A daily
Diary
6am Sun
Up. We are vaguely aware that the night
guard is awake and noisily filling the buckets from the standpipe to water the
garden. He leaves as soon as this is
done.
6.30am. Warm shower in our en suite bathroom, where
the plumbing now works (more or less) then Gareth starts on the porridge. This is one of our luxuries. It is sold vacuum packed in tins and costs £2
per lb. So breakfast is porridge with
local Tigray honey and a mug of weak black tea.
7.20am. Gareth goes down the road to catch the
university bus. This can become very
crowded so it’s good to be at the front of the queue and get a good seat.
Viv’s day. Bit of
a housewife type thing going on here. Life
is dominated by the need for clean water, so the kettle is constantly on the
stove (I have a new 2 ring table top model) either boiling, cooling or ready
for the next boiling. This is to kill the giardia
bug that can cause really bad tummy upsets.
Boiled water then gets filtered in a big container. There is usually some sweeping, mopping,
washing, cleaning to do. Dust is blown
in through the constantly open windows and doors and sometimes a jug-full of
earth can get swept up in a day – very satisfying. I like to mop the floors often so that we can
pad around bare-foot on the cool tiles.
It’s nice
to go out to the shops or the market by 9am before it gets too hot. Whatever is fresh and good quality will
dictate our food for the day. Fresh soft
white bread rolls, or chunky hard rolls, or a big, pizza-size soft bread from
the bakers or ask around to find who is making fresh Injera today. Then to the veg stalls for salad or
greens. A chance for a buna (tiny perfect black coffee with
sugar- a bit like a French express) on the way back home. I have a favourite buna bet (literally a coffee house) where I can sit and waste a
half hour.
Noon. Lunch is ready and waiting for Gareth’s return.
He has to come home at lunch time as there are no toilets at Uni. so it’s a
good excuse to eat together and have a little lunch-time rest. Sometimes we will eat out for a bayonetu (veg
mix on Injera) or ful (spicy bean stew with chillies, rolls and yogurt).
In the
afternoon I may walk the length of Aksum high street to the tourist office to
see friends and talk about our little educational charity, or go to the
Foundation Library where I chat with the staff on an English language
improvement programme. The walk is
lovely, along the tree-lined boulevard (walk in the shade, even if that means
walking in the middle of the road) and there is the choice of about 20 chai/buna/juice/beer
houses, to do a bit of people watching.
It’s not often that you don’t find someone you know for a chat; the
children who know me call out my local name – Viva - It seems to sound good to the Tigrinya accent.
Sometimes, I will chat to the managers of the hotels along the road to
see if there is any work that I can do – proof reading mostly, (some of the
menu descriptions are atrocious – freed fish, chicken sup, brushed beef) but real
work is hard to come by.
Gareth’s day. I get
to the campus at 8am. A week is
dominated by two full days of teaching, which start at 8.30am. These are carried out in the teaching room on
the top floor of the block (windows covered in card and paper to keep out the
sun, one window broken, chairs and tables of poor quality). Most sessions involve lively debates that
offer valuable insight into life as a university instructor. Some candidates have a very high teaching load
and listening to them reminds me so much of colleagues back at UoG. Other days I have a series of tutorials with
candidates who are currently completing action research projects, or lesson
observations to determine the extent to which they have been able to
incorporate active learning methods into their teaching. I’m pleased to say that progress is being
made albeit rather tentatively. In my
office on the first floor, I will meet with candidates and colleagues for writing and planning. I have presented a series of seminars and
written some papers for publication in AKU journals and newsletters. This month
I will run a series of workshops for university staff.
11.30am Time to head back to get a good seat on the noon
bus. Aaaagh, the buses! Large, exhaust-belching monsters. Built to
seat 50, regularly takes 75! If I’m lucky, I’ll catch the ‘executive’ bus which
is smaller, cleaner and an altogether more pleasant ride. Conversation is lively
and often has to compete against loud music from the radio but even with all
this going on the fortunes of Arsenal, Manchester Utd, Manchester City and
Chelsea are obviously being discussed. Shame I can’t join in. Lunch and a rest, usually at home, and catch
the 1.30pm bus back to uni. for afternoon teaching or planning.
5pm and it’s back home for supper and a film on the
computer or an evening of peaceful reading or scrabble, or pop down to the
draught house for a beer or to the local hotel for a football match. There you go – nothing too taxing or
exciting!!
7.30pm Sun
down. Our night guard arrives to patrol the
compound. He stays awake until we are
both in bed and copes with anyone knocking on the compound gate, and then he
unrolls his mattress on the floor and sleeps under the outside stairs. He is also a priest at the cathedral, so on
occasions he has a sing song (not terribly melodic) to accompany the local
wailing priest from Santa Micael on his loud-hailer, or he reads his bible out
loud in Ge’ez. All quite gentle and
calming.
