A Great Holiday

Hi
Well it has been a busy few months here. Time is flying by since I came back after Christmas.
We have continued training in rural areas and training Kindergarten teachers this means delivering five sessions of training a week and with preparations this really fills up the week.
The college where we work very kindly gave the three volunteers a gift of a holiday for one week in Northern Ethiopia to thank us for all our work. They gave us a car, driver, fuel and expenses and sent us off for a week to enjoy ourselves, which we did. This was really generous of the college.
We went to Mekelle first, this is usually an eight hour journey and we were set to leave in the morning at 9 a.m. but we didn't actually leave until 2 p.m. as the usual college disorganisation ruled and as this was a gift we couldn't really get too annoyed. We arrived in Mekelle at 9:30pm at night, in Ethiopia it is not permitted to drive after dark but the driver was determined to reach Mekelle and the police allowed him to keep going.
In Mekelle we met with other volunteers. I stayed with Susan another Irish volunteer. Steve was fixing a computer so this meant we had to stay in Mekelle for a few days we saw the market, the war museum and a rather unknown waterfall, which was impressive. We ate in nice restaurants and generally relaxed and enjoyed ourselves.
From Mekelle we drove to Axum, we decided to cross the Tembien which is a spectacular mountainous desert of Ethiopia not realising that we would have to cross it again on our return so this made the holiday a very bumpy holiday. We arrived in Axum at about 8 p.m. or so and hit the sites early the next day. Axum in the ancient capital of the axumite empire which stretched from Egypt to Somalia and Sudan and down to Madagascar (according to the museum!!) It is a very nice place, full of ancient palaces which are just like stone walls, burial chambers and its most famous site the stellae field which has these huge pillars of decorated stone marking graves. Seemingly they lifted them with Elephants but there is one that was stolen to Italy in three parts and has now returned but they are having difficulty figuring out how to stand it up again but these ancient guys had no such problems, amazing! It is quite amazing when you see the quality of the stone masonship and the measuring tools they used.
We saw Axum in record time and departed before lunchtime, the things to see are quite amazing but don't take very long to actually see. We then headed to Adwa where we ate lunch with Rebecca another Canadian volunteer. After lunch we moved on back the way we came across the Tembien because Steve hadn't finished fixing the computer so we had to return to Mekelle again! We stopped off en route in Abi Adi a really small town with three volunteers. Abi Adi makes me appreciate life in Dessie. There was no mobile network and they had just got 24-hour electricity a few weeks before. We hadn't intended to stay but the volunteers there were so happy to see us they insisted we stayed, and we were glad we did. We all went out to dinner, at the invitation of their college, then we had another dinner back in the volunteer's house as they had taken pork out of the freezer for us (the first time I ate pork in Ethiopia!). Two of the volunteers in Abi Adi are from the Philippines and the Filipinos love pork.
We were back in Mekelle again, the computer was fixed and so we had a good dinner with the other volunteers and the next day headed to Lalibella, which the driver thought would be 5 hours away, 9 hours later we made it to Lalibella!!
I hadn't really been too pushed about visiting Lalibella for the second time but actually it was good. We bumped into an ex-student of ours on the first night and he insisted on being our guide and he refused any payment.
It was interesting as although I knew him from the college I didn't know much about him. He had been born in the rural area but his parents died. He had five older brothers and sisters and they stayed in the rural area but when he was young, his aunt took him to Lalibella where he went to school. He then became a guide, after a while he decided to pursue his education further and went to the college to become a teacher. He was one of the highest scoring students last year. He then was deployed to the rural area where there was no electricity, shops, proper houses etc. He was just about to leave teaching when he was called to teach in the high school in Lalibella town as there was a shortage of secondary teachers so he now is teaching there. This summer he will start studying for a degree in law which will take him five summers to complete and then he hopes to get a job in the regional capital. Meanwhile his brothers and sisters are going around in skins and just living a boring life
Anyway he was an excellent guide and added much to my knowledge of Lalibella. We saw all the town churches in one day getting to the last one at 4:57 p.m. they close at 5 p.m. The next day we headed back to Dessie stopping on the way at one more church which was really good, full of treasures (old illuminated bibles, gold crowns, crosses etc). These treasures aren't kept in a museum as you might expect, no just in an old cupboard and you are allowed to touch them, hold them, photograph them with flash etc. In this church there was some magical holy water which we all drank as it cures illnesses everyone else was fine but I was sick for three days afterwards so not sure what message God was sending me! The priest who showed us around here was wearing an Irish Celtic cross on his jacket!
We headed back to Dessie this was by far the bumpiest part of the journey and we were glad just to get out of the car by the end of the trip. It was a really good holiday though apart from the bumpiness.
Now we are getting ready for our next adventure tomorrow a television crew will arrive from Teachers TV to make a documentary about Education in Ethiopia in which we and our work will feature. So that should be fun, they are here for one day and are quite ambitious about what they will achieve so we will see. They broadcast on satellite and on the Internet so I will inform you when it will be showing and you can try and watch it.
After that I am heading to Addis Ababa for St. Patrick's day. Last year the Irish Embassy threw a big party in the Sheraton. This year however, it is simply a lunch time reception in the ambassadors house but we are going anyway and I am going to drink and eat as much as I can. I may just refuse to leave at 14:30, then he will wish it was in the Sheraton and not in his house. On the Saturday there is a big ball as well for St. Patrick's Day and just about everybody is going so I am really looking forward to that too. So hopefully it will be a good weekend.

Our day guard Serkalem is pregnant the baby is due in 24 days very exciting so we are trying to persuade her to take maternity leave but I think she probably gets more rest in our house than at home. From today she has a young cousin from the rural area helping her. It may have been the cousin's first time to see white people and she just stared at us most of the time but I am sure she will get use to us.

Anyway for now I think that is all the news I will keep you posted on the TV programme schedule.

Ciao
Orla