[J] On Wednesday we met up with the other VSOs as usual at the Post Rendezvous to get our weekly pizza fix. Although neither Neal nor I had pizza this week! Actually that's just as well because three of the others ordered the pizza I usually get and it came with loads of ham on it! Actually come to think of it, they never really stick to the descriptions on the menu. I think they just make all the pizzas the same with whatever they have in the kitchen. Luckily for me I've always had veggie ones previously. In a lot of restaurants and cafes they don't actually have menus. You have to just reel off all the amharic words you know until they say they have something!
After our meal we decided to have a fruit salad. It was very nice with a delicious syrupy sauce on it. "Oh this tastes like um.. sweeties" I said trying to remember what the flavour was. "Aah" replied one of the Canadians, "you can buy it in a bottle at the supermarket - it's called Vimto" And that's exactly what it was - Vimto flavoured sauce on fruit salad - what a great idea. So then we had fun describing Vimto to the Canadians (and Dutch). I've just realised that there is another example of Ethiopia being stuck in the 80s!
[J] Just as I thought we were adjusting to the heat, it gets hotter. I was informed that on Thursday the temperature reached 36degC. (Don't let JPK see that bit coz he won't come and visit!) Thankfully there have also been some wicked thunderstorms which help to cool things down but some nights we find it really hard to sleep coz it's so hot. On Weds I cycled to the new campus for a lecture at 2pm. So I was cycling for about 15 minutes during the hottest part of the day. When I arrived I was drenched with sweat! Luckily I got there about 20 minutes early so I had time to recover. Apparently it is the hottest time of year at the moment and the short rains should start in the next month or so and it will get cooler. Although the Nigerians who work here have been complaining to Neal about how cold it is here and how they have to have blankets to keep them warm at night....Crazy!
[J] For some insane reason we agreed to enter a 10k race this weekend. It was organised to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and only cost 5Birr (<50p) to enter so we felt that we had to - two of the VSOs in Awassa work for the regional AIDS awareness office. Anyway, apart from our thrice weekly stadium sessions and a few 4k runs since we got here we weren't really prepared but hey - it's all for charidy mate!
So the race was due to start at 8am and we were supposed to arrive 1 hour before this. The other VSOs (having been in Ethiopia longer than us) arranged to meet us at Keith and Lori's house at 7.15am where we pinned our race numbers to our shirt and then wandered down to the start. It was really busy with loads of people milling about. Anyway we hung around for a bit then a bit longer and at about 8am they started making speeches and playing some music over the tannoy system - unfortunately they didn't seem to be able to get the synthesiser working (shame!). Then some movement occurred and all the women were ushered over to a little street to warm up. At this point we realised the boys and gals were running separate races, but not to worry as from VSO there were 3 girls and 2 guys so we weren't all alone. Anyway the girls started warming up in this little street. I was a bit anxious about warming up too much incase I used up all my energy. But I tagged along for a couple of lengths of the street to loosen up and did some stretches. I was feeling a bit worried as all these girls seemed to belong to an athletics club and several had "Ethiopia" tracksuits on and there were coaches with stopwatches at the side of the street shouting. There warm-up pace was also my race pace. Oh well not to worry. A bit later we were escorted to the start line and people started running, we thought this was the start but found out it was just another warm up, this time running away from the start line and back to it. Well bugger that I thought, I definitely need to save myself. I'm sure some of those girls must have run at least 5k just warming up. After being called back to the start line one more time and told to do another warm up I was wondering if the race was ever going to start. i was also getting concerned that the temperature was rapidly rising the longer we were waiting around. Finally at about 8:50 we started.
Now I've heard of a sprint finish..but a sprint start. When the gun went off I could hardly stop giggling. Everyone sprinted away from the line leaving a trail of dust behind them. The serious runners then continued to leave everyone else behind but about 100m up the road most of the "fun-runners" started walking. This was when things started getting funnier. I was just plodding along at a steady pace, my aim being just to finish the race - without walking if I could. Anyway, everytime I approached someone walking they would see it was a ferenji and start sprinting again. I could hear people shouting to the people walking in front of me presumably something like "Watch out you're about to be overtaken by a ferenji!" Presumably by the look of terror on their faces as they looked over their shoulder at me and also the fact that they desperately tried to sprint away - this was a bad thing.This cycle would continue until eventually they gave up sprinting and I overtook them. I would have felt quite good about this except most of them were only about 10 years old and were running in bare feet or socks only!
The crowd along the route were amazing. As far as I know there were only 3 ferenji (me, Liddy and Ilske) running in the womens' race, and we were certainly a novelty. It was like being a champion runner as I approached you could hear the crowd start cheering and shouting in English and Amharic things like "Good work", "Very good ferenji", "Ferenj! keep going" and also lots of people shouted "gobez" which as far as I know means "smart/clever" but I guess it must have other meanings too. Also some of my students were spectating. I didn't recognise them (I teach about 300!) but they cheered me on: "Jenny, our fantastic teacher!" I tell you it kept me going. The other thing that kept happening was that people in the crowd would start running along beside me - trying to beat the ferenji I think. But when they stopped I'd shout "Baqqa? Baqqa?" which means "enough?" and the whole crowd would have a jolly good laugh!
The race was 2 laps of a course along the main roads of the town, on one part there was a U-turn so you could see people in front or behind you. After the first lap I seemed to be completely on my own. I couldn't see anyone in front of me and there didn't seem to be anyone behind either. I started to get paranoid that everyone else had finished after the 1st lap and I was the only one still running. Luckily at the U-turn I saw that this wasn't the case and there was actualy someone who wasn't that far ahead of me. And she was walking. Ah I though maybe I can catch her up so I concentrated on that for a while. Well I was just catching her up, when the red cross van drove by and she stopped and got into it! I was gutted, my only potential running companion for the next 5k and she'd given up.
In the 2nd lap I really started to feel the heat, especially on the uphill parts! I was having to just concentrate on keeping going. Unfortunately I timed running around a certain roundabout next to the biggest church in Awassa just as it was finishing its service. So I also had to start dodging hoards of people as well as cars. And of course they all found it hilarious to see a ferenji running in a race. At several points I felt like I wanted to stop and walk but I have to say the crowd really kept me going. I managed to finish (to tremendous applause and cheering) in about 58 minutes (after some confusion about where the finishing line was) which considering a) I'd done no training, b) it was bloody hot and c) I don't think we're completely adapted to the altitude yet - I was pretty pleased. I was handed a rank card as I crossed the line (I came 40th), then I had to go and get my name written on a list and then I was given a t-shirt! Liddy and Ilske also did really well and now I'll hand you over to Neal to tell you about the boys!
[N] Keith and I didn't really work out what was happening with this race thing. We just had to keep our eyes open to see what the other boys with numbers were up to. After the girls set off we were trying to work out how they were going to set the boys off, would we leave immediately or would they let the girls finish their first lap first? Obviously we would get going fairly soon or it would be the middle of the day - which is to say, very hot. Hmmm, nothing happening, just hundreds of people lining the streets occasionally being pushed out of the way by either an over-zealous Toyota Land Cruiser with a film crew in it or by a police / army officer with a big stick. After about half on hour we figured that Jenny might be making an appearance some time soon. We knew she was coming because the men with sticks started to get even more frantic, whacking the crowd even further out of the way than before and the crowd made the biggest supportive noises of the day. Our start still didn't seem to be materialising and it gradually dawned on us that the race that we'd expected to start in the 8am morning cool was actually going to start at about 10.30, when the mercury is at least pushing 25degC and rising.
So after the womens race had finished (with an inspiring performance by Jenny) we finally got under way. Well, we got under way after quite a lot of milling about and one false start. I made the mistake of getting pulled along by the sprint start and spent the rest of the first lap recovering from this folly. Much shouting, which I took as support, though sometimes it wasn't absolutely clear that this was the intent. I think I had a rhythm of sorts for about ten minutes, this was sandwiched between a kind of hell at the start and delusional exhaustion at the end. Somewhere half way through my second lap, a thoughtful local decided that I needed to cool down. He launched the contents of a plastic jug with substantial force directly into my face, a good portion of this went straight up my nose, which wasn't very pleasant, but on balance I did appreciate the gesture. I was left wondering exactly what the intentions were behind this unecessarily powerful soaking.
Somewhere on the second lap I picked up a pace maker who ran shoulder to shoulder with me right to the end. I don't know if he was just enoying running with a Ferenj or if he needed the moral support too. Either way I have to thank him for keeping me going to the end. As I crossed the line I wasn't aware of anyone giving out rank cards, I just kept going the further 200m up the road to the Pinna restaurant for a refreshing Chimaki (fruit juice) and a several large slugs of water. Keith's words sometime before the start came back to me "we'll feel a lot better about this when it's all over". He was so right.
[N] So another whole week gone. Yesterday we went out on the lake in a boat, with the prime objective of finding some hippos. I'll point out at this stage that the hippopotamus is responsible for the highest number of human kills in Africa per annum (well if you don't count the humans of course). Four of us clambered into the rather rickety boat affair with our two oarsmen for the morning, a gentle push and we set off quite close to the edge of the lake. I was quite pleased to be able to imagine that we might stand a chance of swimming to the edge in the event of a capsize. However I was also contemplating the effects of the Bilharzia that lives in the lake. For some reason the conversation always comes round to parasites when you feel that they are close at hand. This didn't appear to be something on the minds of the twenty or so Ethiopians who were having great fun throwing themselves into the lake off a concrete jetty that ventures out past the water lillies. There was plenty of other action in and around the water, a great variety of birds getting their Sunday brunch, people fishing on rafts that managed to make our boat look like a luxury cruiser and livestock drinking all around the edge.
After about an hour and a half of fairly strenuous effort on the part of our captain and the first mate we were able to make out the profile of some logs in the water. Oh no, but these logs have ears, it's... Hippos! (you might want to re-cap the third sentance in the first paragraph of this section, because that's what I was doing in my mind) They mostly just sat there not doing much, with us at a distance of about 50-100m. Two things disturbed me particularly - firstly, when we arrived there seemed to be about fourteen of them, lying there with their nostrils, ears and eyes poking out, then after a while we could only see about eight, so did this mean that the others were currently heading in stealth mode towards the boat ready to tip us up and gobble us whole in a Jaws-esque type episode. Secondly, presumably in an attempt to make sure that the hippos didn't disappoint, our crew felt that it was their duty to try and liven them up a bit by hollering at them and banging the side of the (you'll recall, rickety) boat that was currently our only separation between life and hippo morning snack.
But no, it was good and we lived to tell the tale. Thankfully on our return journey, whichever crew member wasn't rowing took the duty of bailing out the now somewhat damp innards of our boat. We payed our 150Birr for the pleasure of our three hour cruise and cycled back for our now overdue lunch.
[N] On Saturday night there had been a couple of other VSO's in town, so we'd had some dinner at the Logita, coffee and cake (or beer) at the Pinna and then headed on to the Feven Lucky Pub for our first experience of Awassa's top night spot. Ok. We've not mentioned the seeming obsession with 'Titanic' (yes, as in Leonardo and Kate), to the point where THE phone keypad lock to have sports a Titanic logo, so perhaps you're not ready for this, but... Daddy Cool by Boney M is a hot tune in Ethiopia. Not something that I feel is wrong in any country, but a bit of a suprise all the same. Apparently Boney M headlined at the Addis Sheraton on the eve of the new Millenium. And I think that some of the atmosphere that was probably created that night was with us in the Feven on Saturday.
Jenny's had her hair braided. It's quite cool ([J] So why do you keep calling me spider-heid or medusa?!). Almaz did it for her in about an hour and a half. Check out the photos!
[N] It's well past my bedtime, so this will be brief, hopefully we'll get this uploaded tomorrow night (ISP / battery [tomorrow in a no lecky day] / phone line permitting). One of our intake (Libby) has been in Awassa this week, working at the teacher training college (TTC), developing the new curriculum for the teacher training institute (TTI) that she usually works at. So that's been really nice, catching up with someone else's experiences who started when we did. We seem to be thinking the same sorts of things so that's comforting. Work wise we're preparing for the mid-semester exams, writing exam questions and trying to impart that last vital bit of knowledge to our students. Jenny's initiated some discussions in her department about research activities, it's nice to start to get things going that might have a longer term impact.
I went mountain biking with Keith at the weekend. Don't worry, my high quality Phoenix Mountain Bike prevented me from taking even the smallest risk, as I have no faith in it whatsoever. So we sweated our way up Tabor hill and rode down it, then of course in that way that the locals simply (and understandably) don't understand we went back up and did it again. The people working on a water storage system for the new hospital being built gave us a bit of a funny look the first time we came past, but for the second time they had to down tools and stare! After all that exertion we ended up at the Pina Hotel for a mango chimaki (fresh fruit juice) and a chocolate doughnut. Suddenly it all seemed worthwhile.
[J] On Wednesday I had 300 handouts (each 20 pages long) to take up to the new campus so i decided to take the bus instead of cycle. I asked one of my colleagues (Getachew) to help me carry them to the bus and arranged to meet him. Unfortunately he was a bit late and the bus waits for no-one so we missed it. We were stranded at the old campus with 300 handouts and a lecture in half an hours time. So Getachew decided we should get a taxi up to the new campus and leave the handouts with the guards at the front gate who could put them on the next bus in an hours time. We walked up the street to find a taxi and after a short discussion with the driver we got in one. I though it was a bit strange that there was already a girl in the front seat - but hey never mind. As we set off Getachew infromed me we could only get a taxi as far as the bus station then we'd have to get a gari. This is when i realised that even the small taxis work on the same principle as line taxis i.e. they follow a certain route and cram as many people in a possible. Luckily we didn't have too far to go in this little Lada with 6 people in it. I was relieved to get out until i remembered the next step involved taking a gari. If i was on my own i would have cycled and been late for my class. Luckily the gari we chose had a horse that could actually walk without limping and you couldn't see all of its ribs. The day before Libby had got a gari down to the lake with some colleagues and she tols us the driver of the gari in front went over a bump and flew out the side of the cart! When she told me, I thought it was hilarious (i bet the horse did too) but now i had to get in one I started to fear for my safety. I climbed in and held on the a piece of the cart as tightly as i could. As we set off Getachew and the driver chatted away - The driver was asking if I was Indian! So there we were bumping along a dirt road - I was praying that the horse knew the width of his vehicle as he kept getting closer and closer to a big ditch at the side of the road. Getachew asked me if I used the garis. i told him I'd never got one before coz I felt sorry for the horses (most of them are in a horrific state) as I didn't think they were looked after very well. I don't think Ethiopians are really aware of the concept of animal rights but Getachew didn't seem too suprised. As we neared the Uni the driver started whipping the horse to make it go faster. Getachew shouted at the driver to stop and told him that i didn't like it! The driver was completely gob-smacked "Lemen (Why)?" he asked. Luckily by this time we had arrived so I could escape and leave him to ponder how crazy ferenji are.
[J] Since we arrived here we hadn't been paid. A couple of weeks ago we ran out of the money we'd been given in Addis and so started to chase things up. It turned out our salary was still being processed and there wasn't any ope of getting it soon and we were advised to fill in form to get a "salary advance" for the 2 months pay we were owed (Hmmm!). Well whatever it takes to get some cash! So we filled in the form (in duplicate) and handed it to the Dean of the Faculty to sign and send on its journey of collected many more signatures. We were told the process should be finished that afternoon. Not likely, after a few phone calls it became obvious we weren't getting it that day (Friday). So my boss lent us some more money for the weekend. On Monday the Dean started making enquiries. Apparently the form had to be signed by him (done), the vice president, finance and then it had to go to administration and then finally back to finance - Phew. Well first of all none of the aforementioned offices admitted to having seen the form. The vice president was away and his secretary swore she hadn't seen it. Anyway the next day the form turned up in finance and we were told it was being processed and to come back tomorrow. Well this continued for another week and a half. We would turn up every day to be told it was waiting for someone elses signature but they were away/in a minute/asleep etc etc. I was getting a bit frustrated it's a bit embarrassing having to ask your boss for money every few days (although it did make sure he kept the pressure on finance to get our money ready). Finally on Thursday finance told us they had the cheque ready and all it needed was - you've guessed it - a signature but the person wouldn't be back today - so come back tomorrow. Neal went back in the morning and got told to come back at 2pm. He was teaching then so they said ok 4pm. I went at 2pm and they told me "We made an appointment with your partner for 4pm why are you here now?" I told them I had a meeting at 4pm so I couldn't come then. "But the cashier is too busy now (there was a queue of about 50 people) so you're partner will have to come back at 4pm" "And can he pick up my salary too?" I asked "No - you need to sign for it" (Of course). Eventually I decided I wasn't going to get my money and as long as Neal could get his we'd be ok till Monday when i could get mine. However when my meeting finally finished at 6:30pm, the cashier was still opened and grudgingly agreed to give me my money. So hurray we're rich we've got 2 months salary each. Of course we need to pay some of it back to various people but we celebrated by buying a bar of chocolate - our first since we got to Ethiopia - what a reet treat!!