Alex Little

For the last month the main road near our house going down into the city centre has been in a state of turmoil. At the beginning of December it was a reasonably well maintained tarmacked road, then, one night, the diggers moved in. Day by day more and more tarmac, earth and rocks have been moved, bulldozered and steamrollered. The road is the process of becoming what appears to be a 6-lane motorway and probably explains the demolition of the roadside houses and shops last year. I’ve been reliably informed that the reason for the roadworks is the 35th anniversary of the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) sometime in February. The TPLF headquarters are at the end of our road and the road-widening is to allow for the planned parade/show. Rumours are that the Ethiopian prime minister is going to be attending.

With the road closed, all traffic, from cars, taxis and bajajs up to buses and articulated trucks have been diverted down the narrow, dusty side roads. It has also meant that our university service bus stop has moved and what used to be a regular easy-to-find service has now turned into a daily game of bus stop hide-and-seek. The bus may or may not stop at the same place it did yesterday or the day before that. Additionally, even if it did stop in the same place two days running, it may stop at completely different times. Not even my Ethiopian colleagues really seem to know where and when the bus will stop.

Happy New Year! (Although in the Ethiopian calendar it’s still 2002, 2010 won’t be reached until Sept 2017)

We celebrated with meal out with some friends from work, letting some fireworks off in the street a little early as our friends children were getting tired and needed to go to bed. We were little concerned to start with about letting fireworks off in the street, we were quite near the military communications facility, plus all week there’s been the Ethio-Sudan Joint Border Commission Conference, so there’s been a high police and security presence in town with all the visiting ministers and Sudanese Ambassador. We didn’t think that some loud explosions late at night in the centre of town would go down very well, but we had been reassured that all would be fine and fortunately it was.

After the fireworks, we celebrated midnight at a local bar with a flaming sambuka and despite Thashika’s best efforts at burning the place down after dropping hers on the floor, we had a fun night. Not a single attempt at singing Auld Lang Syne was made.

One the way home, with the blue moon I got a few decent photos of our house and street just lit by moonlight. But the photos look a lot brighter on my camera screen than they do on my laptop screen… see how this looks on your screen:

If anyone feel like a challenge, work out when the next blue moon will be in the Ethiopian calendar. The Ethiopian calendar starts on 12 Sept with 12 months of exactly 30 days each, then a month of 5 or 6 days depending on whether it’s a leap year or not. Post your answers below.

Last week, Oliver and Haileleul from the Engineering Capacity Building Program (ECBP) in Addis came to visit our elearning project in Mekelle. They are working for the elearning development program for ECBP, setting up eCompetence Centres at other universities in Ethiopia and are looking to develop a similar program in Mekelle without duplicating the Digital Campus project work.

All seemed to go very well and we’re currently in the process of writing a proposal for the training of more staff to become elearning experts, to be presented to the University management in the very near future.

Their most successful program so far seems to be at Adama University, where the Engineering College has been turned into an independent Institute of Technology. The (German) director and senior management have really focused on improving student computer access, by setting up 600 terminals open 24/7.

The ECBP approach taken to develop elearning course content/materials is slightly different to our approach with Digital Campus. We are training teachers to set up and upload their own courses and teaching materials, with the support from pedagogical department, whereas the eCompetence Centres allow teachers to take their materials to the centre. The centre staff then do much of the content development and uploading for the teacher. There is good reason for this difference, the ECBP approach has a stronger focus on multimedia content, whereas we’re looking at much more basic content uploading and activity creation. Expecting all staff to have the facilities, skills and time to produce multimedia content is simply unrealistic.

There are pros and cons of each approach. Sending your content off to a centre for transformation into online activities can increase the technological complexity of the activities or content developed (e.g. multimedia or flash animations), increase quality (questionably) and consistency between courses. Also it is easier to set deadlines for course production. However I have concerns that staff then have no sense of ownership of the online materials related to their course, for example, that regular updates are made and that staff participate in and monitor forum discussions. It may mean staff then don’t consider it to be part of their jobs to be involved with the online aspect. I have to ad that the ECBP approach does have the teachers working with the elearning team – it’s not a case of the teachers dropping off the materials and walking away from any further involvement.

Training teacher to produce their own online content and activities means that you can have a smaller team supporting the elearning development, providing advice and training but not the ‘doing’ and this woul dhelp to reduce the direct cost to the university. We hope it would also motivate the teachers to encourage their students to use the materials and activities if the teachers have gone to the effort of creating them. The danger is that teachers won’t have the time or skills, or it will be considered to be more work force upon them by management. Maintaining a baseline level of quality and consistency between courses may be difficult.

So, which do you think is the better approach? Or should there be a mixture between the two?

I hope that I’ll get the opportunity to visit Adama university early in the new year, with some staff from Mekelle, as I believe there will be a lot we can learn from their experiences. I think that the success of their program may be mainly due to the efforts put into providing 24/7 open access computer labs to students, something that’s yet to be achieved on anything but a very small scale at Mekelle.

On Friday, I finally rebuilt our Moodle server, following the power supply failure of the old server. The site is now running on the same server as the main Mekelle University website and so can be accessed off campus (another big achievement) at:

http://www.mu.edu.et/elearning

Initially, we’ll use this Moodle installation as the place where the Engineering and Health Sciences tutors can upload their courses for the Digital Campus pilot project, but any other college or department is welcome to use this server for hosting their courses.

The building of the labs for the Digital Campus project is all coming together at once, the servers and terminals are on their way up from Addis as I write, the tables are almost completed and will be delivered by the end of the week, plus the other networking and electrical work is almost finished. All of this is on top of organising the training week (16th to 20th November) for tutors, followed by week of training for th ICT staff. This training is being run by the Digital Campus project team, with the others arriving from around the world during this week.

Given how busy I’ll be over the coming 2-3 weeks, I’m unlikely to be checking email much or updating my blog, so be prepared for a long catch up post in a month

Last week, I was asked to go and visit the Mums for Mums centre to help them to help them out with the redevelopment of their website. Mums for Mums is a local NGO which helps women into work by giving them training and childcare, plus much more. They’ve recently won a grant of 100,000 USD from the Stars foundation to expand their activities. This is a huge amount of money for a relatively small NGO in Ethiopia.

They’d like to revamp their existing website so they can better advertise the work and projects they’re able to undertake with the new funds. The current site was built by a VSO volunteer when she was working in Mekelle a few years ago – she worked at the Computer Science department at the University and started the elearning project that I worked on last year. As she has now left Ethiopia, I feel it would be more appropriate if the office staff could keep the site up to date themselves, rather than depending on someone abroad to do this for them.

My first task in this work is to write a proposal they can send to Stars, so at least they can show they’ve started thinking and planning how their website will be renovated.

Updating the site to use a content management system (not sure which one we’ll use yet) and training the staff will be straightforward enough. The more complex facility that they’d like is the ability for people to donate money online, as they receive many offers of donations, often from people in the UK. Currently there are two ways in which money can be donated. Either by transferring money directly into the Mums for Mums bank account in Mekelle, or by donating through a partner charity (Friends of Ethiopian Children in Need – FECIN) in the UK.

Neither of these methods are ideal, transferring money directly by international transfer is expensive (approx 40 GBP per transfer) and so is only appropriate for very large donations. Using a partner charity in the UK means they are dependent on this other charity.

We had a discussion about how we can find a solution for this, but is difficult as Mums for Mums is not a registered charity in the UK and so can’t use (for example) the JustGiving website. Registering as a UK charity may be a solution, but they’ll need representation in the UK, plus all the associated paperwork.

If anyone has any suggestions as to how we could find a good solution to this problem would be gratefully received. There must be many other NGOs around the world who receive donations from the UK without being registered as a UK charity, so we’d be interested to hear any possible solutions. Please either leave a comment below or email me directly (alex@alexlittle.net)

On Thursday, rather than celebrating bonfire night – the meaning of which would have been a little lost on most people here, we celebrated Martin’s birthday. Over the week we’d had several other VSO volunteers coming to Mekelle, so the promise of a good meal out and some birthday cake was enough to convince them the stay on an extra day or so. Mike, an IT volunteer from Maychew technical college came up on Tuesday to look at the IT infrastructure at the University and also for me to show him the main computer suppliers in Mekelle. Cathy and Peter came over from Axum, I’d visited them the previous week, to see the English Language Improvement Centre (ELIC) and the Academic Development Resource Centre (ADRC). Marcel also returned to Mekelle after an extended back in Australia.

For Martin’s birthday meal we went to the Boston cafe, one of the main ferenji restaurants in town. We had a great turn out, with about 25 people coming along, so was lucky that accidentally 2 cakes had been ordered.

As I’m sure many of you will be aware, it is 25 years since the reports of famine in Ethiopia appeared on the BBC. But a quarter of a century later (and who knows how many millions in aid) there are new reports about potential famine in these same areas affected all those years ago. The BBC has recently broadcast from Mekelle about the situation (here and here), and Oxfam are again raising money to try to prevent famine occurring again across east Africa. There’s also a report on the Guardian website about the impact of the images sent back from Ethiopia 25 years ago.

From my point of view, working at the Uni in a well-off regional capital, I see little or no sign of the food shortages which are being reported back in the UK. I’m certainly not saying that problems don’t exist, I know that I’m in a privileged position, given my location, job and income – but for me, it’s hard to know how bad the situation is, or is becoming. It’s also likely to be affecting more remote rural areas far worse than where I’m based. There are no reports in the local media about the situation (in either the local language or English language newspapers), so my main sources of information about the problems are from outside Ethiopia, usually BBC & UK newspaper websites or from those I know who work with medical organisations/NGOs and spend more time out in the rural areas. As far as I’m aware the situation at the moment is certainly just about potential famine, and the number of people needing extra food aid (on top of the food aid normally given out) is 6.2 million – which is actually the same as last year.

Since coming to Ethiopia last year, I’ve always been wary about bringing up the subject of the 1984/85 famine. Most people I meet or work with are under 30 and so either weren’t born or were extremely young at the time. Also, those Ethiopians who have been abroad say that all anybody else in the world seems to know about Ethiopia is famine and long distance running and I don’t want to perpetuate the feeling that that’s all anyone knows or cares about Ethiopia.

Yesterday, Martin and I met up with Mike Wooldridge, the BBC journalist who has been sending back the recent reports, but was also one of the reporters here in Ethiopia reporting on the 1984/85 famine. He’s an ex VSO volunteer and his daughter was a VSO volunteer at the Teacher Training College here in Mekelle a few years ago. It was really interesting getting the chance to meet Mike, finding out about the changes that have taken place in Mekelle and Ethiopia generally over the last 25 years and also being able to show him around the University to demonstrate the work that VSO is currently doing.

Just over a week ago the new intake of volunteers arrived in their placement, so the arrival of Martin, my new housemate has doubled the number of VSO volunteers in Mekelle – ok, Marcel is also still in his placement, but is currently back home in Australia for a break.

So have spent the last week or so trying to introduce Martin to life in Mekelle – seems to be going well so far. We had ‘fun’ last weekend trying to get a wardrobe from the VSO furniture store last weekend. Firstly we’d been given the wrong address, which explained why the keys we’d got didn’t fit. When we got into the store, to be able to remove a wardrobe, almost all the other furniture had to be moved/rearranged first. After we’d finally extracted the wardrobe from the store it wouldn’t fit through the door in the compound gate. No problem you may think – open the gates – but they’d been concreted shut. So after taking the wardrobe to pieces we finally got it out into a pick-up to take back to our house.

This weekend, Mike, one of the new volunteers at Maychew Technical College came to visit us in Mekelle to shop for all those things he can’t buy there. He’s come as a n IT advisor at the college, so I’ve invited him to come and have a look at what we’re doing at the Uni here. Would also be good for me to go and see what they’re up to down in Maychew.

Work has been slowly progressing in the labs – our new Cisco switches have now arrived – after the supplier tried to make a bit of extra money for himself by giving us DLink hubs and assuming we’d either not notice or not know any better. The electrical works still needs to be finished in the lab before we can test the new network. I’ve had to ask them to redo some of the work to align the sockets on the wall – the photo shows the current state. Although it may feel a little petty to complain about things like this, my feeling is that if it’s allowed to pass this time, it sets a precedent of what is acceptable quality, when actually it takes very little effort to get right in the first place.

The Computer Science department is still in the process of moving, but there’s not a hope of everything being ready for the new semester which starts next week. Although the new dept still has no network installed and is unlikely to do so for several weeks (and be connected to the rest of the campus network), I arranged to run some training for the lab technicians last Thursday. So half an hour after we were meant to have started, no one had appeared. Whilst on the phone to the department head, one of the technicians arrived. The others technicians weren’t going to be able to come, so I thought I’d continue anyway. We then found that the only lab we had a key for didn’t have any electricity supply to the sockets. The lights were on, but the electrical work hadn’t been finished. I then abandoned the training – maybe more will turn up next time.

I did however make some progress in other areas. I’ve been trying to get ETC to put a record in their DNS database for our e-learning website – but have had little luck being put through to the right person. On Thursday afternoon, Habtom (assistant head of ICT dept) and I went to see the head of ETC in Tigray. So, on Friday afternoon we finally managed to get the correct phone number for the head of the DNS servers in Addis, and we’re making progress. Originally, in Mekelle, they wanted to charge us 1000 birr for the entry, despite my explanation that it was only a subdomain we wanted not, a full new domain. Fortunately the, more technically aware, person in Addis isn’t going to charge us this and even suggested that he’d help us get our own public DNS server set up at the Uni here. So Friday ended with some good news – just need to make sure I follow it up this week.

Last weekend was Meskel – a celebration of the finding of the true cross. Last year I’d arrived in Mekelle just in time to celebrate Meskel so this year we were going to head up to Adigrat as there is a bigger celebration there. Unfortunately all the hotels there were booked up, so we didn’t go in the evening. Instead we stayed in Mekelle and headed up the mountain overlooking town to watch the bonfire being lit and the torchlit procession down into town – much as we had done last year.

Early on Sunday morning, we drove up to Adigrat just for the day to see the daytime Meskel celebrations there, held in the football stadium, a bonfire ready to be lit on the centre spot and the whole town out in their traditional clothes. First a few speeches by some of the chief priests from the region, then the fire was lit and people used the ashes from the fire to draw crosses on their foreheads.

On our way back into town we stopped at a friends family’s cafe for a couple of drinks, where a TV crew from Ethiopian TV (ETV) interviewed us. So if you’re able to receive ETV, we may be on sometime this Sunday. In case you miss us on TV here are a few photos:

Head priest returning after lighting the bonfire

Spectators in the grandstand

Waiting for the fire to die down to collect ashes

One of the horse riders who had been racing around the stadium before the fire

Interview for ETV

I’ve just come to the end of probably the busiest week I’ve had in nearly a year in Ethiopia, most of which has been involving chasing paperwork and bureaucracy.

Firstly, I finally managed to get the Moodle server moved from one campus to the main ICT data centre at another campus. Originally the server was in the Computer Science department, but the erratic power supply and lack of working generator meant the server was often off. Moving to the main data centre means the there is a more reliable power supply and generator. However, moving the server is not quite as simple as you may think. Several different letters and stamped pieces of paper were needed to allow me to move the server, mainly so the guards would allow me to take the server off campus. It took almost a week to get the paperwork done, but it’s finally moved. There’s now just the small issue of configuring it properly on the network, this was started today but not finished as the guy with the one of the necessary passwords isn’t in the office.

This week work started on the networking for one of the new computer labs (the photo shows the channels being cut in the floor for the cabling). I was at the Health Sciences campus a few days ago when I was called to go up to the Arid campus to show them where the channel should be cut as the labourers had arrived. Arid campus is two bus journeys away from Health Sciences, so I was told that I could get a University car to take me to save time. Unfortunately a drill also needed to be taken, so we had over an hour getting the paperwork sorted out, again, so we’d be allowed to take the drill off one campus and onto another.

The car we were then given was actually an ambulance, but we were prevented from leaving the campus as the papers we had to allow the car off campus didn’t cover the ambulance, so we couldn’t leave, and I ended up taking the 2 buses.

So , having received the call at about 9am to go to Arid, I finally arrived just before 12, all for a 4km journey. I later found out that the ambulance must have the proper paperwork to leave the hospital grounds even if it is on an emergency call-out. Hopefully I’ll never need an ambulance in a hurry.

I’ve finally started to receive post again this week. I had been expecting several letters, none of which had arrived over 3 weeks after posting. I manage to persuade the new lady at the post office to let me go and have a look in the other PO boxes, and found most of my letters (to box no 3060) had been put in the wrong PO boxes, some in box 3006, some in 3070 and some more in a cupboard. I’ve still yet to find a parcel my parents sent over 3 weeks ago, so suspect it’s just gone missing. All of which is quite annoying as last year we had no problems at all with the post, but I think they now know how irritated I was by it all, so the post should be fine now. Please don’t let it put you off sending me anything, just label it clearly and let me know you’ve sent something so I can look out for it.

The final saga of the week is that I’m currently office-less. Although over the last week many of computer labs have moved over to our new building, my office has yet to move, not that with everything else going on I would have spent much time this week in the office anyway.