A Better Weekend!!

Well this week went well, the trouble in Dessie appears to be calmed down now. Although we have heard they are arresting people who they suspect of being opposition supporters and there is certainly still a lot of political tension but no violence this week anyway.

This week we held workshops everyday twice a day. On Wednesday we finished the Continuous Assessment Workshops. I think the teachers have the idea of continuous assessment now but how many will actually use it is hard to know. Yesterday one teacher did show us some lovely examples of assessment she had carried out, so I suppose some people will.
This workshop now is on teaching English, mainly improving children’s spoken language, using big books and handwriting. Some of the teachers have so little English it is hard to know how they can teach English. However they enjoy this workshop more as there are loads of games and practical ideas. Yesterday one man from a far away school, this school hardly ever attend training, came along to the workshop and afterwards he asked if we could help him to make visual aids for his first grade class, so he is coming to the college on Monday morning for us to help him, so that is good that he actually came forward himself looking for the assistance.

In college this week our two colleagues were absent, one because his sister died and the other her aunt died. Death is pretty common here. The sister was particularly tragic as she has five young children and she had just given birth a few days previous. We called over to her house to pay our respects and it was very interesting. Quite like if someone died at home really, loads of relatives had come and all the women were preparing loads of food. They had an Arab tent in the garden as the house couldn’t have accommodated everyone and it has been raining here this week.

About two weeks ago we met some other white people out in a restaurant and we had said to them to call in some time and today the woman called in to our house. They are a Finnish couple. They have been in Ethiopia six years working with the Lutheran church. They work here in Dessie with Aids orphans in an after school club and home visits. It is really nice to meet other foreigners and they seem really nice. Tomorrow we are meeting them to go for a walk and have some lunch so we are extending our circle of friends! And part of our work is to increase Aids awareness so hopefully we may be able to do some work with them too.

This evening we are going in search of Hyenas. Sercalum is taking us over to a place near her house where the Hyenas come and people feed them as there is a meat factory there and the Hyenas come and if the people give them some meat, they will eat that and be full so they wont try and steal the good meat. So it should be interesting.
Here the weekends can be long so it is nice to have things to do, so with that this evening and meeting the Finnish people tomorrow this weekend will be quite interesting.

We headed into town last night Gill and I, Steve was at another funeral of someone else in college’s sister. We went for something to eat and had two beers and a coffee and got the last bus home at nine o’clock pm. So that was a wild night out in Dessie, actually it is a nice break from the routine and to eat out is as cheap to eat at home.

Anyway that is all the news at the moment, the weeks are flying by I have been here in Ethiopia nine weeks now. I don’t really want the time to rush by but it just does. This time next month we will be in Addis Ababa for the Christmas conference which will be a chance for all the VSO volunteers to meet up so I’m looking forward to that and the week after that James (a friend of mine) is coming over for ten days for a holiday so again I am really looking forward to that it will be a chance for me to be a tourist for a while.

So I hope you are all keeping well, the weather must be getting cold there now. Here it is warm mostly during the day and cold at night. Although this week we had a lot of rain which people aren’t too happy about as it will ruin their crops as it wasn’t nice soft rain but really heavy rain for a few days.

Anyway I’ll post again next Saturday, as they say here Ciao!