Yay for chance meetings

The other day I was getting copies done for a training (and was still charged the full price even though I brought my own paper. Grr) and a man who walked in after me stuck up a conversation.  I immediately got the feeling that we had met before, but I didn't remember.  Such things happen when you're the post popular person in town and everyone wants to talk to you.

Eventually, I remembered who he was, a guy named Franco who I had met at the juice bet one day and had vowed to actually call once I had taken my GMATs.  His number has been on a Sudoku scrap piece in my purse for months! Fancy meeting him on the opposite side of town from his house (and work).

Franco, even when I first met him, is a gem of an Ethiopian. Aka a unicorn in PCV speak, but he doesn't consider himself habasha.  He grew up in Cuba, studied in Russia, and now is a security supervisor for the UN if I remember correctly. He's got a grip of 11 languages, travels a lot, and is more than welcoming in helping me with my (super duper) rusty Spanish which I'll need for grad school.

We got sodas and spent an hour talking. It was this weird mix of Spanish, Amharic, and English, but it worked all right. He even gave me homework to learn 1-10 in Arabic (which Dani can help me with).  Franco is so cosmopolitan, he's a breath of fresh air that will hopefully last this entire last year.

He offered to teach me how to drive stick, since my one lesson in the States didn't really stick with me, and what other Ethiopian in Huruta 1) has a private care 2) can speak English to explain how to use a stick and 3) pretty much told him I can use him as a bunna daddy.  Then again, he considers himself Cuban so....

There are just times here when I'm blown away by the people I meet, be it in sleepy Huruta or some place else.  Franco's one of them, and he's really only in the country for another year, so we'll be leaving together.  I have a brother in arms to join Dani and me.

First Training of the Year

And I'm off!

Technically, school started Sept 12.  But well, national teacher meetings weren't scheduled till after then, nor the teaching rotation finalized (that's Ethiopian foresight for you) so regular classes didn't actually exist until this past week.

I held a training on what is CPD and how to do it, which is a national level program all teachers much participate in every year that's focused on self-improvement.   I went to two school to invite people and hoped for maybe 15 total from both schools combined.

I got four.

Well, at least they each got individual attention!  The best part was all the Oxford ESL textbook I had laying around for teachers to fill through while waiting for people to arrive.  My teachers just fawned over them and begged me to lend them out.  They really are much best than the English for Ethiopia books that are used here and hopefully my teachers can use them to 1) understand the purpose of supplemental texts and 2) use them to some extent.  We shall see.

I'm just excited to begin working.  I've paired up with a 2nd grade English teacher and will now be giving weekly 5 min phonic lessons to his two classes.  

This is the letter B. You draw it like this.  It sounds like this.

Basic stuff, that really teachers ignore.  There's a reason the literacy rate in the local language isn't 40%.  Hopefully, for this class at least, we can boost that because skills like blending (which we'll get to about half way through the year) is a skill you use to read all languages.

Wish me luck for my first class on Thursday!  I hope the little kids at least understand me.

Ethiopian New Year! (Sept 11 in the International Calender)

In the Ethiopian calender, Wednesday was New Year. It also happened to be a fasting day and so celebrations were spread out over Wednesday and then Thrusday, because unlike the Greek Othrodox Church who said it was okay for American to eat meat on Thankgiving (which falls during the advent fast) because it was a holiday, the Ethiopian Church can't give thier people a break.

Or maybe the habasha don't want one because then they get two days off of work.

Regardless, I enjoyed both days and got to understand it a bit better compared to last year when I was a newly arrived Hurutalite.

Flowers are big for New Year, after all it falls at the end of rainy season. Children will draw flowers on paper with the words Happy New Year on them (melkam addis amat or inquan adasrashichu) and pass them out to people they know. The adults who receive them traditionally give the child money, a bir or so. Flowers are also the traditional gift of thanks from the small groups of children who go caroling.

(insert video)

It's usually the small children who come singing, and all our visitors this year were girls. They sing the local version of Auld Lang Syne, and not all are as well equipped with a drum as the one above. As with receiving a drawn flower, singers are gifted with change and maybe bread too if you have some on hand. Not everyone gives money, I know I didn't last year, but if you do the kids will give you a handful of flowers as well as the previous song.

Most of the ones I got still had the roots attached, but oh well. It was just fun watching their reaction when they say me. When the this group first came to the compound, they were singing to Dani who was on the porch and didn't see me in the living room. But then the girl in the pink dress stuck her head in the doorway and saw me. Her eyes went wide and her mouth mute.

On other holidays, I go house hopping for doro wat, but on actually New Years we just went to Dani's mom's house for coffee and then on Thursday went around town to feast. I feel really bad I couldn't even eat a half plate at our place for dinner.

I did make no bake peanut-butter chocolate cookies to share, except for the fact that I over estimated the amount of oatmeal I had left and so instead of staying in balls my cookie dough just filled up platters. But hey, people enjoyed it, and I have a huge amount left over for me to just spoon into my mouth. It gets me all the time, how they put three spoons of sugar into a tea cup but can't handle sweets.

Well, I guess they are small spoons.

MSC

I just got done with MSC, or mid service conference.  Only 11 months to go!

It was great seeing friends and going to restaurants that serve food I forgot existed. (The French place has pumpkin pie!)  And some of the sessions were enjoyable.

The Education sector is still pretty new here in Ethiopia, just two years, and so there was a lot of discussion about changing our framework and adjusting programs to fit with what the MoE already has in place.  I find such things fascinating, analyzing strengths and weaknesses of a program and working with a group to improve it.  Maybe it's because our ITELE program is important and the changes to it now will effect the future of edu volunteers in Ethiopia, of I can see the long term impact of the framework and not a similar view of my work at the school, or perhaps I just like being a part of something important.  Regardless, it's making me glad I'm getting a MBA.  I imagine similar round table discussions in my future career and am looking forward to them.

I did sign up for two huge projects in addition to my clubs and trainings at school.  One is to help with creating a teacher training manual, specifically creating lesson plans for future PCVs to use in conducting methodology trainings for their teachers.

The other is a personal writing one, well, editing. I want to put together a collection of stories from the current Ethiopian generation of PCVs and RPCVS, and publish it with all proceeds going to the country fund to help pay for PCPP grants volunteers have written for grants that aren't covered by VAST or PEPFAR aka HIV or Malaria projects.

But again, they are lasting things that make be feel like I'm actually doing something.

It's weird, because I've been here for a year already and know I've made a difference - I have the English grades of my club students to prove it - but I have nothing concrete. I guess it comes back to the whole 'leaving your mark' thing a lot of people have.  Having a say in the program and in the perception of how people see Peace Corps and Ethiopia as a country just makes me feel valuable. And who doesn't like that?

Regardless, the new school year is starting soon, next week in fact, and I'm quite excited to get things up and running.  I feel like I've learned a lot and nothing at all this past year, so we'll see how 2006 (remember, Ethiopia has a different calender) goes.