Well now we have seen how the other half live!!! You have heard me moan and whine about being ripped off for being ferenji well now I think I understand why. We were invited to a party by a Scottish girl who works for an Irish NGO (non-governmental organisation) called GOAL. She lives in Awassa with three other NGO workers and we thought it'd be nice to meet some of the other ferenji living in Awassa. It was bring your own beer so after dinner Keith, Neal, Angela (a recent arrival from Canada working at Debub Uni for 6 months) and I grabbed a couple of bottles of Gouder (local wine - cheapish and gets much more palatable after the first bottle!) and headed for "Haptam alley" which is the road by the lake. We weren't quite sure of the directions but followed the sound of pop music figuring if it wasn't Amharic pop music it must be a ferenji house! We were right, we knocked on the gate and pushed our bikes to the designated area and went on in. The first thing that struck me was the satellite dish in the garden, and the second thing was the DJ on the porch!
We went inside to put our wine on the table and this is where the reality of living as a VSO (i.e. on a local wage) hit me. The table was full of foreign wines from Italy, France etc and bottles of spirits and pizzas! Just to top off the effect was a massive bar of Toblerone just casually strewn across the table. Wow we were in heaven, we hastily hid our bottles of Gouder at the back of the table and met our hostess Susan, she had done VSO previously so completely understood our position. She was lovely and made sure our glasses were always topped up with good wine! The party was great and just like being at a party at home I had to keep reminding myself I was still in Awassa as I noted the fridge, sink, work surfaces with real cupboards and even a blender in the kitchen. I don't really know why I noticed the blender but it totally stuck in my mind, I'm sure I've never seen one in Ethiopia before!
It turns out there are loads of ferenji in Awassa working for various NGOs. Awassa is the capital of the SNNP region which is quite badly hit by famine in rural areas. Save the Children, Oxfam, World Vision and many others are all here. There was a bit of snobbery from a few people towards us VSOs "Oh you're the ones who came on bikes" laughed one person. And I was blanked for not knowing what one NGO abbreviation stood for! Someone asked us how long we'd been here, they were surprised we'd been here so long and hadn't seen us before. Neal pointed out we probably hang out in shabbier places! We also travel by bike whereas most NGO workers travel by 4x4 vehicles! Anyway it was a good laugh and nice to meet some new faces.
Well the number of VSO volunteers in Awassa has now doubled. This intake was the biggest in the history of VSO Ethiopia. 44 new volunteers arrived bringing the total number in the country to just over 100. We met the new Awassians in the Pinna Hotel. It was exciting to put faces to the people we have been emailing for the last few months. So the new people are:
Michela: A physics teacher who is working at the Teacher Training College (TTC). We have in common a passion for rugby and she's also a west-country lass!
Tricia: Also at the TTC but definitely not a teacher - a management adviser. Lori is upset that she got a key to the executive bathroom so soon after arriving
Jenny: Another one - making 2 Jenny's and 2 Nea/ils in Awassa - how confusing. This Jenny is working at the HIV/AIDS secretariat (with the other Neil!) and previously spent a couple of years in Mali with the Peace Corps.
John: A statistics instructor at Debub Uni - so one of our colleagues. He recently finished a VSO placement at a University in South Africa.
Marc: Another colleague (computer science dept) and rugby fan - unfortunately he supports France!
Kath: Well she's in Dilla (3 hours down the road by minibus) but plans to make frequent visits to Awassa to stock up on provisions and VSO gossip. She's teaching physics at Debub Uni - at the teacher training campus which is in Dilla.
So I expect things will be a bit different round here now. It's weird now I know how the others felt before we arrived. Things are going well so far and Jenny had us all round for a fab dinner - brave girl after only a week of being here.
I found out about this conference by chance when we were in Addis and I saw an article in a newspaper about it. This year it was in Addis. I ummed and aahed about whether or not to attend. Finally I decided to go and got a lift with Belachew from the VSO office from Awassa to Nazaret. From there it was just a 2 hour bus ride. The venue was the very impressive African Union Conference Centre in Addis Ababa. The plenary session room was where they hold the African Union meetings and had country name plates around the room. I would have sat at UK but the view of the screen from there was terrible so instead I opted for the prime viewing spot allocated to Burkina Faso! For each country there were headphones for translation, microphones and voting panels. There was no translation facilities at this meeting but you could listen to the presentations through the headphones. Cameras projected the speaker onto large screens throughout the talk and if a question was asked the cameras automatically centred to the microphone which had been turned on - how cool is that!
One of the organisers told me that 400 delegates had registered but I don't think that many were present. Most attendees seemed to be from Ethiopia and Kenya although I did meet people from all over Africa and there were some scientists representing the WHO. The two major symposiums were "HIV/AIDS, STD and TB" and "Malaria and other vector borne diseases". There were several smaller symposiums including; medicinal plants, nutrition and health, sexual and reproductive health and viral and bacterial diseases.
The plenary talk summarised the current status of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) in Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 30 million people are infected with HIV which is 70% of HIV-infected people worldwide. However only 1% of those who need the drugs, are able to afford ART. During the discussion it was pointed out that efforts should not only be focused on ART, especially as resistance will develop. Other factors such as a nutritionally balanced diet can be just as important.
One of the most heated debates followed a talk given by Amiri Rajabu from Tanzania. His talk was essentially very simple, he presented some statistics; that 3.2 million children under the age of 15 are infected with HIV and 800,000 of them are newly infected (i.e. did not become infected during birth) and adolescents begin sexual activity between the ages of 9-16. He had run workshops in schools where adolescents had told him they want to protect themselves from STDs such as HIV but they couldn't use condoms because they are too small. The speaker then asked the audience whether we should provide condoms in different sizes in order to accommodate everybody. Some agreed with the speaker that if it was a choice between condoms or HIV then such protection should be provided for school children. Others thought condoms should only be given as a last resort and ABC (practice Abstinence, Be faithful, or use a Condom) should be promoted i.e. people should be encouraged to abstain from sexual activity; condom use should only be the last resort. Yet another opinion was that as condom usage has not been successful in adults, so why should we expect it to be effective for adolescents. The talk caused quite a stir and the arguments continued over the lunch table.
The other sessions provided equally interesting topics. We heard about plant extracts which show anti-malarial activity, a grass pea (Lathyrus saivus) which is very resistant to drought, disease, pests and water logging but contains a toxin associated with a nervous disorder when the pea is eaten as a large (>30% calorific intake) part of the diet - i.e. during times of drought and famine. The toxin can be removed by soaking the pea before use. The speaker had interviewed women and found they knew the pea was related to the disease, and they knew that soaking or boiling before use was a good thing but many of them didn't practice this. On the other hand if they are eating this pea during times of drought then they likely don't have spare water to soak them.
I found the conference really interesting and it was a good opportunity for me to find out what kind of research is being carried out in Ethiopia and neighbouring countries. I was impressed by the high standard of the presentations but was dissapointed by the number of speakers who didn't turn up - there was at least one speaker in every session who didn't show. At first I thought they just couldn't be bothered but I spoke to a man from Tanzania and when he registered he discovered he was giving a presentation that afternoon, so I suspect many of the speakers hadn't been informed properly.
Oh my god - We thought someone was being murdered when we were happily watching a DVD one Sunday evening and we heard screaming and shrieking coming through the wall from next door. As we worried about what we should do having no way to contact anybody we listened a little closer and heard the tell tale Amharic word for God "Igzerbia, igzerbia" included in the screaming. It slowly dawned on us that no-one was being killed it was just some kind of religious ceremony. It continued for a couple of hours before it finally stopped. We didn't think much more about it until the next time it happened at 5 am in the morning. This went on on random mornings and was really quite horrible as you woke up hearing all this screaming and wondering what on Earth was happening. When it goes on for two hours there's really little hope of getting back to sleep again.
On the bright side one positive thing happened, due to these rude awakenings we decided to start running again! So we've managing two mornings a week and seem to be avoiding the shrieking and training for the 10 k in Addis Ababa in November!
Thankfully they've moved out now and our new neighbours have been much quieter............so far!
[J] Did I ever mention that I hate football???
Last weekend saw the start of the rugby world cup. Rugby isn't exactly a followed sport in Ethiopia, in fact most people have no idea what it is, so we were worried about where we would be able to watch the matches. I was very pleased that in the new intake of VSOs to Awassa included two rugby fans. Michela and Mark. I had made Neal promise to come and watch with me, which he agreed to but I think we were probably both relieved to have some other supporters with us! There are not too many establishments that have satellite tv in Awassa and they all show the English football premiership on a Saturday. Michela had been out the night before and met one of the managers of the Lewi Hotel who assured we could watch our rugby there. So we turned up to see England vs South Africa and football was on the tv. We asked them to change the channel but were told that all the other customers wanted to watch the football. So we had to sit through a footie match trying to guess what might be happening to our boys against the Springboks. I cannot tell you how gutted I was. I've always hated football but never as much as this - it wasn't even a good game. We sat through a bloody boring nil-nil match between Man U and Leeds watching some poof with spaghetti in his hair......Grrrrr
Thankfully they let us turn over after the boring footie to watch the second half. I had nipped to the toilet during the footie and when I came back the others told me they had flicked over to show us the score (as we'd been pestering them for the last half hour!) and England were losing 16-6. Oh No I thought that's it, I don't even want to watch the second half if that's the score already. Those little tricksters, when they turned the second half on England weren't losing at all but winning!! Yippee they won the match which will probably be the decider of the group!
Mark, Michela and I have predicted the winners and runners up of each group and reckon France will play England in the semi finals (Mark is from France) and we have made a pact to support the winner of that match in the final! Luckily the timing of the rest of the matches probably won't clash with Man U playing so we have a good chance of seeing them!
The rainy season has definitely finished and the weather is very hot. This means that the roads are very dusty. Every time a car goes down the road it blows up a dust storm which gets all over your clothes in your eyes and in your mouth yuk. Just outside our house, the road is so dusty it's like a beach! The dust is at least a couple of inches deep. This just adds to the excitement of our daily bike journeys to work as we skid and slide about!
Well it only took ten months but it finally arrived and we now have a phone. It took several trips to the Telecommunications office after paying our installation fee. The phone was installed very promptly, unfortunately it was not connected so promptly. We kept phoning (not from our phone obviously) and going in to the office and they kept saying "tomorrow tomorrow we will check the line and connect you". Now I get agitated just by the thought of going in to the Tele office. You sit on these benches outside the "Marketing Manager's" Office, and everyone stares and whispers about the ferenji. Eventually you get to go inside the office and then you queue in there aswell. This almost-queuing system which makes it even more annoying when people barge into the office when you've been waiting on a bench for 20 minutes - Grrrr. I usually send Neal which is pleasanter for everyone involved especially after the last time we waited almost an hour outside and inside this guys office to be handed a bill which (of course) needed to be paid at the cashier's desk. I nearly bit his head off but Neal firmly ushered me out the office. Neal was in Addis and I had to brave the office myself. "Be nice" I told myself "There's no need to be angry". So it was fairly quiet - phew and soon I was sat in the man's office where I smiled sweetly and greeted him in Amharic. On my very best behaviour I told him I keep getting told the phone will be connected tomorrow and it never is. He thought this was quite amusing and asked me who had told me this and I replied everyone I'd spoken too in the last two weeks (but didn't tell him directly that that included him). He assured me they would check the line and connect it so off I went (still smiling) and made plans to bug him every day until it was connected. Lo and behold the very next morning we got a phone call from the Tele office to check the line and tell us is was now connected and working - Hurrah!
[J] Hurray - more visitors. We have been so lucky already and this month our friends Kit and John visited from Glasgow. Well they're not really from Glasgow anymore as they're on their way to Australia to work for a year. They're taking a few months to get there and decided to make Ethiopia a stop off on their way. Neal had been in Addis for a workshop so met them from the airport at some unearthly hour of the morning. I wonder if BA are forced to have the crappy time slots so the Ethiopian Airline flights are more appealing! After a relaxing day in Addis and some interesting interactions with the locals Neal brought them down to Awassa on the 6am bus.
[N] I had been in Bahir Dar at a workshop about VSO's strategy plan in the education sector. What I'd hoped to do when I got back to Addis was meet up with some of the staff from the University to do some purchasing and then meet Kit and John from their flight. Unfortunately (and not suprisingly) there was another holdup with the purchasing committee (something to do with a vehicle this time I think) which meant the purchasing had to be postponed again. However, at the aforementioned ridiculous time in the morning I did successfully meet Kit and John and delivered them to a bed in the Yonas Hotel to try and catch some sleep. We made a tentative arrangement to meet around 9.30 the next morning and I tootled off to bed.
Next morning I went to drum up K+J from their happy slumbers, to find that it'd taken them a good while to get to sleep and then had been disturbed early in the morning, so they weren't ready to surface just yet. Sometime before lunch on Friday morning we managed to drag ourselves out onto the streets of Addis Abeba. First things first I thought, so we headed up to Arat Kilo to get some food in the wonderful "Blue Tops" restaurant, hmmm, Greek salad, yum. A quest for insect repellent yeilded no result around Piazza, so I decided that the best chance for such a farenji item would be one of the international hotels such as the Hilton. There was no insect repellent to be found there either - however, we did have beer served by the pool and later on pizza in the pizzeria. So it wasn't a wasted journey. We had an early start ahead of us the next day for the trip to Awassa so got to bed on our return to the hotel.
Getting the bus is a bit of a chore - the approved best approach is to get to the bus station before 6am to ensure getting on the 'non-stop' Awassa express. Having turned down an expensive offer for a taxi to the bus station the night before, I'd put us in a non-ideal situation where we needed to get a taxi from somewhere outside of the hotel at 5.30am. A passing line taxi seemed like a good idea at the time, but as it made slow progress to Mercato and then stopped somewhat short of the bus station it rapidly looked like a very bad idea. We were quite burdoned with baggage and started up towards the bus station, I realised that we needed to pick up some other form of transport to stand any chance of getting to the bus on time. We got into discussions with the driver of a near empty line taxi who indicated that he would take us to the bus station for some exorbitant fee. With little choice I placed one of the bags I was carrying into the doorway of the line taxi, which was promptly handed back out to someone standing on the street who procceded to run off with it! I threw my other (larger) bag further into the taxi and then ran after the guy. He didn't get very far and threw the bag at me to stop me getting near to him. I took it and went back to the line taxi, which we quickly bundled ourselves into before anything else could happen. So eventually we made it to the bus station, paid double the exorbitant fee originally demanded of us by the line taxi driver and hurried into the relative security of the bus station compound.
The bus safely delivered us to Awassa where we met up with Jenny in the Lewi to get on with the important buisness of keeping up with the World Cup Rugby.
Having arrived in Awassa from Addis midday Saturday, on Monday morning it transpired that the purchasing committee was at last ready to go to Addis to spend some money on equipment for the physics labs that I've been arranging. This has been an ongoing affair, with several false starts. However, now all we had to wait for was the uni garage to fix a broken light on a car and we'd be off.
Yes you guessed it - the light didn't get fixed until after lunch time, by when it was decided that it was too late to head up to Addis. So we delayed until tuesday. I was actually quite pleased about this becuase we did have guests with us at the time, so I could spend a bit more time with them. We did get away on tuesday morning - how nice, a trip to Addis in a Landcruiser, rather than the big smelly bus.
By the time we arrived in Addis, it was too late to get going on the purchasing process, so we said our goodnights and I headed off to Higher-Hulet to find a bed for the night. Once in the VSO office I happened to bump into Deb, which although not my plan was very fortunate, because Deb and David often help us out with a bed for the night. So having fixed somewhere to stay I dug out the Addis Yellow Pages to try and find some suppliers which might stock the sort of equipment I was looking for. Being in a city that you don't really know, it is very difficult to find specific items. The Yellow Pages has only existed for a couple of years and mostly only lists very broad groupings of buisness types, which leaves a lot to the imagination. So I picked some likely looking names from the 'Electrical Suppliers' section and phoned them up. After suffering my communication difficulties for a few calls, one of the helpful admin officers in the VSO office took over for me and found a few hopeful places that the purchasing committee could try the next day.
So the proceedure goes like this:
I think my best moment was when we were sat on Bole Road waiting for two of the committee members to come out of a shop. I decided to go for a little walk and came across a shop which by complete chance was the only place we mananged to find in Addis which could supply bench power supplies. A very productive stroll indeed!
My input to the process ended after we'd collected and opened the quotes as I had to get back to Awassa with a hire car for our trip to the Bale Mountains. So I looked over the quotes, gave my recommendations and left the committee to get on with the actual purchasing. This worked out fine - when they got back to Awassa, they'd procured all the things I'd wanted.
[J] Neal picked up the hire car in Addis and came down to Awassa. When he got to the house he found me, Kit, John and Marc waiting eagerly to set off for the Bale Mountains (pronounced Bah-ley). Unfortunately the car had set off later than anticipated so Neal and driver didn't arrive until about 2pm. We set off anyway and made it as far as a town called Dodola before it got dark - driving in the dark in Ethiopia is not recommended. Hardly any cars have functional lights and all the other traffic - cows. goats, garis etc are all still on the roads, you just don't see them until the last minute. Anyway we spent the night at the pleasant "tourist hotel" where we drank lots of beer and started learning how to play bridge from Marc. We'd spent the last few nights trying to teach ourselves so it was good to have someone who was confident about the rules teaching us. The friendly staff put CNN on the TV for us (we didn't ask!) and Marc and I eagerly awaited any sports news concerning the France V England match this weekend. They interviewed the capitanos and we started getting ultra silly and excited (well I did anyway) and predicting who would win and by how much!
The next morning we set off to the National Park itself although the area around Dodola is completely stunning. We had been told it was only an hour to our destination of the park HQ in Dinsho but luckily we didn't push on last night coz it actually took us 3 hours to get there. I think it was further than expected and also our driver was exceptionally slow. I don't know where else in Ethiopia he has been driving but he drove like he'd never been on a dirt road before! Anyway we got there just before lunch and arranged our activities for that afternoon and the next day. We scoffed down our random assortment of food - habisha dabo (local bread), hot sauce and a watermelon undertook negotiations with a lady to make our dinner that night and set off on an afternoon walk.
Our guide was very keen and pointed out practically every plant we walked past and bird too. It was quite fun trying to interpret the bird that he'd said. Of course he told us in English but in an Ethiopian accent. Even though Neal and I are getting the hang of Ethiopian-English (e.g. Where are you go? How is it?) we still get caught out from time to time. We eventually worked out that the boost-ed was in fact a buzzard. He was actually a good guide and we saw loads of Nyala (antelope-type things) and warthogs. We got back to the lodge (also at Park HQ) around sunset and our guide took us on a wee walk around there where we saw even more wildlife which was stunning as the sun was setting over the mountains.
We decided not to go to the highest peak of the mountains (second highest point in Ethiopia at 4377 metres) as we couldn't face another 3-4 hours in the car after two half days driving to get here. The staff at the park really didn't seem to understand this and insisted we had to go there but we insisted we didn't and opted for horse trekking in the locality instead. We decided on the horse option as we had all felt really tired during our walk yesterday. I'd like to use the altitude as an excuse but I think we were really unfit too! So our horses and leaders showed up and off we went. Only Marc had had enough horsey experience to go alone - i.e without a boy to hold the reins and lead the horse. Now I think I've been on a horse twice in my whole life, and the last time must have been at least 15 years ago. My first problem was how to get on, which I managed ok my next thought was "Bloody hell I didn't realise how high up horses were!" and tried not to look round. We had saddles which were covered in blankets and a wee stump-thing at the front of the saddle to hold on to for dear life. I don't remember anything about the first hour of the trek as I was completely terrified and convinced this animal was going to trip over and send me flying over his head to land head-first on the ground - of course we didn't have helmets on. I think everyone else was a bit more confident than me although John had a bit of a panic when his saddle started sliding round and he found himself sitting more on the side of the horse than he should have been!
Gradually I started to relax -well my body gave me no choice as I physically couldn't grip my legs around the horse so tight for more than an hour or so. Then, shock horror I actually began to quite like it. Now I don't know much about horse riding but I assumed that if you were being led, you wouldn't go very fast....but this is not the case in Ethiopia, the boys hit the horse a bit and shout "Hid" which means "go" and start sprinting behind as the horse breaks into a gallop. My boy improved greatly once he'd hidden his flip-flops in a bush and lead with bare feet but I still couldn't help feeling a little concerned that they could easily trip over the various rocks and plants all over the place and then not only would he probably be quite hurt but I would be left on a galloping horse with no idea of how to stop it or make it go the right way. Thankfully my fears were not realised. Also thankfully the horses in this area are treated much better than they are in Awassa. I wouldn't have gone anywhere near them otherwise. These horses actually looked well and had glossy coats and probably ate real horsey food more than once in a blue moon.
We trekked for about 3 hours to a pretty little waterfall and stopped to have our lunch. We had habisha dabo, some samosas and some hard boiled eggs that the nice lady had made for us a breakfast time. Unfortunately - probably coz we weren't really that eggsperienced at such things - we hadn't given much thought to the transportation of such items and when John opened his rucksack he found there had been an eggsplosion. Not eggsactly surprising if you think about all the bouncing around we'd done on the way there. Luckily they were still eggible and provided endless amusement as we thought up lots of eggsellent jokes!
After all this hilarity we went on a wee walk over the waterfall by the edge of the Sanetti Plateau. We saw lots of birds and cows and horses but our guide was desperate to show us the Ethiopian wolves. Now in every book we'd read it said to go at dawn or dusk to see them. It was midday so we didn't hold out much hope. Even so the scenery was beautiful, it was cool because of the altitude and the sky was a beautiful blue. Our guide left us sitting on the edge of the plateau while he sprinted down into the valley and out of sight. He's said something about the wolves although we had no idea what he intended to do, perhaps his "brother" was at the other side of the valley with some he kept as pets - I don't know. About half an hour later he came back and breathlessly pointed over to completely the opposite side of the valley from where he'd been but lo and behold there were two Ethiopian wolves. We have no idea if they were related to his marathon efforts - I'm sure they can't have been but you never know. So we spent some time admiring these beautiful animals through our binoculars. They used to be called Simien foxes but recent genetic analysis showed them to be more closely related to wolves. They eat small rodents that are abundant in the park, they are evident by there burrows which were all over the plateau and every so often we caught a glimpse of one scarpering out of sight.
Eventually we got back to the horses - and believe me the last
thing
I felt like doing was getting back on that darned animal. But it was
either that or walk and I didn't think I could manage that either. So
we all clambered back on and tried to ignore our aching bums and legs
and thought about the crate of beer and open fire back at the lodge. I
won't describe how we all felt when we finally got back - after a total
of 6 hours on horseback none of were quite walking properly!
As we were trekking Marc and I also kept up endless banter about
the
rugby match guessing what the score was every ten minutes. Marc had had
a dream the night before that France won but I wasn't having any of
that nonsense. We got back to the lodge and were pleased to discover
there was a satellite TV there - the electricity had only been
connected about a month previously so we thought there would be none
there as it says in the guide book. We eagerly watched the rolling
strip of headlines that run along the bottom of the screen - new
headlines......biz headlines....sports headlines -yes yes but no
mention of the rugby next round news headlines......biz
headlines.....sports headlines and.... oh no an advert break. Back to
the news headlines....biz headlines .....sports headlines.....rugby
world cup - yes yes what was the score, Australia beat New Zealand -
huh? Very surprising but what about, oh here it is France V England
....yes yes tell us we can't bear the suspense.....play tomorrow -
WHAT? We couldn't believe it, we'd been psyching ourselves up something
stupid all day and we'd got it wrong they were playing on the Sunday
not Saturday - Aaaaah
Oh well, we sat down and had some beer and lit the fire and waited for our dinner. You arrange with the nice lady what you want her to go and buy from the town and then she cooks it for you. We'd brought pasta with us and some creamy mushroomy sauce you just add water to - thanks to Kit and John! I did my best to try and translate the instructions into Amharic for the nice lady but she was convinced it was soup and she knew what to do. I convinced her it wasn't soup but sauce to go with the pasta and the onions she had bought from the town. We even went through exactly how much water to add by showing her where to fill her measuring jug to. Well when dinner came it was creamy mushroomy soup with some pasta and onion and tomato sauce! Really, what do these ferenjis know about cooking anyway! Well of course after our day in the mountains it still tasted great so we didn't really care!
The next morning we had a big argument with the manager as he
suddenly decided all the prices he'd told us were wrong and we needed
to pay more money - git - I shouted at him a bit - mostly in Amharic
(I'm improving!) then our guide had a big argument with him aswell but
in the end we ended up paying the money - it annoys me but it's usually
just easier to pay the money and be done with it. Then we set off on
our journey back to Awassa. We got back safely and arranged for Kit and
John to be taken to Addis the next morning