[J] First of all we have to say a massive big thank you Gavin, John and Frances without whom ...well I'm not quite sure what would have happened but there could well have been tears and no bedtime at all. Luckily with their help we managed to empty the flat and pack and even get 2 hours sleep! Next another big thank you to Jo and Rab who gave us a lift to the airport when most sane people are still tucked up in bed with a hangover on a Saturday morning. We arrived at Glasgow airport to find our flight to Heathrow was cancelled, hmm not the best of news. Fortunately we were there early and transferred to a British Midland flight. This had the advantage of meaning there were massive queues so at check-in they were far too busy to question our slightly over-limit baggage.
At Heathrow we missed complete chaos on the "land" side by being already checked through. Apparently there were long queues just to get into the terminal building and the baggage carousel system packed in. This meant our flight was delayed by about an hour. Thinking of past experiences - and as Jo pointed out - it seems that I certainly am a travel jinx. However when you're going away for two years, an extra hour - or even the prospect of missing the flight isn't too worrying.
We were on a fairly small plane - an Airbus A320. We stopped in Egypt to refuel and some passengers disembarked. The flight was pretty uneventful. Highlights for me was the amazing view flying over the alps and when Neal spazzed out and tipped his tray onto the poor girl sitting on the other side of him.
[J] Immigration through Bole airport in Addis was straightforward. Collecting baggage - not so. Or in some cases not at all. I think it must have been due to the problems in Heathrow. About 30 people of the flight were still waiting round the baggage reclaim to be told simply "Baggage Lost!". We got 2 out of our 4 bags back so at least we've got enough stuff for now. About 6 of the other volunteers didn't get anything. After filling in claim forms we were met by VSO staff, bundled into jeeps and brought to the Red Cross Conference Centre. We went to bed at 4:30am local time, we were so knackered even the singing of the 5am morning prayers through what sounded like a tannoy system acted like a lullaby as we fell straight asleep.
We were up at 9:30 and 14 bleary-eyed volunteers grabbed coffee some funny tasting toast and started our in-country training (ICT). The Red Cross centre is much better than we were expecting. We've got a twin room with en suite bathroom. Although we couldn't actually get any water out of the shower this morning. Yes, it is a normal flush toilet with loo roll so pretty luxurious I reckon! We're here till the 5th then we're being transferred to the Yonnas hotel which is more in the centre of Addis. We were supposed to be in the Yonnas from the start but the African Union Conference is being held just now and the government booked every hotel in the capital.
We had an easy morning got given lots of forms to fill in and told some basic info. Had lunch and the rest of the day free. Lunch was good. We got to try injera which is the local staple. It's kind of like a tortilla but thicker, softer and with bubbles in (like a crumpet). Some people didn't like them they have a kind of soda bread taste but they go really well with the spicy veg that was also served. We also had sprite/coke or Neal had green fanta and some fresh pineapple.
The rest of the day was spent relaxing and trying to write stuff to upload to the website when we can get internet access. Dinner consisted of injera again and - like lunch - bowls of various things to eat with it (including chips). I've a feeling we're going to be seeing a lot of injera i.e. every meal. The idea is that the injera is used like a plate so you put the other food on top of it. then you tear bits off and use them to scoop up and eat it. Early night tonight to try and catch up on some sleep - ICT starts at 8:15am :-(
[J] Yesterday we were had our first Amharic lesson to arm us with enough vocabulary to be allowed out of the compound (i.e. the Red Cross training centre)....Freedom at last. We were put into groups of three and each group given various items to find out the price for and we had to buy some tissues, a cigarette and a stick of chewing gum. First of all we had to get a line taxi (like minibuses that follow a route) to "Confusion Junction". Unfortunately for my group we realised when we got to the main road we hadn't noted which direction this was. In our confused looking state we were immediately surrounded by some kids eager to help us. Then several adults all desperate to ascertain where it was we were trying to get to. They stopped several line taxis but unfortunately no-one understood where we wanted to go. Eventually one of the other groups (containing Neal) shouted to us from a taxi on the other side of the road. We then had to disengage ourselves from our crowd of followers, cross the road and get in the taxi going the right way!
So we squeezed into to the last 2 seats in the minibus (yes there were three of us) paid our 55 cents (about 5p) and off we went. We thought the bus was full but we kept stopping to let passengers in. Until we got off, there were 12 passengers and the 3 staff in a 10-seater minibus.
The scavenger hunt was great fun. We didn't quite have the confidence to barter for our stuff yet and from talking to the other groups we must have looked too fresh faced to be taken seriously. We don't think we got ripped off though and most groups were charged the same for their 3 items overall - around 15p - Wow that makes us seem really tight when you think of it in pounds. We've been given a generous per diem allowance of 50Birr which is less than £5 to buy meals etc with so the cost of living is not high. However we were discussing as a group how we can't keep thinking of how cheap things are compared to home coz we're not on the type of salary we get at home. When we get to our placement we get a living allowance of 900Birr a month which is about £70
We had another Amharic lesson - we get two a day for the rest of our
training. We have 2 teachers who are excellent. As amharic is written in
its own script they have devised phonetic equivalents to help us learn
the words as we don't have time to learn the alphabets (3 each with 7
families). It's quite difficult - the word for "thank you" is quite long
so we're having trouble remembering how to say it (ama-sa-ma-gahlo).
However the most confusing word has got to be "Aye" which means No!
It was Wilco's (one of the other volunteers) birthday yesterday, so
after dinner we presented him with a homemade card (Graham and Phillipa
- our adapting teaching skills course certainly has come in handy
already!) a massive doughnut, and a birthday cake fashioned out of some
rolled up injera and a candle!
Today we have learned yet more amharic including words associated with the traditional coffee ceremony. We had some really interesting lessons about Ethiopian culture, history and politics and I went off to the airport with some of the others to retrieve some of the lost baggage. Partial success I got 1 bag back - the rest might come on the next flight which is on Thursday night. Now just before you go thinking how backwards this it let me just remind you that it is a combination of British Airways and Heathrow airport that have lost our luggage and nothing to do with the Ethiopian authorities!
Finally we got the shower to work and it was great. And I also found out it's not the toast that tastes funny but the rancid butter I was putting on it!
[J] We have now moved to the Yonnas Hotel which is a bit more central and we're allowed out which is nice! We're still getting our Amharic lessons which are still hard but I think I'm making progress. We managed to sidetrack our teachers a little so we could learn how to write our names in the Fidel script which is used here. The food at the red cross centre was great but it's been really good to get out at lunch and dinner times to a few different cafes etc. Last night we had Italian food in a really expensive restaurant (the bill was £3 each). We've had some great lunches which cost less than £1 for a main course and a drink. The freshly squeezed fruit juices are amazing and just the same price as coke or water. Neal and I both had a mixed juice yesterday which was layers of mango, papaya and avocado! I was a bit scared to try the bright green avocado layer but it was delicious. One glass of that would be like a whole meal. On Wednesdays and Fridays, the Orthodox Christians (About 40% population in the whole country) "fast" which means they don't eat any meat on these two days. This is great for me coz it means there's loads of veggie stuff. Today we had "beyanet" which is the usual fasting meal between four of us. It was four huge injeras topped with rice, potatoes, beetroot, various lentil sauces and chillies. It was delicious and really filling. (Don't worry Lizzi they sell chips in most places too!).
We went back to the airport to see if our luggage had arrived on the latest flight from London. When we got to there we met a girl who'd been on the same flight as us. She had just been told that there was no record of her baggage anywhere on the BA system - she's here for 3 weeks on a geology trip and can't do anything without her equipment! We then met another lady who told us she'd been waiting 2 weeks for her bag. Things weren't looking too optimistic but guess what? All of our luggage was there. Amadou (who has had to survive in the same t-shirt since we arrived!) was so excited he ran whooping with delight across the reclaim area and practically jumped on his bag as it magically appeared onto the carousel. This caused some very strange looks from the other people in baggage reclaim!
We've met quite a few other volunteers now who are either working in Addis, leaving this weekend or just up visiting from their placement. We met Keith who has been in Awassa since September. He was great and told us all the things we should get in Addis before we go next week. We also met Jane who used to live in the house we're going to be in. So apparently it's nice but I'm not going to write anything until we're actually there and have seen it! We're now in the process of trying to get bikes coz apparently they're essential in Awassa to get around.
[N] On Friday night we went to the Karamara restaurant where they have dancers who dance in the style of regions of Ethiopia. It was pretty energetic and involved lots of head shaking and shoulder movements. There was also a local brew called Tej that came in re-used water bottles (always a good sign), it was sweet and of undefined alcoholic content. The place was pleasant enough with it's stuffed snake and bamboo cladded walls, but it did make us feel very tourist-like. [J] The dancers go round the crowd and people stand up and dance with them - well if you can call standing up and shrugging your shoulders dancing. Neal got up and had a go and was then obliged to put some money in the dancer's headband. I saw an Ethiopian popstar on tv at the hotel and fans stuff money in their jumpers. Maybe we could try it too! I though it was really nice that so many young girls seemed to enjoy a night out in the Karamara. I thought it was great that they were getting right into it and even dancing on the stage. Well it wasn't until a few days later when someone asked if we went to the dancing place that had loads of prostitutes that the penny dropped!
[N] Yesterday we started off at the BA office to claim compensation for Jenny's lost baggage. The mission was nearly accomplished, only drawback being that they will only give half the money until a photocopy of the ticket is produced. That means another trip to the Hilton. Afterwards we walked into the Piazza region of the city, naturally it was roasting hot and our 60 min walk took in a good number of injera cooker manufacturers. At our destination we make a bee-line for the third floor Mickeys Cafe, where we spent a pleasant hour eating dinner, consisting of spaghetti and macaroni, with tasty sauce. Having established that we didn't know where we were, we wandered about a bit a then jumped into a line-taxi that we thought would take us to Meskal Square. After a bit of confusion with the driver, we disembarked at Mexico Square and then took the 20 min walk to Meskal Square. On the way to Bambis supermarket we're fairly sure that we avoided two attempts at the apparently popular scam of being invited back to someones house for one reason or another and then finding a hefty bill for the privilege.
That evening we attended a get-together at one of the VSO's houses, near to the VSO office. More praise was poured on Awassa.
Today we went on a walk along a river-bed in the hills on the outskirts of Addis. The scenery was great, with a really nice smell in the air. Eucalyptus has been introduced into Ethiopia to provide fuel, following the decimation of the indigenous species. We walked as far as a small waterfall, where we found some habishas (locals) diving into the plunge-pool. After our moderately strenuous walk we retired to the razor-wired oasis of the British embassy for our Sunday dinner. It's sooo easy to find pleasure in this little piece of home.
A walk back to the Yonnas through a wide variety of residential areas, all very close together, from corrugated iron shacks to perimeter fenced houses left us a little time before tea. For this we headed to the Zebra Grill (no Zebra on the menu), where good food and merriment with the other VSO's ensued.
[N] What's been happening all week? More ICT, a visit to the shops for our essentials and a visit to the immigration office to prove that we really did exist and were indeed in the country. [J] We also managed to get the remainder of the money from BA which gave us enough to buy a world space radio. We'd been advised that a short wave radio is not really any good in Awassa.
Last night was our last in Addis, we spent most of the afternoon packing and then went back to the Zebra Grill for dinner with everyone. A few of us then went to the Havana Club. That was interesting - Now I thought the Lady St Club in Helston was small well now I been somewhere smaller! We didn't stay very long seeing as most of us had to get up ridiculously early this morning to travel to our placements.
Our Landy turned up just after 6am. We packed most of the luggage on the roof then we got in with Firew who is driving, Lisa our programme officer and Umberto and Libby who are going to Hossina. Lisa then told us we were picking up two other volunteers who were getting dropped off at Wolketi. It wasn't too bad for the girls in the front but I'm not sure how it was for the 3 boys in the back with the rest of the luggage! We stopped for lunch at Wolketi (Beyanet - coz it's a fasting day) and went to a high school where Lisa needed to do a placement review. Meanwhile we saw round the physics and biology labs where two volunteers have been working. The equipment and chemical stocks were promising - I'm exited to see what there will be at Debub University now. John - the Biochem teacher - reckoned the Uni resources would be ok.
[N] We arrived at Hossina at 4pm, so we've spent the whole day in a Land Rover and are covered head to toe in dust - not to mention the goo that's now formed up our noses! I'm quite impressed at what you can do to Land Rover without it complaining. We reached an altitude of 3100m on the road and are now xkm from Addis. The reality of Ethiopia is beginning to become apparent, the roads development program has only reached so far and the alternative dirt track is of mixed quality. Sometimes we we're bumping along happily enough at 50mph, but a few bits required more careful negotiation - especially the cattle and donkeys that required a quick toot on the horn to get them out of the way. The towns and villages are much more basic than Addis, shouldn't be surprised about this really. However, we're in pleasant hotel for the night before the short leg to Awassa tomorrow. Not sure what we are going to find for dinner.
[J] Well we've been in Awassa for a whole week now. So far it seems like a nice place. It's bigger than I expected especially after our trip here where the towns we went through were really small. We were spoiled for the first few days as Lisa and Firew were still here so we got picked up each night and taken to dinner. They went back on Tuesday so we're more independent now. We've met all the other VSO volunteers who are in Awassa. There are 8 including us. Surprisingly we're the only Brits here! Fred and Liddy have been here the longest (1 1/2 yrs) they're from the Netherlands and are retired. Fred works as a physics instructor at the teacher training college (TTC) and Liddy doesn't work for VSO but certainly keeps herself busy doing other voluntary work. They are both very fit and play tennis most days - they all cycled round the lake (about 30 km) the weekend before we arrived. The other volunteers (all much younger) said in the end Fred and Liddy went on ahead coz the others were stopping so much! Ilske is also from the Netherlands and is a computer trainer. The other 3 volunteers are from Canada. Neil works for the regional HIV/AIDS prevention office. Keith is a civil engineer - he specialises in bridges and would love to meet Neal's dad - Mike! He works for the regional roads authority and Lori, his wife, is an English instructor at the TTC. The first restaurant we went to on the night we arrived is called the Post Rendezvous and does great pizzas - yum! Cheese is something of a rarity so a pizza is a reet treat and it's much better than the pizza place in Addis - and half the price too.
We spent Sunday cleaning and rearranging our house. We decided to swap the bedroom and kitchen over. There's no plumbing of any kind in the kitchen so it didn't make a difference in that sense. One of the biggest jobs was getting rid of all the cockroaches! Luckily not big ones - but no-one had lived here for a few months so they had made quite a home for themselves. The house is quite big. There's 2 bedrooms (the 2nd one is full of extra furniture at the moment though), a big lounge, a kitchen and a small bathroom. We have electricity 6 day of the week- in order to save power each region of the city has the power turned off until 9pm. This happens all over the country and it means that most people can't do any work on the day they have no power! We have the luxury of a flush toilet of the western variety which was a pleasant surprise - most houses have outside pit latrines or squat-style porcelain ones. Now the flush toilet brings us to the major drawback of the house - There is no running water. We actually also have a shower head in the bathroom but the only time we have running water is between midnight and 5:30am (or so we've been told) - not very practical really. We have lots of buckets which get filled by our serategna (who I'll come to mo') so we have plenty during the day but it means we have to wash with a jug. The situation is quite strange as the rest of Awassa has running water every other day. Fred and Liddy are the closest VSO's to us and they have the same problem. They said it's been like this for a few months now but it hasn't always been like that. So maybe one day we'll get a better supply but for now we make do with the buckets. In order to make the water potable we have to boil it for 5 mins and then filter it. We have two filters and after an initial slow start we've got into a routine which means we have enough drinking water so we don't need to buy any.
We have a nice garden with lots of trees in it. Including a papaya tree. It has big fruits on it but they're really high up so we don't know how to get them down before the birds eat them! We also have another kind of fruit tree which has loads of fruits on it. We'd never seen them before. They are the size and shape of apples but have the texture and taste of a sweet avocado. They're quite nice but I'm not sure how we'll use them all - jam perhaps!! We think they are called kashmirs although one of the Canadians called them milkfruit.
We have a big wall around the garden and a big red gate but in most of Ethiopia it is normal to hire a guard (zabagna) to protect your property. When we arrived the guard who worked here before was still here so we have kept them on. If we hadn't they would not only have been jobless but homeless too - They live in "quarters" behind the house. Kasu guards during the night and during the day his wife Almaz is our serategna (literally means worker) she cleans our house, fills our water buckets and does our washing. It's really strange but it is normal here! They have two young children, a son - Abu - who must be about 6 coz he goes to school and a daughter, Butulay, who is 2 1/2. We see quite a lot of Butu as she's at home all day - I have never met a child that smiles so much, she's very cute. I think eventually they'll get used to us but sometimes they giggle at us usually when we wear shorts and they see our ferenji legs - I think they also laugh when they see Neal doing "womens'" work!
On Sunday night we went to the Wabe Shabele Hotel No.2 which is by the lake and had a kass kassa lass lassa (a cold, soft drink!). It was beautiful; the sun was going down and there was a wedding too so there was lots of singing and then it was all interrupted by a big thunderstorm! It was the first time we'd seen rain since we arrived in Ethiopia. It was quite an impressive storm too with very loud thunder. Since we've been here it's been very hot - in the 30's. It's rained about every other day just for a short time, usually in the evening and it's really nice coz it cools things down a bit.
Monday was our first day at work. We were introduced to Dr. Alay who is the Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. We were then introduced to our respective heads of department and Dr Alay gave us a tour of the University. Everyone uses first names here so we're Dr Neal and Dr Jenny! An Ethiopian's surname is their father's first name so for example the little girl that lives with us is Butulay Kasu. Surnames do not get carried on to the next generation and females don't change their name when they get married. Anyway back to the Uni....Debub Uni started on the site of the old Agricultural College but as new faculties have developed this is no longer big enough. A new campus is being built just outside of the town so at the moment everything's kind of in limbo. There are 2 semesters in the academic year and we arrived on the 1st day of the 2nd semester. However because the new campus wasn't ready, the new intake for the Natural Science Faculty was postponed until this semester. The plan is for these students (1100 of them) to learn the whole year's work in one semester! The new students all live at the new campus and we will be teaching there but the departmental offices etc are all still at the old campus. We are both teaching introductory courses for our subjects. All the 1st years do the same subjects; Biology, Chemistry, Physics, English, Geography and Maths and then apply to individual depts for their 2nd year. The other odd thing this year is that due to the lack of space, the labs are being used as lecture rooms so the plan is to lecture for 11 weeks and then do all the practical labs in the last 3 weeks of the term - should be interesting to say the least! The new campus will be amazing when it's finished. The site is massive and they will grow crops there that can be used for some of the research projects. Needless to say Neal and I have been busy all week brushing up on our basic knowledge of our subjects and planning lessons. Neal had his first lecture on Friday - I'll let him tell you about that! and I'm starting on Wednesday. The staff at the Uni are all very friendly and we have met so many people it's impossible to remember all the faces and names - it's easy for everyone else coz we're the only white people there! There are lots of Indian (working for the UN) and Nigerian (sent by a Nigerian government initiative called "Technical Assistance Corps") lecturers at all the Universities in Ethiopia - . One of the Indians who teaches English has a text book for improving listening skills but there is no tape with it. He has asked us to record the spoken passages for him so they are spoken by a "native" speaker. He has promised to cook us Indian food in return so we won't be turning that offer down!
[J] Wow our second week in Awassa. I was teaching this morning and on my way back I posted some letters. I also checked our PO box and it had a letter in it - I was so excited, my first letter! Thanks mum! We've been working quite hard to prepare our lectures and get in to the swing of things at the Uni. I'm even starting to remember a few names now.
Last weekend we walked up a nearby hill. We met up with some of the other VSO volunteers at 7am and got a taxi to the base. We then walked up the hill and around the top. We could see Awassa from the top and a really nice view of the lake. You can see pictures here. We also had a following of small children all the way to the top and most of the way back down who lived on and around the hill. The round huts they live in are called Tukkuls and are the main type of accommodation outside the towns. Because it's so hot during the day we have to get up early if we want to do anything remotely active - hence the 7am start! It's a bit of a bummer but we've kind of changed our body clocks to make the most of the daylight hours. It gets light and dark at about 6:30. There isn't that much to do - especially on a Friday when we have no electricity! So we've started going to bed quite early.
We've started going to an exercise class which is about 5 minutes walk from our house - it starts at 6:15am!! It's held in a stadium which is a football pitch surrounded by a running track. Except it's safer to run around the pitch coz the track is just dirt and has loads of rocks on it! I find it hard to keep a straight face during the class - we have to run around quite a lot shaking our arms around, hopping, skipping and stuff. Some of the exercises are straight out of the 80's. It's good fun though and is on 3 times a week for about 45 mins each time - it's almost as good as a Tune-Up fix at the Stevie! We found a swimming pool too at one of the hotels - except the day we went it wasn't open as they had no electricity to run the pump - it was also just about to start thunderstorming so it's probably just as well it was shut. It's quite expensive though - 10 Birr a time. That's only about a pound but our exercise classes only cost 15 Birr for a whole month.
So I think we're getting used to Awassa - dust an all. It has
actually rained for about half an hour most evenings for the last week
which helps to cool things down and settle the dust a bit. The worst
part is probably the heat, although it does cool down in the evening,
our house always seems to be hot. We have only got screens on 2 windows
so we can't leave the others open. Hopefully we're going to make some
screens for the other windows and the door which should make a
difference if we can leave them open in the evening. We've had quite a
few mozzy bites so we don't want to leave them open without screens.
This would be a good point at which to thank Declan and family for the
"zanza-click" bite treatment thingies. You hold it on a bite and click
it- this produces an electrical discharge and they work really well - we
think they must overstimulate the nerves so the bites don't itch - but
they seem to go down quicker too. Being a white person in Awassa means
you get a lot of attention. Everyone thinks you are rich if you are
white so we get a lot of people asking for money - a lot of the kids
will chant "money money money" as we go past although I'm not convinced
that they all know what they're saying. The other shouts are "you you
you" or "ferenji". Most of the time we just ignore it but sometimes it
can get annoying - it must be what it's like to be famous - you're just
walking down the street minding your own business and it feels like
everyone is shouting at you. A lot of kids want to shake hands too. Most
of the time is fine and sometimes we shout "habisha" back which means
"Ethiopian/Local" - this usually gets a laugh. Also I think around our
house people are getting used to us so there's less shouting and more
"Good morning" or "How are you?". Or maybe we're just getting used to it!
We had some fun yesterday trying to get some juggling balls made at a
local tailors - We've been there a couple of times and I had a great
skirt made which fits perfectly and they made us curtains too. Anyway
Neal made a model out of paper and we found out the word for ball from
the kids and then took the model to the tailors and tried to communicate
that we wanted 6 balls and we would bring some rice or something similar
to fill them!! We think they understood - I doubt they've had a request
like that before! We failed to explain that they could just use scraps
of material (we're not even sure they have that many) so we'll have to
buy about 1/4 metre of material! I'll be interested to see how they turn
out!!
Right time for our Amharic lesson soon and then we're going for a night out in Awassa with the other VSOs tonight!!
[J] Hello me again! Well what a great weekend. Saturday night was good. We went to the Post Rendezvous for tea where to my great dismay they had run out of cheese so I had to have a cheeseless pizza, it was still pretty good though. After a few beers waiting for the thunderstorm to pass we went to a traditional dancing place. It was inside a Tukkul (round hut) and they had a band and singers and dancers. It was the same idea as the one we went to in Addis but this was much less seedy (i.e. no prostitutes!) and a much friendlier atmosphere. The dancing here is completely crazy. There are different dances in the different regions of the country and some of them tend to stick in your mind. I can't make my mind up if the funniest one is the one with frantic shoulder shrugging or the Rebel MC 80's style jumping around! The scariest without a doubt is where the dancers shake there head's around like you have never seen. Honestly they must have to have really strong neck muscles they swing their heads round so fast they become a blur. The only thing is I can't stop thinking about brain haemorrhages after all that shaking! There was a big group of people there wearing baggy tracksuits and baseball caps. They were dancing a lot and (Canadian) Neil asked them if they were American - they did have t-shirts with Washington DC etc on them - they were actually from Addis but managed to get their own back on Neil by insisting that Toronto was in America despite Neil telling them he was born there and it was definitely in Canada!
After this we went on to a club. It was hilarious like a gay wedding reception. Perhaps I should explain something here. Ethiopia is the most gay non-gay place you can imagine! Here it is very normal for two people of the same sex to walk hand in hand down the street or with their arms round each other. It is a very touchy-feely culture - it's not unusual for someone to continue holding your hand - after shaking it - for the entire conversation. Anyway this means that in the club most of the dancing was between two people of the same sex. After getting a drink and standing around for a bit a girl grabbed me and stated dancing with me. She was obviously quite drunk but seemed to relish the chance of dancing with a ferenji! After one dance she went back to her mates where she was overcome by giggles. I thought I was safe but she came back for more! We eventually escaped and went home - although she did accost me outside and ask for my phone number, unfortunately we don't have a phone.
We woke up late on Sunday, wondering what to do with ourselves, when Fred came by and said there was space in their car if we wanted to go to Lake Langano with them. Perfect, we readily agreed and set off at lunchtime. Lake Langano is about an hours drive from Awassa and I believe it's the only lake in Ethiopia you can safely swim in. It has a high mineral content so nasty bugs like Bilharzia don't live in it! What a lovely afternoon - it's like a resort. There's a hotel and some campsites and the edge of the lake was like a beach. The water (once you got used to the brown colour - due to the minerals of course!) was the perfect temperature for swimming. Fred and Liddy had brought their serategna and her 2 children and 2 other children that they knew too. Only one of the Ethiopians knew how to swim - he was very good, a 15-year old who had apparently taught himself how to swim. The other children were great in the water. Armed with rubber rings and arm bands they had absolutely no fear of the water and happily splashed about. As a thunderstorm approached we got changed and left. After a few hairy moments on the road back - a bus pulling out in front of us and various livestock in the road we arrived home at about 5.30pm.
About half an hour later Neil came round to invite us to the cinema with him. So after dinner we met him, Keith and Lori outside the cinema. It's an impressive building with lots of unused fountains outside it and also a Marxist monument - it seems the building had a more official use during the Derg Regime. Anyway we paid for expensive seats (about 20p) and watched The Count of Monte Cristo which was a good clean fun swashbuckling film. The best thing about it was the audience appreciation. You could here mutters of agreement when there was reference to God being all seeing, and providing justice etc. and when the hero was about to get his revenge and delivered a bit of a classic line everyone clapped! Now I thought people left cinemas in a hurry in the UK but here everyone had up and left before the end of the last scene. In fact several people left as soon as the hero got his revenge. Ah it was great entertainment, apparently the films they show are quite random but hopefully it won't be too long before another cracker is shown.
Now for a bit of info for my sporty/physiology friends - This morning I went to the stadium for a run. I was surprised to see how high my heart rate was. The classes stop and start quite a bit so I hadn't really noticed before. But today just jogging round the track my HR was 180 bpm - after a short sprint it easily went up to 200! I think it must be the altitude we're at about 1700 m here. It's weird though, coz I didn't feel anymore tired than I would at home I' d have thought I would have made extra rbcs by now - but I suppose just for everyday getting around and not for exercise perhaps? Anyone any comments? .....I hope it's not dangerous!
[J] Wow the end of our 3rd week in Awassa, it's gone so fast so far. We were told that most of the time, most VSOs hardly have anything to do for the first few months at work. This has especially been the case in some of the other universities in Ethiopia where there are a lot of UN "volunteers" who get paid a lot of money - $1000 a month - which here is just a ridiculous amount, you couldn't spend it if you tried! Anyway because they get paid so much the universities make sure they have a lot of work to do leaving the VSOs in these institutes with one class a week to teach. This is not the case in Debub Uni, although there are a lot of UN volunteers here there are only Ethiopians in my dept. Neal's dept has 2 Indians and a Nigerian lecturer so is a bit more eclectic, but we're still kept busy. Neal is teaching one group for 4 hours a week and I have two groups for 3 hours each a week. I think at the moment it takes us quite a while to prepare for lectures because we're not used to it so hopefully it will take less time in the future.
So this week, asides from our work, what have we done. I think the most exciting thing was to have money wired from Addis by VSO so we could buy bikes. So we bought 2 mountain bikes on Thursday. Altogether it cost B1950 (~£150) for the 2 bikes, two wheel locks, one cheapish wire lock, 2 bells and 2 services. I think we got mostly local prices although Neal wasn't too happy with the quality of the service. You have to get these done because the brakes and gears aren't aligned so you can't ride it anywhere. Well Neal reckoned they didn't do too good a job of that and wiggled all the spokes around (or something) so the wheels are a bit wonky now! Oh well they're fine to ride so I guess that's okay. Neal has been trying to fine tune them a bit better but is finding it hard with his limited tool kit! One thing we need to get used to is the bumpy roads - we only rode about 10 minutes to get home fromt he bike shop but we both had sore bums the next day!! The saddles seem fine so it must be all the bumps in the road. It's quite a hazardous business riding a bike here, although there's not many cars to deal with, the ones that go past kick up bigs clouds of dust to choke you. The major hazards are the gari's, these act like taxis but are horse-drawn carts they own the road in the same way taxi drivers the world over do. No indication of where they're about to go and they can come at you from any direction. Luckily on a bike you can easily overtake them but you have to hope that as you're alongside it, the driver doesn't decide to swing out his whip in order to hit the horse.
I've never plucked up the courage to use a gari and hopefully now I have a bike I will have no need to. There are a few reasons why I wouldn't want to get one, firstly you need to communicate where you want to get to, secondly I'm terrified of them. The carts look really unstable, the tyres have definately seen better years, never mind days and the drivers just seem to ignore the smoothest parts of the road and relish the challenge of the many rifts and bumps at the side of the road - I don't think it will be long before I see a tipped over gari in the road. I have seen a crash between a gari and a cyclist - the gari driver and most of the onlookers just laughed! Finally and a more serious point is the state of the poor horses employed to pull these things. Animal welfare is ceratinly not a priority for these people. I suppose when they only get paid 1 Birr per trip there's not much left for caring for the horse. I did hear a story that in a nearby town a guy is going round checking that the gari drivers look after their horses. If they give them water and food then they get a sticker to put on their gari that says something along the lines of "I look after my horse". It's a start I suppose - maybe it will spread to other places but to be honest when there's so many people living in absolute poverty it's probably not a priority to look after animals.
This week we also had the pleasure of no water for 4 days. At about 5 o'clock on weds morning a car with a loudhailer was driving around shouting something - this is the usual way to make public announcements. Anyway it turned out the announcement was to say there will be no water until saturday. Of course by this time our water had gone off so there was no chance to stock up. As sod's law had it, we had had people round for tea the night before so used much more water than usual. Well this really brings home to you what a luxury it is to have water. I heard on the radio this week that only 15% of the world's population has access to clean, running water. So we had a little over 2 buckets of water to last us 4 days. This is also a time when you realise a flush toilet is not always a good thing and what a waste it is flushing the toilet with clean water. We had to be so careful, and save all our waste water to flush the loo. We managed to refine the art of washing with just 2 jugs of water each. I know I've already said it but it really makes you think about how precious water is and how easy we have it int he UK. I remember the moaning when there was cryptosporidium contamination in the water in Glasgow last year, our supply wasn't even stopped, we just had to boil the water before we could drink it (something we have to do everyday here). And there was chaos - people were panic-buying bottled water and the shops ran out. In Awassa, even people who have running water direct to their houses only have it every other day - this is an attempt by the water authority to conserve water (also the same reason why the electricity is turned off of one day a week).
Anyway, needless to say we were mighty relieved to have our buckets filled again this weekend. But we'll now be aware that this could happen again and not be so frivolous with our stocks.
As it was Shrove Tuesday this week we decided to make some pancakes. We also decided to invite the other VSO's round to join us. Buying flour was no problem, and despite the fasting having already started here (the orthodox Christians eat no meat or milk products for about 50 days during their lent) we were able to get eggs (instead of a bag you get them in a folded paper cone) and milk. We had to seive the flour through a tea-strainer and boil the milk beforehand but our batter turned out magnificently.
Two unexpected guests also arrived with Keith and Lori, Richard and Richard who have just finished their time as VSO volunteers in an Ethiopian town called Bahir Dar. They're both British and were pleasantly surprised to have pancakes for tea! They were in Awassa for one night only as part of their cycle ride from Bahir Dar to South Africa! They didn't seem to have much of a plan except for their route to Kenya and a flight booked back to London on June 11th from South Africa! They have a website too, the address is www.cycleforfood.com so have a look if you're interested.
Last night Fred had a party to celebrate his 60th birthday. He hired an area in a park called Arooma Gedel which is by the lake. It was a beautiful setting, there are lots of birds and monkeys running around the trees and a splendid view of the lake. There was a massive buffet with Ethiopian and European food and lots of drink. Fred's colleagues bought him a full outfit of traditional clothing which they made him wear. He looked great!
After the buffet, when the sun had set, a campfire was lit, a guitar produced and the singing commenced! Liddy announced she expected at least one song from each nationality present. Easy for the Ethiopians, and the Dutch had a fair representation too - there were 4 of them plus an Ethiopian who lived there (our boss Dr. Alay). Neal and I managed one verse of "Flower of Scotland" which meant we outdid the 3 Canadians who couldn't come up with anything!
After the party we had yet another experience - riding our bikes home along the dirt roads in pitch darkness! Luckily Fred and Liddy followed us in their car for about half the way so we could see where we were going. After that we just had to take our lives in our own hands. You know there are bumps and holes everywhere so you can't really avoid them. We just had to keep going and hope we didn't fall off. That will be the last time we go out without Neal's head torch!
So far Sunday has been pretty good. We had a lie in till about 8am. I had a lovely hot shower and washed my hair (the hot shower bit's a lie but I did wash my hair for the first time since Monday!! We had no water remember!). We did a bit of work - well I wrote up today's entry and then went to some colleagues' house for lunch. The colleagues were three Indian lecturers at the Uni, one of whom is in the English dept. So in return for recording a few passages of spoken English we got an amazing lunch. In fact come to think of it Neal didn't do anything - I did ALL the recording so Neal had a great lunch for nothing!
Yeah so we had three types of curry, a masala with potato and cauliflower (bit of a rare treat here!), a tomato based curry with -my favourite - paneer (homemade - and they told us how to make it ourselves), and a third, equally tasty but I forget its name. Of course there was a bucket of basmati rice with fried crispy onions to sprinkle over the top. Hmmm it was all so good, they apologised for not making chapati but said there maid has been off work (mourning) for 4 days so they were short of help! Just as Neal was helping himself to his 3rd helping - even though he'd just said he was full - we were told to keep space for pudding! Then we had a yummy sweet rice pudding with nuts sprinkled over it. What a feast and we were supplied with as much beer/soft drink as we could manage. I tell you it was much harder cycling home than the way there!
We've just enjoyed a coffee ceremony with our serategna and family and this evening we've been invited to Fred and Liddy's to help finish the food left from last night - Oh dear that's only an hour away and I'm still completely stuffed! Anyway we plan to take the laptop and upload this lot onto our website - so hopefully you've got an idea of what we've been up to so far and we'll upload another installment later. If you have any comments on the website (Neal's not completely happy with the layout at the moment but we just wanted to get something on the site for you asap), if there's anything in particular you want to know about or any requests for photos just drop us an email. Hope you are all well....till next time - lots of love from Jen & Neal xxx