Training!

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