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