What a week! On Sunday Ged, Lynda (my fellow volunteers) and I arrived in Mekele, the capital city of the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia. We were greeted by our hosts, Sister Feseha (the nun in charge of the school we’re working in) and Nugus (the school’s administrator). It was great to finally make it to our destination! Anyway, after a day settling in to our new surroundings we were straight to work. I’ve been teaching two groups of approximately 23 students, and so far it’s been a really fascinating and enjoyable experience. First of all though, let me introduce the school that I’m working at...
The Aba Gabremichael School – a really fantastic institution. The school was set up in 1995 to help the street children of Mek’ele, but now also works with a variety of particularly poor children in the city. Its aim is to give these vulnerable children education and support/counselling for their daily problems. Whilst the education is key to the children’s long term future, the school also meets their more pressing needs – every student receives a basic breakfast and lunch, and the children can use the school’s showers and laundry. This support is fantastic. However, because of financial constraints the project cannot offer every student a place to stay in the evenings, and cannot give the children dinner. The staff spend time ensuring that the children who attend the school have a safe place to sleep in the evenings, and seem to be having success (relatives or charitable people can often be persuaded to let a child sleep on their floor). However, the students still have to find some way to get food in the evenings. A few of my students have to work the whole of the evening to get enough money for a bag of food left-over from the plates of diners at the local hotel. It’s been really shocking to hear of stories like this from the happy, smiley faces of my classmates.
The scene that greeted us on our first day at the school will be in my memory for a long time. Upon arriving at the school gates we were met by about 150 students, all of whom were cheering, singing and clapping. We were then each given a bunch of flowers and were taken by the hand by some children in traditional clothes. After processing through the students we sat in the school’s main hall, and were treated to a variety of songs, dances (which we had to join in with of course!), speeches and jokes – all for our benefit. I’ve never felt such an important person! It was a really touching experience. I left the room feeling that I had better do a good job as a teacher so that I’d do justice to this welcome!
Teaching – I’m teaching two groups of about 23 students. My students are aged between 13-17 years old, and are all loosely at the intermediate level. They are great fun to teach, being a hard-working and (on-the-whole) happy bunch of children. The boys are energetic, always putting their hands up to answer questions. They seem to know everything about English football – one boy was telling me about the reserve team goalkeeper that Tottenham Hotspurs (the team I support) have! The girls are really sweet but were a bit shy at first, but the fact that I make a fool out of myself on a regular basis seems to have helped a bit. I’ve got the classes to choose a name for themselves, so boring "Class 3" has now been reborn as "Class Michael Jackson" and "Class 4" is the unforgettable "Class Bob Marley"! Everyone seems keen to learn, hopefully we’ll make good progress in the weeks ahead.
It’s been really interesting to see the education that the students had received before our arrival. To sum it up in a sentence, the students are all incredibly intelligent for their age. Their knowledge of different subjects is so impressive – they seem to have memorised every scientific formula and the dates of every historical event. It is so frustrating to see such educated, hardworking children face so many problems and have so few opportunities. I guess this will be a theme of my time here... Anyway, on a lighter note, I took a photograph of some of the English language work my students’ had done in the past (no doubt they had written it down after a teacher had dictated it to them). You can see it to the right of this paragraph, click on it and enjoy!
The Aba Gabremichael School – a really fantastic institution. The school was set up in 1995 to help the street children of Mek’ele, but now also works with a variety of particularly poor children in the city. Its aim is to give these vulnerable children education and support/counselling for their daily problems. Whilst the education is key to the children’s long term future, the school also meets their more pressing needs – every student receives a basic breakfast and lunch, and the children can use the school’s showers and laundry. This support is fantastic. However, because of financial constraints the project cannot offer every student a place to stay in the evenings, and cannot give the children dinner. The staff spend time ensuring that the children who attend the school have a safe place to sleep in the evenings, and seem to be having success (relatives or charitable people can often be persuaded to let a child sleep on their floor). However, the students still have to find some way to get food in the evenings. A few of my students have to work the whole of the evening to get enough money for a bag of food left-over from the plates of diners at the local hotel. It’s been really shocking to hear of stories like this from the happy, smiley faces of my classmates.
The scene that greeted us on our first day at the school will be in my memory for a long time. Upon arriving at the school gates we were met by about 150 students, all of whom were cheering, singing and clapping. We were then each given a bunch of flowers and were taken by the hand by some children in traditional clothes. After processing through the students we sat in the school’s main hall, and were treated to a variety of songs, dances (which we had to join in with of course!), speeches and jokes – all for our benefit. I’ve never felt such an important person! It was a really touching experience. I left the room feeling that I had better do a good job as a teacher so that I’d do justice to this welcome!
Teaching – I’m teaching two groups of about 23 students. My students are aged between 13-17 years old, and are all loosely at the intermediate level. They are great fun to teach, being a hard-working and (on-the-whole) happy bunch of children. The boys are energetic, always putting their hands up to answer questions. They seem to know everything about English football – one boy was telling me about the reserve team goalkeeper that Tottenham Hotspurs (the team I support) have! The girls are really sweet but were a bit shy at first, but the fact that I make a fool out of myself on a regular basis seems to have helped a bit. I’ve got the classes to choose a name for themselves, so boring "Class 3" has now been reborn as "Class Michael Jackson" and "Class 4" is the unforgettable "Class Bob Marley"! Everyone seems keen to learn, hopefully we’ll make good progress in the weeks ahead.
It’s been really interesting to see the education that the students had received before our arrival. To sum it up in a sentence, the students are all incredibly intelligent for their age. Their knowledge of different subjects is so impressive – they seem to have memorised every scientific formula and the dates of every historical event. It is so frustrating to see such educated, hardworking children face so many problems and have so few opportunities. I guess this will be a theme of my time here... Anyway, on a lighter note, I took a photograph of some of the English language work my students’ had done in the past (no doubt they had written it down after a teacher had dictated it to them). You can see it to the right of this paragraph, click on it and enjoy! 
Living with the Daughters of Charity – Ged, Lynda and I are all staying with the sisters who set up the school. Sister Feseha and Sister Meden have been our main hosts, and have done an excellent job at helping us settle in. We’re really well fed and looked after, so much so that we’ll probably return home double the weight that we came. The sisters have a group of female students doing all of the cooking and housework for us, which whilst making things easy for us, is a bit uncomfortable. I’m not entirely keen to have people my own age doing everything for me! However, we are "guests", and besides, men cannot do any housework here...
The main staple food is "injera", a thick and sour pancake. This is then complimented with a variety of toppings, usually some kind of stew. Whilst we sometimes have meat stews, this is very uncommon in Ethiopia - most people will live off lentil stew. The enforced simplicity of the Ethiopian diet really hit home when I asked my students what extra-special food they would eat at Christmas. Their answer was "meat!".
Challenges of living in Ethiopia – the main challenges so far have been dealing with the power cuts and water shortages. Both are linked, as the lack of rainfall in the region leads to a lack of power – much of the local electricity is generated through hydroelectric power plants. Thus, we only have power on alternate days. At least this is planned, so we can arrange things accordingly (we have to do most of our lesson planning and all of our printing during the days that we have power). Water, on the other hand, is less predictable – fingers crossed I’ll be able to have a shower tomorrow, otherwise my colleagues will not be happy...I have loads of other things to share with you all, but this blog has gone on for ages! Sorry that this has all be condensed into a single, long blog entry, but I have very few opportunities to access the internet (both because of the power cuts, but also because I simply don’t have much free time during the working week). Fingers crossed you found it interesting and that you managed to read this far! Expect another update next weekend... I hope all is well with you, lots of love and take care of yourselves,
Robert
P.S. Apologies for not replying to any emails that you're sending me - the internet is very, very slow here - it takes about 3 minutes to load up an email... Your messages are much appreciated though!
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