Phil and Chris in Ethiopia

A cross country run was held at Bingham for the whole school during the course of a day recently.

Starting at a new school is always exciting because you never know quite what will happen next. That was certainly true during ‘activities week’ which happened during the  five days prior to the mid semester break.

Who rules Ethiopia? Bet you don’t know. Even I’m not sure and I live here, but it’s easy to think Meles Zenawi is still in power. His image appears in all sorts of places. There’s a huge one, faded and rather bluer than he should really look, a few minutes drive down the ring road. He appears near major road works, or close to the railway construction. Hand extended, appealing look, always engaging. However he’s dead.

I had never heard of a ‘colour run’ before so my American colleagues explained. Pupils pay for water balloons and paper cones of colour (powder paint mixed with flour).

If we didn’t believe that the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus were historical events that took place on a date in history and at a place on the map and that the world needs to know about this then we wouldn’t be here. However I have rarely thought much about what happened to the actual cross that the Romans used to execute Jesus. It was an old rough piece of wood – it was probably reused, or made into something else, or burned, or something. I don’t suppose anyone took any notice – after all, no-one seems to preserve other means of execution – axes, guillotines, ropes, gallows, syringes, needles – that sort of thing.

When I’m teaching here in my classroom at Bingham using a UK based early years curriculum, life is not that far removed from working at my previous school. It is easy to get so involved in the job at hand that one forgets that there is another life outside the school walls.

I suppose if they were honest every ex-pat living here in Ethiopia will have occasional moments when the only thing they want to do is go straight to the airport and fly home. Well I had my first experience of this two or three weeks ago, in the middle of the night. Insect bites are a fact of life in the tropics, and Chris and I have coped with them intermittently over the time we have been here. I can sometimes be seen sitting at home in the evening with my trousers tucked into my socks as I am convinced unseen bugs are attacking my lower legs from the floor.

When I came to teach at Bingham I didn’t expect the opportunity to attend a conference for professional development (for some reason called 'Africa 2.014') where the participants are drawn from schools across the globe. The venue was a large (3-form entry) international school in Addis which uses the American curriculum.

In Ethiopia “why?” is usually a rhetorical question. Several times a day, despite a continuing determination not to, I ask “why?” Why did the power just fail? Why did my patient at a local clinic get an injection into each buttock when they only had a cold? Why try to build an entire railway system in one go rather than do a kilometre at a time?

Here is a photograph of the most precious part of our apartment at the moment. It is a socket in the kitchen that the cooker is usually plugged into.