It's not Georgia!

For the first couple of weeks in Ethiopia we tend to precede most sentences with “In Georgia….”  I guess this is only natural as we try to understand the culture we are now in and compare it with what we know about other cultures.  But sometimes there is no comparison to be made!

When we first heard about the Ethiopian education system we nodded our heads sagely and said “Yeah, we know, it’s like Georgia” We heard that the teaching method was for students to sit there quietly and just copy off the board, for speaking and listening skills to be weak as the focus was on reading and writing and not interacting and for English levels in the actual teachers to be low.  This is what we found in Georgia so it was logical to assume it was the same situation.  However it isn’t.

In Georgia, most teachers are untrained (although the majority have many years of experience) and in Ethiopia there is no required training for teachers either. However, one guide told us that if students leave school having completed grade 10 then they will be farmers or teachers. This is not the case in Georgia, where for example English Language teachers may well have a degree but it won’t necessarily be in English.  So I think it true to say that Georgian teachers are likely to be more educated than Ethiopian teachers.

What also makes it difficult to compare the two systems though is that we are teaching in a school where the curriculum tries to base itself on a UK system as much as possible and is therefore open to and already incorporates modern teaching methods, unlike Georgia which was just starting to think about it.  We have not had the opportunity to visit an Ethiopian government school to make a proper comparison.

In a funny sort of way, Ethiopia is like Georgia.  There is a huge rural population in both countries who live off the land and although education is free and compulsory in Georgia, many Georgian children are very poor attenders as they help with the farm work and this is not such a different situation to Ethiopia.

Here are some other differences.

There is a drinking culture in Ethiopia but it isn’t obvious to me in the same way it was obvious in Georgia.  I have rarely seen cigarette smoking in the street or cafés or bars we have visited.  Even in the large hotels, the vast majority of Ethiopians will be drinking coke or coffee.  Fran tells me that there is, but it is hidden behind tarpaulin curtains of the main streets.  This is also where the ‘Chat’ chewing goes on. (Legal high from chewing certain leaves)  However, in Georgia (after 6 weeks in the country we have now stopped preceding every sentence with this phrase!) people are not shy about drinking alcohol and we (well Martin) were regularly offered alcohol by strangers in shops and the street.  Of course smoking was a given.

There is a national shortage of serviettes in Ethiopia, I have decided.  Unlike Georgia, where you have serviettes coming out of your ears, here, you just don’t get them or if so very rarely.  As you probably know, I am a girl from the East End of London and not brought up with the niceties of polite eating but I am unsure as to what I am meant to do, if you are eating with your hands and get covered in gunk.  To be honest, this happens to me if I am using a knife and fork, too!  Doubly problematic, is that it is considered terribly rude to lick your fingers in this country.  What is the option?  My father-in-law Mac used to solve this delicate problem by wiping his sticky fingers on his socks, which I consider ingenious; but this is not an option when you are wearing birks. (Ah another difference between the nations – it was too cold to be bare-footed in birks in Georgia)  Bring your own is the answer.  Either that, or take a trip to the ladies for a wash-down.  However, like Georgia, I find it is best to avoid the facilities unless you are in a nice hotel.

Actually this is a similarity; uninhibited letching of single women.  Out of respect for Martin it doesn’t happen to me (not of course because I am not worth leering at).  On our journey to school, most men just openly gawk at Fran and call out to her.  At first this is amusing but it soon wears thin.  It is not that they just gawk either.  A woman on her own is just an open target here.  We were told that a woman drinking in a bar on her own is considered to be a prostitute; and if she is smoking then there is no doubt about it.  Fran went to Harare last weekend and after she had gone to her room for the night, her tour guide pushed his way into her room and told her that he had nowhere to sleep and he had to sleep on her floor.  He refused to leave, so Fran had to.  It was OK in the end but it so easily might have had a different ending.

One big difference between Georgia and here is the begging situation.  In Georgia there are gypsy beggars who moved into the country after the demise of the soviet system.  As everywhere they are really irritating and attack you in groups and pester the life out of you.  They climb onto the marshutkas while you are waiting to go and hover close by mumbling and feigning tears.  You will always find people in the metro subways with the same people there every day.  One particular underpass has several blind people – it appears to be a little community as well.  You also find some people begging outside the stations with missing limbs and they generally are very passive, just laying there and don’t accost you in any way. 

The begging situation is very different in Ethiopia.  We have been told that it is because the tourists before us have given money, sweets etc and that it just encourages the expectation that all tourists will thus provide, especially if you repeated request it as close as you possibly can.  It is actually really horrible to be subjected to this.  The thing is these people (adults and children) are not universally begging.  They are not asking Ethiopians, just the ‘farenji’ (foreigners).  They may be in a conversation with some other people as when they realise we are foreign put their hand out and rub their stomachs or make eating gestures with their other hand.  I want to punch them – hard.  I know that no-one really has a lot of money and we are perceived as having a lot of money (and literally we do) but as we know we are not rich in terms of spending power in the UK.

One teacher was shocked that a cup of coffee in a UK café can easily cost £5 which is 140 birr.  A teacher earns about 1000 birr a month so that is a HUGE amount to them. Of course we live at a far higher standard of living than they do but they also don’t understand this.  As I said the problem is that people have given in the past what are enormous amounts to Ethiopians and at the same time comparatively little for the Brits. For example it is very easy (especially when new in the country) to give a 100 birr tip(it is £3.60) but if you compare that with a teacher’s pay in the UK that is the equivalent of giving £180 tip.  No wonder that children don’t go to school and that people stand at the bus stations with their hand out when tourists have been so generous.

There are people who are homeless or in trouble in some way and beg on the streets and Ethiopians give them money.  That is a different situation.  But when well fed and clean children call out ‘You’ ‘Faranji’ or just ‘money, money’ it horrifies me and angers me to boiling point.  They don’t just content themselves with this either.  They persist.  We now walk straight ahead with sunglasses on and make no eye contact.  They maintain their dialogue of ‘give me money’ for a while and then when there is no response …. They touch me ….. “Get the fuck off me!” immediately comes to mind and on occasion uttered loudly and I push them off.  For crying out loud!   In Georgia we used to say hello to everyone and smile but here they see it as an opportunity to ask you for money. It is a shame but it makes a difference how you feel about the country.  We don’t even want to go out up the road because of the interference and it isn’t just the people in the street.  You always feel that in shops and restaurants you are given a different price to the locals (often true).  The sad thing is that it is the people who approach you who don’t need the money and  the case of tour guides etc the more unscrupulous of the lot.  The more honest or needy are not up front trying to fleece you.  We prefer to go to the expensive hotels where we know the price of a drink and can sit on the terrace without being pestered.  In Georgia we felt ripped off if a taxi tried to charge us 30p more than we thought was ok.  In Ethiopia, we pay 5 times the price at least in any tourist encounter.