Appreciating the Cold ;-)

Well everything here is going well. Not much to report this week as I was working very hard – for a change!! We had workshops everyday ad had heart failure twice when the college car didn’t turn up on all occasions it was nobody’s fault or at least no one would admit to it. So after we gave the general manager clear printed out instructions of our schedule we thought we were on to a winner but no of course he didn’t come to work on Friday so again no car!!! Anyway this is the way things are here – you just have to go with the flow.
The amount of people dying and sick is beginning to impinge on our work, every training course we get a litany of apologies about people who can’t attend for funerals or because they are sick. It will be hard for the country to develop with everyone dying.

Today we went to Kombolcha a town just down from Dessie. It was very pleasant, it is much warmer there as it is lower so we felt what it would be like if we had to work in real tropical temperatures. It has made me appreciate the cold of Dessie!! Anyway I see from the Irish Times that it is much colder at home so I should no longer complain.
We went to Kombolcha in search of the swimming pool, I expected some kind of hole in the ground filled with dirty water, but to our surprise it is a lovely swimming pool with nice grassy areas and tables with umbrellas and a café. It was recently build by a Polish man who has a textile factory there. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately for the future! They were cleaning it today so we could only look, but we will definitely visit it again in the future. Of course in Kombolcha people thought we were tourists and so we got ripped off by every taxi driver in town. We were ripped off in total to a tune of ninety cent nothing to us but a lot to them. In Dessie people don’t overcharge us as they see us around and no tourists ever come to Dessie so they know we live and work here. In one taxi a boy got in who had never seen white people before he was from a rural area, he stared at us with eyes as big as saucers and then told us he would like our hair on his head.

This week we will begin workshops in Maths, so that will be a change. It is heavy going always giving workshops as between travelling to the different schools and trucking all our resources with us and then delivering the workshops and listening to all their problems etc it does make you tired but at least we are busy.

In December we will be going to a Conference for VSO in Ethiopia so we are looking forward to that. It will be in a town which has thermal springs and thermal swimming pools so that should be nice. It will also be a trip to Addis Ababa where we can buy all the things we can’t get in Dessie so we will have made a long list of things we want by the time we go.

Last Sunday we went to an Evangelical Church with some missionaries here, it was hilarious only we couldn’t laugh. Everyone was singing and crying and dancing etc. We didn’t know what to do or what they were saying. I hasten to add I won’t be going again. Afterwards we went for coffee in a café close to our house which we had avoided up until then because of the name, it is called the Semen Café!!! However it turns out to be a spelling mistake it should read the Semien Café after some mountains in Ethiopia and it turned out to be ok too!

My Dad has put up some photos on my website. www.geocities.com/orlasvso/vso.html I must say that our house is not typical of Ethiopia and it stands out like a sore thumb among all the mud huts. The houses all around us look like dilapidated cattle sheds. So yes we are very lucky to have such a nice house. Everyone in town knows our house as it is so different from anything else.

Anyway take care and I hope it isn’t too cold there. I saw the snow in the Irish Times. I have to say the grey skies at home are something I don’t miss at all.

Ciao

Orla