The infrastructure stars are aligned

So here are a few photos from the summer session:

All five NWS-affiliated visitors were on the ground together for about 24 hours.   

We're having weekly community meetings to share work from our classes. 

I choose to read these expressions as rapt attention.

Me having a Lorax moment upon return to the mountain top.

Pictures courtesy of Andy and his nice camera.

We decided to drag the whole summer session to the top; they loved it!

 Campus infrastructure update:

 The generator has arrived! It came from the Netherlands in a shipping container and reached Addis a couple weeks ago after spending months stuck in customs limbo in Djibouti. No immediate relief, however, for our frequent power cuts, as the installers/electricians aren't coming until September.

Window of opportunity

Well, yesterday turns out to have been quite a gift – and an anomaly: it was mostly dry, which kept the tracked-in mud to a minimum and allowed the students to play outside a bit after lunch; we had power all day, which was great for the computer lessons we had planned (PowerPoint sharing and an Excel intro); and, for the first time in two weeks, the internet (which came on in the afternoon) lasted into the evening and was available in our living quarters. Wow! Of course, after catching up on some email, photo processing, and school prep work, I saved blog posting until this morning… and now the power is off again –and it’s raining. Oh well. In our group here, we’ve adopted and modified a popular phrase from the African aid community: T.I.A., “This is Africa,” has become T.I.E., “This is Ethiopia.” We use it uncritically (like “c’est la vie” or “ni modo”) as a reminder to just accept and roll with what we get on any given day. We still have all the important stuff – food, shelter, community – and, like so many Ethiopians have said to me so often, each day of life with these basic needs met is gift. I feel the truth of that more viscerally here than I ever have before. 

Posted during the lunch break. More posts and pictures coming... assuming the stars are still aligned after the teaching day.

The Joys of Living with Unpredictability!

The theme of service delivery over the last few weeks (and months) can be summed up in a word: unpredictable. For some reason, the local infrastructure has been particularly challenged in recent days.

An example: on Friday afternoon, at the end of a long week of teaching, a colleague and I sat down at the two office computers to wrap up some work before enjoying an evening out. Just as the computers were booting up… ZAP! The power went out. It came on 90 minutes later, but that’s how it’s been going here; we never know what will work and what won’t, nor how long something will keep working. It makes cooking an adventure (the pasta water may or may not get to a boil, and that egg just might get fully fried, or it might not…), and the daily suspense involved with taking a shower is exciting (will there be hot water or water pressure this morning?). Besides being unpredictable, there never seems to be an explanation for any particular service outage - except for the routine blaming of any such problem on inferior components from China (see next post for more on this phenomenon).

It’s been a good exercise in taking nothing for granted, in being flexible, and in appreciating the simple luxuries and conveniences when they are available. The power goes out 2 or 3 times most days, which mean no hot water, no internet, and low to no water pressure. Sometimes the power stays off for a short time (45 minutes or so), and other times it’s gone for half a day or more. This makes prepping for class hard, since no power means no printing or photocopying teaching materials and no getting the students into the Computer Lab (which we try to do for a period each day – and we’ve had good luck in that goal). At worst, it has also meant not being able to flush toilets or wash hands before lunch – which is a challenge since we eat with our daily lunch our hands!

Independent of the power, the campus internet service also disappears a few times each week (at its worst, we were more than 10 days without service). In addition, the ethio tel cellular network (nicknamed the “not-work”) is very spotty in our area. We often can’t make or receive calls, and text messages can arrive anywhere between 20 minutes and 6 hours after they were sent. Again, unpredictability! 

What’s been inspiring in the face of all this inconvenience is how many people manage to stay laid-back and not get worked up by the service interruptions.Our students are especially resilient and perpetually cheerful. For myself, I feel like I’m doing well at appreciating the days and times that the services all work – and not worrying too much when they don’t. It helps, of course, to know that just outside the college gates people are living in much more challenging conditions, for example with no plumbing and no appliances to use even if the power is on.

Monday morning update:

power? YES

Internet? NO

hot water? YES

water pressure? NO

Monday evening update: all systems off (am posting this, more than 36 hours after writing it, from an Internet cafe with a generator)

Summer session in full swing!

Joel and me with the prep program students.

These past two weeks (the first of six in the summer session) have been a wonderful - and exhausting - whirlwind! The best parts have been: one, seeing the students every weekday for six full hours of classes and activities and, two, having a growing team helping out with the program. It was particularly fun to get to teach alongside Joel, a former student of mine. He brought great energy, creativity, and enthusiasm - and he also did a much better job than I did at persevering with his blog postings despite our busy schedule and the many power outages. Here's a link to his blog, JTrek.

Sprucing up the campus.

With the longer class days, we added daily
cleaning assignments (modeled on the Northwest School's

Dawit running the Computer Lab session.

Environment Program), and we also started pitching in with campus landscaping (in addition to helping alphabetize the HUC Library's donated fiction collection (much of which is sitting in the basement un-shelved and even still in boxes). 




Other highlights from these first two weeks of the summer included hearing from two American medical students who are spending the summer working in Addis, introducing the students here to the idea of Ultimate Frisbee as a sport (they caught on fast and are enthusiastic to start playing!), and celebrating Joel's birthday with a large group of ILAE friends - both American and Ethiopian.

By the time we said goodbye to Joel this weekend, we'd welcomed three more arrivals from Seattle, including Ellen (ILAE's Executive Director) and two more teachers from the Northwest School. Ellen will be focused on planning for the school's opening in September, and the two teachers will welcome additional students on Monday.