Training went well yesterday – the driver for the 7:00 car arrived at 7:45 (Ethiopian time) and when we got the 25km on bumpy dirt road to the school, the teachers had forgotten our training (they had chosen the date) and were at a meeting somewhere!
We’re well into Ethiopian Orthodox version of Lent at the moment. For some reason the fasting (many people don’t have meat during this time) lasts about 60 days. I pointed out (using my limited Christian knowledge – anyone back home can correct me on this) that lent was supposed to represent the time Jesus was in the wilderness which was 40 days – like Lent is back home. I suggested that perhaps the government had added 50% lent tax.
The practical upshot is that I am now woken everyday by the calls to prayer, not just Wednesdays and Sundays.
Also, a semi-racist comment by one of the instructors backfired yesterday. He said, in a sort of derogatory way, that some Gumuz people believe The Moon is a god. I came back with, “well at least you can see their god.”
I suppose it’s good that I can make comments like that in
Today, I am starting an English Language Improvement course with some of the lecturers and support staff in the college. 6 out of 30 “needs analysis” forms came back to me, so I will be interested to see how many people turn up. As you can see, my healthy pessimistic attitude is still going strong.
The weather is going from hot to very hot, with quite a lot of wind, particularly in the afternoons, but it’s not a cooling wind, it’s like being in a blast furnace. Also, due to farmers burning stumble in fields and natural fires, for the last couple of weeks, quite a few days have started with a sort of smog. It soon disappears when the ground heats up.
Finally for today, I found in my wallet the lowest value coin I think I have ever held. It’s a one centime piece (there are 100 in a birr.) It is currently worth roughly 0.06p which means if you wanted to buy a Snickers bar, you would need 700 of them!!!
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