Alex Little

Unfortunately the faculty trip, due for this weekend, up to the Tekeze dam and Axum was canceled – something to do with the cost and lack of numbers. So instead a few interesting nights out in Mekelle.

Whilst we were out in Allegro bar having a few games of pool, several people behind us (7 or 8 of the new Uni students) started shouting about black power. After a few minutes of this one of them came over to say that it wasn’t because there were white people around, just that they were excited about the prospect of Obama getting in as president! Not having any TV, or a radio which can receive BBC world service, I feel quite out of touch with what’s going on outside of Mekelle, so I’d not realised the election was coming up so soon. Not even sure I know much about what’s going on in Mekelle for that matter, apart from the odd report of people being eaten by hyaenas.

On Saturday we went up to Wukro, a local town about a hours bus-ride away, to have a look at the agricultural college there. Reinhard (a German guy) has been working there for nearly 5 years and took us on a little tour. They must have some of the best cared for cows up there, which look like they actually have bit of meat on them. All the cows we see in and around Mekelle are extremely thin, which explains why most the meat here is very tough. The college make cheese to sell on, and we ended up buying about 4 kilos – this was between 6 of us and should last a while in the fridge.

Although the bus ride is only an hour, a couple of locals were travel sick – the bus doesn’t actually stop, the conductor just hands round plastic bags which are then thrown out of the window (presuming most of it isn’t already on the floor of the bus!). This seems to be quite common and is probably because many people here aren’t used to traveling long distances by bus – the roads aren’t exactly smooth (though the road to Wukro is tarmac all the way) and the buses could do with new suspension fitting.

Word now seems to be getting out that I’m an IT volunteer so have had several requests to help fix computers/laptops – I sorted out 3 last week and over the weekend and am due to help reinstall Windows XP on someones laptop later today. Think I’ll need to get my pricing structure sorted out!