Free at Last!

Well, are exams are over and marked and after Saturday, we are free for three months of vacation! We all survived, including the kids, whose exam questions were often rather questionable, involving lots of memorizing of definitions which I’m sure made no sense to the Tigrinha speaking students as they made no sense to me. Kim and my exams went well, but with 60 students to a class, they took hours to mark. At least some of the answers kept our spirits up as they were quite funny. About a quarter of my students think that their mother looks like a banana. Kim has a student who is a loser (he was copying from the student in front of him and got some letters mixed up), and he has another student with a long hair. I also have many students whose brother is a moustache. Despite the elaborate efforts to prevent cheating, Kim and I saw countless examples of it during the exams as students whispered to their friends and looked with very obviously shifty eyes at their neighbour’s paper. Most of them survived however. I have only a few who have failed the course and I will raise their mark to 50% because there’s no point in holding them back.

We’re in the thick of the World Cup here in Eritrea and it has taken over the lives of many people including Kim, Simon and Lukas. Unfortunately, the African teams haven’t been doing so well. Saba is quite into it as well so the boys are hanging out at her house and heading to the cinema, which has a generator, when there are power cuts. Power cuts continue to be a very regular part of our lives. Every third morning we have no electricity, and every few evenings we lose it for a short period of time. We are now well prepared with our kerosene lanterns, candels, and book lights.

I have been entertained a lot recently by the various ways people carry animals around here. Yesterday was the most amazing. A fellow on a bicycle had about twenty chickens strung onto his bike, attached upside down by their legs. The chickens seemed very much at ease with this arrangement. A few days earlier, two men were carrying a goat up the street upside down, each holding a pair of legs. “This is a goat” , they told me (Eritreans are intent on my learning the English names of various animals.)

Paperwork is taking over our lives here. It has always been necessary to apply for travel permits to get anywhere off the main Keren, Asmara, Massawa roads. Now we need papers to go anywhere outside of Keren. These can take up to ten days to get, and with summer holidays it’s very frustrating to feel trapped in our city, even though we do love it here, it’s nice to get away sometimes. We’ll manage though.

We had a very nice visit with Maya’s friend’s aunt and uncle last Sunday. We were invited to their small village outside of Keren for lunch and coffee ceremony. We immediately fell in love with the village, which was in a valley surrounded by mountains, with a huge baobab tree as a central landmark, and many traditional huts, and best of all, no children screaming “tilian” as we entered. We we served taita (injera, the traditional sour tortilla that is eaten with most meals) and chicken zigne (spicy chicken and tomato), and tripe. As usual, the mom rushed around and served us and didn’t eat, while the dad sat down and had a good discussion with us.

Now that school is over the local kids seem to have more time to play. Maya has organized for her friends to play soccer twice a week, with Kim as the coach. Lukas and Simon join in the impromptu neighbourhood soccer games just outside our compound. It’s a nice relaxed change from our highly organized soccer back home. The Eritreans have good ball skills, so our kids are learning lots, though the passing and teamwork side of things is a little limited here. They’re also learning to play in intense heat.

Mangos are here! The mango season has finally arrived and they are delicious! But the best food I’ve eaten in the past week was...tofu, broccoli stir fry!!! Our VSO friends have been growing broccoli in their garden and the arranged for their visitors to bring over two vacuum packed tofus. With the soy sauce we found in Asmara, it was a really delicious feast!!!

I guess that’s all the news, I’ll write again next week.

Take care,

Barb