Yellum Meurbrat

It’s really hot this morning. Yesterday there was cloud and wind in the afternoon and a few spots of rain, and the overcast night kept the heat in and at sunrise the outside temperature was 27C! Goodness knows what it’s going to be like this afternoon.

Also the power was off (“Yellum meurbrat” = there is no light) for most of the evening so I boiled my potatoes by candle power, and later heated water for my “bowl” the same way. I’m having some problems with the candles. I need a better way of separating them because the heat of one is melting another and if you don’t get the spacing right they end up as a big heap of wax on the floor.

With the lights off, there were more creatures than usual in the house. There were three spiders in the 5-7cm range (which thankfully don’t bother me much because I am building a tolerance out here – I leave the little ones alone as they get the mozzies.) There was a mouse in my kitchen cupboard and I could hear the rat in the family’s kitchen gnawing at something, but could do nothing about it as they have locked me out.

This morning the toad/frog was back and there was a tiny mouse (body about 3cm) in the bathroom.

The power is on in Gilgel, and in most of the other staff houses, but it’s still off in the three houses on my side of the road.

The water was off last night, and the net has been bad for days. As I write this, the computer has been re-dialling and re-dialling for 30mins.

I’m well into the training about making teaching aids and find it very interesting that the students who are helping have very little in the way of practical drawing skills. Even things like marking a piece of paper with a measurement each side and connecting them with line to make sure it’s straight is unknown or difficult for them. Drawing big bold pictures for the wall is also difficult – they often draw tiny pictures, not using all the paper. It reminds me of the level children in the UK are in Year 2 or 3 - “Don’t forget to use all the paper.” They also leave lids off pens which means they dry up very quickly in this heat wasting 8 birr a time. This can be accounted for in that they have never had any art training or teaching in their lives. There isn’t really art on the primary curriculum and if there was, there would be no money for resources.

The motivation in the schools is also very different from school to school. There are a couple we have visited who have been using number fans frequently and got straight into making resources in this training. There is another where one person has tried the cards once and the teachers just sat there and took lots of prompting to get started on the resources and are very unresponsive during training. The head also said they tried putting up displays last year but the children destroyed them. There is a definite attitude in some schools that there is no point changing as the children and students will destroy things or become disruptive. I need to think of a way to address this.

Still no net connection so I’m giving up and will try to send this later.