The last entry!
Trip Start
Dec 28, 2009
1
9
Trip End
May 19, 2010
Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom
Monday, March 1, 2010
I am writing this as I sit at Nairobi airport waiting for the connection that will bring me home to England. Yes, I am coming home early. I have wrestled with this long and hard. I now believe that I need to get myself healthy again. I have been feeling less than 100% for the past few weeks and have tried to shake it off and continue as normal. However, I can’t do it anymore. I hope that I am merely suffering from a lack of something in my diet or some minor ailment, but the continued feeling of tiredness and lack of energy is just not right! I have heard too many horror stories of mysterious foreign bugs to simply ignore this. I want to feel full of energy and enthusiasm but I have struggled to simply get myself into school to fulfil my commitments and then after it was all I could do to get home and collapse on the sofa. I finally realised that, frustrations aside, I need to come home and get well before I can do anything else.
Thanks so much to those of you who have responded to my plea. I have so many ideas and my passion to change lives in Ethiopia is still there, but it seems I need to have a rethink about how to achieve that. When I first started to feel ill I simply ignored it and decided it was in my mind and just a response to some of my irritations about my life in Ethiopia. But then I realised that the 2 things were not connected!
I have learnt so much during my time in Ethiopia. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend time there. I have met some truly amazing people and realised that there are many agencies and organisations working hard to try and assist people in Ethiopia to change their lives. I just wish there was some way of making all of them aware of each other so that they could pool resources and not simply duplicate efforts.
I have now witnessed at first hand the sacrifice that families make in order to give their children a decent education. Teachers are struggling on a daily basis to provide a relevant curriculum against all odds. I believe the government realise that education is the way in which they will lift their country out of poverty, but it is an immense task and they simply do not have the resources nor the experience to make this happen quickly.
There is evidence in schools of where VSO personnel and others have tried to put in place systems similar to England. For example they have cluster groups who meet and receive CPD (continuous professional development), but that is not really the answer. They have no resources to implement the suggestions given at the training. I have now tried to teach under the same conditions as Ethiopian teachers and I can see that without more investment nothing will change.
I am lucky because I have a background of teaching in England with the benefit of good CPD and countless resources. This has enabled me to take what I was given in Ethiopia and make my own resources and have the confidence to apply techniques I have used in the classroom back home. However, when faced with 70 students in cramped conditions I have struggled to feel that I have made any kind of impact. Here teachers are afraid to encourage students to become independent learners as with so many in a class it feels like they are not in control. Also the students have limited access to information to enhance their own learning. Instead you find that students are used to learning by rote and struggle to complete tasks set that require them to think for themselves.
To expect teachers to make their own resources, and photo copy them at their own expense, when their salaries are so small is not reasonable. So what is the answer? Right now I am not sure. I need to spend some time recovering my strength and energy. There has to be an answer because the will is there, but in many cases there is a sense of hopelessness as the task just feels too huge to them. How can they change?
I have learnt that I need to change my approach. I have become frustrated too easily. I can now see that it is unrealistic of me to expect these teachers to adopt my methods overnight. The infrastructure is simply not in place to work the same way we do in England. There has been decades of people working the way they are with layers and layers of bureaucracy. It is not possible to dismantle that and change methodology overnight. As I said the will is there but the understanding is not. I noticed that where schools had libraries the books were often old and or totally inappropriate for the level of understanding of the students. Everything is locked up and only one person has a key so if they are not at school for any reason nobody has access to the library. How can students be expected to go away and research for themselves under these conditions?
I now understand that all the things that happened to me was not as a result of people deliberately trying to undermine what I was doing but simply a lack of comprehension of my expectations. I would arrive at a school expecting to teach my group of students only to discover that there was a meeting so the students were not there. So why not call and tell me? Well it simply had not occurred to the coordinator. Why would he even think about the fact that I had rushed from my morning commitment to take numerous buses, Bajaj or garis to ensure I arrived on time? Nobody seems to think ahead like this. In England we would do our best to warn somebody that plans had changed. Here in Ethiopia time is just not the precious commodity that it has become in England. So who is right? Is it my fault for trying to cram in too much and so feeling let down and upset that my time has been wasted or is the Ethiopian more laid back attitude to time more realistic? I don’t know, but at least it has given me food for thought. At the very least I have experienced a clash of cultures. I thought I understood how life was in Ethiopia, but by spending an extended period there I have discovered a whole lot more to it than I was aware of before!
I feel so fortunate to have experienced the kindness and genuine affection of people. I have been almost embarrassed at times by how much they have been prepared to go out of their way to ensure my comfort. It was for this reason that I chose to keep my departure quiet. I simply could not cope with the idea of how emotional they would all become at the thought of me leaving. Once again I think this is a result of my culture and my way of life. I have been constantly overwhelmed by their generosity.
When I was struggling to obtain money, as my bank had decided to freeze my card, a bank teller simply handed over 200birr (about £10) on trust as he could see how upset I was. Can you imagine that happening in England? For the next week I felt so guilty that I had been unable to get back to the bank to repay him. When finally I was able to return the money he was more concerned about how I was able to resolve the problem and get money than he was about receiving the money back from me!
As I said in my last entry this experience has been so different from my time in Nepal and maybe not so interesting for you all to read, but it has had a profound effect on me. Right now I have no idea where my future lies but Ethiopia has changed me. The sheer joy on the faces of those children just because I was there to teach them will remain with me forever. Somehow I want to try and ease the burden of teachers in Ethiopia and enable them to provide a better experience for the children who struggle on a daily basis simply to attend lessons.
So this is my final entry but not the end! I am now back in the UK starting my nomadic existence. Right now I am in Milton Keynes. I have been to the doctor and had blood tests but I am awaiting the results. I have started the process of trying to find some teaching work. It would seem my irritation at life is not exclusively reserved for Ethiopia as I am facing a number of issues here too! Still that is all part of life and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger they say! Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting on my adventures. I hope you enjoy this final entry and photos!
Comments
I really hope that you will feel better soon! Special thanks for all your efforts you made to help us all!
Get well soon!