Advertisement
Published: November 21st 2008
Edit Blog Post
The final manuscript
I put pictures in it as well. Honest! Well it's been some time since the joyous Obama update. Can't say it's been writers block as if you have followed this blog you will realise I can jibber jabba utter rubbish with the best of them with very little encouragement whatsoever 😉
No, more like being busier than a ZERO-legged man in an ar*e kicking competition!
On Thursday I start a 5 day Cisco course.
I am still writing Day 2. Doh.
I have started teaching English and held 4 classes this week. Two beginners classes for women and two mixed advanced classes. As a bit of a perfectionist, I am at sixes and sevens trying to come up with good lesson plans; but never having done any formal teaching before coming to Ethiopia, let alone teaching English, I really am flying by the seat of my pants 😊
Chuck in a last minute rearrangement of our flights home at Christmas because Yemenia Airway's 4th schedule change in 20 minutes left us with a 2 day stop-over in Sana'a, Yemen, without offering to pay for visas, hotel or even a word of apology (in fact they failed to answer four emails to either London or
Harry Potter and the Wireless Network
"A right riveting read" (The Sunday Times) Addis Offices or pick up the phone during the five attempts I made to call their Addis office).
Sprinkle on an email from my mate Stu telling me the Inland Revenue had decided to investigate my taxes from the year 2006-7 without telling me so I had missed my 3 month deadline and immediately owed £100 (over one month's salary out here) and had to provide information I did not have being 5,000 miles away.
Shake with a pinch of installing a new 30 station network at the Bureau, configuring two servers, building another Chinese flat-pack piece of furniture without instructions (them humourous Chinese - don't you just love em); this time a rack for the switches and patch panels.
Stir in a new training room (Mark II) that we rebuilt - painted walls, mounted whiteboard, new curtains, cable management, beautiful new tables & chairs (also without instructions; insist on standing if offered a seat) and new office furniture/arrangment in the IT rooms.
Drizzle with two pregnant cats mewing outside the house during daylight hours and the good news transmitted in Ge'ez from the local vicar's new Bang & Olfson's during the hours of darkness, just
Where are the people?
Must be a shai-buna break... to disturb my calm.
Bake in the 40 degree oven that Assosa has turned into now the rain has stopped and present with a demand for three video camcorders, two laptops, one video iPod, nylon cable ties, an 8-port switch, laptop memory upgrades, flash disks, artic silver CPU paste, pens, razors, soccer balls, stopwatch, chocolate and a partridge in a pear tree that my colleagues want me to bring back from the UK after Xmas...
So tonight dear friends.
(nervous tick)
Apologies.
(starts dribbling..)
I may be somewhat stressed.
(..shaking uncontrollably..)
I just want to come home.
(banging head against the table)
Please. PLEASE! PUH-LUH-EEEESS...EEEESSS...EEESS....
(<--Sara mixes crushed pills into a glass of powdered milk, pours down throat and massages neck until swallowed)
Uhhhhh......
(there, there)
Ohhhh.
(that's better)
Where was I?
So.
Everything's here in Assosa is just A-OK.
Sara was in Addis for 6 days over the last weekend delivering her proposal to the European union for a 200,000 euro grant for her six new ethnic development associations. Sounds like she had a good time - two massages, plenty
of jambos, taste sensations galore, got to meet all her girl buddies and even (dammit) saw the new James Bond flick!
One our fellow VSOs in Assosa has left as his placement didn't work out so we are down to three. The guy who owned his local off-licence filed for bankruptcy yesterday and then hung himself. Police don't think the events are related.
Antero, our Finnish buddy consultant working on a water project here, is back from a holiday in Finland and has bought, well, breeze-blocks of cheese back from Addis as well as fine red wine. I went round to help him out and tried to fix his satellite TV dish. Cheese and wine were great but couldn't fix the dish.
Might have to go back round again. In fact think it might have to become a major project of mine. Well at least until the cheese finishes and the wine runs out...
Did I mention I'm teaching English? Great fun.
My 'women only' class that Sara will take over (she was in Addis) went up from 10 to 13 from lesson one (Monday) to lesson two (Wednesday). It's a shame really that these
women do not get more of an opportunity. They are very shy when it comes to speaking English and are convinced I will laugh at them.
On the contrary, I find it, well, humbling, that they want to learn my language and I'm only too pleased to help. Of course I can't explain that to them - yet - because they wouldn't understand! They insist on calling me "Mr Alan" even though I tell them to call me Al. It's very sweet.
My advanced class just need confidence. Most of them can read English perfectly as in theory the majority of senior school lessons are in English across the whole of Ethiopia. What they lack is confidence to try speaking what they know and also the correct way to actually pronounce some words.
The teachers over here are not really comfortable teaching in English - why should they be? It's not their mother language. It would be like forcing all secondary school education in England to be delivered in French! Yes, we study French as a subject in it's own right, but imgine physics lessons in French!!!
I gather that for a while VSO refused to
Blast from the past
Can you guess which cabling was mine? help support the use of English as the standard language in the schools in Ethiopia as there is much evidence that students just learn things parrot fashion and don't understand the English, let alone the concept and that there is a body of thought that (quite reasonably I would imagine) you should teach people in their mother tongue.
Of course in Ethiopia there are 90 mother tongues. Imagine 90 physics teachers per school to meet the needs of 90 different students with differing mother tongues! In reality of course you don't have 90 languages being spoken in school, but you may have 8 or 9 in the schools here (Berta, Arabic, Gumuz, Shinasha, English, Amharic, Oromo and Tigrian).
Anyway, aren't I meant to be discussing my first IT training course? Seems like a lifetime ago 😊
Seriously. It's weird. I have no fear whatsoever any more about walking into a room of total strangers and trying to teach them a new skill. I'm sure teachers know what I mean. I'm not saying I'm any good at it; just it holds no fear. My comfort zone has just stretched to include it. I just guess that's part of
Training Room Mk II
The home of good learning what I came for.
So what did I need? A manual?
Wrote it. In fact wrote two. And am on my third. Each one over 1,000 slides. Rather proud actually.
What else? Some trainees?
Well Bekema my counterpart was in China on a training course (jolly) so we had Debebe (my other counterpart), Nugussie (Bureau of Finance & Economic Development), Mihret (HIV & AIDS Bureau), Wubalem and Teddy (Capacity Building or CBCB), Habtamu (Administration Offices), Tilahun (my boss), Adem and Mustapha (Regional Education Bureau), Antenna (Civil Service Bureau) and Tesfay (Microfinance).
The criteria was; must be an IT Expert; must have a network at their office.
So.
Manual. Check!
People. Check!
Next stop "the first Microsoft Certified training centre in Beneshangul Gumuz" (as the Bureau Head said with a smile as he surveyed our hard work).
All the arguments over relocating the BPR team and which rooms had the better feng shui completely forgotten...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.203s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 9; qc: 90; dbt: 0.0976s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
John
non-member comment
Grounded
I came across your blog when I looked for information about Asosa. I was thinking of going there for some research, but I just learned from Ethiopian Airlines that there will be no more flights to Asosa until February 8th. I hope that doesn't impact you. Best wishes in your good work.