Mini tornado. fire and recorders

On Sunday night there was a mini-tornado. At first I thought it was another weather-front gust, but very strong. Big clumps of straw from our roof fell into the centre of our house and lots of debris was blowing around outside. A few minutes later the power failed and apart from a brief hour on Monday, it remained off until Wednesday night. On Tuesday afternoon I found out why the power was still off: Power poles all along the “high-street” were down – they were just snapped off at the base. The wind caused a domino effect I think.

It wasn’t a dust devil as these occur during the day, are caused by heated air rising from the ground and only last a few seconds. The wind we had was in the evening and must’ve persisted quite a while to travel to town and do the damage after it left us, so I guess it must’ve been a tornado – albeit a small one.

A side-effect of no power, is no water (as it relies on electricity at the pumping end.) On Wednesday, the college arranged a delivery of two Jerry cans, but me and Göran couldn’t help laughing when we emptied them into a bucket – they contained big globs of oil (the Jerry Cans originally held cooking oil), and the only thing the water was any good for was flushing the toilet.

On Thursday morning the water was back – hooray, but Thursday night the power is off again!

Recorders

In other news, I have had an interesting week with the recorder players – the same kind of thing that I would get in the UK, based on the players that are not so good being jealous of the best one (who also happens to be a girl) and the one I have chosen to teach others. I think it is now mostly sorted, by re-arranging groups, and by using the translation help of one of the guys from the woreda who is with me. I am getting on really well with him and he is really good both with translating, and with active teaching in general. He seems to have a good teaching style even with younger children (he usually teaches older students.)

On Thursday, the students began their first lesson teaching younger children. It went quite well although they tried to move too fast, forgetting that what they know, the students do not yet know and need repetition. Still, not at all bad for a first teaching session for them.

Fire

On Wednesday the sun was a weird orangey colour due to huge amounts of smoke in the air and in the evening, just before I went to bed I saw fire on the hill near where I live and the sky was yellow with fire in the distance. I woke up around 1am and could hear the crackling of the fire. When I looked out of the window, I saw a long line of fire in the distance, maybe 500m away from the house. This also happened last year. The farmers, I think, burn the stubble from the fields before ploughing, but whether by accident or plan the fire usually spreads over huge areas. Luckily it never made it to the house. Lots of the area around the campus has been pre-burned in a controlled way to stop these wild fires doing any damage.