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