OK it’s been a good few days, so I though I’d better add another blog entry, plus Al has been nagging me! It’s been a pretty busy few weeks. I got the opportunity to get out of the office and attended some workshops that are being run by my team, it was really interesting to get to experience some of the huge differences but also how many similarities there are too. The first workshop was in Assossa at the high school, the second got me out of town to a place called Bambasi - known for it’s milk, it was an [View Full Entry]

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The UN of VSO VSO certainly recruits its volunteers from all parts of the globe. A Dutch couple had arrived the week before our flight landed and a UK based volunteer serving in Kenya was also in country already. At least 3 Canadians had connected onto our flight at Heathrow, 4 Filipinos, 2 Kenyans and 2 Ugandans arrived the following night; and 5 Australians arrived during the day. A German couple were also due to arrive in Assosa for a short-term placement the week after we had finished ICT. Not that this was a surprise to us - on P2V, SKWID [View Full Entry]

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Come to Addis to get fat Strange though it may seem and contradictory to everything you might expect in Ethiopia, I have been getting fatter since I arrived in Addis! The restaurants serve up all the European dishes you dream about whilst out in the regions living off of injera and shiro, you are usually at a workshop taking very little exercise on a nice per diem and you normally have the company of like-minded VSOs who are itching to get stuck into a casa-casa jambo (pint of ice cold draught) and catch up on the gossip. Besides, my good work [View Full Entry]

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We invited all our VSO friends round for dinner and a film on Friday, Al downloaded Sweeney Todd before we left the UK. We were all quite excited (well some of us anyway) as it had good reviews in the UK, and Al promised a red carpet and popcorn. Marta made some lovely, lovely food for us - cabbage and potatoes, salad, shiro, it really was very tasty, everyone was very impressed, it’s a shame Marta wasn’t around to experience the adulation of her cooking! We didn’t quite manage popcorn, but some interesting biscuits, which I quite enjoyed, Al managed to [View Full Entry]

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Arrival All VSOs, no matter how long or short their placement is, are required to have some in-country training. This is where you are given some basic orientation, cultural information, language training and country history, geography and politics. For long-term volunteers (6+ months) in Ethiopia it was 8 days. The short-term volunteers get at least 2 days, but they are usually whisked away to get on with the job. We arrived at 3.30am ET on Sunday 3rd February and were met by 3 current volunteers from last September’s intake. The flight had been fine, but tedious. Remarkabl [View Full Entry]

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This is potentially the last time I give a top 10 food update, as I think that this now covers the full extent of our culinary delights in Asossa, this is not a complaint, the food is (mostly) incredibly fresh and you can buy it straight from the family who produced and picked it, or if it’s packed or processed from a little local shop - which is a shack or a little cabin, and they are all over the place, on every corner. There is a couple of ‘supermarkets’ but these are for the feureunj (foreign) contingent really, they have [View Full Entry]

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Al has been so diligent getting the blog up and running I thought I’d better start adding some comments and also get it up to date. I thought we’d have time in the first few weeks to work on this and we’d have a easy paced introduction to the country, when I’d have to keep myself entertained reading my books and watching episodes of Dawson’s Creek and recuperating after a hectic few months in the UK, what a naive women I am, it’s been none stop since we got here. We’ve not been in Ethiopia for 1 month yet and it’s [View Full Entry]

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It is currently the year 2000 in Ethiopia. It is currently the year 2008 in the UK. In as brief a history as possible, here is the pre-Ethiopia time :) It's a monster entry this one, so make sure you read it while getting paid e.g. at work. VSO Application & Early Training We applied for a two year placement through VSO in January 2007. People ask us what made us do it and I guess it was a number of reasons. We have no kids, we were getting a bit stale at work maybe, maybe I was a bit fed [View Full Entry]

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..and it might be my PC so I better be quick. We have been in country for 3 weeks now. Lots of pictures & thoughts to share. Never done a blog before and it feels a bit like praying. You send these messages into the ether and hope someone is listening and maybe cares! :) Well, anyway, disclaimer#1 - I've not done this before so if it is awful, bear with me. I have 2 years to get better at it! And, disclaimer#2 - there is a VSO policy regarding blog posts so I'll save anything contentious or outrageous for personal [View Full Entry]

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