[J] It's my least favourite time of the semester again - when the students get their results and are allowed to look at their exam papers. I have been teaching 270 students in the college of Agriculture this semester and I can't say I've enjoyed teaching them much. The other students I've taught here have been (on the whole) keen to learn, motivated and well-behaved. However for a number of reasons (which I won't go into here) these students have been a right pain in the backside.
The lectures are no problem as I just lecture and they copy down exactly what I write on the board and try to figure out what on Earth I've been blethering on about after the lecture. The labs are a different matter.....they never read the lab manual before the lab so they have no idea what they are supposed to be doing. After explaining step by step what they are to do to the whole class they still have no idea what to do. After demonstrating the technique to them they still have no idea what to do.....Arrrrgh. At first I thought they mst be having serious problems understanding my English but apparently they are the same with Ethiopian instructors too. After all the demonstrations I tell them to get on with the work and they all just sot there doing nothing until either myself or the lab technician tells htem individually to get on with something. Now to be fair to the students, a lot of the experiments have to done in large groups as we don't have enough equipment or chemicals for them to do the experiments individually or in pairs. So for some of the experments it is unfortunate that one student will be doing the experiment while as many as ten or fifteen are sat watching. To make up for this I made sure that in every lab there was at least one thing they could do individually or in pairs and I attempted to hastily modify the experiments so more people were involved in the practical aspects.
So when people were sitting doing nothing - not even pretending to watch the person doing the work - I got a bit annoyed and told them to get on with something else. In the second week of labs I told the students at the start if they didn't want to take part in the labs then they should leave. They all thought this was a hilarious thing to say (so they do understand me then!) but no-one left. I got fed up with constantly telling people to do work. They'd tell me they would start an experiment and I'd come back ten minutes later nad ask them why they hadn't started and they'd say they're just going to start and I'd come back ten minutes later and they were still sat in exactly the same position as before having not done anything. I tried everything. I tried being nice and making sure they understood and asked the lab technician to explain the procedure in Amharic but still.....nothing. I tried being nasty and told them they would fail the course if they didn't do the lab work. Nothing I did seemed to be able to get them to get off their lazy arses and do any work.
On top of all this during the first week of the labs, my notes for the pre-lab talk and my copy of hte lab manual - complete with comments on how to improve it for next year went missing as did some coloured chalk from the lecture room. This may sound petty but coloured chalk is a rare commodity in our Uni and my notes were the only ones I had as they were hand-written and I needed to do the lab several more times that week. In the next lecture I made a plea that somebody may have "accidently" picked them up and could they return them. Thankfully they (well the notes and lab manual) were returned anonymously to the lab tehnician the following week. In the last week of the labs I made some visual aids to help identify different types of bacteria. At the end of the lab, we counted to check they were all returned because we needed to use them for all the 6 lab sessions that week. And lo and behold one was missing. I told them to return it and nobody moved so I told them they couldn't leave until it was returned (I couldn't quite believe I was saying this - but I needed it for the next lab). We waited some more and the lab technician told them to return it. Still no sign of it. By this stage all the students were crowded round the door complaining. I told them to all go back to their bench and check through all their notes and under their benches and the bench next to them. We waited for about half an hour before somebody finally produced the article from their pocket neatly folded and handed it back to me. I was not happy and still had another lab to teach - which was now runnign half an hour late. I apologised for the late start and told them to ask their classmates for the reason why. It hink most of them knew because they'd been waiting outside during the incident. Anyway at the end of the lab - guess what we had to go through it all again. I couldn't believe it - these are supposed to be university students and I felt like I was back in primary school.
Maybe you're getting a feeling for these students now - oh they're also arrogant aswell and act like they know everything when they blatantly don't and cannot even use the microscopes correctly. Anyway I wrote a simple mid-semester exam and more than half the students failed it. The exam really was simple which was confirmed by the invigilators of the exam who thought it ws easy and it wasn''t even their subject. It's not surprising really seeing as they've done next to no work for the whole half of the semester. Of course after the exam I was hounded by students complaing that the exam was too hard and they hadn't expected questions from the lab etc etc. This is one of the classic things that the students here say when they have done badly in the exam "Teacher we do not expect to get ....this type of question/ questions about.... etc" As Marc said - isn't that the whole point of an exam - that you don't know what the questions are going to be!!
So the final part of this rant is something I've ranted about before - the students checking their exams. It is Unversity policy that the students have a "right" to see their exam papers - to try and prevent corrupt marking I guess. So I wasn't looking forward to going through papers with 270 students but I set some time aside and told them to come at what would have been there lab time int he last week of the semester to look through their papers. The first afternoon was not too bad, a few students had genuine grievances and a few didn't. The second afternoon was a complete nightmare. The students were blatantly writing in extra answers on their papers and telling me I hadn't marked it properly. Now I'd been warned of this happening since we started working here but I'd never witnessed it before. They must think I'm completely stupid - some of therm weren't even intelligent enough to use the same pen! They'd come with bits of writing crammed around where their original incorrect answer was or they'd write underneath the red lines I'd put on the paper to indicate to myself there was no answer written for that question. I just laughed and told them to take it away and some of them got really stroppy about it. In hindsight I should have changed their mark to zero for cheating in an exam - Ha! next time.
The final exam is yet to come so we'll see how many of them pass. Of course there are a handfull of students in this group who are hard-working and genuinely seem to want to be at University but to be honest most of them don't seem to appreciate the opportunity that they have - I know that people at home are the same - it must be human nature not to appreciate things until it's too late. But these students are the future of this country and they cannot see that they can make a difference - there are only a few thousand graduates every year from universities in Ethiopia. They really are the future government ministers but they don't seem to be able to look to the next day let alone life after graduation.
[J] Last Saturday after a quiet dinner of pizza in Post Rendezvous we cycled home. This is something we do every week so nothing unusual there, but unfortunately it was a particularly dark night and we only had one light between us. As we neared our house we turned right off the main road (at Photo Era) and took a slight different line each. Neal went head-on into a rather large rock which was in the middle of the road. His bike stopped and unfortunately Neal didn't. Luckily it wasn't too major an incident but he's got a big scabby knee now which hurts when he has to cycle to work (Aaahh). Usually when we cycle home the streets are deserted but of course not tonight. Poor Neal not only had a fall to contend with but a bunch of people who were hanging out on the corner saying "woiney" and "I'm sorry" which seems to be their translation for "izo". I jumped off my bike to see Neal -- he said he was okay and a girl came up to me, shook my hand and said "Hello Dr Jenny -- I am one of your students." Great -- not only a bike accident, but a group of people watching and them turning out to be students!
On Tuesday I was cycling to work alone (Neal was letting his knee recuperate) and I also fell off my bike! I've only fell off once before -- not long after we arrived and it involved a gari (horse and cart driven by maniacs). I've always hated garis and my second bike tumble also involved a gari. I was cycling down a street and a gari was weaving from one side of the road to the other as they usually do. We cycle faster than the garis so when you overtake it's a bit of a gamble as to which side you over take. I decided to go on the inside so speeded up just as the gari veered over towards me. I slowed down a bit and rang my bell, to let the guy know I was there. He responded by completely ignoring me and whipping his whip behind him into my face. I tried to avoid the whip (if only I'd used Keith's technique of grabbing the whip and chucking it into the hedge!) but hit a rock or something -- anyway I came off. Luckily avoiding the steep ditch at the side of the road. The gari just carried on for a few metres and then stopped and both the driver and his passenger just sat there staring at the ferenj on the floor. I was fine - not hurt but my leg was trapped between the pedal and the frame of the bike and I was having a bit of trouble freeing it. Still the gari driver just watched eventually some guys from a bike stand came over to help just as I managed to get my leg free. They asked if I was alright and I managed to mutter in a mixture of Amharic and English (Amaringlish) something about stupid garis, whips and bells. They brushed off my saddle and pointed in dismay at the mud all over my trousers but I assured them I was okay and set off to work (I was almost there). As I passed, I called out to the gari driver that he was a "stupid donkey" which apparently is a strong insult here and that made me feel a bit better!
[J] Another week, another leaving party - Well at least that's what it feels like at the moment. This week it's the turn of Sally to head back to the motherland. We had a small party on Saturday night. It's pretty quiet in Awassa at the moment as lots of people have left or gone on holiday for the summer. So six of us gathered at Jenny's house for a wee party. Sally is the Gouder queen of Awassa. She doesn't like beer so when we are out she drinks wine. In Ethiopia yu can buy imported wine but it's far too expensive for a volunteer to drink regularly. So she has to make do with the Ethiopian produced wine of which the most widely available is a red wine called Gouder. As an appropriate send off we thought we should have a wine tasting session with all the Ethiopian wines you can buy.
Earlier in the week we randomly assigned the different wines for each of us to buy. Marc (who is French) was particularly pleased to have been given the task of buying "Shampagne" (no that's really how it's spelt!). We turned up to Jenny's with our bottles of booze, unfortunately, Melanie was not feeling too well and couldn't face drinking - this was rather fortunate for the rest of us as she could be an impartial judge leaving the rest of us free to "blind" taste the wines. We had 3 whites - Awash White wine (6 Birr), Awash Cristal (20 Birr) and Kemilla (20 Birr), the Shampagne (a whopping 50 Birr), and three reds - Gouder (10 Birr), Gouder Export (20 Birr) and Axumite (20 Birr).
Melanie poured out the wines - white first into glasses and we had a taste and some "discussion" before scoring and trying to guess which was which. The results are shown in the table below. For each colour, we gave our favourite 3 points and least favourite 1 point. The whites were pretty ghastly and the 6 Birr cheap stuff was really no worse than the 20 Birr bottles. We've often puzzled over the difference between Gouder and Gouder Export - I mean who on Earth do they export it to for a start? At a previous party we did a blind tast test and the Gouder (original) came out better and no-one could tell the difference. At this party we could tell the difference as Gouder Export was a little less watery but there does seem to be a huge variation between bottles for both. I reckon it's just a con to get people to pay more for the export when going to parties etc. so they don't seem cheap - well we won't be falling for that again!
Most of the wines are about 12% in strength except the Awash White wine which they don't seem too sure about. The label says "strength 9-11%". Awassh white wine did win as most easy to open bottle as hte cork "slips out easily". The Axumite was very difficult to open and as Neal pointed out it "needs science rather than brute force" to open it. This was hampered by the fact that Sally had completely wrecked the half-broken corkscrew in opening the first (appetiser) bottle of Gouder! After failed attemps by Marc and Neal and a head scarf, the Axumite was eventually opened in a team effort by Sally and Neal using the broken corkscrew and two batteries!
The first wine we tasted was the Kemilla, we mostly guessed it was Kemilla although I thought it tasted quite strong and a little rough so it might be the cheap stuff, Neal thought it smelt artificial, Marc didn't think it smelt of anything, Sally thought it was sweet and Jenny G. was glad we only had one bottle of it! Any doubts we had over whether it was the cheapy one or not were soon abolished when the next sample came out which was the colour of urine when you are very dehydrated! Despite the awful appearance, Jenny, Sally and I actually thought it tasted as good as or better than the previous one. Marc said "I'm not drinking this" - wine snob! and Neal said he couldn't taste anything (he'll be a cheap date then!). Finally for the whites out came cristal which lived up to its name by looking like water! Sally thought it smelt horrible but Marc said "at least this one is wine", Jenny thought it was awful and tadted like a chemistry class!
We had a spot of delicious dinner and then moved onto the reds. Unfirtunately by this point, the comments weren't as clear and concise as for the whites. I don't know why - it must have been Melanie losing interest in recording the results!! We decided (very sensibly I think) to save the Shampagne for another night. After all it cost 50 Birr (almost 2 days salary) so we wanted to savour it another night.
| Wine (price) | Jenny G. | Jenny S | Marc | Neal | Sally | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gouder (10) | 2 | 1.5 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 10.5 |
| Gouder Export (20) | 1 | 1.5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 7.5 |
| Axumite (20) | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 12 |
| Awash White (6) | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| Cristal (20) | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 8 |
| Kemilla (20) | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 12 |
Note: Red text indicates red wine, yellow text indicates white wine. All prices are given in Ethiopian Birr (ETB), £1 = 15 ETB (approx). All advice and wines are drunk at your own risk - no responsibility will be taken for any accidents from drunken acivity as a result of using this table.
Our overall conclusions were - stick to the reds and don't bother paying the extra for Gouder Export when the original will do just fine! Also we have decided at the next party we will taste all the Ethiopian beers!
[J] I decided to a bit of baking this evening - some kind of cakey-thing with raisins in. The first job however is to sort the raisins out from any other junk with them. Then you have to pull off the stalks that are still attached which takes ages. Then when you finally cook with them you discover they are not made from seedless grapes and still have pips in - Bah!
This week is supposed to be the final exam week for the second year students. I say supposed to be because the students have gone on strike and are refusing to sit their exams. The reason is that next year due to a lack of buildings, the current students will have to live off-campus. At the moment all the students live in dorms on the campus with full board in a cafeteria on campus. Next year due to the government-endorsed expansion of the Universities, the number of students coming is too many for the amount of accomodation - despite the building of two new dorm buildings over the summer. To solve this problem, the new students and female students will be given priority for on-campus accomodation. The rest of the students will be given 180 Birr a month and expected to find their own food and accomodation in the town.
The students are not at all happy about this and say that they should be allowed to stay on campus because they are senior and the new students should be made to live in the town. Can't quite see the logic in that myself. They went on a kind of hunger strike - in that they refused to eat at the student cafeteria but most of them bought food from outside (which seems to defeat the purpose of their protest a little!) The students had a meeting with the president of the University. I don't know the details but it seems the students were not willing to accept any compromise or deal offered by the university so their next strategy is to refuse to sit their exams.
At this point I have lost what sympathy I had as it now just seems like a big scam for them to get out of taking their exams. I really don't think they're helping themselves either as they are going to have to take the exams sometime - surely it's easier to take them now at the end of the semester rather than next year - but maybe the students don't think so. There also seems to be a lot of intimidation of students to join in the protest. A few students turned up to an exam yesterday (about 9 of 200) but most are too scared to take it even if they don't agree with the protest. One student said to the Womens' affairs officer that her classmates had said they would kill her if she sat the exam! This is where I think they are being completely unreasonable. We have to put up with students cheating (see above) in order to be an open and democratic working environment and the students respond by what seems to me to be mob rule. I don't know what will happen - it looks like the students are leaving the campus so won't be sitting their exams just now anyway. I don't know - they want the moon on a stick!
[J] We just spent a wonderful weekend walking in the Bale Mountains. We went with Marc and Melanie as we were the only volunteers left in Awassa that weekend! We set off to the bus station to get to Shashmene. It's always a gamble trying to get public transport anywhere as nothing leaves until it is full (or much more than full!). The only bus in the bus station going to Shashmene was empty so we decided to check outside as previously we have boarded almost full minibuses just outside the bus station. Of course this time there was nothing there and to make matters worse when we got back to the bus station the original empty minibus was full and set off without us! Then we had to get on a bigger bus and wait for that to fill up. Luckily many people travel to Shashmene to go further afield so it didn't take too long. I was starting to worry that we wouldn't be able to get a bus to Dodola because it was lunchtime. In fact by the time we'd set off I'd convinced myself we'd have to spend the night in Shashmene which wasn't a pleasant prospect.
Thankfully I was wrong. We arrived at the bus station in Shashmene and found a bus going to Dodola. Told the guy we didn't want our bags on the roof but eventually relented after he assured us they would be safe. He put them up and then came to get his 5 Birr chrge for the service. Then we had a bit of an argument with a guy who had showed us the way to the wrong bus and wanted paying for it. Essentially he was just a beggar who hangs out at the bus station trying to make a bit of money. Begging happens all the time here but I find it annoying when people expect you to give them money for a service they haven't carried out or that you didn't need in the first place!
The bus was fairly small and was about 3/4 full when there was a bit of a kerfuffle and a mass exodus from the bus. It turned out another bigger and more full bus had just pulled into the bus station which was going to Dodola and several destinations beyond too. Obviously most of the passengers wanted to go further than Dodola so opted to change to the bigger bus. This left us with a bit of a dilemma as we were now the only passengers left on the little bus except for two other women. After checking out the big bus we decided to change to that one - much to the annoyance of the driver of the first bus. He actually refused to take our bags off the roof and told us to get back on the bus. This definately made up our minds not to travel with him and Neal ended up climbing onto the roof himself to pass the bags back down to us! We then realised that the two women left on the bus must have all the other luggage on the roof which consisted of dozens of plastic buckets and bags - which is presumably the reason they were still on that bus!
We found good seats on the big bus and didn't put our bags on the roof! It was a really big bus and left about 5 minutes after we'd boarded and it wasn't even full - what bliss! After a quick chat with one of the assistants I found out the bus was going to Goba then Ginnir, back to a town called Asela and then on to Addis Ababa which takes a total of four days to complete - which is why I guess they don't bother about filling up the bus. The journey to Dodola was pleasantly fast - we stopped a couple of times and I thought we'd broken down but seemingly it was just to allow all the men to pee at the side of the road! There was one very annoying bloke who was high on chat and thought he was "the man". Of course he wanted to impress the ferenjis and his idea of this was to stare at us constantly and reel off his extensive English vocabulary which consisted of "tomorrow" and "money"!! Luckily when we got off at Dodola - he stayed on.
We stayed the first night in a small guest house owned by a German NGO called GTZ. They have set up the trekking huts in the Adaba-Dodola area and are currently handing the scheme over to a local gvernment organisation called IFMP (integrated forest management project). We were amazed by the efficiency of the operation - we've not seen anything else like it in Ehtiopia. We chatted with one of the guides about how long we were staying and where we wanted to go and he told us how much it would cost (which agreed with the charges on a printed price list he also gave to us). He then asked us to sign a document stating how we should behave and how the guides should behave. If your guide was late or your horse was sick they gave you your money back! The guide lost 2 birr for every 5 minutes he was late - now that's an incentive to be on time and of course he was!
The guest house was great, we pulled the sofas through to a small conference room with a TV. There was a fridge stocked with beer and we cooked a bit of tea and sat back to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The only thing was there was some problem with the satellite dish of the connection to the TV or something so to picture was all pixellated and split screen and stuff. Despite Neal and Marcs' best attempts they couldn't fix it. I suspect this might have added to the excitement of the ceremony as it meant we could play "guess the country" by the pixelated colours and jerky actions as there was no way we could read the writing or hear the announcer!
The next morning our guide, Hussein arrived (on time!) whilst the others were still eating scrambled eggs for breakfast. The Bale Mountains is a predominantly muslim area and it seemed that every second person we met was called Hussein! We paid for the GTZ car to drive us the first 11 km to the start of the trail. Here we picked up a horse and leader to carry our bags. You can also trek the trails on horseback if you want to - I didn't want to! We wanted to get straight into the forest. On the first day we walked approx 7 km with a climb of about 700m. We were mainly walking through forest , it was beautiful with loads of twisty trees and pretty flowers. We took a break after an hour where the others made a complete mess of themselves eating mangoes while I sensibly stuck to gingernut biscuits. The Bale mountains are well known (in Ethiopia at least) for there wide variety of fauna and flora. We knew from our friends that this area is not good for seeing animals - the national park itself (where we visited last year) is better for animal spotting. Although we did see some bushbuck and baboons in the distance through our binoculars - Hussein must have excellent eyesight to have spotted them in the first place - although I guess he knows the places where they hang out (just like I used to know where the rabbits would be when I was a tour guide at Goonhilly!). We had to cross a river four times which at some points involved fashioning a bridge from large logs and rocks. Neal and Melanie managed to stay dry but Marc and I both got wet feet. At one crossing Marc gave up and just took his socks and shoes off and waded across!
We made it to the the first hut called Wahoro by lunchtime. The hut was really well equiped with kerosene stoves, a water filter and even a non-electric iron. We unpacked our bags and changed out of our boots - the hut even had flip-flops you could wear around the place. We threw together some rice, tomatoes and dried vegetables in a pan for lunch and relaxed while it cooked. The hut had a little porch with two benches and some benches in front of the hut. A little way down from the hut was a large roof where you could camp as demonstrated by our guide who pitched his tent there. There was a place where you could light a fire too for cooking or to keep warm. Next to the hut, there is another compound where the family who look after the hut live. I think most people in the area are farmers - althoguh they don't seem to grow crops, they mainly farm cattle, sheep and goats which they eat and trade for grain at the local markets. The huts give them a bit of extra income, we pay 25 birr each to stay there and you can also buy local bread and even a goat if you want. We asked for some bread and our guide asked if we wanted to watch a traditional flour mill. We went into the neighbours hut to see a small girl pounding away at grains of wheat on a slab with another rock to make the flour. The men and boys sat watching her so I asked if only the girls of the house did this kind of work. "oh no" Hussein replied "the women do it too!" I wondered how long the poor girl had been working to produce enough flour for our 2 rounds of flat bread which we had just eaten.
We ate our lunch and I introduced Melanie to marmite (which she liked!!) By this time the rain had started so we sat on the porch and the others read books while I tried to convince them to do something more fun. I busied myself exploring the bathroom. Behind the hut was a smaller little hut with a toilet and a "shower". The toilet was a western style flush toilet which wasn't plumbed inso you had to flush with a bucket and presumably just empties into a pit latrine - but much more pleasant. The shower was a bucket on a ledge with a tap attached to the bottom of it! If you wanted a shower the guide heated up large pan of water over a kerosene stove which was surrounded by a large wicker-basket type contraption which presumably acted to insulate the pan and heat it up faster - very smart. We also looked through the guest book and played "find all the VSO volunteers!"
Luckily the rain stopped and our guide took us on a walk to a small waterfall which was very pretty and then we went to some "caves" which was a cliff face with some shelters built at the bottom. The locals come here twice a year for several days to pray. There was a small fire lit and our guide told us there was praying starting that night. I looked at the roof and didn't fancy their chances of staying dry in the rain!
I know Ethiopia is in Africa and you expect it to be hot but we are currently in the rainy season and at the altitude we were at (over 3000 metres) it was really cold as night fell. Luckily there was a wood burning heater in the hut. Unluckily it didn't work and filled the hut with smoke! So we survived by opening one of the bottles of wine that you can pay for in the hut ate a dinner of pasta and tomato sauce! It was raining but cozy inside the hut with kerosene lamps and candles lit and we played cards until it was so cold we had to go to bed!
The next morning, we decided to have porridge for breakfast. We thought the porridge would be "gumfo" - local porridge which isn't like what I would call porridge. However someone had written in the guestbook that the porridge was really good so we ordered 4 servings as we were running a bit low on food and thought we should have a hearty breakfast. About half an hour later two bowls of "porridge" appeared. We should have trusted our instincts as it was indeed gumfo. Neverless we each got a spoon and dug in. Gumfo is made from some kind of grain - wheat I guess which is ground up and mixed with water to form a thick paste. It's served in a bowl with a hole dug out the centre of the porridge which is filled with savoury, spicy rancid butter - Hmmm, just what I wanted for breakfast! After the first spoonful, I though it was okay but as I ate a few more spoonfuls it seemed to get worse until I started to feel a bit sick after about 5 spoonfuls. Neal did quite well and managed to eat a fair amount. Melanie had the same experience as me and Marc tried one spoonful and refused to eat any more. We felt quite bad that the family had made it and we didn't like it - cultural differences and all that. I think that was the main reason why Neal ate as much as he did to try and make it look like we were all full! When he saw how much we'd left, Hussein asked us if we didn't like it. We mumbled some excuse about being full - all four of us had probably managed to eat a quarter of it between us! Hussein tried it and then informed us it wasn't good porridge. It hadn't been prepared well and he would complain to the family! We told him we had had enough to eat and agreed we'd only pay for half the porridge! Hussein told us it would be better at the next hut but we decided not to risk it there.
We walked out of the forest and through several farms as we walked followed a contour around a hill. Then the landscape opened up into moorland and we could have been in Yorkshire or Scotland! There was even heather about. We walked about 10 km which was pretty hard work as we climbed higher still. Hussein was keen to push us on and as we reached the hut it was all worth it as we marvelled at the spectular view and a massive storm came in. The second hut, Angafu, was just about the highest point we got to about 3500m. The hut was a little more basic than the first one but still well equiped. We unpacked again and surveyed our meagre food supplies -pasta or pasta. Marc, Melanie and Neal were debating the benefits of buying a goat to eat for dinner. They found out from Hussein that a small goat would provide about 8 kg of meat. They were wondering if they could eat that much - even if they shared it with Hussein and the hut keeper and how much they'd have to eat for lunch the next day. They were still trying to decide when another ferenj appeared and entered the compound. Lets hope he's not a veggie too I said to the others and he can share a goat with you. Then two more ferenjis appeared, and some more and eventually eight of them showed up. They were tourists from the Netherlands and were in the fourth and final week of their trip. They were spending only one night in the huts and were just stopping here for lunch before continuing on to Wahoro, the hut we had left that morning.
We watched them eat their lunch with pangs of jealousy as they pulled out jars of jam, fresh bread, tinned meat and laughing cow cheese from there daypacks and tucked in. Then we looked up at the enormous black clouds in the sky and the lightning over the hill from where we had just come from … and they had to go after their lunch. Suddenly we didn't feel quite so jealous as we ate Neal's homemade marmalade on the local flat breads. After they left, the heavens opened and we sat under the eaves of the hut drinking tea and watching the rain as it lashed down. There was even some hail mixed in with it too. Hussein heated some water so we could have a shower and after waiting for an hour or so, the rain still hadn't stopped so Neal decided to brave the shower anyway. Hussein filled up the bucket and told us there was a bit of a problem as the rain was coming in the hut. We decided to go for it anyway. The water in the bucket was toasty and warm and I even managed to wash my hair but the hut was bloody freezing and the rain water that came in through the walls and roof was very cold too! It was kind of worth it though because once I'd got out and dried and put my clothes back on I felt completely invigorated and nice and cozy too. Of course ten minutes after we finished our showers it stopped raining which would have made it a much more pleasant experience!
We spent the afternoon deciding not to get a goat - the decision was finally made after we checked how much money we had left! Instead we prepared a sumptuous feast of pasta and packet sauce. But as always when you have spent the day walking and are camping out, food always tastes great. We also rationed out some chocolate to leave us two squares each for the following day too. I was feeling pretty exhausted and persuaded the others to play mindless card games which they weren't impressed with at all so I went to bed instead! We had had the stove on for most of the afternoon so the hut had warmed a little but the bedroms were still cold so I kept most of my clothes on. It was so cold even Hussein gave up his tent and slept in the hut with us!
The next morning after waiting for some bread and a horse we set off. At each destination we had a new horse and horse handler. This means that the money you pay to hire them is more evenly spread around the communities living in the area. On the last day we walked back through the forest to where the car had dropped us off on the first day. About 7 km - mostly descending. We crossed the river a couple of times but the last time had a proper bridge made out of tree trunks. We arrived at the rendezvous point and relaxed, lying down on the grass while waiting for the car to come. We had sent a message with the Dutch people's guide to send the car at 12 instead of at 3pm which we'd originally decided on. We arrived at 12 and there was no sign of a car for the next hour so we wondered if our message had got through. We decided we wanted to try and get back to Awassa that afternoon rather than spend another night in a hotel so we were worried if the car didn't show up soon we wouldn't be able to get back before it got dark. There were a group of guys surveying the land around the pick up point who were suposed to have been picked up at 11am. So when a car finally appeared on the horizon evryone was anxious to know whose it was. It was a pickup truck and as it got closer we saw a GTZ sticker on the side but our elation was short-lived as the driver got out and told us they were on some other business. But he did say, they had only just received our messgae and another driver was on his way to pick us up. Finally, the car arrived and took us back to Dodola. It dropped us at the bus station where we were informed the bus to Shashmene would leave at 3pm after the market had finished. I was surprised to hear such a scheduled time and doubted whether it would happen. However we bought our tickets and sat in the grotty bus station "cafe" and then went and secured our seats on the bus. The bus left on time and I was relieved we should make it back to Awassa before dark. The journey was very bumpy. The driver seemed to take some kind of perverse pleasure in finding the best potholes to make all the passengers literally bump off their seats. The other passengers were particularly amused at the sight of four grubby ferenjis being bounced around! It seemed to take ages but we luckily got straight into a minibus at Shashmene going to Awassa where we arrived just as the sun was setting. We stopped in at Post Rendezvous to avoid a sudden heavy downpour and ate a very delicious pizza before trekking the final 20 mintes back to our house.
The students did indeed leave the campus without sitting their exams. The exams still had to be set by the instructors incase any students turned up. My exam was last saturday and out of 370 students we had 25 show up. The students who took the exam were mostly advanced standing students which means they are not regular students but are on a kind of sabbatical from their jobs to take a degree. They have no reason to get involved in the students' strike so sat their exam as they are hoping to graduate soon.
Now I've just found out that the student representatives have written a letter to the president of the University saying they are sorry for their behaviour and they actually do want to take their exams after all! The general concensus amongst the instructors is that the ringleaders of the strike were students who were failing the year and didn't want to take the final exams because they knew they were going to fail. These students can now tell their families that will not return to the University because of the "troubles" there rather than because they failed all their courses!
The students are now going to be called back to the campus to take their exmas the week starting 30th August. This is very annoying as I now have to write another bloomin' exam and mark them in the few days before a wedding which we will be involved with all weekend because I am a bridesmaid and Neal is an usher and then our friends come from the UK. Hurrumph - I'm in a big sulk and want to go on strike myself!
The timing for the Olympic Games here is not great. We are only two hours difference from Greece so I was expecting to be able to watch many of the events but all the finals seem to be very late at night. Am I just being cynical or does that happen to suit North America quite well! Contrary to speculation, there is no big screen like there was for the football so we have to rely on hotels with TVs. The problem is most places close after about 9pm during the week and nobody respectable is seen out after that time.
So we've had to make do with reading the results the next day on the BBC website. Originally I tried the official Athens site but I found it didn't give me the imformation I wanted i.e. a round up of the days events and results. We connected to the internet whilst the womens marathon was on and failed to get a live video as advertised on the BBC website, I guess our connection is too crap. We did watch the live updates that are typed in every few minutes but we disconnected when it said that poor Paula Radcliffe had collapsed in tears at the side of the road!
It's been pretty frustrating for me not being able to watch anything. Instead we listen carefully during any race with Ethiopians in because if they win you can hear a cheer across the whole town! Maybe we should have got to know our neighbours better. They all seem to have TVs! As far as I can work out the Ethiopians have been doing pretty well in their favourite events. Poor Haile Gebreselassie missed out on a medal though - maybe him and Paula can comiserate together!