10/8
I finally managed to teach a class!!! Yesterday I started my two day training on
beekeeping. It started out a little
stressful, it was raining in the morning and the rain pretty much shuts
everything down in rural Ethiopia. I
managed to get to the office just in time to meet my counterpart to get the
last of the supplies and take them to the training location, except, when I got
there he was missing. He finally shows
up about half an hour late, then about twenty minutes after that the guy whose
office was funding the meeting showed up to tell us where to go. We get the people who have shown up for the
meeting over to the office where they tell us that we didn't reserve the room
so we can't hold the training there. So
the guys from my office argue with them and finally convince them to let us use
the conference room to hold the meeting.
We get everything set up and are
about to start the meeting when...the power goes out. So they have to call for a generator to run
my slides off of. We finally start the
meeting scheduled for 8:30am at about 11, and with a whole areas worth of
people having not shown up yet. I work
on the slides until 12:30 when we break for lunch and I tell my counterpart
multiple times that we need the wood for constructing the hives at the office
when we get back. He assured me it would
be there so we go for lunch. I get to
the office with the supplies I need and low and behold the wood isn't there,
neither is my counterpart, my translator, or the host. About twenty minutes after we were scheduled
to start everyone shows up, but not the wood.
So my counterpart goes off to get the wood and I am trying to stall for
time, everyone is getting restless so I decide to use the wood that I had personally
purchased for another project to get stuff started, of course it isn't really
the right size but I made it work.
Finally he shows up with the wood and I find out that the people I am
training have had the training before except for one group and they others are
experts and not really interested in learning it again. I convince them to build one hive so the
people who have never done it can get the experience. Something that took my volunteer group about
four or five hours to do during our training took the Ethiopians about an hour
and a half! I was very impressed and
they even built the lid which we didn't finish during the PC training. After that we just do some discussion and
break about half an hour early. That
meant that finishing the hive which I had scheduled for today wasn't necessary
so I had a whole afternoon with nothing scheduled. So today I get to the office, again because
of the morning rain have to wait for my counterpart to arrive. When he gets there I am told that he has been
assigned work in another area and can not help me at the training. We get to the meeting hall and don't have the
projector, the generator, and are of course late. We start at 10:00am instead of 8:30, but at
least it is a bit earlier. The power
come back on so they want to turn off the generator to save gas. Of course we don't have the proper extension
cord to reach the outlet though so no slides until someone comes and gets
everything set up. So I teach without
slides for a while. Then we finally get
power in time to finish the last five slides.
We break for lunch and come back to finish the day which we decide to
substitute the hives for some other examples.
They only take about an hour and a half, most of which was just
answering questions while wax boils.
Then it is one to the talk about the office politics, the problems the
different groups want help with like not having a fence, things being stolen,
and why they aren't productive (even though the hives are in rooms at their
houses and not set up), needless to say it wasn't anything in my area so I sat
until they finished at 5pm. All that to
say that I think it went pretty well.
The people seemed pretty interested while I was talking, the questions
that were on topic were pretty good, and the feedback all said good things and
that they want me to come work in the field to help them get things
running. In the end we had about fifty
people attend, although one group showed up five minutes before we broke for
lunch the second day and literally were not there for any of the lecture. Overall I was pretty happy with how it went,
although for any future training I will be taking more direct responsibility
for making sure rooms are reserved and supplies are were they are supposed to
be. As far as the time I stressed about
it the first day, but the second day I just decided that I had to deal with the
fact that Ethiopians do not work by the same time constraints that I am used to
and I decided not to let it bother me.
As for other things, I am still in the
process of trying to reschedule the meeting to train about the banana disease,
I do have people occasionally stop me on the street to ask me when I am coming
so I know I have interest. The schools
just started this week, although the students are showing up but the teaching
doesn't start until next week (don't ask).
I met with some of the school administrators this week and they are
ready to work with me. I have to give
them action plans for the clubs I want to start next week and the week after
that they are going to start setting up the school clubs. They did give me a hard time about the class
sizes though. I have the numbers set
between twenty and thirty depending on the club. They said that wasn't a good number because
they have thousands of students and more than that will want to attend. I tried to explain that I am not a teacher,
that I am a volunteer and this isn't my primary project, on top of that I need
to have a manageable size so that I can provide the assistance the club is
designed to provide. They still tried to
get me to do more clubs or more students and I basically told them that we
would see. So far though I am planning
on having five clubs, having narrowed it down a little, at three different
schools, each an hour long each week. On
top of that I am working on the beekeeping stuff, which I have offered to come
out to each bee cooperative once a month for four kabeles, one of which is a
day trip into the gorge where I have to climb down and back up a mountain. I am working on a proposal to work on fish
farming in a kabele about forty five minutes bus ride from my town; and my
office has asked me to work on business design training, and maybe some poultry
production. Anyway, I am not overwhelmed
yet, but I am trying to keep it that way.
I have plans to ask PC to send me some help next year, so hopefully I
will be able to get a new volunteer to pawn some stuff off too.
So basically getting that class together
has been my week. I spent all day Monday
getting supplies together and meeting people to organize things (see how that
went). I did realize that my big report
for PC was due last Sunday so I have to run into town the day after tomorrow
and write it all up. When I get back I
just got permission to start my own beekeeping project at the Farmer Training
Center so I will be starting that the beginning of next week.
The thing to think about in this post is
responsibility. In America when you are
told/asked to do something you are generally expected to have it done on
time. That is not necessarily true in
Ethiopia. So next time you ask for your
significant other to have dinner ready when you get home, or the person at the
office to get a report to you by the end of the week. If they come through for you make sure to
appreciate it.
P.S. I have heard that some of the acronyms and words
I use are not necessarily understood so I want to take a second to do a
refresher on them. I hope this
helps.
PC: Peace Corps
PCV: Peace Corps Volunteer
HCN: Host country national
Habesha: The Ethiopian name for an Ethiopian (Think
"American")
Forenji: Translates to foreigner
FTC: Farmer training center
Woreda: Think county
Kabele: A governmental division of a Woreda (my Woreda
has twenty-one kabeles)
GAD: Gender and Development committee
Buna: Ethiopian word for coffee
Gassera: The name of both the town and the Woreda I
live in
