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Published: March 22nd 2008
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Cheeky Monkey
How did he get there? Ah, Ambassador, You (Didn’t) Spoil Us So did the Ambassador spoil us with small crunchy spheres of chocolate?
Er, no. In fact he didn’t even make an appearance at all.
The Brits, plus one miscategorised (and displeased) Australian, queued outside the compound before being led to a room for a very interesting health briefing with the Embassy doctor - a lovely happy woman who explained the contents of our individual small first aid kits and the large “safe-house” first aid kit. Apart from the missing latex gloves (!?!) and the out of date and largely useless anti-malarials - jar of marmite and a bottle of Bombay sapphire - all was in order. Hopefully none of it ever required.
On the way back from the Embassy we passed The Gunners bar; I made a mental note to catch a game next time I made it to Addis.
The afternoon’s entertainment was a ‘scavenger hunt’ laid on by the current volunteers for the benefit of the new volunteers. You are given a number of tasks to complete and things to collect off various VSOs and from shops dotted around Addis. The idea being that it would help improve
our Addis geography and give us a chance to use the line taxis.
We both decided against taking part as the training schedule so far had been pretty intensive and we had had very little free time to buy some essentials and more importantly get online and sort out some bank payments/check email. Instead of heading off to all 4 corners of Addis we huddled down in the VSO internet room and got typing/waiting/typing.
The first scavengers returned within a couple of hours and so we headed off to the Pride bar next to the VSO office for a jambo and to meet Steven, a current VSO in Assosa, who had been sending us information by email prior to leaving the UK. By about 8.30pm we were glad we hadn’t done the hunt as the last few scavengers came in. Apparently the line taxis were so busy during rush hour none of them would stop and a handful of VSOs had ended up walking for an hour or so back to the office!
Cheese Fix So the idea was for the Assosa vols (5 of us) to head off to the Zebra Grill for some food,
Say Cheese!
Oh no, don't remind us... but the jambos, the scavenging chaos and some packed Pride Bar miscommunication meant only the pair of us and Pascal (from Kenya) managed to make it to meet Steven and his crowd. The Zebra Grill is famous for its ferenji dishes and we wolfed down a plate of spicy bean burrito with CHEESE and chips. We had been told it would be our last proper cheese for a while.
The evening entered very soft focus when Steven nipped next door to an off-licence (perfectly acceptable to do this) and came back with a bottle of ‘limon araki’. Every country has its famous evil brew and, well, this is one for Ethiopia. It’s some sort of distilled spirit with a nasty boiled lemon sweet taste. Pinch thy nose, think of England and down in one...
When we got back to the hotel it was packed with people watching the end of the African Nations Cup semi-finals , Ghana/Cameroon and Ivory Coast/Egypt by candlelight.
That night the head torches came in useful. Our first power cut. Not that we initially realised. Having met a few other VSOs in the bar and remarking how “atmospheric” the Zebra Grill and the other restaurants had looked and how in the hotel was looking good by candlelight we went upstairs to our rooms and worked out why. No power!
Stupid ferenjis!!!
1-to-1 with the P&G PMs (at the VSO PO) Cursing Steven and his ‘limon araki’ the following morning I set off with Sara on the school bus for a meeting with the representatives of the Volunteer’s Committee. Most countries do not have enough volunteers in country to warrant a committee, but Ethiopia has nearly 130 and one had been formed to provide professional and personal support for volunteers, particularly though in isolated placements. As it happens Steven is our current representative for the western part of Ethiopia (Assosa, Bonga, Gigel Beles, Jimma & Nekemte) though the only personal support I was in need in right now was a couple of headache pills and a gallon or two of water...that and maybe some professional advice to avoid limon araki in the future 😊
That afternoon we visited the VSO office for our one-to-one meeting with our programme manager for VSO Ethiopia. In fact it was more of a two-to-two meeting as Sara and my meetings were bundled together as we have the same two Programme Managers (PMs). Sitting on the on the balcony of the VSO office we discussed our placements, what we can expect from our employers, what support VSO Ethiopia provide, how often we needed contact from them and vice versa. We have two very nice PMs, Wubalem and Berhanu, though Wubalem looks after the VSOs in Addis and Berhanu will look after those in Assosa.
We fall under the “Participation & Governance” Sector of VSO. Each country that VSO operates in has a Country Specific Plan (CSP), which is a high level 5 year work programme to tackle disadvantage and poverty. Ethiopia’s CSP runs from 2004-2009 and focuses on 3 sectors - Education, HIV/AIDs and Participation & Governance (P&G). Our P&G sector seeks to develop Federal and Regional Government so they can deliver effective services and also to provide opportunities for civil society groups to participate in decision making. The P&G sector used to be called Capacity Building & Infrastructure and has close links with the Federal Capacity Building programme, hence my placement in one of the regional Capacity Building Bureaus in Assosa. Sara’s placement in the Education Bureau is governance-focused, rather than education-focused, hence her classification as P&G, not Education.
I got the impression from the 1:1 meeting that some VSOs might expect close contacts with the Programme Office in Addis, though it had been made pretty clear during the whole VSO recruitment process that we were employed by our local organisation, not VSO Ethiopia. My understanding was that VSO were more a dating agency not a marriage guidance bureau and that if you had the initiative to travel 5,000 miles to volunteer overseas you ought to be able to sort out any little ‘relationship’ issues yourselves. Maybe some volunteers come from backgrounds where they are used to a little bit more cuddling by their employers? I don’t know as I have always worked in the private sector in the UK where you just get on with it.
G’day Mate? While we were at our 1:1, the non-Brits were at their respective Embassies. For the Aussies that meant the Canadian Embassy, who had some agreement with the Australian government to look after Aussies in Ethiopia. They clearly had a better reception than we had at the British one. The Ambassador certainly spoiled them with a handshake and good wishes for a successful placement, followed by a presentation on the Canadian government’s role in the Ethiopian development effort. To cap it all, given it is probably a bit like a full solar eclipse in frequency, they got to witness the surprisingly noisy and energetic mating ritual of the compound’s ancient giant tortoises, leaving us Brits feeling a bit short-changed by our whole Embassy experience!
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