Saturday 29th September - Language Learning

I managed to get to breakfast for the first time today. There were eggs and bread and porridge, cereal etc. I took a spoonful of something that looked interesting, then noticed it was fried injera. At 8 o'clock in the morning, eating a fried sour vinegary roll of bread-like stuff is not good! (Actually the texture of injera is like a crepe on one side and the airy holes of a crumpet on the other and overall it feels like a rolled up sponge.)

Then to our first real training sessions – in the morning we talked about why we were here and what our professional and personal goals were. I have been a little dizzy now and then over the last few days, but at one point I came across really dizzy and had to sit down. This is probably altitude-related. I didn't have the headache or nausea of altitude sickness, but I did feel dizzy. Pleasantly dizzy as it happens – sort of spaced out. I was told to drink lots of water, which of course meant I missed parts of following sessions, going to the toilet! Later on in the day I felt better.

In the afternoon we started our Amharic language learning. My numbers skills I had learnt from the CD-ROM came in useful, but it was so hard remembering other words. I could remember one for a bit, then when we were told another, the first one went out the window. The hardest one was "ah-may-say-gan-ah-lu" which means "Thank You." It has six syllables and trying to remember them in order is a nightmare! There are also about 7 phonemes that we don't have in English with tongue clicks etc – it's very hard to speak them.

After that, I went to the computer room. Steven the VSO ICT guy had set up a network switch and seven of us with our laptops were connected to the VSO laptop acting as a server to a dial-up internet connection. Now remember how slow I said it was with one machine connected. Now imagine with seven sharing the line. (Broadband is usually 1000kbps+, the dial-up line was connecting at 40kbps and sharing between 7 laptops…) Anyway, I got through a whole charged battery and had only managed to see the welcome screen to my webmail. I tried signing up to Yahoo and Gmail because others were having luck with them, but that failed. Finally, and hopefully I sent in yesterday's blog using someone else's email. Then my webmail finally came through and I sent an email home after two and a half hours.

At Dinner, I sat with two Ugandans who were recruited by VSO in Uganda. It was really interesting hearing about their country. There's also a really nice guy from Kenya in my language group – also a VSO Volunteer. After dinner I sat outside and one of the volunteers had brought a guitar and people were taking turns singing. There was one young woman who sounded like Joni Mitchell and was really good. I don't think they're ready for Mr Bojangles yet, although I may get the old tin whistle out soon!!!

I think I mentioned the plumbing and fittings. Lots of money has been spent on this university, but it seems there has been no attention paid to the little things. For example: when the floors were tiled and grouted, it's like no-one bothered to wipe up the excess or dropped bits, so the floor and shower look dirty. Also, almost all the taps have not been tightened so when you turn a tap control on, the whole tap including spout rotates. The shower drips (also, still no hot water), the toilet leaks after flushing; in fact there was a major leak in one of the toilets near our training rooms. I know I don't know anything about the bureaucratic systems here, but I'm sure if someone paid a couple of qualified plumbers to come in with a few tools, they'd have the whole place sorted in a couple of weeks.

Of course all of this will probably seem like luxury to me in a couple of weeks time…