Archived Blog
Staff Retreat
It’s nearly half term here, which means one thing: half term reports. I’ve got so much marking to do in the next few days; fortunately I have Monday off so I can catch up a bit. I have to think of comments for all of my 50 students too, which won’t be fun. After that, I have parent teacher interviews to attend on Thursday and Friday, where I have 15 minutes to fill with each parent about their child. Note to self; look up professional teacher sounding waffle on the internet.
On Friday, the Kindergarten and Grade 1 students performed their annual play and, being the only drummer from the staff, I was asked to play the bongo. I don’t really mind doing these types of things, the songs were simple enough that I didn’t need to practise and could just “wing it” and it was quite cute watching all the kids perform their play. With kids that young, mistakes just add to the humour of the whole performance. I was even presented with some chocolate for my trouble. Great!
On Saturday, the whole of the Bingham staff went back to Babogayo Lake, where we went with the Grade 9 students, for a Staff retreat. Babogayo’s SIM centre is in the middle of a number of court cases for various reasons, so you need a special permit to visit. We had obtained a permit, which was valid for the 30th February. Fortunately, they let us in on the 1st March. Only in Africa. However, the day was great, and we all enjoyed a relaxed day by the lake. A couple of us swam across it, which was a good 45 minute swim.
Our house mate, Aaron, is currently working in the Somali region of Ethiopia, which is in the middle of a lot of unrest and fighting from rebels. He recently returned for a couple of days so we all went out to a restaurant to catch up. He has a lot of stories to tell; it’s quite scary some of the things that go on down there. The Ethiopian army are quite ruthless with some of the rebels that they catch. Aaron lives on the UN compound, where there is a generator that gives electricity for some of the evening hours. He told of times when he would be in his room in the compound and all the lights would die, and there would be a great commotion outside, with gunfire. It makes living here in Addis sound like a dream land! He has to fly down there from Addis, as if he went by road, the rebels would almost certainly ambush the car. While flying away to and from the dirt strip that the plane lands on, apparently the pilot does a lot of bank turns and aggressive flying, to avoid being an easy target for rebels with rocket launchers sitting in the bushes.
He returns in a couple of weeks, and then our other housemate, Baby, is moving out. His work has bought a house which he will be in charge of maintaining and so will no longer live here. He was recounting a story about when Brian and he were down country, and they met some farmer boys who had camels with them. Unfortunately, these boys only spoke Oromo, not Amharic. Baby was fairly confident that he could speak Oromo fairly well, so he went to speak to them and asked them if he could have a ride on their camels. Unfortunately, his Oromo wasn’t as good as he thought, as they proceeded to take two of the camels, and encouraged them to mate, thinking this was what Baby was asking.
Goodbye from Addis,
Niall
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