December

One of the teachers at our school had got a new job at a newly opened private school called ABIFAM. He invited us to come see his school, so that's what we did. It was very interesting to see another private school. The classes were much smaller, but that was mainly because it
was a new school and not that many people knew about it. It seemed like a very nice school and both Aske and I were a bit jealous of the class sizes. At the moment Eldan is experiencing hard competition from private schools around Jimma. When Eldan first started out, it was practically the only private school, but now new ones are starting up everywhere (9 schools have started up in the past 6 years) and offering the teachers better salaries. This means that many of the best teachers have now left Eldan and put it under hard pressure to
raise the teachers' salaries.














The family we're livng at is drying a lot of chilli at the moment. They use it for a special Ethiopian spice called Berberi. In the background you can see Maria washing clothes.















Christmas! Here you can see the adventskrans in action.



















The family of one of the Danes, Mads, who had come to visit him on Cristmas. Here they are visiting us at Eldan. The students were very happy to see them.














This is Mads' niece. The kindergarten children were very happy to see her and all wanted to play with her. We all agreed that she was very good at handling all of the attention and the hundreds of children who wanted to touch her, mainly she just smiled.















Our Christmas dinner! For Christmas one of the Danish families had let us borrow their house (they were in Denmark for Christmas) which had an oven! So, Aske and I spent all of Christmas and the day before making food and it was sooooooo good. We made 3 kinds of cakes, buns
and the dinner itself. It was nice to celebrate Christmas in the best possible way you can in Ethiopia. The woman on the picture is a Dane called Pernille who celebrated Chritsmas with us. It was nice to have a guest, athough there is a long way from the 20+ dinner I'm used to
from the Faroes and just being the three of us. That being said, we had a lot of fun together and a very nice Christmasy Christmas















Here we are dancing around the Christmas tree. I admit that it was a bit strange with only the tree of us, but it has to be done for Christmas! We had borrowed the tree from our family who won't need it until in a week. All of the things on the tree are made by us!:)















Last Saturday we celebrated Aske's birthday with one of the teachers from the school and Pernille. We had baked the cake layers on Christmas and it was so good! We had put jam, banans and homemade cake cream in between the layers and topped it with the Sweet Whip we bought in Addis (which actually wasn't that bad, it tasted a bit like coconut milk or soy milk). It was a very nice and cosy birthday and we had a lot of fun showing the Ethiopian teacher how a birthday was celebrated in Scandinavia.

A picture of the gang that went on a hippo-quest. The big white guy in a red T-shirt is Mads. The two boys in front to the left are Samuel and Isaac (some friends of us) and above Mads’ shoulder there are three Danish girls taking pictures

















Crossing a field to get to the lake. We live 1900 metres above sea level and the highlands here are very fertile and green.















By one of the lakes we saw this strange bird. We have no clue of what it is.















The best picture we got of a hippo. As mentioned they were rather shy, but this one showed us its face

















The river in which the hippos lived.
















We are all very focused on picking (or, in this case cutting with a Swiss knife) a flower for a Christmas decoration
















Some traditional huts we saw on our way back. The woman who lived in one of them invited us into her hut. It was one room with kitchen, stable and bed, all in one. The chickens lived on a stick above the cows – clever.















As previously mentioned, the cat wakes us up every morning by meowing. Usually it does it outside of our door, but one morning it had got so impatient and desperate (“Why don’t Aske and Maria let me in at half past 6??”) that it tried the window situated 1 meter above the ground. So, it hung there and meowed miserably for a while until we took pity on it and let it in.




















Maria’s is doing her best to make an Adventskrans (Aske also helped).

Aske

When we arrived in Jimma, almost three months ago, we had read in our Lonely Planet about a “Hippo Pool” somewhere near the town. Luckily “the other Danes” had done the same - so we decided to hook up and rent a minibus together to get there. We went there this Saturday afternoon, but had some slight difficulties finding it. Luckily Mads (a Dane) had brought a GPS with the location of the hippo pool marked on it, so after some driving in a forest we managed to find it.

Just a few kilometres out of town it is remarkably rural. Five kilometres out of Jimma there is a hydropower dam, creating a big area of swamps, shallow lakes and small rivers behind it. This was were the hippopotamus were to be found. None of us (or the driver or our accompanying Ethiopian friends) had been there before, but as the dirt track ended on the wrong side of the dam we were met by some local boys who knew the way to the hippos. We walked for some time and saw a big lake. The local boys pointed across a plain, but we insisted to go down a hill to get to the lake. And in the end, what do the locals really know when we are the ones with the GPS?
It obviously turned out that they knew a lot more about the location of the hippos.

Down by the lake there were no hippos so we walked for some hundred metres along a river and insisted to cross a field to get to another lake (though the local boy consistently pointed further down the river). By that lake there were no hippos either, however there were lots of interesting birds. We still lacked some excitement. Half of the group was already left behind as their all had a sincere fear of hippos. Maria, Mads, Mette, our driver, a little boy and I heroically kept going. Nothing should stop us, not even a couple of cute hippos.

My perception of hippos got completely undermined by the other Danes in the bus on our way to the lake. They all agreed that hippos are aggressive and dangerous animals. I thought they were big and too slow to do any harm, but was told that after mosquitoes, the hippo is the animal killing most people in Africa. Well. I packed away my swimming gear and agreed to keep a safety distance.

Back to the story. We heard something that sounded like a shot from an airgun and soon after the boy who had showed us the way, pointed at the river as a massive hippo put up the nose to breathe. Wow, we had really found them. However the hippos were quite shy (just as I had predicted) and did not seem aggressive to me at all. The muddy river they were paddling around three-four metre below us, so we all agreed that the big animals could not jump up the vertical dirt walls. Nevertheless the adrenalin started pumping as the biggest of the hippos swam towards us while looking with its evil eyes.

We think we saw half a dozen of hippos, but as we only saw the tip of their noses it is difficult to say. We were told that hippos crawl up on land at night, but during the day they just seemed to be relaxing in the shade of a tree leaning out above the river.

Friday night we had invited the Danish couple Sara and Gregers and their two year old son Vilas for dinner. Unfortunately we had to admit that our kitchen facilities were not sufficient for making what was on Friday night’s menu: Lasagne and apple pie.

Did I write the story about what my dad sent us? Anyways her it comes again. My parents were about to send us a package and I asked my father to send us some powder food as well because of our lack of creativity in the kitchen, and especially because of our lack equipment (oven etc.). My father was very kind to rush down to a supermarket the following day and immediately send of the package. What we got was Indian Rice Dish (use only 500 gr. minced meat), a lasagnette (use only 500 gr. meat plus an oven) and a Sausage Dish (use only 500 gr. sausage (impossible to find in Ethiopia) plus oven). Great. As we don’t even have meat it was certainly not easy to use all our lovely dishes my dad had sent.

Gregers and Sara had heard about the story (the rumours spread quickly among the Danes in Jimma), and said that we were welcome to come to their place to make the food. The point of the story is that we invited them for dinner –in their house.

It was great to have so many things in a kitchen again so Maria and I really enjoyed cooking. We made a real salad with feta cheese and sun dried tomatoes, the lasagne from Denmark as the main course and a nice apple cake with cinnamon and cardamom – umm, it turned out really good. We brought wine and even did the dishes, so both parties were happy (at least we were). Such a win-win situation =P

Tomorrow (Friday) we have school again. The last week we have not done any work (a part from invigilating for two hours) so we have done lots of practical things (and watched all the movies we have got from the others).

Now we will go and find some late lunch somewhere in town, as well as posting this on the internet. I hope it will be manageable today. Last week it took me 67 minutes to send the text and the seven pictures by e-mail for Maria’s mother to upload them. Today we have eight pictures, so let us see how long it takes.

Have a nice week everybody – and merry mini Christmas!

Aske

Maria

Hello everyone.

So, the first of December has arrived and Aske and I are doing our best to get into the Christmas spirit. We have made an erm… “adventskrans” which I guess is a part of a Scandinavian tradition (basically just four candles and then you light one every Sunday for the four last Sundays before Christmas). Because of our limited Christmas resources, we had to be creative and succeeded in being so by making it out of a round metal plate for roasting coffee on and red ribbons which we used to hang it from our ceiling. To my surprise, it actually looks good. We have also bought a big candle which we are going to write numbers on with a permanent marker and use as a Christmas calendar. Yes, Christmas has definitely come to Jimma. My mother has also been as kind as to agree to send us coloured shiny paper to make Christmas hearts out of as well as strips of paper for making Christmas stars out of.

Other than that and the whole hippo affair which Aske will tell you about, not much has happened here in Jimma. At the moment our students have their mid-term exams, so we spent 3 hours as invigilators last Monday and have had Friday, Tuesday and Wednesday off. We haven’t done much. Yesterday we spent looking at fabrics for my Christmas present: a tailor made dress.
Yesterday we ordered Aske’s Christmas present, a tailored suit for the modest price of 750 birr – 400 kr. One might argue that knowing what you’re going to get for Christmas is boring, but we decided that since we had both wanted something tailor made for a long time, but never really had the conscience to spend the money on getting it done, Christmas was the perfect excuse we had been waiting for. So, today the lady of the house took us to her favourite tailor so that he could make me a dress that I had drawn. I don’t think that my dress will look remotely similar to what I drew or that he understood what I wanted, but I’m going back next Thursday for a fitting and then we’ll see if I can make myself clearer then. Moreover, the fabric (3 metres) was 60 kr. and the tailors wage 35 kr., so I guess it’s okay if it doesn’t look completely like a Channel dress, I’ll survive and so will our wallets.

Maria

Here is a picture from when four of “the other Danes” came to our place for dinner
















Maria and the two Danish girls Mette and Louise on the backseat of the taxi on our way to the waterfalls in Seka















A river near to the waterfalls, with three African boys in it
















The magnificent view of the valley with the grazing cows and the waterfalls in the background. Of course it was even more beautiful in reality















The typical tourist pose: Maria and Aske in front of the falls
















Here is a rather dodgy bridge we had to cross to get to the waterfalls. On the picture you can also see half of crowd that followed us all the way














The landscape in the Highlands is, as mentioned, amazing. Suddenly there was a huge bump on the other side of the bus window, and you can see the hilly highlands behind it
















A picture from the (really rich) Sanford International School. We were very lucky and visited the school on a night where the students hosted a show. Ooh it brought back memories. Here are four girls doing Ethiopian dance















This picture is taken on the way back from Addis, with a Maria staring out of the window
















Finally is another picture taken from the window of the bus. Hopefully you get an idea of the mountains, curves and landscapes we had to cross to reach Jimma

Aske

Hey to you all.

So many things have happened down here, so we have not had the time to update the blog for the last couple of weeks. So let us update you chronologically.

Two weeks ago we invited four of the Danes over to our rooms for tomato soup and pancakes. We had spent a long time on cooking and preparing, and it was certainly a great challenge to fit six people in our “kitchen”, but we managed. It was great talking to them about the quotidian life here and we agreed with two of them, Mette and Louise, to meet again the following day (Sunday) to go on an exploring trip some miles out of town.

Sunday we woke up (very early) to go to church before we had breakfast at a café nearby. We found Mette and Louise later on (or they found us) and they immediately ordered the taxi that should bring us to one of the surrounding villages. The taxi driver asked for 500 birr ( = 50$ or the monthly wage of a teacher with a university degree) to take us there, but as we were all desperate to see the surroundings we accepted. We went to Seka, a village some 30 km from here as our Lonely Planet had recommended us to see the local waterfall. It was great to see what Ethiopia really looks like. 85% of the 80 million people in this country live on the countryside, so what we see here in the town in not the average Ethiopian. The landscape was astonishing and really African. We live 1800 m above sea level, but still there are mountains surrounding the city on all sides. There are mountains, plateaus and fertile, red soil everywhere.

When we came to the village, people immediately formed a crowd around us. We had to walk for 20 minutes to reach the waterfalls and had great company by many boys who wanted to be taken photos of for 1 or 2 birr. When we reached the valley of the waterfall it felt highly surreal, like the revelation of a landscape in a Disney movie. Well, look at the picture and judge it yourself. By the waterfall there was a constant breeze from the big masses of water moving the air and it just seemed like such a perfect sanctuary, all it needed was a bamboo-café selling warm macchiatos and cold colas.

We spent an hour or so there, following the local kids all around the waterfall. Local boys were swimming naked, men were chatting in the shade of a big tree, and some women were drying their clothes on bushes in the sun after having washed it in the brown water of the river. The waterfall was nothing big or famous in Ethiopia and I am sure not many foreigners go there, however it just felt so relieving and refreshing to see it, to feel the wind from the water and to get out to where electricity is still just a new invention.

On our way back we saw a bus being stopped for a police inspection. A German we talked to the day after had experienced six check-points on the 30 km bus ride between the village and Jimma. As we might have mentioned, chat (a lightly intoxicating drug taken by chewing the leaves of a certain plant, not the media of communication) is extremely popular around Jimma and apparently one cannot carry big amounts without having to pay some chat-taxes. What the chat-growers do is to distribute a pile of chat to all the passengers in the buses and collect them again when the bus reaches its destination.

Maria has written about our trip to Addis Ababa, but she did not mention how we got there. When we came to Jimma a long time ago, we took the daily domestic airplane (40 min.) as we could not imagine what a bus ride in a strange country and with 60 kg of luggage would be like. This time we wanted to do it the local way (and to save a considerable amount of money) by taking the bus (the buses operate at a fare price of about 1½ $ per 100 km). We found out that to take the bus in Ethiopia is a big mess, especially for people who tend to get carsick (Maria) or for people who like to wake up late (me). To take the bus from Jimma to Addis one has to be at the bus station at 5:15 in the morning, 1½ hours before it gets light. What meets you there is hundreds of people waiting outside the bus station for the gates to open at around 5:30. When the gates have opened (it really felt like being at Roskilde Festival again) people rush to find their bus. Every bus has a discretely placed sticker with a number on the side, which has to match with the number on your ticket. Luckily the taxi driver (one of the four in Jimma) who took us to the bus station also ran with our luggage to find our bus. He was fast, so he managed to get the best seats for us; the ones right behind the door, ergo a lot of space for the legs.

When you have taken your seats you sit, and wait. No one knows exactly what you wait for, but waiting is a compulsory part of the bus ride. People, beggars, boys selling chewing gums and other strange characters go in and out of the bus while you wait for it to leave after about 1½ hours. It is bitterly cold around dawn and when you have only slept for four hours the same night the enjoyment of yourself in the bus is at that point of time at a very low level. It helps when the sun starts to rise and the bus driver turns on the engine and sets of for Addis Ababa. The odd thing is that nobody knows how long it is going to take. There are 354 km and it takes anything ranging from 7 hours to 1½ days to put them behind you. We were lucky and arrived in Addis at around 14 o’clock, thanks to a fast driver.

The way to Addis was just marvelously beautiful. There are two valleys or gorges the road has to cross, so there are quite some serpentine turns that an experienced 4x4 driver would enjoy. However we were in a fully booked, Ethiopian-made bus that had been on the roads for at least a couple of decades, so Maria did not enjoy it as much and spent most of the seven hours gazing out of the window. I should maybe have done that too as it gave a good impression of the society and nature. We will post a picture or two of the landscape, but the majesty of the highlands cannot really be captured on a photo. I spent the bus ride finishing my Mandela autobiography that I had read ever since we arrived in Ethiopia. Finally on our way through the suburbs of Addis I got to page 527 (the last one) and read some very wise words by Mandela which I immediately forgot as I was exhausted and tired from waking up early.

After four hours drive the bus stopped for twenty minutes so the passengers could get some (Ethiopian) food. We just wanted to find a bathroom and were met by a big man who apparently was the manager of the “rasteplatz”. We chatted a bit with him and it turned out (according to his own claims at least) that he had been one of the royal, personal body guards of the Emperor Haile Selasse of Ethiopia and had travelled with him to destinations like Germany, France and England just to mention a few. What gave him credibility was that he immediately recognised the name Denmark. He guided us to two of his “hotel” rooms that were just about to get cleaned and said “you can take room number 5 and you take room number 6”. Great, two private “toilets” for 10 minutes. There was a hole in the ground, no tap, no water, no toilet paper, but the gesture in itself was highly admirable. So we also bought some coffee there on our way back from Addis.

In Addis we bought many different things (as you can read from Maria’s entry), and also two international newspapers. We really wanted to find some, but were unable to do so in the bookshops. We were told that we could probably find some at the Hilton and Sheraton hotels (the two most expensive hotels in Eastern Africa), but as I had forgot my dress and Maria her robe we didn’t quite dare (or bother) to go there. Luckily we were stopped by a street seller outside one of the most exclusive supermarkets, he turned out to have both Le Monde and The Guardian. Oh heaven! Now that I have no more Mandela to read, I am trying to get through every article, before I will start on a new book.

I guess that is all so far.

More news and pictures will come some time in a week or two.

Aske (with Maria by his side)

Maria

So, this weekend Aske and I were in Addis, the capital city, and enjoyed all the great pleasures of life that we once took for granted. We had rented a room in a hotel with a sofa, a table, a big bed, satellite television and a real western bathroom with a normal toilette and, joy-oh-joy, warm water. All this luxury for only 250 Birr (150 kr) for the two of us per night.

The main excuse for our visit was that international parcels can only be sent from the main post office in Addis and we really wanted to send Christmas presents home. In addition we wanted to do some Christmas shopping for ourselves. We found almonds for the shocking price of 148 birr for 500 gr – that is 148 loafs of bread or a fifth of a middle-class monthly income, however, what is Christmas without Ris à la Mande and what is Ris à la Mande without almonds? So, we bought it and now have 500 gr of almonds for Christmas. Yay. Apart from that, Addis offered many interesting things. We also bought cream (from a Danish company) that can be stored at room temperature until 2010 and only needs to be cooled for 24 hours before being “whipped to create the desired foam”. Interesting, although I have my doubts about the taste, but, what is Christmas without Ris à la mande and what is Ris à la mande without whipped cream? Furthermore, we found canned hot dog sausages (also from a Danish company), real cheese(even feta) and (bliss oh bliss) sun dried tomatoes(they cost 60 birr,but were so worth it, the salads we have made this week have been divine).

While being in Addis we also found the opportunity to meet Tsegue who took us to a show at the school where he is currently the principal - Sandford International. It was the first international school in Addis and is very prestigious. School fees are a staggering 60,000 birr (40,000 kr) per year, so the students who attend are upper class Ethiopians or children of diplomats. It was by far the most well equipped school we have seen with a proper sound system, musical instruments and a real stage with curtains. Later his wife, Magdesh, took us to visit Raselas, the school that Tsegue’s wages from Sandford and RCNUWC’s own DROP help to fund. The contrast was stark, but by Ethiopian standards, Raselas seemed a very good school. There were only around 15 students in each class and, what in my opinion was the best part, they did not believe in hitting the students. The library was also very well equipped by Ethiopian standards as it had received book donations from an American association and had also managed to buy some subsidized books. Magdesh told us that she would be e-mailing Ellen from Sweden (who as most of you know will probably start her volunteering period there in January) later that day to get more accurate information as to when she would be coming, so Aske and I keep our fingers crossed and hope that it will be around the 13th of January so that we can meet up with her in Addis on our way back to Europe.

We also met up with Daniel, one of the founders of Eldan, and our own Kidist, the wife of the other founder, Elias, who passed away last year. Together we ate the best fish I have ever tasted (perhaps because I haven’t tasted real fish for several months), fresh from a lake nearby Addis.

Altogether we were only in Addis for half of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so we had tight schedule with seeing schools, seeing people, shopping, sending parcels (took ages), taking warm showers (took even longer), watching news from the outside world on our satellite television and eating pizzas and Indian food. Before we knew it, the weekend had passed and we had a 7 hour long bus journey ahead of us back to Jimma. It is strange how my perspective of Addis has changed after having lived in Jimma for three months. I remember being scared of all of the attention and thinking that it was all so foreign and different. We were there for almost a week back in September and for the whole time I was only waiting to get to Jimma and start my life here in Ethiopia. This time around, the people of Addis seemed very calm and blasé about our presence there. Every second person did not greet us with a “you, you!”, the children did not become over-excited to see us; we still received some attention, but only a fraction of what we receive here in Jimma. Furthermore, they had quality western food. For three months I had not tasted a real pizza (only a pie that pretended to be one) with real cheese (cheese, along with most other things that require refrigerators, does not exist in Jimma), and oh the joy I felt when I could get a quality Italian style pizza with pork (a no-no in Muslim and Orthodox Jimma) on top of it. When I last was in Addis, I did not know that I was supposed to stock up on warm showers or world news. I did not know that I was supposed to buy spices, cheese, sun dried tomatoes, butter and strange cream that can last for 2 years. But this time, this time I did.

Despite the luxury of the capital, it felt good to be back in Jimma. As Aske and I walked the last bit to our home on the red gravel roads of Jimma, it actually felt strangely like having come home. It is of course not as much a “home” as the real one back in Europe, but compared to Addis, it was. I realized that, although I enjoyed Addis to the fullest, it was still in Jimma that I wanted to live. The roads are redder, we run into people we know and like almost every day and when we walk into a shop, the shop-keepers know who we are and we know who they are. It is nice to live in a city of a reasonable size. It may not have all the food that we are used to, but what it lacks in goods, it makes up for in charm.

Maria - November 9, 2008

Finally it is weekend. Our dear students are at the moment hopefully writing their weekend diaries in order to hand them in to us on Monday. That means that right now Aske and I have absolutely nothing to do except relax and enjoy the weekend. At the moment there is a little cat lying on the floor relaxing too. As Aske has mentioned, it has become our little pet and feels more and more at home in our little apartment. We thought it was the cat of the house, as we’ve seen the maid giving it meat, but one of the daughters of the house recently said that it wasn’t. Anyways, every morning we wake up because the cat is standing outside our door, giving out little sounds so that we’ll notice that it’s there and open the door. However, it still panics completely if we close the door. We have accidentally done that twice while it’s been inside and it runs under a chair, lies flat and starts howling. Today it has spent its morning rubbing against Aske’s and my legs and following us around everywhere we go. It has turned out to be a very social cat and it constantly “talks” to us Aske claims, but in my opinion it more sounds like it’s just complaining or begging us to give it food. Anyways, it is nice to have a little cat to wake up to in the morning and who also sits waiting for us outside our door when we get home from school. I just feel a bit sorry for the cat because we leave in two months, and then what’ll the poor cat do? I guess it has survived so far in Ethiopia and will continue to do so after we’ve gone. Maybe the maid’ll help it a bit (although I have seen her splashing water at it too).

And now for something completely different! This whole week the Ethiopians have been ecstatic because Barack Obama won the presidential election. The U.S is very popular here in Ethiopia and gives a lot of aid to the country. The books for spoken English are as an example made by an American university and “given to the Ethiopian people by the George W. Bush foundation” as the book’s first page kindly tells us. There is also a big billboard in the city which has a picture of a man and a girl, some unintelligible Amharic letters and some small letters underneath which say “American Aid”. So, yes, here they are very happy that an ”African” has finally become president of the United States and spent the whole Wednesday congratulating each other and putting up pieces of paper saying “Congra to all the supporter of B. Obama, our Afro-american hero”. In fact they almost act as if he is Ethiopian. They proudly tell us that his father was Kenyan and that he apparently was from the northern part of Kenya and possibly from a tribe which is in fact practically Ethiopian. I really think that it is amazing what Barack Obama has achieved with his persuasive talk about change. It seems as if even pessimistic Europe (and myself I must admit) is hopeful that he will change the U.S. to the better. It is incredible that he can make a country as far away as Ethiopia believe that he can also change their country and the whole world (Yes, they have told us that that is what he’ll do). It seems as if they finally see hope in the Western world because now one of their own has gained the power and he, unlike all the others, will keep the interests of Africa in mind. Mr. Barack Obama certainly has a lot to live up to here in Ethiopia and I really hope that he’ll be able to live up to the image the Ethiopians have of him.

Maria

Aske - November 9, 2008

The story about an Eskimo who paid the Bornholmish a visit in Africa

Hello again everybody, time for some updates from the land far away.

Yesterday (Saturday) we received some very good news from Norway; a delegation from RCNUWC is going to Western Ethiopia in the Christmas break and passing by our town, Jimma, on their way there.
We are (hopefully) going to see nothing less than five familiar faces here. We both got very happy when we read this in an e-mail yesterday. I think I got a bit overexcited, probably because my previous personal first-year Jens Møller from Greenland will come too. Unfortunately they will only stay in Jimma for one night (which can quickly result in almost nothing if the planes or busses are delayed), but it will still be fun and strange to see the people here. My own beloved English teacher (guess I had to write that in case she reads the blog) Donna and Maria’s English teacher, Pete, will come too as well as Ezequiel and a first-year from Iceland. According to Maria (the North Atlantic expert amongst us) claims that Ingunn is a girl’s name, so we expect to meet an Icelandic girl here soon. I have already promised Maria that I will give Ingunn some moral support and some financial aid when she gets here.
Well, enough about a maybe-visit we might get for some hours in 1½ months.

How are we? Nothing big has happened since last update. Our dream about an electric stove came to life last Monday. It is much easier to sit inside cooking. We are getting lazy yes. We are also considering investing in one of these Italian silver espresso-things you put on a stove, but it costs the same as 16 kilos of avocadoes so we have to consider if it’s worth the expense.

We have also bought some small boxes/baskets made out of straws. They are highly decorating and we feel very African when we have them in our house. Yesterday we of course washed our clothes (as we do every Saturday morning), but also cleaned our rooms and moved some tables around so that we now have free space and a very neat apartment I would say. Let’s see if we can keep it that way for at least two days.

Last week we had more diaries to correct than ever before. Luckily we have got a bit faster now, so we managed to finish correcting them 20 minutes before we gave them back. In all four classes the average mark has gone up (an increase of between 0,2 and 1,1 out of 25 points) which means that many of the students have gone from a C to a B. Just to state it again: The marking record of the school shows that 37% of the students get A+, 38% get A, 22% get B and 3% get C... Nobody (except for 2% of our English diaries) gets D.

We wanted to go to Addis once in November to relax and do some food-shopping and once in December to do the Christmas-shopping and maybe send a parcel or two to Europe. However it seems like the two trips will be combined in to one. We wanted to have gone to Addis this weekend, but we never asked the school for two days of. So we looked out for new plans. Two of the Danes from the nearby enclave asked us if we wanted to go to a lake in the wilderness some 17 km. from here. We were supposed to go this morning, but when they called the taxi-driver he said that the road would be inaccessible for the next three to four months (because of the mud-condition of the road). So they said they would try again next week and see if it wasn’t just the Ethiopians being over-cautious again.

On November 30 it will be the first Sunday in Advent so we also need to find some kind of pine-thing we can put four candles in. Maybe we will have to find that in Addis.

We finally received our weekly Danish newspaper here on Thursday.”News”-paper is maybe overrating it a bit as it took 15 days for it to get here, but it is really nice to have some intellectual things to read every week. It surely also prevents Maria from panicking because of our lack of things to read.

Last weekend we also exchanged videos with the Danish family here – so now we have 250 GB full of different films. This morning we watched Aristocats as 60 GB of the films we got were children’s movies meant for their two-year old son. We have also started on a documentary in three parts about the origin of coffee (a couple of miles from here – ha!).

Last news from me: we have almost got our own cat now. For the last couple of weeks we have befriended a cat that now comes to our door many times every day. It has surely never been cuddled before, but it seems to like it. We give it the leftover tuna from our sandwiches and milk every day. The people living in the house here stare strangely at us when we spend time with the cat, as pets here are not for petting purposes.

I guess that’s all I can think about writing this week.

Congratulations to you all about Obama’s victory=)

Take care everyone, and a happy November to you all.

Aske

1: The mountains we see from our path to school on a beautiful morning. The buildings in the foreground are parts of Jimma University














2: All the students wear uniforms and all the teachers wear these white gowns. We asked why and apparently it is to protect the teachers’ valuable clothes from being covered in dust from the chalks. Another teacher said “it makes us look like professors at university” – we believe in the second one.



















3: We were invited to make Doro Wot (Ethiopian chicken stew)at one of the teachers’ house. It of course included grabbing two chickens from the backyard cutting their throat and cutting it in to pieces. It is the women’s chore, so the man in the house and Aske just watched patiently.














4: We have to spend a lot of time correcting those Weekend Diaries, so to make it as pleasurable as possible we went to a nice restaurant on our way home. The “St. George Beer” is actually not bad.



















5: As Maria wrote some time ago, passing the grade 1 and grade 2 classrooms can be very difficult in the breaks because of all these lovely, little fellows who want to show their affection to us by various means.



















6: It is easier on the way home, where there are just a couple of students who occasionally want to talk to us. Here we gathered some of them for a pose with Aske.

Aske - November 1st

As you might have noticed there seems to be a tendency that we are only online in the weekends – now it just happened again.
Today is the first of November and I really cannot understand it. Outside the weather here is as it always is – sunny and comfortably hot. Today is the first of November (sorry, I just have to repeat for my own sake). Under normal circumstances I would have started making Christmas decorations two weeks ago, but here the winter seems far, far away. Most probably it will never make it all the way to Jimma.
On my desktop I have a background picture from RCN in Norway - it was taken in the summer-sunshine and the fjord looks nice and warm. Now I just wonder how the weather is there at this moment, I am afraid it is slightly darker than on the picture I have of it.
Yea the missing-Christmas-spirit-depression will surely come to me in a month – I can already feel it =)

What about the news from here? Well, we are doing fine. We are quite accustomed to the way of life now. Yesterday we bought a basket to store fruits in and in general we get more and more well-equipped. We are intending on buying an electric heating plate (stove) this week - not because our camping-gas-thing doesn’t work, but just because we want to feel privileged being able to cook spaghetti and fry onions at the same time. We know it is extravagant, but I do believe it is important to feel good here if only for a few months.
Like every Saturday morning we have washed our clothes today. This week it was my turn, so I have been in the shade of a tree scrubbing for 2½ hours. My arms are a bit sore now and yes, I do feel pity for myself.

This last week we have brought the laptop to some of the classes, because I am sure pictures and other visualizations stimulate the learning process. Of course the teachers have never used any remedies in the classes (not to accuse them, but because there are no), so the students are understandably excited when we pull out the laptop of the bag. So far we have only shown them a PowerPoint-presentation with pictures from our school in Norway. When they saw the first pictures of campus you could hear a gasp in the classroom because of the beauty and every time a black person was shown there were comments and questions about who it was. Pictures of tall Danish Lauge and short Sesotho Kopano were also popular, but especially a picture from graduation with white, Finnish Backmann and Kenyan Jonathan holding hands made the Ethiopian students talk. Luckily I had one picture of Yilikal from Ethiopia which made the students applaud when they saw it.
Haha, it was fun for the students to hear about the school and seeing pictures of Africans on skis, but it was just as fun for Maria and I to hear what they had to say about it all.

All this computer-thing actually started because we wanted to show them a movie. We have about forty movies on a hard disk here, but after a thorough consideration we believe that the best one to show would actually be Simpsons the Movie. We know, we know that it is not the most educational and pedagogically correct movie, but the English language in it is actually at a good level and with a good pace and pronunciation. Now we just need to download the subtitles from an internet café.
We also asked the school to buy an extension wire for the speakers because there is no electricity in the 8B and 8C classrooms. They said they would have bought it for last Thursday – I still haven’t seen it though.
Yep, that was an update about what we do in class: we try to use modern technology in our teaching.

Now to something different, but yet very important; the number of whites in Jimma. I am sorry, but even the Ethiopians say “black” and “white” about people, so we just have to adapt. Anyways, the issue is that these last three days the number of whites we have seen in the streets has exploded. We think it is maybe because the rainy season is supposed to be over by now and so the number of foreigners coming to Ethiopia increases. On one hand it is nice because we hope it can take some of the attention away from us when we walk on the streets if it is not a sensation in itself to see a white person. On the other hand I feel confused now. We have completely lost count of the other foreigners in town. Before we said hey and talked to, I think, every single white person we saw – now we are just two out of many.

Did we not write about the Danish enclave we have found? It is actually not new news - we saw them for the first time in late September. They are in total 8 Danes (one is only two years old though) living in three different houses, all within 200 metres from our. They are here working on two different projects organised by the vet-university in Copenhagen and Jimma University. Some are here writing for their masters degree and some for their PhDs, some will just stay here for a couple of months and some will stay for more than a year. The projects were supposed to start in August, but because of different (partially bureaucratic) complications they won’t be launched before some time in 2009. Anyways, I keep being amazed by the chances of meeting eight Danes in Western Ethiopia living very close to us. One month ago you could almost count the foreigners in Jimma on two hands, and we have not seen any Germans, Finns, Swedes or Norwegians, so it is actually quite a coincident that there were many Danes. We have had some nice times with them so far; we got invited for home-made burgers last week in the house of the four youngest ones, and as recently as last night we got invited for a gin & tonic at the couple with the two year old after having had dinner with them at a restaurant in town. As Maria wrote; knowing the other Danes also gives us some advantages, such as freshly canned sausages from Addis – very nice. We also talk a lot about where one can find what here in town, something which is very useful. We have found butter, milk, knives and even curry thanks to the other Danes. Today we are going to exchange movies from our hard disks so we will get something new to watch. Maria also borrowed two books a few days ago (but she has already read them now).
We (I think it was mostly me) thought a lot about if they were going to stay here for Christmas, because that would increase the chances of roasted duck and rice pudding, but it seems like they are all going back for the holidays. Well, then Maria and I will have to get some good Christmas spirit going on our own. My parents have sent a package with cinnamon, so that we can make some kind of Christmassy food in two months time.
Yep, enough about Christmas.

We have also got an e-mail with a comment from the blog by Pete (r Wilson) saying he would pass by Jimma some time in his holidays – which we are very happy about. We are looking very much forward to see him again and to talk about experiences, culture and Norway. Weehee I am a bit impatient actually to get a visitor from far away to our town where we can show him around and stuff.

Down here we have a very limited access to information so we are quite worried about the situation the world seems to be in at the moment. The only thing we know about the global crisis is what we have received in a couple of e-mails from my father, and in the only fifteen minutes we have watched BBC down here they kept repeating “Iceland has gone bankrupt”. So yes, we actually do worry about it a lot. Especially Maria, for obvious reasons, is afraid that the ugly Crisis-Monster will creep all the way to the Faroese and strike as hard as it did there 15 years ago. But as mentioned, we don’t know much about it. One month ago my parents subscribed an international weekly Danish newspaper for us, but we still haven’t received it, so we are not able to follow yet.

Talking about receiving mail; a few days ago we got a package from Maria’s mother – all the way from the North Atlantic, it was the same kind of excitement as opening the presents lying under the Christmas-tree. On the stamp it said “Tórshavn 20. Okt 2008” and we got it here on the 29th of October. Quite fast I would say – nine days. The other Danes say that it takes about three days to get a letter from Denmark to Addis Ababa and about five days to get it from Addis to here. Hehe, we are living out in the province.

Anyways, we have to upload this and get on the web now.

So long!

Great wishes to all of you reading this

Aske

Maria - November 1st

Life here in Jimma keeps moving forward in its own slow pace. I can’t believe that I have been here for two months now and that my Amharic (the national language) is still as bad as when I came here. I still only know the phrases that I learnt from my fancy Easy Learn Amharic CD and how to order coffee, tea or tea and coffee mixed together (“sprice” it’s called and is actually – believe it or not - very delicious.) Hm… And I’m starting to think that it’s too late to learn anything now since we only have two months left here in Jimma.

Anyways, nothing much has happened since I last wrote a blog entry. We are still correcting English diaries and although some of the students have improved greatly and are being creative, the majority is still stuck in the listing of every single thing they do Saturday and Sunday. Some of them add a “I was happy” at the end of the list and are surprised to know that that is not being very creative.

Tomorrow there will be a small culinary revolution in our kitchen. The Ethiopian orthodox church doesn’t believe in eating pork, and since the other half of the population here is Muslim, pork doesn’t exist anywhere outside of Addis. But, a Danish couple who lives close by our house went to Addis this weekend and promised to bring canned cocktail sausages back. Uh uh, soon we will taste pork for the first time in months! Aske and I are also thinking about going to Addis soon. When we were there in September we didn’t know that we were supposed to appreciate the pizzas, the cheese, the ice cream and the hot showers. Instead we were just waiting to go to Jimma to see how our life was here. If we would have known what we do today, we would have enjoyed the commodities of the capital to the fullest and filled our suitcases with food and other things (such as knives for eating, they don’t exist here in Jimma). So yes, we might go there for a weekend and enjoy a more Western way of living and stock up for a first class Christmas celebration in two months. I bet we can even find a plastic Christmas tree somewhere, haha :)

That’s it for now, folks. Bye :)

Maria

We attached some pictures for you all to get some kind of impression of the place.
We hope the internet allows us to show them to the world. If we are successful in our attempt many more pictures will come later on.

The first picture is taken this morning illustrating how enthusiastic Maria is when she washes our clothes (enthusiasm is here measured by the quantity of water on her shirt).









Second picture is of our room. In the lower left corner are the “cooking facilities” we were promised (the green gas-thing made in China) and right above it is our “washing machine”. Above the mirror is our “photo album” and to the right is “our office”. Our “bedroom” is in the lower left corner illustrated by a mosquito net.














Picture number three is from our first week in Jimma, showing me doing the laundry. Maria found it amusing, so she took a picture. Tsk tsk.



















Number four is from once we went to another teacher’s house to see “the Coffee Ceremony”. The lady in blue has (without the parents knowing of course) been his girlfriend for the last six years. The younger lady to the left is his fourteen year old sister who does the cooking in the house.














Two weeks ago there was a marriage at the house we live at. The parents of the bride got a sheep (well… I would like to have a pet-sheep too), we named it “Birger”. Unfortunately Birger’s stay here was short, before they ate him. Anyways, the picture is from the night I went to the toilet and almost started screaming because someone, somehow had forced Birger to spend his night there. Yes, it did feel odd to pee right next to a sheep. I managed to protect myself.



















Number six is just a picture of Maria on her way home from the school. Just to show you all how blue the sky is and how red the roads are.



















The last and seventh picture is Maria happily doing the dishes. Our food storage is in the background. When we came we had one single-use knife, two forks, one pan and some other spare necessities.

October 17th - Aske

Today is apparently October 17th (oh thank you laptop), I thought we were still in first week of October.
That is something I have noticed and both enjoy and fear – the pace at which the time is passing.
Now it is Friday evening, but it seems like the last weekend has just ended. Time passes by fast. I can’t wait to get back home to food, hot showers, liver pâté, nightlife, everything, but at the same time I really do enjoy it here and I feel good here.

As it has been mentioned before everybody seems so suspiciously friendly towards us. I keep getting surprised by it. If we take one of the minibuses around town and are not quite sure if we are supposed to pay 1 or 2 birr (0,5 or 1 kr.) and we show two birr notes to the taxi-guy, he only takes one. I love it, but I keep getting surprised by the honesty of 98 % of the people.

Puhh, anyways, I am happy that it is Friday. During the weekdays we have had an (I would say) immense workload the last two weeks: we had to correct the “English Weekend Diaries” from four classes. In theory it means that we should correct 180 exercise books with written work. I know it is wrong to say this as a teacher, but luckily only about half of the students handed them in and yet we managed to make a ½ meter tall pile of books to correct.

We have spent every evening from Monday to Friday plus our daily two-hours break in the middle of the day on correcting them. It took ages.

The Ethiopian students were quite astonished when they got back their exercise books and saw that we had often written more in them than the students themselves. The other teachers responsible for the English diaries in the other classes apparently look at them, sign them and give them a marking ranking between D and A+. They do not write one page with comments, ideas and explanations in each of the books – and nor will we in the future as we have been told that we had to give them marks, used for the records.

We have created a new marking system. It is inspired by our previous, admirable Environmental-Systems teacher Anna Garner and is meant to provide the students with some constructive feedback without taking 20 minutes each.

Almost all of the students wrote the exact same things these first two weeks. Now I know it by heart: “I wake up from my bed I go to toillt I wash my fise I wash my hand I it my brake fast I see TV program I play foot bool whith my frend I go to my uncl hous I study my lesons I it my diner I wash my leg I slepp on my bed”, and that was just Saturday… Sunday was the exact same thing (+ “I go to church I come back” for half of them).

Arghhh! I have got enough of that – we have. So we made this scale that surely will punish all the students because they show no signs of creativity and individuality whatsoever.
Therefore we will force them to write what we want to read by marking

Creativity and Content out of 10 points
Vocabulary and Spelling out of 5 points
Grammar and Fluency out of 5 points
Handwriting (we were forced to include this) out of 3 points
Improvement out of 2 points
TOTAL out of 25 points

And then:
0-7 points = D
8-13 points = C
14-17 points = B
18-21 points = A
22-25 points = A+

I think it will surprise the students as well as the teachers to see the results. We have this idea that our “fancy” private school kind of pushes the boundaries to be able to show their overall result: 55 % A and A+, 40 % B and 5 % C, or something like that.

Now the problem is that the students have been learning English for eight years and some still cannot communicate in English. We wrote down some of the more interesting ones as they were worth remembering:

S.Y
Satr bay mornig it a was, aoisiy
buy han I wayk ap my
my mother is war king Warbly
and I ask Her she a nsark frmi
it was ny brother 9ragua sn
we stisort In arcnik Hot
we a bak In the niyt thun
we Shapt

Well… it’s up to you to interpret; we of course just copied it literally, but I especially like line three “my mother is war king” – excellent!. If you want our inexperienced opinions there are here some clear signs of dyslexia, but that is not something the teachers have heard about before.

I have been thinking a lot about all this fuss about what the best way to learn English really is. My mid-way conclusion is: not to start teaching it from grade 1 and to find some qualified teachers who actually do know it. Our school focuses a lot on English compared to other schools (so we’ve heard at least), by having English 1 (written English), English 2 (spoken English), English 3 (supplementary English) and finally “English Day” one hour weekly. In total it is something like 8 periods of English in five days - that is quite intense. Unfortunately one cannot really see that they have had these many English classes for the past eight years.
We are of course very modest in the company of the other English teachers at the school, but there is no doubt that Maria at least is far ahead of them all when it comes to correct knowledge about English.

We do secretly have fun about all the wrong things the teachers say, but it is sad to see that the students remember all the wrong things they have been taught. “No, you cannot say I woke up from my bed or I studied my lessons – sorry!” Sometimes in the exercise books we write “take care” at the end, but apparently the students feel threatened by it. When they whisper and have to be quiet the teacher waves with his long plastic cane and shouts “You! Take care!” – something that clearly gives it another connotation from what we want to say.

The best episode (that I really enjoyed myself) was when we tried to teach the students to use “ago” and “in” when talking about past and future. All Ethiopians tend to say “before two weeks ago...” instead of just “two weeks ago…” and “after one day… “instead of “in one day…”. For some reason one of the other English teachers (the male version of MT for those of you who know her) wanted to pay our class a visit and observed it for some time. As he was about to leave we asked the students how to make the sentence correct “____ one month I will go to Addis”, and he said to us “after one month, yes. That is good. Keep doing like this” and then he left. I laughed a bit when he had gone, but I also feel a bit rude or cocky when we tell the students that what their previous English teachers said was wrong – but we are right, because… Because we are from Europe?

Yes, we have used English every day for two years, but the teachers have all gone to university for many years where they only use English… Taught by Ethiopians, who probably have been taught by Ethiopians themselves.

Hmm, it is getting late and you have probably been bored about reading all these detailed, useless information for quite a while already. I bet Maria writes something interesting =)
Today the local shopkeeper asked if we still had the crate of beers we bought for an occasion a long time ago. In Ethiopia they have relatively enormously high refunds on bottles. When we bought a crate (24) of beers it cost us one average monthly salary. Anyways, we wanted to make the shopkeeper happy and celebrate that it is Friday, so we took a beer, but still have many left.
Here at last I want to say that if you expected a postcard from Ethiopia; sorry can’t do – there are none. If you expected a parcel you can forget about that too – you can only send international parcels from the capital.
As simple as that.

Furthermore we do not have any address (those are nonexistent in Ethiopia) and we just got a phone number today.

All from me now.
Best wishes and lots of love to you all. I miss everybody and everything, but still enjoy Africa =)

Aske

17 sep - Maria

Eldan school has just opened a computer room and decided that computer lessons are to be given during spoken English classes, so all of this week they have split our classes in two: one half learns about computers while the other half has spoken English class. This means that we now only teach around 20 students – what a luxury! Having class discussions is so much easier and so is keeping them quiet. We like it very much.
The school has also given us a new task: For the past two weeks we have been correcting English weekend diaries for grade 7 and 8C. The first week was horrible as all of the diaries sounded like this:
I woke up from my bed then I ate my breakfast then I washed my hand and leg then I watched television then I went to the market then I ate my dinner then I slept on my bed x2

We taught them a bit about commas and words they could use to replace “then”. We also tried talking about creativity and individuality, but I don’t know how much they understood. The majority of this week’s diaries were a bit better than last week’s, but still the same (some added a “I was happy” and thought they were being very creative), however, there were some really great ones in between. There was a little fellow who wrote something like this:

Saturday: I got up and ate my breakfast. I was very happy because I rode my bicycle from 2 to 6. Then I watched television and slept.
Sunday: I was very afraid because I rode my bicycle again to Jimma airport. There I met two police officers.
“You do not have license plate,” they said. Then they hit me, but it was necessary.

Simple but effective. A real story with a build up and everything.
I really look forward to reading next week’s entries, and I’m sure the students will try very hard to be creative as we start grading them next week also.

One thing which has been the most shocking feature of the school is the fighting. Everyone hits everyone (girls included) and we see fights every single day. The teachers also do not hesitate to hit the students and usually use sticks to keep the students under control. We see them treating the students like cattle: If they don’t move fast enough, they hit them, if they move in the wrong direction they hit them and if they fight they hit them.

We tried having some class discussions about fighting where we also taught the students what the different words you can use to describe fighting are. You see, they think that everything is called “kicking” which makes it a bit confusing for us when they come up to us and say “He kick me!” but mean something completely different. We taught them” hit, slap, punch, kick, pinch, bite, strangle, throw a rock at someone, attack someone and insult someone” (they loved it and I don’t think I have ever seen that many students taking notes before). We always ended the class by trying to get them to talk about the right of teachers and parents to hit children. Some of the points they made were interesting, but I think it might have been too difficult a discussion topic for their level of English.
I actually think that I am getting more and more accustomed to the fighting. There are especially two boys in 7B who like me very much and talk to me quite a lot, and who I also like very much. However, they always fight and then just laugh and smile when I stop them. They are best friends and inseparable (so I always punish them by moving them away from each other) and don’t really see what’s wrong with hitting each other. I guess you just have to take it with a bit of humour (unless it’s a really serious fight) and keep in mind that they are much more used to hitting and being hit and therefore don’t care about it as much as we do. As one of the teachers always tells me: “This is Africa man….” I guess I can’t expect them to act like they do in little peaceful Faroe Islands. Here defending yourself is important and if you don’t fight, you aren’t strong. I mean, when the police and teachers hit my students, how much can I then expect of them?
- Maria

Sept 30 - Maria

Today is September the 30th my calendar tells me, but I have long since lost track of time which seems to move at a different pace here in Ethiopia. Their calendar is a different one – a couple of weeks ago we entered into year 2001 and the clock does not start at midnight, but at 6 in the morning when the sun rises. That means that I go to school at 2.30 and get home again at around 9. They also have thirteen months in a year, so all in all I’m quite happy that Aske’s laptop is able to tell me what time it is western time. Perhaps even more so because tomorrow, the first of October, is our six months anniversary. We are planning to go to a restaurant which we haven’t yet eaten at and celebrate with a good dinner and some Ethiopian red wine.
At the moment I’ve got more than 40 mosquito bites on my legs and am feeling very sorry for myself. We were out eating with Kidist (the wife of one of the two founders of the school) and some others who work at the school. Unfortunately, Kidist had forgotten that she had to attend some charity-something, and wasn’t able to come until 8 o’clock – three hours later than planned. Apparently it is a part of the Ethiopian culture not to start eating until everyone has arrived, so we were waiting outside the restaurant for 3 hours. At first it was okay, but it gets colder and dark at around 7, so little Maria ended up sitting in a skirt being very cold and (she found out the following day) attacked by more than 40 mosquitoes. Now my legs are almost more red than white and I’ve had allergic reactions to some of the bites so they’ve got disgusting yellow bladders, ew, ew, ew. Both Aske and I have also got a cold, blah.

Maria

sep 10 - Maria

I arrived Friday evening with a stomach filled with butterflies. Was my visa okay? Had I filled all of the papers correctly? I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the airport which was very professional albeit a bit slow. When we finally got through the passport and visa control, Daniel and his chauffeur were there with a sign reading “Aske and Maria”. They followed us to a car and drove us to our guesthouse. It is about 20 dollars per night for a double bedroom (110 kr for the two of us) with cable TV and a separate bathroom with a bath tub, running water (warm and cold) and a normal toilet. I am very happy.

So far we’ve been to see Lucy (the ape-human) at the national museum, had a traditional Ethiopian dinner and been a tour around the city. It is completely dark by 19.00 and since there are no streetlights, the streets are lit only by the light of the small shops that fill the streets. When we drove home after eating Friday evening at around 11 in the evening (accompanied by Daniel and his friend), I was surprised to see a man with an AK47 (Aske says) guarding the hotel nearby. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen anything bigger than a gun on the streets before, so I think that was the first time that I realised that I’d left home and really come to a new place. It should be said that we’ve had no problems whatsoever, though. Everyone has been very nice to us, and even though people on the streets stare a bit, that’s all they do. I have to say that I feel very white and out of place from time to time, but I think I’ll get used to it with time. I am of course awful at bargaining and all of those things, but Daniel said that I was very good at eating with my hands (the traditional food where you use a flat bread to pick up the food), so I guess that’s a start. Oh, and no stomach problems so far, no mosquitoes and no big spiders either. That might change when we leave the big city, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Today we plan to go to the market which will be interesting and a bit scary for little scared me, but definitely an experience to be experienced. On Tuesday or Wednesday we drive to Jimma and I’m really looking forward to seeing the apartment, the city and to getting settled at a place that is my own (well, for 4.5 months at the least). I’ll try to keep you updated about what happens in the next few days. Take care everyone!

- Maria

Yes, I am alive!

The internet here in Ethiopia is incredibly and painfully slow andrefuses to load this page. However, my mother suggested that I juste-mailed the posts to her, and then she'd upload it. Clever.

So, gosh, what has happened in the last month?
Well, our apartment with its cooking facilities turned out to be two rooms with one of those small things you bring out camping. When wearrived it had a bed, two plastic chairs, a plastic knife and some cutlery. We spent two weeks living out of our suitcases, but now, oh now we have got a drawer, and not one but TWO tables and THREE woodenchairs. We are very happy. There is no running water inisde the house, but a tab outside in the court yard. The bath room is in a seperate building outside and consists of a porcelain hole in the ground and a cold shower next to it, but in Ethiopia, this is actually quite fancy. Everyone uses squat toilets here as the area is predominantly Muslim,and I got used to it after a day or two.
We visited some of the teachers from the school, and none of them have had indoor toilets, running water, more than two rooms or a stove, so I guess we are living as average Ethiopians. It is actually very nice.

The school is also very nice and the Ethiopians themselves are very warm and welcoming. The young children a the school act as if we are rock stars, and Aske and I dread having to pass by the 1st-3rdgraders during recess. They all come running toward us: "Aske! Maria! How are YOU!" and they touch us, kiss us, try to hold our hands and touch our hair... Oh, they are actually very sweet and charming all of them. Sometimes it can just be a bit overwhelming having 40-60 of them trying to touch you at the same time...Especially if you are in a hurry, but if we have lots of time, then we try to talk to them and hold their hands and bend down so that the little girls and boys can kiss our cheeks. Yes, they are actually very charming all of them.

Aske and I teach a class called "spoken English" together. We teach the 7th and 8th graders. There are around 40 students in each class and three 7th and three 8th grades. We don't have any textbooks because it is SPOKEN English and we don't really know what to do, but so far we have taught them how to give directions, and then we'll see what we can come up with in the future. Apparenlty this is quite a fancy private school by Jimmaean standards, and the pupils are known as being clever and quick learners - all is good:)

I like it very much here in Ethiopia, and, eventhough I can only take cold showers and have to use different toilets, I find myself falling more and more in love with this country and its people for every day that passes. It is all truly amazing. You should alll be here and see the red gravel roads stretch out in front of you and the marvelous green mountains in the distance. You should all feel the incredible hospitality, warmth and humour of the Ethiopians - Yes, when are you coming to visit me?
Unfortunately, we have tons of things to correct for tomorrow, so I'll have to end ithere. I will try to write again shortly. Bye everyone,take care, I miss you!

Lots of African loveMaria