Alex Little

Over the past week or so I’ve read a few blog postings and articles about how to get a job in international development or as an aid worker (Guardian and Aid worker video). I wouldn’t consider myself to be working in, what most people would call, international development (I’ll come onto that later) and certainly not an aid worker. But in any case I thought I’d add my tuppence worth as to how I arrived in the job I’m doing now. Given my lack of (conscious) career planning I’m not sure whether any of this should be taken as sound career advice, but maybe my experience will help someone.

As probably many people reading this already know, I worked at the Open University (UK) for over 7 years. After this amount of time I decided that I needed a change. Not that I particularly wanted to leave the OU, rather, I needed a new challenge and to look at what other options might be out there for me. I’d often considered applying to VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas), but either didn’t think I had the skills/experience needed or was too busy doing other things. I certainly didn’t apply with the explicit intention of then working full time in international development. My first piece of luck was that VSO had a placement available for a project directly in the area I had most experience in (elearning, as I’d been working on at the OU), I’d expected to be offered a placement doing general ICT infrastructure development and skills training.

Whilst working in Mekelle (Ethiopia) I had my second piece of luck, which was to become involved with a project from Alcalá University (near Madrid) which was also trying to develop the elearning capacity and facilities at Mekelle Uni. I extended my VSO placement specifically to continue working on this project and now, here I am almost a year after finishing my VSO placement, working as project manager at Alcalá Uni on the same project in Mekelle and preparing to go back to Ethiopia in a few weeks time. Admittedly my personal circumstances have helped me hugely, I’ve been able to be very flexible as to where I live and be able to travel anywhere anytime. Many other VSO volunteers I knew in Ethiopia returned to their home countries and similar jobs.

So… back to why I don’t consider myself to be an international development worker… I prefer to consider myself to be working on an elearning and ICT project which happens to be in Ethiopia. Most people would probably describe that as international development, although I could work on a similar project anywhere (Russia, Japan, Argentina etc), yes, the circumstances (working culture, state of infrastructure etc) would be different, but aren’t they different in every country, even every organisation, anyway?

For the work I’m now involved in and how we’d like to move forward, keeping ourselves distanced from being seen as an NGO/charity is probably our best way forward. My feeling is that being seen as an NGO/charity may perpetuates the impression that we’re there simply to donate equipment, which then ends up being installed but inoperable and unsupported after only a few months. There is certainly still a place for charities/NGOs etc, especially working in relief work, healthcare & education for the extremely poor, but not so much for ICT development.

Probably the only advice I could give to anyone wanting to get into a similar field (which is much the same as you’ll find in any other article about careers in international development) which is that you must to spend some time abroad (probably volunteering) to really gain an appreciation of the issues and challenges faced. Just having a Masters or some other qualification won’t be enough. Apart from the few days in pre-departure training with VSO, I have no formal training or qualifications in international development.

Perhaps I’ve just been very lucky or perhaps I made my own luck, I’ll leave it to you to decide which!

After a very uneventful journey home, I’m now back in the cold and wet of the UK – although it is quite good to be back really. Haven’t been up to much since I returned, just getting everything unpacked and starting to get in touch with everyone again.

I have posted up the edited highlights of my photos from the past few months (since I returned in August). These are all just the photos from trips away and evenings out, I’m working on putting another album together to show the work that we’ve done in setting up the new computer labs and training sessions.

Have already started to spend far too much money – ordered 2 new computers (laptop and desktop).
Hope to catch up with you all again soon

Today is my last day in work at Mekelle. Feels very strange to be leaving after such a long time, but think I’m ready to go back – for a break at least. Still no running water at home, though I got a shower at a friends house last night. So there are a few things here I won’t miss!

I’ve been really pleased with the progress we’ve managed to make in developing elearning at Mekelle, especially over the last months, though I’m sure I could easily spend another 10 years here and still not get everything done that I’d like. Now I just have a few days in Mekelle getting packed up before flying to Addis for another few more days and back to UK next weekend. My next blog entry will probably be once I’m back in the UK, after I’ve had a bit of time to settle in again. Will be in touch with as many people as possible once I’m back and looking forward to seeing everyone again

After 18 months, I finally managed a visit down to Maychew – less than 3 hours by bus south of Mekelle. There have been VSO volunteers working at the Technical College there all this time, but usually I see them fairly regularly as they come up to Mekelle on way to airport or just for shopping in the ‘big city’.

Apart from the fact I’d never been before, the other reason to visit was to climb one of the hills around the town. So Mike, Getachew and I ll got up far too early for a Sunday morning (6am) for the walk up Bekura.

It took us about two and a half hours to get to the top (around 3100m), making our own path up. There is a path but its very long so we decided to take the short steep route instead.

Maychew is known for being where the Italians finally defeated the Ethiopians in 1936 and there was lots of fighting in the hills around here during the TPLF fight against the Derg in the 70′s and 80′s. Because of this you still need to be a little careful where you go walking around Maychew, there are still mines and other unexploded munitions – we saw plenty of (used) shell casings on our walk up, where the farmers had ploughed, but Bekura is considered free from mines unlike some of the other nearby hills.

Whilst in Maychew I was hoping that I’d be able to get shower – we haven’t had any running water at home for more than two weeks – our water meter was taken away by the water board for repair and still hasn’t been returned. Our enormous collection of buckets and water bottles have kept us going, but now we’re even starting to empty these out. Unfortunately, no luck getting a shower in Maychew, the water pressure was too low during the my stay – so looks like I may have to wait until I’m in Addis next week. I will make sure I definitely get a shower before I fly home

Last week we had our second full weeks training course with our elearning tutors. Jaime came over from Alcala University to deliver most of the training and I was there to help out with more of the technical aspects and generally lend a hand.

It was a completely different week to the previous training week we had back in November. Then it was the start of the training so it was much more hectic and we had more participants – who seemed to flit between attending or not – so it was difficult to manage with everyone working at different paces. In November we gave people plenty of time for practical work as well as giving presentations – but at the end of the week, some people thought there was too much time to work on their own. I suspect that many of these were the people who were more interested in getting the certificate to say they’ve done the training than actually implementing anything.

This week we had a core group of about 12 tutors who attended the whole week, which was almost entirely practical sessions – just a few presentations. Jaime had much of the previous week meeting with the tutors for individual tutorials and catch up, which worked out to be time well spent. The outcome was a very productive week and we now have many courses (around 15) almost fully uploaded on our Moodle server (see: http://www.mu.edu.et/elearning) – many of the courses allow guest access if you would like to take a look. Next challenge is to make sure the student accounts have been created and that they have received some form of induction to the lab.

Unfortunately we still have some unresolved technical issues in the labs which has been making things a little tricky to manage. None of the issues by themselves are show-stoppers, but all the little issues add up and we’ve already experienced the fact that we’re not always told when there are issues – instead people just don’t use the lab. So we need to make sure there are plenty of ways in which staff and students can communicate when they are having difficulties.

At the end of the week we had a nice meal out with all the tutors at the Axum hotel. Even though it was a Friday night, most places are very quiet – it’s still fasting time in the run up to Easter and many people won’t go out to restaurants/bars if they’re not able to eat meat!

Today I held the first student induction session for Seyoum’s ‘Marketing Management for Industrial Engineers’ course. All seemed to go very well, we had far fewer problems with the students logging in than I was expecting – I think this was mainly due to Seyoum being able to explain in Amharic what they needed to do.

The other weekend, I had a great trip down to the Bale mountains. Fortunately we were able to borrow car (4×4) for a few days from a friends work in Addis. Bale is known for it’s trekking and horseriding, but fortunately, given that it rained almost the entire time, we hadn’t planned to do either of these activities and spent most of the time driving – our shortest days drive being about 7 hours.

The roads to and around Bale were far worse that we had expected- mainly because most them are in the process of being asphalted, so the ‘road’ that you can use is actually a track next to where the road is going to be. At one point it took us over 3 hours to do less than 100km.

Basing ourselves in Robe, we had a day up to the Sanetti Plateau (over 4000m high) to watch Ethiopian Wolves and then on to the Harenna Forest. The landscape is completely the opposite to that around Tigray – with real forest and greenery- as a result of all the rain. The next day we headed another 120km east to the Sof Omar caves. These were fantastic (see photos below), fortunately we picked up a guy from the local village who happened to be a history teacher at the local high school, so he was able to translate what the guide was telling us. Due to the rain we couldn’t get as far in to the caves as we would have liked – since crossing the river inside the cave would have been too dangerous. The teacher also had a map of the cave system (below) – 17km long – if anyone is interested I have higher quality copies of the images than I’ve uploaded below. Fortunately I’d remembered to take along my little tripod so was able to get some reasonable photos once we were inside the caves.

The next night was spent at the Dinsho lodge which the guide book describes as being like an abandoned ski lodge. It was a little tricky to find, the road builders had removed the signpost so we ended up taking someone from town to show us where to go, on arrival all was dark and locked up (living up to the guides book’s description) , so we went back into town to track down the warden.

The next morning the warden too us out for a walk to watch see Nyala (photos below again!), then back in the car for a drive to Shashemene (home of Rastafarianism apparently) for lunch and up to Lake Langano for an overnight stay by the lake, and few drinks and a swim – my camera battery had long since died by this point.

The highlight for me was certainly getting to the caves, it would have been difficult to get there without our own transport and now that I’ve seen a small part of the Bale national park, I’d certainly like to go back during a drier period for a trekking holiday.

Last weekend had my second stay at the Gheralta Lodge, about two hours north of Mekelle. Last time I went was way back in December 2008. Out of the 10 of us we had 9 nationalities, with only Martin and I being from the same country, the rest from India, Pakistan, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Ethiopia and US.

On the Saturday afternoon we played rounders, using the bat and ball which have been sat at the back of my wardrobe for the past 18 months. There wasn’t quite enough of us to make up 2 teams, so we ended up making a cross between rounders and cricket which seemed to work after a few ‘discussions’ about what the rules should be (and rule changes half way through the game).

On Sunday morning, some of us stayed around the lodge playing frisbee and reading, whilst the rest went to visit one of th nearby rock churches. Those who had gone to the churches ha a hard time with the local ‘guide’ and priest. The cost of visiting the churches here has gone up to 100 birr, per person per church, up form 50 birr last year and 20 a couple of years ago. On top of this there are now ‘official’ guides who will charge 150 birr, then another fee just for climbing the mountain (even if you don’t use a guide or go in a church), then a final (variable) fee to get the priest to unlock the church door. All these charges and arguments about how much should be paid always spoil any visit and don’t encourage you to visit again, or recommend particular places to others.

So in the end I was quite pleased I didn’t bother with the church visit – it was one I’d seen before anyway – but it was great to get away from Mekelle, even if it was just overnight.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to go and visit Adama University – in Nazret, about 2 hours drive south of Addis. I went with a couple of staff from ECBP (Ethiopia Capacity Building Programme), as they have a similar learning programme to what we are trying to achieve in Mekelle.

Adama University is an interesting case in Ethiopia as it now has a German President and several other senior expatriate staff – such as the ICT Director. So they have implemented many changes which have yet to reach other Ethiopian Universities.

Their elearning programme seems to be going well, they have a team of 5 staff dedicated to uploading and developing the elearning materials – more information about their team can be found on the Adama University website. Although they have a very similar approach to the one we’re taking with the Digital Campus project, there are some crucial differences. Firstly, their team are uploading the materials for tutors, whereas we are supporting the tutors uploading their own materials (I have previously blogged about this). Some of their activities and assignments form part of the students final grades, as we are not including the whole course cohort in our program, we are unable to use summative assessment. Their better IT infrastructure and lab access allows them to offer the online courses to many more students.

One the other side, we have our system available off campus too, whereas at Adama their Moodle is (currently) only available through the local network. I’m still unsure that having a centralised team is the best way forward. I can understand it’s advantages, in quality control, consistency etc, but unsure that it will encourage teachers to feel they actually own the course and should be keeping content up to date, participating in discussions etc.

Their ICT infrastructure looks very well organised and they have common computer labs which are open 24/7 – this obviously gives them much more opportunity to push courses out to students and know that the students will get access. We’re trying to push the University here to having similar levels of access times for students, but I think it will be a while yet before Mekelle reaches 24/7 access to labs which have a large proportion of machines fully functioning.

Although it was a long way to go for half a days visit, it was well worthwhile for me to meet the team there and look at the different approaches they are taking.

I feel I’ve been a little quiet on here recently, but that’s not because been being lazy. Quite the opposite in fact. The closer I get to my leaving date, the longer my to do list seems to grow. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll get chance to finish everything I’d like.

It’s only in the last week that I realised I’ve not left Mekelle now since the middle of December, when I had a very brief trip down to Addis for the VSO leavers workshop. But, I do now have a trip down to Adama University lined up for next week, a couple of hours drive south of Addis, so will be good to get away for a few days for a change of scenery, even though it’s still work related. The new intake of volunteers arrive this weekend, so whilst I’m in Addis, I’ll get chance to meet them all.

Progress with the Digital Campus project had been a little slow over the last few weeks, but things are now getting back on track. The next full week of training has been arranged for the second week of March, so just before I return to the UK. We’re also now getting many of the technical issues resolved with the servers, such as implementing an LDAP server to ease the user creation process. Later this week I’m running a Moodle admin training course for people in Computer Science and ICT, so at least staff will have an idea of how to maintain the server properly.

This week, I’ve started the Moodle Course Creator Certificate (MCCC), so I’ll be working on that over the next couple of months. Despite having used Moodle a lot in this job and whilst at the OU, most of this has been from a developer point of view, rather than a teacher. So will be good to learn more about how the various activity modules, which I’ve rarely used, really work. Just need to make sure that I can set aside enough time to devote to this.

The last week or so has seen lots of ups and downs, though overall the balance is more up than down! On both of the last Saturday mornings I ran training sessions for tutors. I was expecting these to be a bit of a nightmare, I’d already had trouble getting all the user accounts working correctly, plus I wasn’t really sure how many people would turn up. In the end around 10 tutors attended each week so was very pleased with this outcome – it could very easily have been that no-one or only one or two attend. Not knowing who was coming beforehand or what level they’d got to made things a little tricky for planning the sessions, but went well in the tutorial-style we used. Some are already creating quizzes and other activities for their students, whereas with some other tutors, they hadn’t attended the training week in November, so we were starting at the beginning.

Last Sunday morning (just over a week ago) we had some visitors from the Ministry of Education, so I explained our elearning projects and showed them the labs – unfortunately (as always seems to be the case) a power outage, in one of the buildings holding the switches connecting the terminals to the data centre, prevented me from showing the terminals in use.

The downsides this week have been the fact that it was uncertain for a while as to whether we’d be able to run the second full week of training for the tutors, as the visitors from Alcala may not have had time to prepare. If they weren’t coming this would have made extra work for me, as I still would have needed to run some extra training to ensure the tutors were set up and ready for delivering courses int the second semester. With all the other tasks I have to do (in the now 8 weeks remaining – not that I’m counting) this would have been too much and I’d have been very disappointed if they had canceled, or delayed until June.

Also a laptop went missing from our office over the previous weekend. A student had left it with one of my office colleagues to fix, but without going into all the detail here (and I’m not totally sure about exactly what happened), he ended up being locked up at the police station for 2 days and has to pay 12,000 birr (over 1000 USD) until the laptop is found. Previously our office was used a lot by other staff to get internet access and to get their laptops fixed, but now all this will stop and the locks are being replaced.

This week we finally made progress on fixing up many of the user accounts that weren’t working, plus getting the server at Ayder campus working again. There were lots of different odd problems with the users accounts, but most re fixed now (just a few odd problems to resolve still). But getting the server fixed was great news (especially at the end of a Friday afternoon). this means we can now get the lab open again and into use. Though now the students are having exams, then they’ll have a 2 week break, so they may not be around much for anther 3-4 weeks. The lab at Ayder now has curtains up, and new carpet is ready to be put in. The curtains seem to match the rest of the room, but I suspect this is more by accident than design.

Anyway it was a good end to a very fraught week, so hoping I don’t have any more weeks like this one.