Walking In Eritrea

Eritrea would be perfect walking country if travel permits were more freely available and if you could always carry enough water to keep you going on long hikes. That said the now-departed John (more about that later, not as morbid as it sounds!) organised a walk starting on the edge of Asmara as part of a weekend of St Patrick’s day celebrations a couple of weeks ago.

Setting off from the end of the line for the no. 1 bus which is near the city dump (the walk gets better!) you first pass a very well maintained cemetery and onward to the edge of “the escarpment” ready for the descent.

One you start going down this is really quite rough walking, lots of loose stuff, very steep in places and definitely no waymarkers! Our objective for the morning was just to walk for a few hours and take in the scenery and wildlife but you need to be equipped even for this; so showing up in flip-flops and with less that half a litre of water doesn’t really cut it as one of our number found … he finished up sitting and waiting at the top for 3+ hours.

One of the main attractions of a walk in this particular area is the chance of reasonably close encounters with troupes of baboons and it wasn’t long before we started to spot them sitting on the tops of ridges and moving away from breakfast at the city dump in quite large numbers. They make a lot of noise and get out of the way if humans get to close, though. The dump also attracts large numbers of steppe eagles and other birds of prey and carrion-eaters plus, of course, Jason our resident VSO bird-watcher.

The ascent back to the top of the escarpment was tougher than expected and we were all glad of the occasional rest and of the water we'd taken care to bring along. Eritrea can be a demanding place to go walking.

A few baboon photos came out really well along with a few of the eagles – someday we’ll get some more out there on the web-album ...

The End For Some
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The New Volunteers as they were collectively known have now all left Eritrea so what are they now? (Old-? Ex-? Never were-?). Whatever the label it’s all just very sad and frustrating … in John (one of the six) I have lost an IT colleague to with whom exchange ideas and we’ve all lost a natural social organiser (who knows where the EMIS - Education Management Information System - project will go now).

The mood amongst the volunteers who remain and the programme office staff is understandably subdued just now. No-one really knows what will happen next.

Computers in Education
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Work is a little slow but, of the solar-power schools in phase one, all but two have now received computers so I’ll be gathering feedback on their ICT teaching programs when I can. Let’s hope it goes as well as Foro school.

Following a suggestion by Tariq of Aptivate, an ICT-in-Development NGO (Google “Aptivate NGO”), and with the help of Stephane in London I have now obtained a copy of the Schools Wikipedia collection (all 4Gb of it in uncompressed form) from SOS Children’s Village a very worthwhile orphan’s charity … a pause to imagine what it’s like to be an orphan in a very poor African country during a global recession.

It’s part of my minor push to get some educational content onto the computers we deliver and it will have the added benefit of giving students a bit of an internet experience (albeit simulated) – we’re going to try it out at Fthi school next week.

P