their English and, more importantly, see themselves as having plenty of room for improvement. Because they do not have degrees, the college instructors look down on them. As a resullt, my colleagues don’t have the inflated view of their own importance that many of the instructors have.

Today I’ve helped Meleshew set herself up with an email address. She had the same excited reaction I remember having when I got my first email address.