Christmas is Coming

Just Back in Dessie after a great few days away. On Tuesday we flew to Addis Ababa. The plane from Dessie is a 17 seater little propeller jet. It is tiny and doesn’t even have real seats, well it has seats but they aren’t solid or padded just pieces of material suspended between two pieces of metal. The flight is fantastic though, you can see incredible mountains, rivers, valleys and little villages perching right on top of the mountains, this gives way to a flat blanket of perfectly neat fields as you approach Addis. From the air it is also possible to see how successful irrigation schemes can be here; as every so often you can spot lush green fields in amongst the parched yellow ones.
The airfield in Kombolcha is good fun too. It is basically just a stoney but flat field with a shed to the side of it and before the plane comes there are cows on the run way and horse and carts. In the shed you meet the man who sold you the plane tickets in Dessie, he looks after all aspects of flying except actually flying the plane himself. Looking at the runway I didn’t think the plane would take off but it did and very smoothly in fact I have had worse take offs and landings in Europe than here. The flight attendant told me that Ethiopian Pilots are the best (though he could be paid to say that) because Ethiopia is at such a high altitude the fuel doesn’t burn as well so they are really skilled at take offs at high altitude and also dodging mountains as they fly!

When I arrived in Addis Ababa last September I thought I had arrived in hell. It is one of the poorest cities in the world and the poverty is everywhere, however Tuesday was my first time back there after three months in Dessie and this time it looked like New York, I couldn’t believe how good the shops looked and all the modern cars driving around it was amazing. While in Addis I bought stock cubes, cupa soups, super noodles, Pringles, salted pea nuts, and English magazines, all are unattainable in Dessie. I ate cannelloni, Pizza, chips, I even had an Irish coffee! I also met other volunteers who are living in really small places in the middle of no where. One guy had taken six buses to get to Addis Ababa, even though he is only maybe 300km from Addis it had taken him 2 days.

After a day in Addis we headed to Sodere which was fantastic, it was really hot and there was an olympic size thermal swimming pool which was like a huge hot bath. I had a great time in Sodere we had a pub quiz one night, a camp fire and Christmas party another and well lots of drinking. I wasn’t in bed before two am any night which is quite unusual now for new Ethiopian Orla. During the day we also had workshops and sessions. There was a lot about the security situation here, there are still a lot of problems and people have seen horrific things in their placements and there is a lot of tension at the boarder so we are all braced for the worst but we don’t know what will happen. I hope it won’t get too bad, on the one hand no one should be oppressed in the way the Government oppresses people here but at the same time a war or trouble will cause so much damage here and Ethiopian people really need a break they can’t afford any more fighting. Anyway it is a complex situation especially as essentially we work for the Government here so that presents its own difficulties. Some of the NGO’s who publicly condemned what happened have been warned that any more complaints and they will be expelled. So you never know I could be home earlier than expected but I really hope not!

So, I am back in Dessie now for another week of workshops and then on Friday I will head back to Addis (by road this time) to meet James and Susan. One of the VSO in Addis is having a Christmas eve party so we will attend that and then fly back to Dessie where we will have our own Christmas party here. During the following week we plan to go to Lalibella for a few days to visit the rock churches there so I am looking forward to all that.

So Merry Christmas everyone, enjoy the last week of work and enjoy the festivities next weekend. I’ll miss the usual Christmas eve fun in Skerries and of course I will miss being at home with my family Christmas day, but I am really glad I will be with friends here anyway and it will be a different Christmas but one I am really looking forward too.

Nollaig Shona

Three Months in Ethiopia

Well I am three months in Ethiopia now and I feel so settled in. At first I liked it but I thought I would be happy to go home at the end, this week I wish the time would go more slowly as I am enjoying every minute. Once you get use to the African pace of life, you appreciate how great life here is.
Everybody here is so friendly it is incredible and everyone always has time to stop, to talk, to take coffee it is really nice. One of the lecturers Hamde, spent a year in England doing a masters and this week I was talking with him about how he found life there, and without a doubt I believe it is easier for me to come here and settle in than it was for him to go there, as here people really go out of their way to make us so welcome.
This week we began the fourth workshop, this one deals with Group work, Action research and Positive behaviour promotion in the classroom. It is a bit more challenging for the teachers. We are trying to establish if they are happy with the workshops and if they are using the methods we are teaching but it is impossible as it is the culture here to appreciate everything and to compliment everything so they will not criticise our work at all which while very nice does not help us to improve.
Yesterday we visited the Preparatory School and met with the English department who wish to work with our department. It was a good meeting; they have a brand new school which is really nice and are really committed to improving English. It is amazing how committed people here are to improving society, I am not sure if it is like this everywhere or just in Dessie.
We made a new discovery this week; we can toast bread by holding it over the electric ring! This has added a whole new dimension to our cooking. Last night we had a night out which somewhat resembled one from home. We went to a restaurant in town with Hamde and had four beers! This is the most I have drunk since I arrived in Dessie ….. I am glad to say I can still hold my drink. We left the restaurant at 10 pm and the town was deserted, late nights in Dessie do not exist.
I have been to the Ethiopian Airlines Office seven times this week to sort out our flights for Tuesday and spoken to them on the phone twice but finally the tickets are arranged. I will have the patience of Job when I return as things just take ages here and there is no way to hurry things up. Anyway now we have the tickets and will jet off on Tuesday to Addis Ababa, on Wednesday we will travel to Sodere for the Annual Volunteer Conference. I am really looking forward to seeing everyone again and just relaxing by the pool for a few days. We will fly back to Dessie on Sunday.
We are planning a Christmas party in our house. We will invite everyone we know in Dessie to try and thank them for all their hospitality so far. It will not be Christmas here till 19th January. So we are planning to decorate the house, we have Christmas music, we are going to go shopping in Addis Ababa for party nibbles and we will get some beer so it should be good fun. It will be strange for the Ethiopians as they don’t have parties like us, they have coffee ceremony and dinner etc but not just standing around having a drink parties but we are encouraging people to do party pieces and Ethiopian’s are good dancers and singers so hopefully it will be good although everyone will probably have left by half eight as it will be a very late night for them!
Our guard is keeping well, still collecting the shoes! He now realises I can speak some Amharic so he now has little conversations with me which is nice as up until this he just said ok ok but he had to tell me about the water bill during the week and to his surprise I understood and was able to answer him!
Speaking of Bills we made a third visit to the Telecommunication Company today. In September they cut us off for not paying the bill we are now afraid they will do the same thing and call in weekly to check can we pay. Today they said “no no you must pay on the 30th October” and we said “but it is December now” and they said “yes yes so come back and pay in three weeks!!!” How this makes any sense I do not know, but I do know we have not paid bills for October or November yet and so I am expecting the phone to be cut off any day now then we will have to pay a reconnection fee. I suspect this is their plan to raise more money.
Anyway thank you for all the messages and have nice week I will think of you all as I relax in the thermal springs of Sodere!
Ciao,
Orla

Walking in Dessie

Well this week was slightly uneventful, one of those weeks which just make the time go by, pleasant but nothing special.
So apologies if this news is all mundane. We got a new teacher’s lounge in work. The teachers lounge use to be beside the student’s lounge and therefore teachers didn’t like going there as it wasn’t really a break from students .So the new lounge is in another part of the college and now well so far but I suppose it is still a novelty, everyone goes there to hang out at break time. This is great for us as we get to meet more people. Also there is a table tennis table in the staffroom now and I am learning to play much to the relief of one of the curriculum lecturers Ali who was the worst player in college but I have now relieved him of this title, even though I am useless at it, it is fun and I provide entertainment for the whole room with my bad shots etc.
There is also a coffee machine in the new lounge, so we can now enjoy machiato’s which I am sure will appear in Starbucks very fast if they are not already available as they are very nice a little like a cappuccino but nicer. We are also getting a fridge for the soft drinks and Digital Satellite TV for the teacher’s lounge!! I won’t want to return home to our little Staff room in school after this! The digital satellite TV is courtesy of America, however no one could figure out how to set it up until Steve (the Kenyan volunteer) arrived.
Well it is December now and it is very cold here. The temperatures drop below zero during the night but heat up to around 20 degrees during the day, so you leave the house in thermals, and many layers of clothes and later on find yourself sweating as the day heats up. I don’t know how people here are accustomed to it. I am sitting outside in the sun now typing this and it is about 16 degrees but later I will be frozen inside huddling around the electric fan heater which keeps breaking down and requires about three or four kicks a night to keep it going.
We are very much looking forward to Christmas here now. Tuesday week will see us flying to Addis Ababa …. According to VSO anyway. We checked with the airline and they say there is no flight but VSO insist they have booked us on a flight so we will see. So we will fly to Addis Ababa meet all the other volunteers and then head to Sodere – a thermal spring resort for a few days of relaxation …. And we need it. How the Ethiopian people just keep on working with no holidays is beyond me. They did have a lot of holidays but the Government did away with them at some stage so for Christmas they will have one day off!! I think if they had proper holidays they might work harder during the term but this is their country so if they are happy!
Then on Christmas Eve a friend of mine James is coming over from Ireland and we are meeting up with another Irish teacher here Susan to do some travelling so I am really looking forward to that.
I am sitting beside our guard’s hut at the moment, this man appears to have no family we think he may have come here after the war with Eritrea and there are still a lot of displaced people from that war so perhaps he has family somewhere. We can’t really communicate with him as he speaks Amharic but whenever we speak he just says ok ok ok whether we speak Amharic or English. Anyway he lives in a tin shed in our Garden and guards our house and he is very nice we, his clothes are the most raggy things you ever saw however under his shed I see five pairs of shoes!! He just keeps acquiring more and more shoes and mostly he wears a pair of broken white sandals, its quite mad he obviously loves buying shoes as since we paid him on Wednesday he has bought two more pairs!! Very strange!
Yesterday our housekeeper Sercalum cut her finger while cleaning the kitchen and guess what she did to cure it … took soil from the garden and mashed it into the cut. I suppose she has never heard of tetnus! When I came home from work I of course cleaned and dressed it for her and tried to explain to her not to put soil in her cuts, but it is no wonder people get sick over here. I heard of another person who burned her sandals to put melted rubber in her cuts in an attempt to heal them!!
Just back from a walk – much to the amusement of the local people I have started going for walks, well there is nothing else to do in the evenings and it is always interesting but local people can’t understand why anyone who could afford not to would walk anywhere. I walked up to the new church today to take some photos I met the same old priest as last time – Alamayo but at least this time my Amharic had improved enough for me to hold a conversation with him. I also met a man called Misehfin who is a musician and who invited me to come to his house and meet his wife and he will play some traditional music for me so I will have to take him up on this offer sometime or else he will no doubt be insulted, but it would be interesting too but strange as I don’t know him but that’s the way people are here, they just invite you to their homes or to have a coffee or that all the time. After the church I met Ato. Bayenen who was the principal of a school here and ruled it like Hitler but after the recent disturbances here, the government has put him in charge of Security – no better man!! He wants to call in to see me some day in work. Then I met a student Solomon who lives near us and then eventually had to talk to all our neighbours to get back to the house. This was a typical walk in Dessie, people are so friendly but a quick walk can turn into a long walk when you have to keep stopping to talk to people but it is nice.
So things are going well and the time is passing by very quickly. We have run about 38 workshops now in the last two months so things are very busy but interesting.
Anyway I hope you are all keeping well,
Take care
Orla