When we arrived back from Bale we turned on our world space radio and heard that the England rugby team had beaten France. I have to say that after seeing their performance against Wales the previous weekend I wasn't sure they would. The Saturday of the final came. Michela came round the night before for tea and we made little England flags out of small pieces of paper attached to cocktail sticks. We were going to paint flags on our faces but everyone else threatened to disown us if we did.
The next day we set off to our now established veiwing establishment - the Lewi Hotel. Two weeks ago another customer had complained about us making too much noise and we were asked to keep it quiet. We were a bit worried we might not be able to contain ourselves and would get kicked out. When we arrived we were the only ones there. We're not sure if the waiters had warned any customers not to come up to the restaurant or if it was just a coincidence. Despite never having heard of rugby a few weeks before the waiters were quite excited about the match too. We were so surprised that they cheered at all the right places and they seemed to have developed a decent grasp of the rules over the last few weeks. They took a flag each and displayed it in their shirt pockets.
I think the timings of the games have been really good for us here. They have spanned over lunchtime so we have been able to go to the Lewi, order lunch and drink a few beers while watching all the games. So we ordered our beers (St George beer of course - he also happens to be the patron saint of Ethiopia!) and settled down to watch. Well what a match. I'm sure I lost at least 5 years from my life with the tension of that game. It was soooo good, our boys definitely saved the best till last. When Johnny's final drop goal came we all stood up and help our breath - including the waiters who hadn't served anybody for the last 15 minutes at least! We couldn't believe it - he did it. We won we won - fantastic. There were cheers and hugs all round - and another round of St Georges too. I can't imagine what the atmosphere was like in England (Or Scotland for that matter - I have to say it was nice to be able to support England without being slagged!). But anyway in a little restaurant in a little part of Ethiopia there were four very happy English folk, one Francobrit who became a happy Englishman for the day a bemused Canadian and a handful of Ethiopian waiters who all celebrated the English rugby teams' win that day - Well done boys - you did us proud (and thanks to Roisin for the tasty pics of Johnny!)
Well after watching so much sport it was about time we did some ourselves. So the next weekend we travelled up to Addis Ababa for the Great Ethiopian Run. We were lucky enough to get a bus from Awassa on Friday lunchtime that went straight to Addis. It was a hot and sticky journey but with no major difficulties we arrived in Addis at about 5:30pm. We rushed to haya hulet (lit. 22 the name of the area where Deb and Dave live and where the VSO office is) and up to Deb and Dave's house as we'd arranged to go out for dinner to say goodbye to Lin who came in our intake and had finished her contract. We went past the Pride bar, just outside the VSO office and saw loads of VSOs there who were all in town for the race or for various workshops that had been taking place. We said lots of hellos and found out where the restaurant was and hurried to dump our stuff at D&Ds. We bumped into them as we went up the road and arranged to meet them at the restaurant too.
We dumped our stuff and nipped back to the Pride bar for a quick beer before grabbing a taxi to the restaurant. We discussed various places to meet up before the run, finished our beer and rushed off to Makush. This restaurant was amazing. It's Italian and apparently the chef is ferenji. Neal and I shared a spinach and Gorgonzola cheese salad for starters which was divine and then had a four seasons pizza and spinach and ricotta ravioli with a creamy mushroom sauce. These foods are definitaly NOT widely available in Ethiopia. Wow it was like being back in Britain. The bill was almost British too - well no it wasn't it was only about £10 each for two and a half courses and some wine but it was about 4 days salary for us! For dessert we had crepes with milk and white chocolate sauce and pineapple. ........were we in heaven or what?
Of course the company was great as well!! It's so weird to think that Lin has finished already - makes me feel like I've been here a while now! She was working for BESO (Basic Education System Overhaul) part of the ministry of Education. Her contract was for a year and she's going to do the last few bits and bobs from home as she can do it on computer and send them over. Deb and David were also there and Les, all of us arrived at the same time so it was nice to catch up and hear about everyone's experiences.
The next day we got up early and went to an NGO craft fair. This happens on the last Saturday of every month and lots of projects funded by various NGOs get together to sell their wares. This was the month beofre Christmas and was predictably packed. It was held in a school which could have been anywhere in Europe. I think this is one of the most shocking things about Addis is the amount of money that is available for a very small minority of the people. I know this is the case all over the world but the posh buildings in Addis are so out of place comapred to the rest of the city and country it just makes it even more obvious. This school looked like a minature Sheraton hotel! It was a missionary school - I think funded by the Evangelical church.
I was a bit freaked out by the whole experience. I said it was packed and it was, packed full of ferenji. It reminded me that some aspects of Christmas in "the west" are worth missing. Loads of people were frantically rushing around buying all their Christmas presents - saying "how much? how much?" then grabbing armfuls of gifts. I managed to calm myself down by scoffing some scrummy ice cream and buying some butter for my planned Christmas cake. We didn't buy much, just a few bits and bobs, it was pretty crazy and expensive by Ethiopian standards (which of course is dirt cheap to anyone on a salary paid in dollars or pounds). We brought a couple of Christmas decorations and a few cards and then sat and relaxed in the sun. Apart from the sunshine (and ice cream) I felt like we could have been at a Christmas fair in Germany or somewhere!
After the others had gathered together their purchases, we headed off to a wee shop called "Ato Basket" which means Mr Basket and can you guess what he sells? Yes that's right - baskets and lots of them in every shape and size imaginable, as well as tables, chairs and loads of other stuff too. We didn't really fancy taking any furniture back to Awassa for us so we wondered over to the shop next door and bought some great cooking pots instead. They are hand made out of clay and not only look good but you can cook in them too. This is one of the great things about Ethiopia is that all the "national" things are part of everday life. The national dish of injera and wat is eaten every day and for every meal by a lot of people. The coffee ceremony is carried out regularly. We have one in our house a few times a week. The national dress is worn all the time and the clay pots and stuff are used by regular people to do their cooking in - so everything is functional as well as looking nice.
Deb and Dave offered to take our pots back for us and we were dropped off at Bambis to buy the rest of the ingredients needed for a Christmas cake. We managed to get everything we needed - glace cherries were the most expensive thing - except the brandy which we thought we could get in Awassa. Then we headed back to Deb and Dave's house for a nap - well we needed to be rested for the big race the next morning. That night as usual, Deb and Dave made a most delicious tea - prepared with some veggies purchased from the NGO fair. Then we went to bed early to be fresh as a daisy for the race!
We met up with several other volunteers who were running/jogging or walking the distance. I have never seen so many people in one place since being in Ethiopia, there was an estimated 18,000 people taking part so it was definately the biggest race Neal or I had been in. We waited outside the National hotel which is just slightly uphill from Meskel Square where the race started. We could just see a sea of contestants in Meskel Square. Most people were wearing the race t-shirt which was green, yellow and red so it looked liked an enormous moving mass of Ethiopian flags. As we waited, Haile Gebre Selassie went past on a motorbike to the start of the race accompanied by an enormous cheer of support. He must definately be the biggest hero in Ethiopia. He wasn't competitively running this year as he was the official starter. Although he did run the race after he fired the gun.
As 9am approached, we made our way down to the start and as the gun went off you couldn't help but jog alongside the hundreds of people eager to cross the start. The course was two laps, the first lap was shorter, 3.5 km and then the second lap, 6.5 km, covered part of the first lap (including a bugger of a hill) and extended a bit further. The most disheartening thing about his was when you were running the first lap you saw the km markers for the second lap so as we were approaching the first 1 km you could see the sign for the 4 km mark which you would be at in the second lap! There was a lot of people watching and several groups of people were chanting as they ran. It seems a popular tactic is to walk a bit and run a bit so we kept getting overtaken by the same groups of people as we preferred to keep the same pace throughout. The first couple of kilometres were really slow as there were so many people you could hardly move, it did ease off a bit and although there were still hundreds of people in every direction you looked you had a bit of space to run at your own pace.
Neal and I managed to keep together for the whole race, as the start was such a scramble it was hard to stay together with other people. As we neared the 3 km mark lots of cars went past with horns blaring and we were moved to one side of the road. It took us a while to realise that the race leaders were at the 7 km mark and they needed to separate the first lappers from the second lappers. We saw several people try to sneak through to the second lap and one man was having a bit of a shouting match with a steward who wouldn't let him join the second lap! We heard later that this was a bit of a problem and lots of people only ran about half the race by sneaking onto the second lap!
As we were running through Meskel Square the commentator announced the leaders of the race were about 4 minutes away from the finish line (which we were just crossing for the first time!). It was tempting to stay and watch the winners but I was worried I wouldn't get started again if I stopped so we continued our plodding onwards trying not to think of going up the big hill again! At around the half way point the route went around a petrol station, this caused another bout of cheating as loads of runners went through the garage to cut off the corner. There was one poor steward holding his arms out in a pathetic attempt to try and stop the cheaters but more than half the runners were taking the short cut so there wasn't a lot he could do.
As we continued round the second lap the sun got hotter and hill got harder but we were over half way and knew we could finish. At about the 8 km mark there was a cooling off service offered. Somehow a water point on the side of the street had bee turned on and spouted water across the road so you ran through a mini water fall. It was really nice and cooled us off a right treat and lots of people stayed under it to get completely drenched! We finally reached the end, we certainly didn't break any records but we completed our goal of jogging the whole way round. We blame the altitude and the number of people for our slow time (1h 15m) and certainly not our lack of fitness!
We got to the end and collected our medals and plodded off to the Ghion hotel for some much needed refreshment. As we met up with other volunteers we discovered we had been lucky - they had ran out of medals! Seemingly about 5-10 minutes after we got there. You were meant to hand your number in as you collected your medal but this system hadn't really worked and there were many people going back for more medals (why? I have no idea!). This meant that as the last few medals became available it turned a bit nasty and the guys giving out the medals were apparently amusing themselves as they threw one medal on to the ground and laughing at the ensuing scrum to get it. Bit of a shame really as it put a damper on the race for those people who completed the course and didn't get a medal. Kath (from Dilla) saw a women with a bunch of medals round her neck and managed to make her feel guilty enough to give one to her - I just don't understand the point in having more than one, but hey what do I know?
Unfortunately we had to get back to Awassa that afternoon so we couldn't hang around to enjoy the afternoon with the other volunteers still in Addis. We went back and had a shower and treated ourselves to lunch in the Zebra Grill - Hmmm Masala chips and headed back to Awassa feeling exhausted and worrying how sore our limbs would be by the time we got to Awassa - would we be able to get out of the landrover? Would we be able to get out of bed the next day? Would we ever run again?
Back in Awassa and it was time to put those Christmas cake plans into action - but first some brandy to soak the fruit in. One saturday afternoon off I went on my bicycle to find some brandy. I was sure I'd seen little sachets of it - double shots which you could buy but on closer inspection these turned out to be vodka, whisky or punch (whatever that is?). So I scoured the ferenji supermarkets with no luck, there seemed to be everything - whisky, vodka, gin, wine, malibu(!) everything except brandy! I was beginning to despair why didn't we just get some in Addis when we saw it there.
The next week at work I asked advice from some folk at work and a colleague of mine said he went past a liquor shop on his way home and he knew the guy so he'd ask there. The next day he reported back that they'd sold out but he had had a wee shot of something himself to soothe his sore throat! He suggested another place and I tried there on my way home. And I was in luck - brandy alleh but there were no full bottles so I'd have to buy it by the shot! Luckily I had a small water bottle in my bag so I bought 10 Birr worth of Ethiopian brandy and went off on my way. I was worried it might be a bit rough as it was locally made but figured it wouldn't matter too much for a cake - I needn't have worried anyway it was fine!
Ever since we arrive in Awassa, we have been told we were moving to the new campus soon. Any attempt to get a more specific answer was responded to by "next month". Well it finally happened and we are now situated in new offices in the main campus of Debub University. Our students are all taught at the new campus so it is much more convenient to be based in the same place as where we teach. Before we had to get an hourly bus between the two campuses which are about 5 km apart. If you missed the bus then you would be very hard pushed to get to the new campus in time for your class.
Our offices are in building that housed the library last year while the permanent library was being built. It is a temporary building by which I mean it's not much more than a large shed with a tin roof. Lots were drawn to determine who got an office with a window (one in three chance) and Neal and I were lucky enough both to get an office with a window. However our offices are on opposite sides of the building. Neal's is on the shaded side and is lovely and cool and if you open the window you get a lovely breeze and a view of another tin building where they prepare food and a bit of scrubby grass. My office has the sun continuously shining into it through the whole day turing it into a solar-powered sauna. We have one window that opens onto a building site and every time a car goes past a dust storm floods through the window to coat everything. But hey at least the facilities are better here than in the old campus - Oh silly me I forgot, actually there aren't any! We have to use the student toilets - which are sometimes locked for that extra challenge and there's nowhere to eat for about a 2 km radius!
Oh well we can console ourselves with the fact that one day it will be a lovely campus and there's a new cafe being built just over the road form the campus, whether or not any of these things happen before we leave I cannot say but we're managing to keep optimistic. On the whole it's good to be here and once some of the teething troubles are solved things will be much easier.
We went to Debre Zeit (about an hour south of Addis) for a few days for the VSO annual conference. It was mostly sessions which involved reviewing the new 5 year strategic plan for VSO Ethiopia. But there were also talks from other VSOs about various activites they'd done to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and gender equality. It was good to meet some of the other volunteers working in Ethiopia and hear about their expereinces. There was a large intake of volunteers in September that there are now 100 of us in Ethiopia. So it was a pretty big conference. The highlight of the conference was the talent show on the Saturday night. Apparently last year the VSOs from Awassa did not make a big effort (except Keith who read a poem). So inspired by last years prize (a tube of pringles!) we decided to do a little planning. During our bi-weekly meet ups for food and drink we concocted our plan.
In the best Christmas tradtion we performed a pantomime. We altered a classic and made Cinderella a poor VSO volunteer working in Awassa who gets an invite to an NGO recruitment fair at the Sheraton Hotel in Addis. We had 5 short scenes and each was written as a poem. We split the verses up between us. Lori and I were narrators, Kath from Dilla played Cinders. John and Sally played the ugly sisters - our VSO programme officers in Addis, the other Neil played a splendid Prince Charming (boss of the recruiting NGO), Michela was a sign holder, Keith a magnificent (drunk) Fairy godmother but Neal rather stole the show as Buttons who attempted to juggle various home-made balls and clubs during scene changes.
It went down well and we won (we didn't even bribe the judges) but alas there was no tube of pringles this year but we did bask in glory for the next day and Neal is now known as Buttons to all the volunteers in Ethiopia!
We decided to have a party at our house on Christmas Day. We started getting into the spirit of things earlier than usual, we put up some lovely cheesy decorations and made a tree out of green card. While we put up the streamers and baubles we listened to some great christmassy tunes supplied by our friend Gav and my sister Lizzi. It's funny how we really enjoyed listening to all those songs that I usually hate by the time December comes let alone Christmas. When they're not rammed down your throat everyday for 10 weeks or so they're actually quite good! Also thanks to my mum we were able to count down to christams in the traditional way with an advent calendar!
On the subject of Christmas tunes....to answer Bob Geldof and his chums - No they don't know it's Christmas time, well at least not in Ethiopia because they don't celebrate Christmas until Jan 7th.
So we originally wanted to try and cook a traditional(ish) Christmas dinner but as the number of people invited increased we decided even with our ingenious "pan-in-a-pan" oven it would be very difficult to cook roast potatoes, and there was not a glimpse of turkeys or brussels sprouts anywhere to be seen. Not in Awassa anyway although I'm pretty sure we could have got some in Addis for an extorsionate amount of money! Instead all the VSOs in Awassa contributed some kind of dish which we wouldn't normally eat. We ended up with a veritable feast with delicious mushroom stroganoff made by Sally (with wild rice and sauce sent to her from Australia by her mum!) banoffee pie created lovingly by Michela, yummy lentilly curry dish from John, Marc, Keith and Lori bought some meat for the barbie marinaded in beer and wine (although not together) which were made into kebabs with the few remaining courgettes that were left in our garden. Neal and I made a chick-pea curry, some chapatis and our masterpiece was a trifle - thanks to kit and john for the jelly and custard! Other Neil brought some homemade Tej (although he didn't make it!) which is a traditional fermented mead like drink made with honey. Of course we also bought in some crates of beer, some wine and lass lassas (sorry - fizzy pop). We also made some (improvised) mulled wine for our guests as they arrived. We tried to explain that in the UK where it's very cold at Christmas time it seems like a good idea to heat wine up before you drink it! We simmered up some local wine (Gouder) and added spices which are usually added to tea here - a mixture of cinamon, cardamon and some random bits of woodchip too. Anyway I have to say that Gouder has never tasted so good and it went down a treat.
About 20 VSOs came, all those from Awassa, Kath from Dilla and some others from other parts of Ethiopia who cadged a lift down after the VSO conference. Also several of our colleagues from Uni came too - Indians as well as Ethiopians. Our colleagues were keen to experience some British culture so we made a pass the parcel with forfeits and sung Christmas carols to Michela's penny whistle! And of course we ate loads and drank lots too! During the food it was a bit of a nightmare as we didn't have enough plates/glasses/cutlery etc so Neal and I seemed to be continuously washing up for an hour or two and we came close to running out of water. But we managed and I think everybody had a good time.
In the evening when most people had left, there was just us VSOs left and a few other friends. We gave out our secret santa pressies. Neal received some CDs - one was a mix and the other by Dawit a Ethiopian pop star. Mine has to be the best ever - Free purchase - but wait this is the best bit - and delivery of a pizza from Post Rendezvous and two drinks. That is courtesy of "Keith's pizza delivery service" - I'll need to make sure he fastens a little "hot box" to the back of his bike when he goes!! It's a voucher so I can cash it in any time - hee hee hee!
We had such a great time and I just want to say thanks to everyone who came and made it so much fun. It helped us not to get too homesick!Not only do Ethiopians not know it's Christmas time but they don't know it's New Year either. As you should know from a previous journal in the Ethiopian calendar, New Year is on the 1st of Meskerem (or Sept 11th) so Dec 31st is no special event here either. Oh well we can't betray our ferenji roots so on New Year's Eve we went off to the Post rendezvous followed by a trip to the Feven. We thought that maybe some Ethiopians might celebrate - any excuse for a party huh! but when we arrived at the Feven at about 10pm there were only 3 people there. Well at least we filled it up a bit. As the night went on a load more ferenjis turned up. The strange thing was we didn't know any of them and we tend to recognise most of the ferenjis in Awassa now. They didn't look like they lived in Ethiopia - some of the girls were wearing skimpy tops.....Hmmmm - I thought to myself - what is going on here? It turned out they were tourists travelling all the way to South Africa on a tour. I thought it was a bit strange that they would pick Awassa to spend Hogmanay but apparently they didn't. Their bus had broken down and they were stranded here. They certainly livened the place up a bit.
As it was so quiet we managed to convince the DJ to turn the music off at midnight so we could do a countdown. We splashed out and ordered some spirits to toast the New Year and did our countdown. Neal, Sally and I tried to start a rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne but were drowned out by the DJ playing that other New year classic of "Country roads - take me home"! A little surreal but a good night anyway.
For Ethiopian Christmas we were finally allowed an official day off work. I tell you having to go to work on New Years Day was a bit of a struggle. The festive season is much harder work when you don't get the time off. Anyway for Genna (which is the Ethiopian name for Christmas) we were invited to a colleague house for lunch. Aselefech is a secretary in our faculty and last weekend she invited me over and her sister braided my hair. She lives very close to us, just up the road in a small house shared by her, her 4 sisters, her mother and father and grandmother. They also rent out the accomodation at the back of the house (like servants quarters) so there seemed to be hundreds of kids running about all eager to get a glimpse of the ferenji getting her hair done. It took about two hours to finish my hair there and my head felt like it was covered in hundreds of little plaits.
I took Neal round on Christmas day (Jan 7th) and we were invited for lunch. The house was much quieter as the people from "out the back" had all left for the day to visit their families. Of course the traditional dish of dorro wat (spicy chicken sauce with injera) was on offer. Aselefech had been very worried about me not eating meat - not even chicken? but told me one of her sisters was studying hotel management so she would make some vegetables. The afternoon was a great test of our amharic as we tried to communicate with the family. Aselefech's mother also works at the Uni as a cleaner, so does her sister in the staff lounge and so does her brother as a maintenance guy - keep it in the family huh!! Mind you probably all four of them only earn as much as Neal or I does in a month and we always moan about how little we get! Aselefech is paid 250Birr a month (about £20) which is basically below the poverty line of less than a dollar a day and she has a fairly good job working at the University. I imagine she may get paid a higher salary if she was male! Anyway the day was really nice, Aselefech surprised us by wearing a sari that one of the Indian lecturers had given her and she looked absolutely stunning in it.
Lunch was fantastic Neal was fed Dorro wat until it came out of his ears and I was given a great mixture of veggie sauces to eat with my injera. We were also goven kinito and tella to drink. The kinito we've had before when Almaz has made it and I think this is a sign we've been here too long but we're both starting to quite like it! We'd never had tella before but heard lots about it in Dervla Murphy's book "In Ethiopia with a Mule" as when she travel around Ethiopia (with a mule) she seems to be constantly drinking pints of the stuff. It's made from roasted barley and is fermented with yeast so is slightly alcoholic. I have to say we didn't really dig the tella it was like drinking yeast! Our hosts were not offended though in fact before we'd tried it Aselefech had suggested we probably wouldn't like it and we should stick to the kineto!
After lots of chatting we felt we had exhausted our complete knowledge of the Amharic language and headed home feeling very stuffed. When we got home Almaz prepared a coffee ceremony and a short time later we were fed more dorro wat and injera. I think Almaz was upset we didn't eat much although we tried to explain we'd already been eating all afternoon it didn't seem to be a good enough excuse. After all that food all we could do was go to bed and think about not eating anything for a couple fo days to recover!
[J] As you may remember, when we first arived in Ethiopia we were a bit ill. We seemed to have amoeba constantly on and off for a few months. As a result of this I lost some weight in the first few months when we arrived. Now thank goodness we seem to be over the stomach bugs (touch wood) and as a result I have put back on the weight I lost but I reckon I'm about the same size I was before I came. Anyway Ethiopians are not shy about telling you how you look. So the last week everyday a different person has said to me "Oh Jenny you are getting so fat!" or "Look at you Jenny, you are really putting on so much weight", and then on a different day one of my Nigerian colleagues went by on his bike and greeted me and signalled for me to stop as he had something to tell me. So I stopped and shook his hand and he said to me "Jenny you are getting big, SOOOOO big, you must be eating too much injera". Jesus, talk about how to give someone a complex. It's hardly surprising when you are force-fed food by Ethiopians constantly over the Christmas period!