May 13, 2009 -- posted by Karen

We spent most of the day volunteering at the Ethiopian school down the road. It was a rather mixed experience. It is clear that the children at this school are among the poorest children in town. For many, the meagre meal they get at noon at the school is the only guaranteed sustenance they get for the day. The campus itself is quite beautiful and feels like an oasis in the desert with beautiful flowering plants and mature trees. This is unusual because for the most part, Ethiopians don’t have space in their life for beauty since survival must come first.

Sol and Isaac were assigned to work with the grade ones and had a great time with them. They were able to interact with them extensively, teaching them games like “Duck, duck, goose” and “What time is it Mr. Wolf.” Abram and I were assigned a grade three English teacher who was less used to involving others in her teaching. We basically spent the day observing her teach. Since she has large classes of approximately 50 students, I suggested that Abram and I could take a few students to a different space and give them some extra work on the day’s lesson or simply practice some basic English with them. She didn’t seem to understand my suggestion. Because of her limited English, she frequently taught the children incorrectly. However, she was a very nice person and quite a gifted teacher despite her limitations.

During the noon hour, Sol and Isaac played football (soccer) with the older kids in the school yard. The heat and the high altitude took their toll and by the end, they were absolutely exhausted. At the end of the school day, I taught an English class for the teachers and office staff which turned out to be a lot of fun. Approximately 15-20 teachers attended and they were very eager to spend time interacting with me in English. I will be doing this with them three times a week. I was able to share some of the school supplies I brought along with the teachers and they were very grateful.

This evening was marked with several culinary victories. I actually managed to put together our rather limited ingredients into something that resembled spaghetti sauce. The kids even liked it. (I’m not sure if it was actually that good or if everything just tastes much better when you’ve gone without for a period of time!) Since I was on a roll, I also attempted muffins in the evening. Since our oven doesn’t work, I used our neighbours oven that sort of works.

This was to have been a “No Electricity Day” with the power shut off from 9 am to 9 pm. That makes the evenings very long since it is dark by 7 pm and no one has adequate alternative light sources to do much but stare at each other by candlelight. However, for some reason, the power was never turned off. The rumour is that our part of town will no longer have power outages since we are near a government building. That would be wonderful.