The Heat is On!

It is warming up quickly in Keren. In the span of a few weeks it’s gone from being cold enough to wear a fleece sweater to school in the morning to being so hot when we go home at lunch that my face is a lovely tomato red. This change in the temperature coincides with the loss of our constant supply of water. It’s been almost a week now since our taps were running, so we can’t even have a nice refreshing shower every day when we get home. Luckily we’ve got three big water barrels and a cistern that leaks but still holds some water, so we’ll be okay.

School is going well, though my students are having a hard time getting back to work after the fun we had during the week of International Women’s Day. Every day, I get requests for volleyball or soccer instead of an English lesson. We’ve managed to get access to the volleyball court during the girls’ break on Mondays and during their gym period (which they usually spend in the classroom, with no teacher). A colleague and I are organizing the classes to collect money so that each class has its own soccer ball. Then I’ll organize a schedule for the field. The soccer field is currently being used by the boys during the girls’ break, but if the girls show up there first, I’m hoping that they won’t be kicked off the field. To help facilitate this, I’ve just posted a nice letter to the boys and the male staff, thanking them for their support during women’s week. One of the things that I thanked them for was “sharing” the field with us. Hopefully, they’ll see the irony in this and find it hard not to let the girls play football on the field during their break. We’ll see how it goes. I’m also getting the female teachers thinking about a year-end soccer game against the girls. The boys and the male teachers did this last year, so maybe we will be able to join in on the fun this time around.

This week was graduation week for the students at the technical school in Hagaz, a small town not far from here. One of Maya’s friends was there as was her best friend’s sister, who is having a party to celebrate her graduation this weekend. The top students get to go to this and similar technical schools before heading off to join all the other new grade 12 students for their final year of school and military training. For military training, grade 12 students from all the Eritrean schools are sent to a small town east of Keren in July. They train and study until about March, when they write their grade twelve exams. The top students are sent on for further education in regional colleges, while the remaining students continue with their military training. After that, they have an unknown number of years of national service. If their English is good, they often end up doing their service as teachers. It’s hard for some students to leave their homes and families for this training and service, so sometimes they need help being encouraged to go. A bunch of “encouraging people” were visiting homes last week looking for reluctant participants. We had five people check our home to see if anyone of the appropriate age was there. It was a fairly intense experience. It puts things into perspective too. It helps Kim and me to understand why many of our students feel no need to study hard unless they are among the top students, as their future has already been decided for them.

The struggle to obtain enough bread continues for our family. Our local shopkeeper has now cut our supply down to four buns a day. I’ve tried my best to convince her that this is fairly useless and that one more bread would at least give us one each for breakfast, but to no avail. It’s frustrating, because others are walking away from her shop with 20 or so buns. Bread is by far the cheapest way to fill your belly here, so everyone works hard to find a reliable source. It’s all a question of having the right friends in the right places. Our next strategy is to head off to the city administration, to request an official letter. Our local bakery is willing to give us bread, but they can’t give us any without a letter. I’ve been putting this off because I know the city administration will need three other official letters, copies of all relevant and irrelevant documents, and several hard to obtain stamps, all of which will probably involve several days of waiting. But with only 4 buns a day, I guess we’re going to have to give this a try. Kim isn’t too eager to embark on the quest for bread letters as he just spent a few days applying for travel permits so that we can visit a friend in a small village over Easter. It has suddenly become difficult again to get these permits and it looks like officials are trying to make things as complicated as possible so as to discourage us from applying for them too often. But we’d really like to visit our friend Phil in his village before we go home, so hopefully it will work out.

Bureaucracy and uninvited house inspectors aside, life in Keren really is nice. For example, we had a lovely walk up the mountain with the Egyptian family on Thursday afternoon. I had expected only the dad and son, and maybe the youngest daughter to go, but was happily surprised when the mom and her two teenaged daughters also showed up. They are quite traditional in their customs and dress, so for the first time ever, I climbed the mountain in a long dress and headscarf. Luckily, it was late in the afternoon and it had cooled down a lot. We didn’t end up making it to the top, but everyone enjoyed the walk and the beautiful views over Keren. At one point, the elder daughter, one of my students, gave a shriek and jumped a few feet in the air. She’d seen a “jarad”. I figured it must be a snake or a scorpion, but when we looked up the word in our Arabic-English dictionary back home, it turned out to be a locust!

The weeks are flying by, and though I really miss family and friends at home, I know saying goodbye to friends and students here and leaving this beautiful city behind is going to be really hard. The best thing to do, I guess, is to not think about it too much. So, I guess I’ll say good-bye now.

Before I go though, I have about 15 grade 7 students who have written letters that they would like to send to penpals in Canada. If anyone reading this knows of a young (say 10 to 13 year old) girl who would like an Eritrean penpal, please email me and let me know. It would be easiest for me if a school or classroom took this on, so that I could send the letters all together.

Take care,

Barb