i put this little spot over here
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for location … but the connections are always to frigging slow to let me change it …
that is the biggest disappointement in my life right now …
feel sorry for me dammit …
we put on a workshop for some Debre Berhan youth this past weekend … it was amazing … after it was over, they spontaneously burst into song and dance for us … seems to happen a lot …
we really did kick ass though … picking up from past mistakes, we spent 2 action packed days full of learning and laughs … the youth were highly engaged and in the post work-shop debrief, they had nothing but good things to say … so that is me bragging … out team is better than your team … na ne na na na na ….
otherwise life is wonderful … debre berhan is about 10 times the size of debre sina … so there is always a ton of stuff going on … and i spend hours just wandering aimlessly through the markets talking to anyone and everyone … i miss the kids of debre sina, but it’s nice to be around more people my own age …
and the people … they never cease to surprise … beggars like to suck you into long conversations before they ask for money … which is a good strategy i suppose … get that personal conncection going ….
except with me …
i take advantage of the conversation and never give them anything … (such a bastard i know … but that is another post entirely … maybe my next one)
but it’s nice, as they seem to speak better english than most other people (though it’s a fact that crazy people speak the best english of all) … ANYWAY … i break into this long conversation with a 45ish year old man who is clearly not having the best of luck … we talk about our homes, i tell him i am from saskatchewan … he says “oh, home of wheat as far as the eye can see” … after all the ”wow, how the hell did you know that”s … i say “it’s actually not all wheat” … he says … “oh yes i know … all trees in the north … much like russia” …
most people i have met don’t even know what toronto is, and many think canada and the USA are the same thing (they LOOOOVE the US here) … so wtf … beggar on the streets who makes 180 birr/month ($15) … knows more about my province than i know about pretty much any country on earth …
it has its downsides though … the taxi’s in town are horse drawn and called “gari’s” … while i can understand the lack of focus on animal rights in a country where so many starve … and where people simply don’t have the luxury of loving the creatures they survive on … it breaks my heart so see the way some animals, especially the horses, are treated …
whipped, forced to walk all day on broken limbs, forced to work with open sores, given little to eat, clearly sick … i am fortunate to live a life where i can be critical of such treatment … but it is so hard sometimes …
way to end on a good note brandon …
we are spending all this week sitting in on business training for street youth … it was pretty boring today, but we get to engage a lot more with the youth for the rest of the week, so it should be a pretty good time … everyone has a story … and i like stories …
i wish i could send more of you personal messages, but i am sick of complaining about the internet …
if you send me your address (b.j.bertram@gmail.com) … i will send you a postcard …
peace and love …
bb
ps … walk down the street … make eye contact with somebody random and smile at them … if they smile back, walk up and shake their hand and hug them … the simplest things are the most rewarding … and you would be surprised how a little loving personal contact (however random) will change the course of a day … seriously do it … OR ELSE ……………………………..
Filed under: Ethiopia | Tags: Challenges, EDA, Education, Language, Workshops, YCI
Sounds like I am on vacation …
Youth Challenge International (YCI) … who I’m volunteering in Ethiopia on behalf of … is partnered with Emmanuel Development Association (EDA) … a local Ethiopian NGO that specializes in “Development Through Education” …
they have built a few dozen schools, run dairy farms and wood shops … and involve themselves generally in the education of everyone from the smallest children to street kids to adults … specializing in those who fall through the cracks of the official government system …
my role, if I were to define it, would be “trainer training workshop facilitator” … myself and the 3 other Canadian volunteers I am here with put on workshops for local youth leaders … these leaders come from small communities all over the place … and are paid fairly well to listen to us yammer on … on the expectation that they will take what we teach them back to their homes and teach it to everyone they know …
so, when we are not busy sleeping in, or sitting drinking coffee, or wandering aimlessly around a beautiful mountain village, or playing with local children, or sitting in the sunshine reading books, or playing endless rounds of Asshole (the card game, not the character trait, which I have already perfected) … a.k.a. Executive … we spend our weeks designing workshops designed to teach 15-24 year olds about HIV/AIDS, Hygiene, Health, Gender Equality, Leadership Skills, Peer-pressure, Environmental Awareness and Self-Esteem …
I have also launched a personal initiative to teach primary school kids how to solve their problems without fighting … cuz they like fighting …
I have made it my personal goal to bring the wonders of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ to the children of rural Ethiopia … I expect to see Ethiopia emerge as a formidable force on the world ‘rock, paper, scissors’ stage within the decade …
The key component is that we don’t really ‘teach’ much … but instead lead discussions and create activities that allow the participants to teach each other, while we fill in the holes … sounds easy right ??? … try doing it in another language …
I design elegant brainstorming sessions that are expertly designed to effortlessly lead the group from one conclusion to the next until they have a crystal clear understanding of the role self-esteem plays in resistance to peer pressure …
I ask for a “quick brainstorm” … hoping for 5-10 rapid responses that will be built upon over the next 15 minutes … annnnnd … the first person to answer talks for 4 minutes, followed by 1 minute of translation so I know what she said … the next person to talk talks for another 4 minutes, followed by another minute of translation …
10 minutes of the 15 I have allotted to this part of the workshop have gone by, and I don’t have 1 single answer yet …
Turns out people in the Amhara region of Ethiopia like to provide thorough, well though-out answers …
good to know …
we leave tomorrow for 10 days in Debra Birhan … a medium sized city half way back to Addis … we will be putting on a workshop there … and will be attending Street Kids International training, which is to be the focus of our last month back in Debre Sina … basically the same stuff, but expanded and with employability skills thrown in … I get to design a business focused ESL (English as a Second Language) mini-curriculum … should be fun …
Filed under: Ethiopia | Tags: Cold Showers, Debre Sina, Ethiopia, Food, Joy, Life, Pollution, Poverty
- the sun beats down and cooks my poor white skin … but as soon as I move into the shade, it drops 10 degrees, and I am shivering and need to put on a sweater …
- the second the sun drops behind the mountain, the temperature drops at least 15 degrees, and I need to put on a sweater and sometimes a toque …
- there is nothing resembling a noise by-law … so local establishments blare music loud enough to rung out over the valley constantly … none of which I understand …
- the music sometimes stops, and there are long periods of people talking over the loudspeaker … none of which I understand …
- every night at 5:00 when everybody gets home from work, everybody burns their garbage, and the whole valley fills with smoke …
- animals literally roam freely everywhere …
- there are open sewers everywhere … so one must be careful not to step in the strange liquid or the mystery mud …
- the idea of ‘garbage cans’ was only recently introduced, and people seem uninterested in them … so raw sewage and trash tend to build up all over the place … which nobody seems to mind, and quickly becomes background noise …
- there are kids on the street playing foosball everywhere …
- there are (basically) no utensils … all food is served on a large platter … with a bread/pancake like layer of injera … the injera has little piles of veggies and meat and sauce etc on it … you tear off a little bit of injera (right hand only) … scoop in some veggies/meat and dip it in the sauce and stuff it in your mouth …
- a huge platter of Bay-i-net (fasting food, so injera with no meat) costs about 6 birr … a coke (in a glass bottle) costs 3 birr and a cup of coffee 1.50 birr … a huge meal is thus about 10-12 birr … or about $1.25 Canadian … which is still more than the average FAMILY lives on in a day …
- it is almost impossible to get meat on fasting days, and almost impossible to get non-meat on fasting days …
- the coffee here is better than you are even capable of imagining … the ‘coffee ceremony’ is a traditional celebration which involves roasting fresh beans … grinding them by hand, boiling water and serving 3 small cups of the freshest coffee imaginable, with a healthy serving of sugar … when I say you can not imagine how good it tastes … I mean … you … can … not … IMAGINE … how … INCREDIBLE … it … tastes … the thought of choking back timmy ho’s or starbucks crap ever again makes me want to throw up both in my mouth and down the front of my sweatshirt …
- the big dipper isn’t around until about midnight … and then it comes up sideways … and gradually flips upside down over the course of the night … which is a LOT more disconcerting than I would have expected …
- they don’t have ‘toilets’ … they have ‘squat toilets’ in some of the nicer places … which are really just porcelain holes in the floor … less nice places have wooden holes in the floor … and others just holes in the ground … one is expected to “aim” at the hole … which some people are clearly not capable of, despite a lifetime of practice … I would be lying if I said I had not stepped in some anonymous person’s feces … I will post pictures of some of the ‘nicer’ toilets when I have a chance …
- the bananas here are small and yummy … and should be sold in Canada … as we all agree they taste better than the traditional variety …
- there are about 10 different kinds of honey (ethiiopia is the ‘land of bread and honey’) … and while some may resemble a bucket of molasses filled with woodchips of varying shapes and sizes … they taste incredible, and they all taste different …
- tonight I helped teach a neighborhood boy algebra … it is not easy to find the square root of 5.07 without a calculator … he says “what’s a calculator” …
- power goes out randomly … water goes out consistently … internet is available when it feels like it …
- in spite of the seeming lack of cleanliness, and the unavailability of luxuries or variety, or any of the other things that I appear to be complaining about … the entire place is beautiful, and the simplicity with which people approach life is truly worth more than all the clean, ordered complexity Canada has to offer …
Many apologies to everyone who has e-mailed/messages/facebooked me … I have 30 minutes of internet time a week and a 56k dial up connection that only works when it is in the mood … I appreciate your love, and will return it as soon as I possibly can …
Filed under: Ethiopia | Tags: Children, Debra Sina, Mountains, People, Scenery
Welcome to debra sina … my home for 6 of my 8 weeks in Ethiopia …
I don’t know where to begin …
How about up …
The scenery is miles beyond the most beautiful I have ever seen … Debra Sina is a tiny community built on the side of a mountain … standing in our backyard, looking down is a busy “street” that is about 10 feet wide, very steep and rocky and has an open sewer running down one side of it … at any hour of the day i can look down and see a flock of sheep wandering by, or old women on canes, or groups of laughing children, or chickens or donkeys or dogs or …
Looking up, i can see the local hotel … a common stop on the road north from Addis Ababa … where commerce thrives as locals sell there wares to the busloads of people on their way to or from the city … beyond it, and in every direction, is the sprawling village of debra sina … corrugated tin roofs stretch up the mountainside and down the valley … there are really no ‘roads’ … but rocky, twisty, steep paths that randomly connect the many centers of the village, and from which the many dwellings spring … these roads bustle and buzz with life from morning to night …
Looking up further … and wow … mountains … huge, rocky tree covered mountains giving way dramatically to wide valleys, where as far as the eye can see, small farmers go about their daily grind … with more mountains, increasingly dramatic and beautiful, springing up almost at random … beauty beyond anything I could have dreamed … this is the birthplace of our species …
The true beauty of debra sina is not found in its mountains, but in it’s people … while I get occasional strange looks and kind-hearted jabs of “for-en-gee” (foreigner) (I am the only white male and am a foot taller than everyone else)… the people are kind and wonderful … almost always offering a smile and nod, and regularly walking up, shaking my hand, and launching into a conversation in broken English …
The children are another story altogether, and are what make this place the treasure it is … walking down the street, I regularly find small hands slip themselves into mine … and look down to see grinning faces looking up at me … “hello … what’s your name” …
sometimes children I have never seen before will run from 50 yards away and throw themselves into my arms, while the community around watches and smiles … even greater are the children I have befriended, who will call my name from across bustling markets and fall into step with me no matter where I am going … sharing their day and their life with a complete stranger from across the world …
Can you imagine anything like this in Canada? Even in the smallest town, can you imagine groups of children running up to strange foreigners and walking around with them, hand in hand, all over town? Can you imagine parents and community all accepting this?
There is a small group that live near our home who come by daily to talk and play games and just hang out … they are, for all of us, the highlight of our trip, and while their families live on less than $0.80 a day … and they shiver when the sun drops behind the mountains … and their clothes are too small and full of holes … and they know nothing of the million luxuries we don’t even NOTICE in Canada … they are happy … they have more love of this life than almost any Canadian child I have ever met …
For all we have, we are missing the most important things in this life. I hope I never own a television again.
Two days ago, I was walking across a bridge when a 15 year old named Abraham called out to me … after talking for 10 minutes, he asked where I was going and I said to buy some bananas … he said he would walk with me to the market … when we got there, he pointed to a small round church overlooking the town … and asked if I would like to see it … I said sure … and we wandered off, up a narrow rocky trail, past a burial ceremony, and around the church …
He asked if I wanted to see something beautiful, I said sure, so he took me out the creaky back gate and through a cemetery, that was really just a random smattering of graves (marked by corrugated tin) IN a forest on the side of a hill … 10 minutes of scrambling down hills and up rocky ledges, and we emerged on a lookout that provided a 300 degree look over the valley … the most beautiful thing I can remember seeing in my life …
We then walked back, sharing our lives … and he helped me get a good price on bananas in the market, before we parted ways with a handshake and a hug … (everybody shakes hands, everybody hugs, everybody is always happy to see you) …
Can you imagine something like this in Canada? A 15 year old wandering off randomly for half an hour into the forest with a strange foreigner?
Anyone who says Africa needs to be ‘fixed’ should be shot (myself included). Canada needs to be fixed.
I would love you upload pictures to show you all what I am seeing, but I have yet to find an internet connection that can handle the upload. I am going to keep trying, but hi-res pics on a 56k modem just don’t work. I hope that in Nairobi at the start of April I will have better luck.
Filed under: Ethiopia | Tags: Addis Ababa, Call to Prayer, EDA, Friendship, Sickness
pictures are a pain in the ass to upload … takes for EVER …
ANYWAY …
so i got sick … my 2nd night in town … ohhhhh how i got sick … i was happy as a pig in poop when i went to bed … then around 4:00 my intestines decided they weren’t big fans of the food i had eaten for supper … (serves me right for ordering a club sandwich in africa)
after an hour of tossing and sweating and trying to make my stomach hurt less, i did the massive throw up that was described as “sounded like somebody pouring a bucket of water into the toilet” …
i am used to feeling better after i puke, so i went optimistically back to bed (which had broken in all the tossing) … but oh no … no no no no … the fun was just beginning … i actually feel worse for laura, who was sentenced to share a room with me by the pull from a hat …
i finally got to sleep just in time to be woken up to take a tour of the many projects our partner organization (EDA) operates in the area … i was really looking forward to this, as the whole POINT of my trip is to be exposed to as many different kinds of ‘development’ as possible … but not wanting to ruin the trip for others should i have been sick en route … and being told that it involved long trips over bumpy roads and lots of hopping in and out of cars … and still feeling like i was going to die … i went back to bed … i managed to force down a single bun around 9:30pm … but otherwise did nothing but drink and drink and drink all day long …
yay for africa !!!
but seriously … i knew it was coming sooner or later, and am glad that after 24 hours i am back to 100% … and one great positive came out of the experience …
b/c of my copious amounts of sleep, i was awake by 5:00am this morning .. and i was heard the muslim ‘call to prayer’ ring out with the sunrise over a silent, sleeping addis … it was magical beyond words … a haunting horn bellowing out nearby caught my attention … in the silence between it’s calls, other horns could be heard echoing it in the distance near and far … for minutes and minutes a symphony of beautiful horns calling out to each other across the expanses of a city bigger than toronto … for just a moment, it felt like we were all neighbors …
addis still has surprises waiting around every corner …the 4 of us decided to walk back from the EDA compound to our house here yesterday … took about 30 minutes … the people are very quiet … and seemed guarded (contrary to everything i have heard) …
walking shoulder to shoulder with them though, everything changes … i smiled and said hello … they smiled back, and i had new friends before i knew it … we fought to understand each other as we shared our lives, but the sheer joy of communicating was apparent above their broken english and my embarrassing amharic … they wanted my phone number, and when i said i didn’t have one … they immediately invited me to join them for tea on a little cafe patio overlooking the main road … an open heart opens hearts …
that’s it for me for now .. we are going to check out a museum later this afternoon … i love museums and look forward to having it put everything else i see in a larger cultural context …
i miss home … now more than ever before … being sick made it suddenly seem a lifetime away … but like all things in life … there is always sunshine after the rain … so i know if i fight through it now … things will soon get better than i could ever have imagined …
i’m going to try a different method for pics, as this is not working at all …
