So, the end of another week, they’re passing so quickly. It’s been a very full week at work, full of meetings and trying to get a report of the pilot study on the new Grade 3 book in. The report is a joint effort by the whole team, due in last week but as usual, still a work in progress. No matter, it will be finished next week.
Cooked a veggie curry for friends last Sunday. In my usual manner I cooked enough to feed an army so it kept us going for food until Wednesday, I like it when that happens, so nice to get in from work and not have to think about preparing vegetables, especially on a Monday.
We took Tuesday morning off to get our spare gas bottle filled. We’ve got kerosene too, started using it for rice and pasta to save on gas. Also got a small pane of broken glass in our front door fixed, it’s coloured glass which I guess is why it cost so much – 585 Nakfa – half of my monthly salary – couldn’t really manage without the VSO top-up. The glass place is just down the road and run by an elderly Italian lady. Her father came here to Eritrea in 1934 and she was born here. Everyone we meet here has a story to tell.
Wednesday, the usual walk to work at 7.30, sun, lots of greetings from school children and our regulars, overcrowded busses, big 4-wheel drives, sheep, bicycles, and the last of the beles sellers (season is almost over.) The farmer came to cut our grass at lunch-time. The amount he cuts is limited by what he can carry on the back of his bike to take for his animals. He’s done something nasty to his legs – 2 abscesses - and needed some help. We weren’t sure what he was asking for, Phil’s Italian wasn’t up to it so we gave him 100 Nakafa which we hoped would cover medical expenses. After work went out to the Roof Garden with other volunteers for a meal. It’s not somewhere we go very often, Cliona came out with “I’d forgotten how swanky it is here, there’s no flies” as we sat down. She’s classy.
Thursday, just another day at work. Got very upset about some family news. It’s at times like this I feel a long way away.
Friday, the usual breakfast of porridge, bananas and sweet tea and off to work. Lunch break is at 11.30 on Friday so we get an extra 30 minute’s sleep after eating. Walking home we discussed whether to go via one of our local shops for weekend shopping, “no” I heard myself saying, “we’ve got three carrots, two courgettes and tomatoes, if we have eggs tonight that should do us for Sunday.” How things have changed. I seem to remember at some time in another lifetime we used to do a big supermarket shop on a Saturday morning …
And before anyone starts feeling sorry for us I should add that we’ve been invited to a dinner at the Ambassador’s residence on Saturday evening. Not quite sue why we’ve been invited, possibly as a VSO presence as there is no Country Director in the country at the moment, and I think invites have gone out to other aid agencies and NGOs, but at the very least it’s a good opportunity to stock up on protein (Andrea and Chris – that’s supposed to be a joke.)
Always up early on Saturday, the dustcart comes at any time from 7 onwards and you have to be ready to take your rubbish out to them – the concept of dustbins doesn’t really exist. Spent three hours cleaning, having got rid of the cockroaches once we're not giving them any excuse to come back, then hot shower and hair wash (our once a week luxury – great), lunch (fata - bread with silsi - tomato, chilli and onion)with a friend at Massawa Fast Food - our local cafe and slobbing for the rest of the afternoon.
C
Monday, 29 September 2008
Football and Eagles
I'm still going to Saturday football practice where I get the chance to run around in the sun for a couple of hours before it gets too hot. It's great fun and I'm currently convincing myself that, having lost a little weight due to the famous Eri-diet, I'm getting fitter. We play on a pitch, at the back of Den Den Secondary school, which used to have grass and which still has a few patches but which is mainly stony grit. Normally we start by running round the field a few times, then we do a few exercises in the dust and rising heat followed by playing a game for an hour or so.
To return to the eagle theme (we think they're tawny eagles); there were five of them wheeling and swooping over the pitch just before we started this morning (had they been vultures I have been worried and might have suspected they'd identified me as the best bet). It turned out that one of them had caught something and the others were harassing it. Eventually a lifeless grey object (a rat we thought) was dropped in the centre circle as if in preparation for some kind of game (the Asmara raptor challenge?) but it wasn't long before it was picked up again at speed - a really magnificent sight.
P
To return to the eagle theme (we think they're tawny eagles); there were five of them wheeling and swooping over the pitch just before we started this morning (had they been vultures I have been worried and might have suspected they'd identified me as the best bet). It turned out that one of them had caught something and the others were harassing it. Eventually a lifeless grey object (a rat we thought) was dropped in the centre circle as if in preparation for some kind of game (the Asmara raptor challenge?) but it wasn't long before it was picked up again at speed - a really magnificent sight.
P
Friday, 19 September 2008
Back in Asmara
Our South African sojourn is over and we are back at work. We spent about a week in total in Cape Town and travelled around the Western Cape for the remainder with a 3-night stay at a game reserve being the highlight, animals in the wild are pretty amazing really. South Africa as a country has a lot going for it in terms of natural resources and infrastructure but a long way to go to fully remove all the legacies of apartheid. In essence two societies run in parallel with non-whites still largely living in townships. Furthermore the same labels (Black, Coloured, White) are still used by people to refer to themselves let alone others. It seems to us that integration will take a few generations to achieve but efforts are being made. On the other hand Cape Town is a place where we could live and SA really is a fascinating country.
Here in Asmara, 15 new VSO volunteers have arrived and are just finishing their "In-Country Training" so a big welcome to them and best wishes for a productive placement. It seems our doom and gloom posting about the lack of Lamba (Kerosene) for cooking was a little premature since it is available again now - probably due to falling oil prices on the global markets. We have also been assured that VSO is working to secure a supply in case of future scarcity. There is also a strong rumour that Asmara Beer is about to re-appear, we've heard that one before, though.
After you're in a place for a while you get a bit blase about what's under your nose. We've been raving about the wildlife we saw in South Africa but I was hanging out the washing the other morning and idly watching a large bird circling an adjacent garden menacingly ... it was a tawny eagle and they seem to be very common over Asmara just now, it's just brilliant the way they can hang in the air. When I asked one of my colleagues if he knew why there seem to be a lot of them low in the skies at this time of year he said "Young Asmarinos don't notice that kind of thing, we're too busy watching girls." - I'm not sure if that was a gentle reprimand, an insult or just an observation.
P
Here in Asmara, 15 new VSO volunteers have arrived and are just finishing their "In-Country Training" so a big welcome to them and best wishes for a productive placement. It seems our doom and gloom posting about the lack of Lamba (Kerosene) for cooking was a little premature since it is available again now - probably due to falling oil prices on the global markets. We have also been assured that VSO is working to secure a supply in case of future scarcity. There is also a strong rumour that Asmara Beer is about to re-appear, we've heard that one before, though.
After you're in a place for a while you get a bit blase about what's under your nose. We've been raving about the wildlife we saw in South Africa but I was hanging out the washing the other morning and idly watching a large bird circling an adjacent garden menacingly ... it was a tawny eagle and they seem to be very common over Asmara just now, it's just brilliant the way they can hang in the air. When I asked one of my colleagues if he knew why there seem to be a lot of them low in the skies at this time of year he said "Young Asmarinos don't notice that kind of thing, we're too busy watching girls." - I'm not sure if that was a gentle reprimand, an insult or just an observation.
P
Thursday, 21 August 2008
Bye for Now
Kerosene is back and seems to be in plentiful supply. Panic over for now.
Unfortunately, without a television, the Olympics have passed us by. It does sound, from the BBC, as if we’ve missed a good one. Next time …
We’re going on holiday. We’ll be back online in three weeks.
Unfortunately, without a television, the Olympics have passed us by. It does sound, from the BBC, as if we’ve missed a good one. Next time …
We’re going on holiday. We’ll be back online in three weeks.
Saturday, 16 August 2008
I was supposed to go to Keren for another week of workshops. This time, to 400 teachers in groups of 40 over six days (with no resources available, a book familiarisation workshop with no books, but that’s par for the course). The trouble was, we weren’t to get the back until next Saturday afternoon and buses from Keren to Asmara are notoriously unreliable at the moment. Usually this wouldn’t matter, it’s normal to wait 2 or three hours for a bus and if after all that you don’t get on one, you come back the next day. However , in this case we’ve got to be at the airport very early on the Sunday morning, we’ve got a three-week holiday in South Africa. I really wasn’t prepared to take the chance of not being able to get on a bus on Saturday and so said I could do the workshop until Friday. For some reason this wasn’t acceptable, and so now I’m not going to Keren at all. I feel really bad about it, as if I’m letting my colleagues down . Not sure what else I could have done. The atmosphere at work was very frosty for the rest of the day. I bought cakes for everyone yesterday and they’ve started talking to me again but still feel bad.
Having a games evening at Anne’s house tonight. My first game of Scrabble for months, I’m very excited.
Got chatting to a family last night, the mother and children had come for a holiday to visit her brother who lives here and has just been demobbed from the army. We asked where she lived and she replied Cambridge. Yet another surreal moment, talking about Cherry Hinton Road, just round the corner from where we lived.
C
Having a games evening at Anne’s house tonight. My first game of Scrabble for months, I’m very excited.
Got chatting to a family last night, the mother and children had come for a holiday to visit her brother who lives here and has just been demobbed from the army. We asked where she lived and she replied Cambridge. Yet another surreal moment, talking about Cherry Hinton Road, just round the corner from where we lived.
C
Monday, 11 August 2008
A teacher's life here is not an easy one.
The last six days have been spent helping my colleagues in the curriculum department run a workshop for teachers from all over Eritrea. Ostensibly the workshop was to introduce teachers to the new Grades 4 (for students aged 10) and 7 (students aged 13) textbook and teacher’s guide.
This was planned to be done through training them in the teaching methodologies with the new books as the classroom resources. It was complicated by the Grade 7 books not being ready at the printers (not entirely their fault, they had been very late in being submitted) so we had to print out a copy of the books and get photocopies. As the cost of photocopying is high we were restricted to 5 copies. There were 25 teachers in the class so large groups were the order of the day.
As I said, these 25 teachers came from all over Eritrea, chosen from the five different areas (zobas). They were expected to go back to their respective zobas and cascade their knowledge down to chosen teachers from schools who in turn would give workshops within the schools. It all sounds great in theory and cascading is a sound recognised way of disseminating knowledge .However there is one big stumbling block – those five photocopied copies of the textbook and teacher’s guides will be the only versions of the book available for the next few months. This means that these teachers will be working to introduce others to a book of which there is only one copy per zoba (encompassing many many schools!). There is no way the zobas will be able to afford photocopying costs. A bit of a nightmare situation.
The teachers in our workshop were, rightly, very upset and vehement in their protests but what could we do but apologise and try to find ways to enable them to give their workshops? (e.g. working from the contents page, book map and one lesson from the book – hardly ideal!). The teachers are wonderful, dedicated people but they really are batting against the odds here.
C
This was planned to be done through training them in the teaching methodologies with the new books as the classroom resources. It was complicated by the Grade 7 books not being ready at the printers (not entirely their fault, they had been very late in being submitted) so we had to print out a copy of the books and get photocopies. As the cost of photocopying is high we were restricted to 5 copies. There were 25 teachers in the class so large groups were the order of the day.
As I said, these 25 teachers came from all over Eritrea, chosen from the five different areas (zobas). They were expected to go back to their respective zobas and cascade their knowledge down to chosen teachers from schools who in turn would give workshops within the schools. It all sounds great in theory and cascading is a sound recognised way of disseminating knowledge .However there is one big stumbling block – those five photocopied copies of the textbook and teacher’s guides will be the only versions of the book available for the next few months. This means that these teachers will be working to introduce others to a book of which there is only one copy per zoba (encompassing many many schools!). There is no way the zobas will be able to afford photocopying costs. A bit of a nightmare situation.
The teachers in our workshop were, rightly, very upset and vehement in their protests but what could we do but apologise and try to find ways to enable them to give their workshops? (e.g. working from the contents page, book map and one lesson from the book – hardly ideal!). The teachers are wonderful, dedicated people but they really are batting against the odds here.
C
Fuel and Food Again
We try to be positive about life in Eritrea and, indeed, there are many positives. The ICT training which I am in the middle of (this time it's for school directors) throws up positives all the time and is much appreciated by our students. For myself, I am finding I am having to go back to school myself in order to have the information at my finger tips so that I can field the barrage of questions. For example I have spent today (Sunday) trying to become much more familiar with the Microsoft Access database in order to be able to take a group through a simple design for a school database next week - it's one thing to be able to use software but quite another to be able to TEACH how to use it.
However there are negatives, and they are related to our recurrent themes of recent weeks. The few volunteers left in the country just now have increasing concerns about what the new volunteers due in September will find. Will they be able to cook for example? Rural volunteers all use kerosene stoves and there is very little kerosene around just now, it's rationed and you have to have a ration card and be prepared to queue for a long time once you know that there has been a delivery - not ideal for someone who is new in the country to face in their first days here.
Food items seem to dwindle constantly, bani (staple brown bread rolls) are in shorter supply than anyone can remember and, in rural areas, the variety of available food is really small. It is noticeable that rural volunteers lose weight in Eritrea and the teachers and school directors who come in for ICT training from the lowlands are almost all very thin - I'm not sure if it's malnutrition just yet but it hasn't been one of the great rainy seasons and Eritrea lives on the edge in terms of food production, if the crops fail ...
P
Due to worries about the incoming volunteers, existing volunteers have been asking the local VSO staff about the shortages, particularly the lack of cooking fuel, and their effect on the programme in Eritrea and we've not really received any reassurances (although to be fair there is very little that they can say). We're seriously starting to wonder if VSO will be able to continue here if at least the fuel shortages cannot be alleviated.
P and C
However there are negatives, and they are related to our recurrent themes of recent weeks. The few volunteers left in the country just now have increasing concerns about what the new volunteers due in September will find. Will they be able to cook for example? Rural volunteers all use kerosene stoves and there is very little kerosene around just now, it's rationed and you have to have a ration card and be prepared to queue for a long time once you know that there has been a delivery - not ideal for someone who is new in the country to face in their first days here.
Food items seem to dwindle constantly, bani (staple brown bread rolls) are in shorter supply than anyone can remember and, in rural areas, the variety of available food is really small. It is noticeable that rural volunteers lose weight in Eritrea and the teachers and school directors who come in for ICT training from the lowlands are almost all very thin - I'm not sure if it's malnutrition just yet but it hasn't been one of the great rainy seasons and Eritrea lives on the edge in terms of food production, if the crops fail ...
P
Due to worries about the incoming volunteers, existing volunteers have been asking the local VSO staff about the shortages, particularly the lack of cooking fuel, and their effect on the programme in Eritrea and we've not really received any reassurances (although to be fair there is very little that they can say). We're seriously starting to wonder if VSO will be able to continue here if at least the fuel shortages cannot be alleviated.
P and C
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