new meaning...new words

Ethiopian’s do seem to have created their own special variety of English. Understandable really due to the general lack of exposure to the language in Ethiopia and also the way that English really is a daft language with silly rules that contradict each other. Some of the special differences come in their pronunciation of words, other times they make up words completely or they use an existing word but attach at totally different meaning to it! For example people always want to know if you have tried the local pancake thing called Ingera. When you say yes they then want to find out if you think it is ‘sour’. The only problem is that they pronounce it  ‘sore’ as in ‘pour, rather than ‘sour’ as in ‘hour’. When Maggie tried to correct the head of the English Faculty on this pronunciation he replied , ‘well, that might be how ‘you’ pronounce it!’...implying that she had it wrong! In Ethiopia it is most definitely pronounced ‘sore’ and in class if you try a more ‘western’ pronunciation you’ll certainly be corrected too.

As funny as mispronunciations are, my favourites are when they make up new words or new meanings to words. On occasion I’ve been quite a long way through a conversation before I realise we’ve both attached different meanings to the words. For example the other day we were brainstorming the qualities of a good teacher. Someone suggested ‘confidentiality’. Half the class were with me and were explaining this point by saying we shouldn’t talk about students behind their back. The other half looked blank. Then later someone suggested that teachers should be ‘confident and assertive’ in the classroom. The teacher who originally suggested ‘confidentiality’ was a bit put out as we had already covered that point! Ahhh... then i realised ...for him confidentiality meant ‘to be confident’. You can totally understand the confusion! Another example I came across recently was someone using the term ’availing’ to mean ‘to make available'.

The only trouble is it is not just Ethiopians getting their English words muddled up... after a while it is catching and I often find myself using words totally inappropriately! However...I don’t think anything tops my friend Joanne’s blunder the other night. Up until recently she was working in the Ministry of Education playing a major role in the Ethiopian ‘English Language Improvement Programme’ so if anyone’s English should be tip top it should be hers! We were talking about some change or other and she asked whether the original thing had ‘evolutionized’ into something else. It took a visiting Dutch friend to point out that the word she was looking for was ‘evolved’!

My Job: a Summary.

I realise that I have hardly mentioned my job since being here and it is probably about time I gave an update. My job this year is to train ‘teacher educators’ in more student centred teaching methods including active learning and continuous assessment. The  year-long course (the Higher Diploma Programme) gives provides them with a nationally recognised qualification in teacher education. The idea is that they ‘role model’ excellent teaching and also support and inspire the future generation of teachers to be excellent teachers. It was introduced in 2003 but this is the first year that Ambo University has run the programme. It is hoped that in the near future all teacher educators in the country will have this qualification.

 Currently in Ethiopia (although this will change next year) students study for 3 years to be a teacher in a particular subject. At Ambo University the subjects they train in are; Afan Oromo, English, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths and soon Physical Education. In their subject areas they are taught the undergraduate subject matter (but not how to teach) and then the teaching methodology is taught by the ‘education department’. The education department also teaches some common course for other courses such as ‘planning and management’, ‘action research’ and ‘psychology’. As a result I have a very mixed group of candidates; 7 from education, 4 from English; 2 each from Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Afan Oromo and 1 from PE. My candidates themselves have to deal with a range of students. For example, in the English department, they might teach common courses for all students on ‘General English Writing Skills’ as well as BEd students in English and BA students in English.

Something that surprised me when I first arrived was that when education students go on ‘practicum’ (school placement to practice teaching) they are mentored by their ‘subject’ teacher rather than an education specialist. As a result, feedback of lesson from their mentor tends to focus more on subject matter rather than teaching skills and the education staff (who teach the teaching skills) do not have any up to date experience of teaching in High School (some have never taught in High Schools themselves!) nor do they have a chance to encourage their students to put into practice the teaching ‘theory’ they have learnt. As a result I think many students regard the theory as just that and don’t recognise opportunities for practical application!

The fact that all my candidates have such varied experiences of being ‘teacher educators’ (some with lots of experience mentoring student teachers in High Schools but no pedagogical background and others with next to no practical experience teaching in High School or mentoring students but excellent knowledge of pedagogical theory) can make planning lessons to meet all their needs quite a challenge. Also, although the focus of the role is improving their ability as a ‘teacher educator’, the fact that they also teach ‘non education’ students means that sometimes the focus drifts from where it should be.

 The Higher Diploma Programme has been developed over number of years as a result comes with a series of well defined objectives, assignments and assessment guidelines as well as a clear lesson by lesson guide for what should be covered. This helps to ensure there is a uniformity in delivery from university to university. It  has also meant I have benefited from being able to learn from the expertise of others and use many tried and tested resources. It has also reduced the stress involved in planning. On the down side there has been much less opportunity for me to be creative and develop my own resources and lesson ideas. This is definitely something I really miss.

As the Higher Diploma Leader at this university I am expected to teach the course 4 hours a week (although this often turns into many more as I have to provide catch up sessions to ensure 80% attendance), observe my candidates 4 times each over the year, mentor them throughout the course and guide them through the various assignments include Action Research Projects. I am also expected to train up some of the candidates to lead the course next year. At the moment we have 4 lined up to take over the running of the course next year and the plan is that I will then take on a more advisory role as they iron out the difficulties of leading this course themselves. The following year they will then be expected to run the course without any further support.

This is the theory at least! When you try to summarise your job in a few paragraphs it suddenly seems quite simple. The reality is somewhat more challenging but I’ll share that another time!

MEAT AND VEG...

A traditional English roast might include meat, potato and two veg. ‘Meat and Veg’ are often the first things you think of when preparing a meal and then later decide whether to serve it with pasta, rice, potato etc. In Ethiopia the phrase ‘Meat AND veg’ is almost unheard of! They might suggest Meat OR Veg but more likely Meat NO Veg! Actually this is not strictly true...there is in fact a dish called ‘Atikult bi Sigar’ which literally translates as vegetables with meat. This dish generally consists of a lump of meat (probably lamb) on the bone served on a bed of sour cabbage. It actually tastes a bit like German ‘Sauerkraut’ and the times I have had it is has been so greasy that I don’t really feel I am getting any goodness from the vegetable. The Ethiopian’s love their meat so much will invariably chose a meat dish over a vegetable one and apart from the above mentioned dish they do not mix the two. I learnt this the hard way when I invited some friends round for dinner. I know they love meat so I made a real effort to ensure I made a meat dish. I thought chilli con carne would be a good option as Ethiopian food is also quite spicy. One of my friends was very polite and ate it all but the others spent their time picking the meat out and leaving the kidney beans. Apparently they like kidney beans but the thought of eating them with meat was too alien to them!

Although I like the Ethiopian Meat dishes I normally come away from a meal feeling like something was missing...and that something is vegetables. It just feels so unhealthy having a plate of meat (sometimes cooked in a sauce) with ingera and I also get bored of having the same texture and flavour. For this reason my favourite Ethiopian dish is ‘Bayaynette’. This is a vegetarian dish consisting of about five or six different types of veg served on ingera. With this dish there is therefore a lovely mixture of flavours and textures and some yummy vegetables. I find it crazy that they only save this dish for fasting (no animal products) days because it is delicious! My Ethiopian friends don’t generally agree with me on this and while Maggie and I have really enjoyed the last 55 days of fasting leading up to Easter they struggled through day after day of eating bayaynette. Ambo has a fairly even mix of Orthodox and Protestant Christians as well as a reasonable large Muslim population. The Protestants and Muslims here don’t have any rules about not eating meat (instead they abstain from alcohol), therefore on fasting days it is still possible to buy meat and other animal products in most cafes. This is not the case in every town. My friend lives in Debre Markos, which has a much bigger Orthodox community. On fasting days she can’t even get milk in her coffee.  

Apart from the major fasting seasons (leading up to Christmas and Easter) Orthodox Christians generally ‘fast’ (abstain from animal products) on Wednesdays and Fridays. These have therefore become my favourite days as they are the only days I can get my favourite dish. My colleagues are quite aware of this and find it hilarious that their least favourite days of the week are the ones I get excited about! I was therefore really disappointed when this week (just after Easter) I couldn’t find any cafes selling bayaynette on Wednesday or Friday. What was going on? I couldn’t understand...was no one fasting?! After visiting 8 cafes on Friday night I finally gave up asked a friend to explain why I couldn’t find it anywhere. I then learnt that for 40 days after Easter the Orthodox Christians are exempt from any fasting (perhaps symbolic of the fact that Jesus has set them free from the binds of religion and tradition?). OH NO! No Bayaynette for 40 days! It seems my fasting season has just begun! It is not a serious problem as Maggie and I generally cook at home anyway and there are still plenty of vegetables for sale in the Market. However, as Maggie is a vegetarian, it does mean that if we do want to eat out at all then we will probably have to go eat at one of the more pricey hotels in town. It seems crazy that, if they can serve meat during the fasting days, they can’t sell vegetables when it is not a fasting day! But I guess the only ones buying the bayaynettes would be Maggie and me...and that wouldn’t be great business!

Cement, Electricity and Books!

Cement and Electricity are intrinsically linked it seems. I hadn’t quite appreciated it before but cement factories need electricity to run. When Ethiopia started running short of electricity last year the price of cement sky rocketed. When the new Dam was being built in order to provide more electricity in the form of HEP prices started to fall. When the Dam finally opened cement factories were advertising ‘sales’ and encouraging more order. Then, after two weeks, the Dam broke and power shortages were again an issue... back up went the price of cement. This has caused big problems for the construction industry and I’m sure must account for some of the half finished buildings you see everywhere that seem to now be abandoned. This issue is also affecting me...or rather the primary school library project I am trying to oversee. When I wrote the proposal requesting funding for the project the price of cement was reasonably low. However, soon after building work began it rose out of our price range. The builder has been quite resourceful and found cheaper ways of paving the floor, however, the outside of the building is still standing quite bare and bumpy with just a spattering of cement on it. It should be a beautiful smooth cement wall ready for painting. I now need to decide whether to use up some of the money earmarked for books and furniture to cement the outside wall or leave it as it is. It is not just for aesthetic reasons that we wanted to cement the wall (a cement wall should protect the books inside from the elements much better than a mud one), however, if we do cement the wall there will be significantly less books to protect inside the library! Hmmm... I guess my best hope is that they fix the Hydroelectric Dam quick smart!

 

Melkam Fasika!

Happy Easter!

Easter (Fasika) marks the end of a 55 day fast in Ethiopia where the Orthodox Christians have abstained from any animal products (meat, eggs, milk etc) - quite an impressive feat considering their love for meat in this country! Some really strict orthodox also abstained from alcohol during this period and also abstained from any physical contact of any kind during holy week (another significant challenge in a country where you normally shake hands, shoulder bash or kiss several dozen people on an average day!). The fast officially ends at about 3am on Sunday after a long church service. Rather than go to bed most people begin gorging on meat immediately after the service. By 9am the streets were lined with small piles of goats skins.

 I headed to Addis, for the Easter weekend, on Friday. I always enjoy coming into Addis just before a big feast day because the whole town is buzzing with people doing last minute shopping and thousands of bleating goats and flapping chickens line the streets awaiting their destiny. Often any taxi journey through town at this time is shared with at least one live goat or chicken.

On Sunday most of my Addis friends spent the morning eating doro wot (chicken stew) or tibs (goat meat) with their landlords, maids or guards. I decided not to join them this time and instead went to the International Church in Addis which was very enjoyable and certainly less filling. I was staying at Joanne’s this weekend and on Sunday afternoon we invited 8 other volunteers round for a meal. It was supposed to be lunch but I guess the fact that we sat down to eat at about 5pm means we had to rename it. It was a great crowd – our family away from home. Joanne and Maureen cooked up a feast!  We had guacamole, humus and crackers followed by stuffed peppers and then a main course of veggie lasagne.

Our Ethiopian friends definitely wouldn’t have approved... all that food and not a bit of meat in sight!

 

Tough on Clothes...

Linen trousers are probably the best things for the hot sunny days here in Ethiopia but being so thin you can’t expect them to last long in this environment! The last of my four linen trousers wore through on Friday and now I will have to make do with my tougher jeans or cords until I can replace them. Obviously simply wearing clothes out here will wear them out but there are also many other (sometimes surprising) reasons for the shorter life span of the average item of clothing...

Walking to work my shoes get a real work out over the sharp rocks and uneven ground. On rainy evenings, coming home, these shoes learn to swim through rivers of mud and who knows what else.

When I go to observe lessons I sit in the chairs the students use and often realise too late that the chair is cracked or has a sharp edge jutting out when I stand too quickly and create another hole in my trousers.

Being quite clumsy and not having had sufficient practice eating with my hands I do often find that some of my food finds its way onto my lap. The food here is normally quite greasy and comes in a fantastic array of colours designed for maximum stain impact!

We are lucky enough to have a maid to wash our clothes  but in an effort to get things extra clean she is less than gentle when scrubbing them to within an inch of their lives!

The wet clothes then hang on a washing line that is made up of bits of metal joined together in a similar way to a barbed wire fence... even with clothes pegs, particularly windy days have the habit of dragging these clothes over the sharp barbs and creating more holes.

I then store my clothes on a small bookshelf which recently also seems to have become home to some rather hungry moths.

My poor poor clothes! It is no wonder that many people go around Ethiopia in nothing short of rags. What is, however, very incredible is that all my colleagues turn up to work beautifully dressed. Clean, smart, freshly pressed shirts. No holes, no stains. I think I need to learn a thing or two from them about increasing the life expectancy of clothes.

Greetings!

Ethiopians love their greetings! I think I mentioned before that I shake hands with more people in the average day in Ethiopian than I do in the average year in England. However, that is not their only way of greeting each other. The girls in particular tend to greet each other with several kisses on alternate cheeks (similar to the French) and when you are good friends with someone you are likely to add some shoulder to shoulder action to your normal handshake. If you are too far to greet each other formally like this (e.g. on the other side of the road) then the two handed wave is pretty popular too. This greeting in particular reminds me a bit of a scene in Wallace and Gromit but it is made even better by the fact that once both hands are in the air (about head height) then it is normally accompanied by some bowing!

The greetings don’t stop there though. I am forever amazed as I sit in my office and listen to the conversations of the secretaries on the other side of the thin wood partition. The conversation is obviously occurring in Amharic but I’ll do my best to paraphrase...

Good morning.

Good morning.

Peace to you.

Peace to you too.

Good health to you.

Good health to you too.

How are you?

I’m fine. How are you?

Fine. Are you well?

I’m well? Are you well?

I’m well. How are you doing?

I’m doing well? You?

I’m doing well. Are you ok?

I’m ok. Are you ok?

Yes, I’m ok. Did you have good night?

Yes, I had a good night? Did you have a good night?

Yes I had a good night.

God be praised.

God be praised.

This whole conversation may be repeated a few more times depending on how well they know each other...and then of course if they are good friends they are likely to ask the same questions about each other’s families. Once it has been well and truly established that everyone is fine (and of course they wouldn’t tell you if it wasn’t) then they might get onto the business they came for ‘ can I borrow some sellotape?’ ‘ is Solomon available?’ etc.

Finally, having got what they came for they say goodbye and this can sometimes take at least as long as the original greetings! I know I shouldn’t laugh – it is after all quite an endearing part of their culture- however, I do sometimes find I can’t help it. I will be sitting on the other side of the partition giggling and thinking ‘my Amharic isn’t perfect but even I heard her answer that question three times already...surely you must know she is ok by now?!!’

Being white does attract a whole new breed of greetings too! I think I have mentioned the endless chants of ‘you, you, ferenge’ as you pass and the fact the some people get so excited to see a white person that they jump up and down pointing, trying to get their friends to come look too. However, on Sunday, even I was surprised by the rather unusual greetings I received in Addis. Firstly, a driver stopped his car to say hello. His passenger translated that he was just so excited to see a white person (in Addis?! Really?!) and wanted to shake my hand. Ok? He then invited me to join them for an Easter Feast. The second was even more surprising... a rather smartly dressed elderly gentleman walked by. We waved a polite hello to each other and I thought that was it. Then, just as he had gone past, he turned round and did a cartwheel back towards me and then jogged on the spot for a few seconds whilst punching his arms in the air a few times. He then continued on his way as if nothing strange had just happened! I was perplexed.