[J] Recently I have been testing out various styles of skirts and their suitablilty for cycling in. I know this may come as a shock to some of you but I actually wear skirts quite often here - they're cooler than trews. So far I have concluded from my research that wrap-around skirts on a bike are a definite no-no. I found this out the hard way. I spent most of my trip to work frantically holding my skirt down with one hand whilst trying to negotiate the new road surface with the other. Resurfacing the road here consists of dumping big piles of rocks at intervals along the chosen road. These tend to remain as large piles for a week or two (very hazardous in the dark - they're about 1 1/2 meters high!) until a steamroller type piece of machinery comes along to spread them out. Notice how I didn't say "flatten them" - no they just get spread out. The largest rocks get pushed to the side of the road, so you have to get off and carry your bike over the boulders when you want to get on or off the road. For several weeks it's very difficult to cycle along as there are big rocks everywhere.
Anyway, other styles of skirt seem to be ok (despite having a bloke's bike) as long as they're not too tight which makes it difficult to get on and off. Although I've seen several Ethiopian women who cycle in skirt suits but haven't managed to spy on them to see how they manage.
[J] This week was the mid-semester break. Great we thought - a week off. Apparently not. The mid-semester break is actually the exam period so neither staff nor students get a "break". The first thing we had to do was help to compile the exams. I have to say I never appreciated how much work it is to write an exam (Ok I hear all you teachers/lecturers saying "I could have told you that"). I don't think my dept went about it in a particularly efficient manner and it was rather left to the last minute. We spent about 7 hours in meetings on the Friday and Saturday before the exam (on the following Thursday) sorting out all the questions. Due to the number of students we decided that we could really only set multiple choice/true-false and gap fill type questions. Anything else would just take too long to mark. Anyway at about 5:30pm on Saturday we'd pretty much finished deciding on the questions. I typed them up ready for duplication on Monday (Tuesday is no power day at the Uni so we hoped to get them duplicated with a bit of time to spare). On Monday morning I arrived, as arranged, at 8:30am. There were no other biology instructors around but I opened the file printed out a copy to check for corrections and asked someone else to check it too. Still no-one else around. No problem I corrected the exam and asked the secretary to help me print it onto stencils ready for the duplicators. Ok I was finished and I was just waiting for someone, anyone else to come and help me. Because it was an exam I couldn't go to the duplictors alone for security reasons (!) and also because we needed 1100 copies of a six-page document we needed as many hands as possible to collate and staple them. Still nobody came and after lunch nearly the whole dept was invigilating for the other exams running. So it was decided we would have to get the generator put on on Tuesday and we'd do it then. So after carefully locking the stencils away for the night I went home.
On Tuesday the palava began again. First we had to wait for the generator to get started. By the time it was started, it was tea break so there was nobody at the duplicators. During this time I finally managed to round up some other instructors and when tea break finished we went over to the duplicators. We turned up to be told that it was now too close to lunchtime and it wouldn't be possible to make all the duplications before it was time for them to go to lunch. Because it was an exam they couldn't leave it unattended. So I continued smiling/grimacing patiently and we arranged to come back after lunch - at 1 o'clock sharp. Luckily one of the other instructors rounded up several people who weren't invigilating that afternoon so were free to help. So at 1 o'clock we turned up to the duplicators to find the generator wasn't on. So off we went to try and get it turned on. Only the one man who turned the generator on and off wasn't around. One guy even went to his house but he wasn't there. We were told to wait in the shy-bet (Tea room) and he would turn up there. Sure enough he turned up there about 10 minutes later, ordered himself a cup of shy (tea), sat down and proceeded to set up a draughts board on the table. At this point my colleagues strarted to get a bit frustrated too and told him we needed the generator on. "Sure" said mabrat-man - as I called him (mabrat is electricity) much to the amusement of everyone except mabrat-man. "I'll turn it on at 2pm". As you can guess this didn't go down too well and after some rather heated discussions (in amharic) mabrat-man - or John as he asked me to call him - got up and went to switch on the generator. By the time we got back to the duplicators, as if by magic, the electricity was on and finally we could start duplicating.
Well that was the start of a very tedious afternoon. Just imagine, 6 pages per exam and 1100 copies. All of which needed to be collated by hand and stapled and finally counted. That's over 6500 sheets of paper and if you think a ream of paper holds about 500 sheets you can start to imagine the piles of paper we were facing. I was fantasising about the photocopier in the I+I foyer in Glasgow Uni that collates and staples as it copies. To keep me going as the piles of paper didn't seem to be getting any smaller I kept reminded myself that this was more interesting than invigilating. Luckily it got done fairly quickly as there were 5 people from the biology dept and 4 staff in the duplicating office who all helped. So we finally finished and locked up the exams back in the dept and then I was given the responsibilty of keeping the key for the office - Gulp! Luckily no mishaps occured and on Thursday we were able to give the exam without any more trouble.
[N] The physics dept took a more streamlined approach to preparing the exam, so each instructor prepared a couple of alternatives from a single 'chapter' of the curriculum. Our meeting lasted about one hour and some of that consisted of a heated debate about blocks and pulleys. Somehow I managed to keep my head down during the duplicating proceedure, arriving back from my morning in the library to be told that it was all finished. The worry now is that I will shortly have 1050-odd scripts to mark the question which I set. Jenny has to mark the entire script for 300 students, we can't decide which is worse...
[J] On Thursday for the Biology exam I was asked to go and "coordinate" which was fair enough and much better than invigilating. I had to go round all the rooms where the exams were being held and check there were no problems. I also had to answer specific queries from the students about the exam because most of the invigilators were not biologists. During that exam, I was suprised how pleased the invigilators were. They kept telling me the studetns were all happy and there were no problems. Apparently the exams earlier in the week, particularly maths, had been very difficult and lots of students had been crying and shouting during the exams!
For all the exams this week, an invigilation timetable was posted. Learning from our mishap a few weeks previously we both carefully checked the timetable and were thrilled to see that our names did not appear on it anywhere! Yippee. Unfortunately not everyone agreed with us. During the week Neal was approached by a colleague and asked to cover 2 slots for another lecturer called Cynthia. Neal was understandably a bit miffed. First of all that neither of us have ever met Cynthia and we thought it was a bit rude not to ask Neal herself but through someone else. And secondly Neal found out she only had 3 sessions and she'd given 2 of them to Neal and they were on a Friday and Saturday afternoon. I was also approached by someone I'd never met before and asked to cover a slot on Friday afternoon for him coz he had a class. I thought this was fair enough but I thought it a bit strange that these people we'd never met knew we had no invigilation duties.... I think that we may have been the talk of certain lecturers around the campus. This seemed to be confirmed by the freshman coordinator who I met on Thursday. I met him at the new campus when I was coordinating the biology exam and and he started swapping me for other people. I explained was already busy that afternoon. Then he had the cheek to try and slot me in instead of himself the following afternoon. I had to explain to him several times that I was already covering for someone else which he wasn't too pleased about. Luckily he couldn't come up with a good enough excuse to assign me to Saturday afternoon. This was a particular stroke of luck because it is physics today and the exam is 3 hours long! Neal's up there now (with a crossword to do) - hopefully there won't be any tears etc but I'm not holding my breath.
[N] No tears, superbly written exam I feel (particularly question
four). I only managed to solve one of the crossword clues during my
three hour stint. Though having just checked the answers in the
following weeks Guardian Weekly if I ever meet 'Gordius' of the
cryptic crossword I'll have a few things to say to him. What sort of a
word is 'Nonet' I ask you? We're currently over a month behind on our
third hand copies of the Guardian Weekly. Apparently there
might be a war in Iraq. Actually we're not really that far behind as we
have a worldspace radio and wall to wall coverage provided by the BBC
World Service.
[J/N] Quite a few of you have been asking if we have had coverage of the war and how the Ethiopians feel about it. We listen to the BBC World Service and when the war started they had nothing but coverage of the war. This started to become quite tedious as it didn't sound like anybody really knew what was going on so they just repeated the same interviews every half hour or so. After about a week and a half they started including the football results again so we knew any immediate 'threats' must be over. The stance of the Ethiopians is quite interesting. Officially, the Ethiopians support the war - not that they have much choice if you think about where most of their financial aid comes from! There is also quite a lot of respect for Britain and the US which tends to colour the judgement of their respective foreign policies. Most of the conversations we've had with colleagues were reassuringly like ones we'd imagine having with friends at home. Some people think that Bush is a tad power crazy and Blair is just his sidekick. The opinion is probably much the same as in the UK where the governement appears to have taken a stance which the majority of the public don't agree with. However obviously we're jumping to conclusions that the majority of the British public are against the war - we're just going by the reports of anti-war protests throughout the country. The Guardian Weekly cover picture was of the anti-war demonstration in London, but we didn't see any one we recognised amongst the few tens of thousands squashed onto the page! However, in reality we imagine there's plenty of people in the UK that think it's a great idea to go and blow up Iraq, we don't get the Sun or Record Weekly here, so we're not sure about the tabloid reporting stance.
[J] Today we're going to a suprise birthday party. There is a volunteer in a nearby town called Dilla who has a girlfriend in Awassa. She is throwing a party for him. I saw her during the week when she asked if we could come. She was pretty nervous. In Ethiopia birthdays aren't celebrated apart from for small children so it's a new concept for her. She said not to bring anything but we've been experimenting with our saucepan oven and have made a chocolate cake to take! We actually made two because we had to test it to make sure it wasn't boggin' before we gave it to someone as a present! I have to say it's pretty darn fine!
[N] mmmmmm. Chocolate cake.
[J] As I mentioned last night we went to a suprise party. We met up with Helena and she took us to her house. We waited there while she went to meet Bob - they'd made plans to go out for dinner. Anyway they showed up and we duly jumped out and shouted "suprise" and Bob was indeed very suprised. Then we proceeded to make little impact on the hugest buffet I have ever seen. Wow it was amazing. There was all sorts of things including pakora-style veg of all description including cauliflower - a rare treat here and actualy brought by Helena's sister from Addis. There was also "Dorro Wot" which is traditionally eaten at all types of celebration in Ethiopia. Wot is any kind of sauce usually eaten with injera and dorro is chicken. It's a firm favourite with all Ethiopians.
So after copious amounts of food, several beers and some good craic we headed out to our now regular Saturday night spot "the feven". Bob told us that the party was much more fun than what he did on his actual birthday on Thursday. He had his house painted so literally spent the day watching paint dry! At the Feven you'll be pleased to hear we introduced Awassa to some Scottish culture. Keith and Lori had taken some CDs to Helena's and still had them on them. They had lots of homemade compilations, mainly from their wedding last year. It was suggested that the DJ at the Feven would happily play requests from them. So as Bob also studied in Scotland (Dundee) we just had to request 500 miles by the Proclaimers. What a laugh! Before that track there was not a single soul dancing and as the first few bars came on, about 8 ferenj leaped onto the dance floor and proceeded to sing (shout) along and jump up and down. The locals seemed fairly amused - some even joined in and asked us how to dance to it "Just jump up and down" we told them which they seemed to do quite happily. This was followed by the usual favourites "Daddy Cool" and "Staying Alive" (Always in that order - apparently they're on the same CD!) and the place was jumpin'.
[N] Just wait 'til we take the CIState cd along!
This morning a few of us managed to meet at "Mountain Snack Cafe" for a swift coffee and cake before walking up the small hill in Awassa called Tabor Hill. Actually I think the locals call it a mountain but it only takes 20 minutes to get to the top! It rained a lot last night so today the air was quite fresh and there was a lovely breeze on the hill. From the top there is a great view of Awassa and the Lake. We were pleasantly suprised by the lack of attention we received. A couple of weeks ago Keith walked up with a friend and had a bit of a bad experience. A ususal ploy here is for people to follow you all the way up and then ask for money for showing you the way. So this happened to Keith and his friend they refused to give them any money and as they made there way back down the two lads started throwing rocks at them. At first I thougth we might end up in a similar situation, several young boys ran up in front of us and some older lads followed us. Anyway when we got to the top the small boys were loitering around us Lori asked them (in Amharic) what they wanted, to which they didn't answer. So we told them to leave us, which they didn't but then one of the older lads told them to leave us alone and it seemed to do the trick.
After a short rest at the top we walked down the other side of the hill and back round the edge of the lake to a hotel for a drink by the side of the lake. As we approached our descent lots of local children followed after us. Unfortunately they were Sidamo so they couldn't understand amharic but they were quite young and just seemed curious. They had the cutest little puppy with them and just wanted to hold our hands and walk with us. At one point we had a following of about 15 kids and then all of sudden one of the older ones said "enough" and they all stopped and turned back! Apparently some of the local children have strict areas set out by their parents of where they're allowed to go and I think they reached the edge of it!
The walk was nice and on the whole peaceful which makes a nice change. As we sat beside the lake in the sun with a cold drink I thought "this is the life" what a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The area by the lake around the hotel has lots of monkeys. There are Colobus monkeys which Keith calls Skunk monkeys due to there long black and white coat and there are vervet monkeys which look like little old men with white beards. The vervet monkeys also have bright blue testicles!
[J] The short rains seem well and truly underway. We thought they had started a couple of weeks ago but then they stopped. This week they're back with a vengeance. It absolutely tanks it down at about 4pm each afternoon. Yesterday we were stuck at work (marking exams suprisingly enough) and it rained continuously for about 3 hours. The drainage system isn't very speedy so when we decided to make a break for it the campus was like a swimming pool. When we got back our guard and maid were waiting for us huddled up in blankets and seemingly very worried that we had got wet. Ethiopians don' t like the rain much. They never move so fast as when it starts tanking it down. I know they are excellent long distance runners anyway but I'm sure if they ran at more events where it rained they'd be smashing even more world records.
To make sure we were ok Almaz gave us what seems to be the equivalent of a Horlicks-type drink to warm us up. We have absolutely no idea what's in it. It's very thick it might be wheat based with some milk in it but I'm not sure. We have borrowed a traditional Ethiopian cook book from the Uni library and the closest thing in there is called gruel! I quite like it but Neal hates it. The trouble is he hasn't told Almaz yet so she keeps bringing him some!
The funniest thing about the rain is all the frogs that appear. I have absolutely no idea where they come from or where they go when it's sunny but as soon as there's a significant downpour out they come. You can hear them ribbiting away from quite far away. There's so many of them and they all ribbit at the same time. I reminded us of home as we were lying in bed coz it sounded like a car alarm!
[J] This week I went to Adventist High School which is where our Amharic teacher (Kase) teaches English. He wanted me just to introduce myself to the students and answer their questions. The idea being to see if they could communicate in English with a "native speaker". It was great fun. I spoke to three seventh grade classes. I'm not quite sure how that relates to the British education system - and it doesn't correlate directly because children from rural areas and poorer families tend to start school later so there's usually a fairly wide age range in each class. Anyway I think the majority were around 12 years old or so. This school is a private school so the level of education is generally much better than in a state school. In Ethiopia, students are taught in English from secondary school but if the teacher doesn't speak very good English then I imagine it means the students don't really learn very much of either English or of the subject that teacher is trying to teach. The students in this school spoke very good English. In fact I think they understood me better than a lot of my students at the University!
They wanted to know all sorts of things but one of the first questions from all the groups was "Are you married?"! In Ethiopia there is no word in the language for boyfriend or partner. You are either single or married. So we usually tell people we are married as it reduces confusion. So I told the students I was married and my husband was also in Awassa. One girl put her hand up and said " You are very beautiful - Is your husband handsome?" After I stopped laughing I told her of course he is! It's very strange - in every class I had someone tell me I was beautiful. Here if you are white then you are automatically beautiful which I find really difficult to accept. Especially when i think most Ethiopian women are absolutely stunning. That's different perspectives for you I suppose. I also got asked what my favourite Ethiopian food was, if I liked Ethiopian culture/music/people, how many brothers and sisters do I have, what does my mum/dad/sister do, what my favourite football team is (The Jags!) and if I like Dorro Wot (Chicken dish served on special occasions) - I don't think they quite understood that I was vegetarian. Ethiopians love meat and it is considered a luxury (which is why it is given up for lent) so I think they think I'm quite strange - but that doesn't seem to be anything new. Everyone thinks we're completely bonkers for not having sugar in tea and coffee and want to know why. Often people keep saying - are you sure you don't want sugar? - Just a little?
All the students were very good and at the end Kase wrote lots of
questions about me on the board for them to answer. One of the classes
were particularly interested in forming links with schools in the UK.
I think they would like to write and receive letters (not many
email facilities here - especially not in schools) to improve their
English. I will try to make some more focused enquiries but if anyone
knows of any schools that may be interested then let me know. I think
either primary age or the first couple years of secondary school would
be most appropriate. Kase wants me to go back in a few months or so and
I will take my camera and get some pictures on the website.
[J] Today is a holiday as it is Good Friday. Keith came round early(ish) this morning to take Neal biking up Tabor Hill. This week I have been finding out about Ethiopian Easter. I think I mentioned before that the Orthodox Christians have been fasting. They don't eat anything until midday or 3pm (depending on how strict they are) and then they abstain from meat and animal products. This lasts for longer than our "lent" I think about 56 days and Ethiopians really love meat. So it turns out that Easter is a bit of a meat-fest. I am starting to get a little concerned - Two chickens (well a hen and a cockerel) have appeared in our garden in the last couple of days and I don't think the intention is to keep them as pets for the kids. Although there are shops here that call themselves butchers, it's not really the done thing to pop along and pick yourself up a nice cut of beef of chicken - No, here it is much more common just to buy the live animal you intend to have for dinner that weekend. So as you can imagine the carefree days of the goats, cows, sheep and hens that roam the streets is about to come to an end. At the beginning of fasting you could see the relief in their eyes but now......I'm sure they know what's coming!
So today most people go to church to pray - for the whole day well from early in the morning until 9pm anyway. Tomorrow is a normal day and then Sunday is Easter. The fasting however finishes at 3am on Sat night/Sun morning. Yes that's right 3am. So everyone wakes up and proceeds to feast. I've heard there are various strategies involved. First you eat shiro wat (veggie made from split-pea flour - very tasty actually) this is because you haven't eaten meat for a long time so you need to line your stomach first. Then you can go on to eat whatever you like. Of course this will include Dorro (chicken) wat, the all time favourite, probably some tibs - beef or goat fried, usually over a charcoal stove - looks a bit like ribs, and also various types of raw meat all served with injera and berebere (spice made from dried ground up chillies and other stuff). All this at 3am - I can't quite believe it but I think I will be finding out tomorrow night whether I want to or not! I just hope I'm not asked to join in - Vegetarianism isn't really understood here!
Actually there is a plus side to all this (June stop reading now!). As all the neighbours have been stocking up on goats, chickens etc for their Sunday dinner the noise of all the animals at night has been terrible. The goats baa all night and the cocks start cock-a-doodle-doing at god knows what hour of the morning - and you know I'm not exactly at my best in the morning. I tell you what with the dogs barking and sometimes the hyenas joining in in the middle of the night I've been tempted to get up and kill a few myself! Well as Neal reminded me - this will all stop after the weekend - gulp. I think this is going to be an experience for me - but I'm not sure it's one I really want to have!
This afternoon our serategna invited us for a coffee ceremony and "collo" which is the name for snacks served with coffee at 3pm. This was great, the only drawback being we were also invited to Keith and Lori's for lunch. No problem for us though! So after a lovely stir fry and rice (with soy sauce - yum) we came back for a taste of food traditionally served on Good Friday in Ethiopia. This actually tasted a lot better than I'm going to be able to decribe it! There was a wheat based dish with corn and beans in it served with a spicy sauce with onion, garlic and berbere in it. This was served with tasty bread and unfortunately a not so tasty drink which we could not identify at all. The flavour was improved slightly by a squeeze of lomi juice (cross between a lemon and a lime) but we refused a second glass! Apart from the drink everything was delicious. I forget the name of the wheat-based stuff but apparently it is supposed to represent Jesus' sacrifice. Of course this was followed by delicious coffee and popcorn. So now we are completely stuffed but satisfied! Also I was able to make it clear that I didn't eat meat and wouldn't be wanting any Dorro wat tomorrow!