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