Given that I start my sixth week of work this week, it’s time for a few words on education. Because I work in the Regional Education office I have contact with people from The Regional Bureau Head through 3 layers of administration and eventually to schools. At all levels I’ve come across people committed to their jobs, working with some of the challenges and difficulties we face in the UK, but also with many local challenges we have no idea about. There are similarities and differences in the
overall systems used. Here are a few:

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• Teachers’  progression and pay- there are six levels of teacher, to move from one level to the next, and achieve a pay rise, a teacher must meet certain conditions. They must undergo an evaluation which is conducted by a PTA committee comprising The Head, elected parents and pupils. If the right levels of satisfaction aren’t achieved, the teacher has a term in which
  to improve, then if progress isn’t made, it’s dismissal.
• “The Green School” or how misunderstandings happen! In discussion recently someone was explaining to me about different sorts of schools and mentioned the “Green School”. My
  ears pricked up (as well as my PAWS antennae – Pangbourne and Whitchurch Sustainability
  group). He explained that this is a school where lessons take place under the trees. Lovely, I thought, before realising that this is a school with no buildings, there is no choice! Having said that, some schools also have gardens – where I’ve seen a range of produce: bananas, papaya and a favourite of ours, a spinach type vegetable caled Kosta.
• Healthy Living – although scarce, water is provided at one of the schools during morning break. One photo shows children lining up in front of 2 huge cisterns ready for their turn – well they were lining up, until they spotted my camera and broke rank!
• Attendance and Absenteeism – In the UK, schools have responsibility for ensuring good attendance, and must follow up absenteeism. Parents gave reasons for absence like skiing holidays or buying clothes for a wedding. It’s the same here, but the reasons are different e.g. gold panning!  It appears there are 4/5 areas in Northern Ethiopia where small amounts of gold can be found, enough to attract 10-year-old boys to go looking to supplement the family income. To make sure their education isn’t interrupted, the authority puts teachers in
  these remote areas to provide one or two hours of lessons a day.
• Special needs – I’ve had the privilege of visiting several schools including Special schools for the deaf and blind. I probably saw the best lessons I’ve seen so far at the school for the deaf, largely because of the great use of visual aids, not always seen in mainstream lessons. There
  is also some inclusion. One mainstream school I visited has three blind pupils, one of whom was a 15 yr old girl, who as it happens is also an orphan. When she started at the school, she needed somewhere to live but was turned away from many places as landlords didn’t want to take her on, concerned that she’d be unable to pay.  The teachers then stepped in and helped her find accommodation. So a 15yr old blind orphan lives alone, fends for herself, including doing her own cooking.
• Class size – I haven’t seen a class with fewer than 45 children and haven’t seen one with more than 60. How do you fit them in? No problem – skinny kids – no childhood obesity issues here. Behaviour – on the whole pretty good too.
• Student participation –school councils are found here – members are elected , I was visiting on election day when all the voting boxes were out ready– see photo. Children are also involved in road crossing duty, a terrifying scene as they step out in front of anything from a donkey to a tuk tuk or 4 wheel drive.

Another view from our flat

A little bit about our living conditions. When we originally  embarked on the idea of VSO, our expectations for accommodation were low. Then,  as we heard tales from other returned volunteers, they began to rise. Many
couples seem to find themselves in houses with gardens. So when, on arrival, we  were ushered into a third-floor flat in an ugly modern block, with a small bedroom, a minute kitchen with one wooden table and dominated by a massive,  stained water butt, tiny concrete-walled and smelly shower room and loo, largish but eccentrically furnished living room and small balcony, there was a certain amount of dismay. The immediate response was complicated by the fact that the landlord and his son, plus a representative from Mekelle University and another from the Regional Education Bureau where Barbara will be working, were all present. Anyway, a month on the shower room is only slightly less smelly, the furniture unalterably eccentric, but the flat nevertheless is beginning to feel like home. So far, we have only been without water on one occasion, though we will have to see what happens as we advance into the dry season – the last heavy downpour of the rainy season was 3 weeks ago.

Apart from the whinge factor, the accommodation question here is an interesting example of the impact of Western influence on supply and demand in the developing world. Apparently, VSO had reserved us a house a little while ago, but when their representative came to finalise arrangements, they found that it already been let at 70% above the original rate. Mekelle has had NGOs and charities here for some time. A Chinese company moved in a little while ago to develop wind power, but their practice is to build living compounds and use imported Chinese labour, so they haven’t had much local impact. More recently, however, a French company arrived, with a generous budget, and the result is that housing costs have risen hugely. This is a pity, as it affects the local people as well, while contributing little to the local economy as many of the property owners are absentee landlords. Inflation is anyway a problem here. The economy is purportedly growing at 11% a year, but much of this is government driven and dependent on aid money rather than what Gordon Brown notoriously called “endogenous growth”. The country devalued its currency last year, but as its imports vastly outweigh its exports, this has further pushed up inflation.

The Value of Things

We didn’t come here expecting to live in the lap of luxury, nor did we expect to find high earners amongst the people we meet, but it’s still sobering when you start getting a bit of a feel of the value of things.

The VSO deal is that you get accommodation provided, then a monthly allowance to live on, in line with your local colleagues. So I get 2,750 birr, which works out close to £100.00 per month (27Birr = £1.00) giving a daily amount of under 100 birr (just less than £4.00). Granted John has to fend for himself.

The Ethiopians seem pretty upfront when talking money and it wasn’t long before the guy on the next desk asked what my allowance was. Same as me he replied – his take home pay is 2,900 birr, but of course he doesn’t get accommodation thrown in and he has his family to support. His qualifications – a double masters, including one from Dublin University, secured him a top job
in Education in one of the 9 Regional offices in this vast country which is Ethiopia.

We’ve learnt that our 1 bed flat costs 3,000 birr per month, so that would count my colleague out of living here. There’s a couple with 3 children who live below us and are obviously happy there –probably because of the sanitation which living here provides, which they wouldn’t get in many
places.

Since starting I’ve spent time getting to know the workings of all the different Education departments, including Finance. Another sobering experience. Having grappled with education budgets in the UK which didn’t always do all we wanted them to, I learnt what they get here.

A year's supply of food?

As in the UK, school budgets are based on pupil
numbers.  The annual allowance per pupil to
a primary age school is 10 birr from the Government, matched by the same amount
from the World Bank making 20 birr in all. It might be easy to think that’s OK and they can manage but a small bread roll costs 3 birr, so you can get 3 pieces of bread for the amount the Government can afford for each child for a
year of Primary school. We braved buying meat this week having lived an entirely veggie life at home up until now – 250g minced beef – 24 birr. More than the total budget per child in school for a whole year.

Along with this are the most charming, hospitable people you would ever wish to meet. A couple of days ago, I was out standing outside work waiting to meet John when an Ethiopian woman stopped to speak. In excellent English, she asked, “how are my people treating you in this country?” I was able to be honest and respond very positively. She was really pleased and proud
that that was my experience and went on to say that she’d lived in Italy, Sweden, Australia and maybe a couple of other countries. In the course of the chat, she said she’d encountered racism when away from home (by the way not in all countries) , but hoped my time in Ethiopia would continue to be pleasant and I would continue to enjoy living here.

What price that exchange?

More about money

One of our first impressions on arriving in Ethiopia was the smell of the paper money, especially the small notes (1 ETB – Ethiopian Birrh – is worth about 4 pence). Officially, small denomination notes are supposed to be going out of circulation, but since the costs of printing paper must be
considerably less than those of minting the new coins, which I imagine must be nearly equal to their value, small change is still largely given in paper money. And this is money that has travelled, money with meaning, none of the sanitized purity of credit cards and electronic transactions. You can see, feel and smell
the number of hands it has been through and the stories it has experienced. A fanciful thought: perhaps part of a banker’s training should be to spend a day in the local market here, bargaining over a 1ETB margin for a kilo of tomatoes, a dozen bananas, under the avid gaze of the boys who hang around there, staring longingly each time money changes hands.

September Celebrations

Flag day – a new National Day – 26/09/11 or 15/01/04, will we ever get our heads round the Ethiopian calendar?

My first day of work coincided with Flag day –  only I didn’t know it was happening. From our well-placed balcony with views of the Stadium we’d seen preparations takingplace the day before as crowds clad in the national colours of red, yellow and green perfected their routines.  Even with the early morning march past our flat, numerous groups carrying banners proclaiming something, still the penny didn’t drop that my first day of work might not actually be happening.  Like all newcomers to the school year I’d been up early, polished and prepared only to find the office doors locked on arrival. Ah well. Luckily someone spotted the uninitiated one and told me to go home!

From then we took advantage of our proximity to the action and followed, cameras in hand to the stadium. We’re not really sure what it’s about, other than it’s a National day and probably is some way a government initiative to promote national unity.  Note the scant skirts of the girls fronting the group in the photo– not a fashion I’ve seen a lot of elsewhere whilst here.

Then there was Meskel, a big national holiday here that celebrates the finding of the true cross. The story is that Queen Eleni (St Helena) had a revelation in a dream. She was told to build a bonfire and follow the smoke to where the true cross was buried. So now Christians in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church light
bonfires to commemorate the event and in Mekelle process up a nearby hill by torchlight on the night before Meskel. This year, celebrations were apparently
much muted following the death of 9 famous Tigrayan singers in a car crash on the way to perform in Sudan. They were brought to the local hospital where our Co VSO Health workers are placed and the funerals took place throughout Mekelle on the day of Meskel, making a very sobered city. They had been leading figures in the liberation struggle against the Ethiopian Derg dictatorship in 1991 and the response to their death here is reminiscent of the reaction to the plane crash that killed much of the Manchester United team back in the 60s (interesting possible diversion on the equation between football and war), or for music think impact of the death of John Lennon, or of a Bob Dylan or Bob Geldolf band.

Anyway, having only just arrived in the city, we missed most of the Meskel events, though we did see the processions in the city centre the evening before, a very colourful and noisy combination of the ecclesiastical and the pagan, with crosses, sumptuous robes, singing, drumming and dancing.

For the celebration we were invited by our charming landlord Hailom for Meskel lunch. Another embarrassment: this year the day itself fell on a Wednesday, when Ethiopian Christians fast (no meat or animal products – every Wednesday and Friday, plus Lent and Advent, a total of over 200 days a year). They had slaughtered and eaten a sheep the day before, so when we sat down to eat, our hosts were eating vegetable dishes while we gorged ourselves
on different meat dishes prepared the previous day.

Ethiopian food is all served with a form of bread called Injera, made from local grain. It is served rolled up (one irreverent Ferenji described it as like eating a bandage, as in appearance it resembles grey, perforated crêpe). You unroll it onto your plate, put the different meat and vegetable sauces on top, and eat it with your fingers, using only your right hand. It is considered impolite to lick your fingers, so by the end of the meal the inexperienced Ferenji (at least in my case) ends up covered in sauce to the elbow.

The Meskel Bird. One of the joys of being here is the variety of birdlife. We’d been told about a dramatically bright red bird which is only seen at the time of Meskel, thus the name. This weekend whilst out and about in the country we were fortunate enough to see it. A bit more research tells us it’s not in fact a migrant, but the male assumes the bright plumage only during the mating season. Twitchers note its bird book name – “The Northern Red Bishop”, captured in the distance on camera.