Visit to Anichow School

Wednesday 30th April

Tummy still feeling fragile – not a promising situation given that there is unlikely to be any toilets and very likely to be a bumpy ride at least part of the way.

I arrived at the office for 8 o’clock, checked the vehicle with Ato Mulat, rang Meleshew who had not yet left home and then Matt to tell him not to hurry – too late as he was already coming in the college gate. The vehicle arrived 10 minutes early. After half an hour, I rang Meleshew again – there were no line taxis... decided to ask the driver to go and pick her up despite this being in the opposite direction. Sadly, but predictably, the schools and supervisor had not been notified and my book had not been collected.

The journey took us off in a new direction – following the road up from the turnoff to the Goha hotel and past the village of Felasha, a Jewish settlement which I need to revisit sometime because it is apparently the best place to buy authentic Ethiopian ceramics.

The terrain was similar to previous journeys and, although the road was not surfaced, it was at least fairly even until we reached Abbaba school. The Director found us a guide to visit Anichow but was a bit miffed that we didn’t want to visit his school. We promised to return after our visit to the ABE school that was our priority for the day.

For the next 20 minutes, we bounced along a very rough track – the sort of conditions 4 wheel drives were invented for! Even so, we ended up stuck and it was all ‘hands on deck’ to remove the stones from the centre ridge and bolster up the wheels with small stones that the wheels could grip on (photograph – well somebody had to take photograph!).

Meleshew supervises, Ruth photographs!

This was followed by a 20 minute walk uphill – our imminent arrival announced by the hordes of children that arrived from nowhere to escort us on the last bit of the journey.

Meleshew had warned me that this school might make me think about the best way to offer any funds I might find available – she was not wrong. There are a lot of photographs to go with this blog but I make no excuses for putting in rather more of this school than I would normally. It is most definitely the poorest school I’ve seen so far and it is badly over-subscribed.


Seats, no desks

EthiopiaLink funded the building that you see – last year it was no more that a shelter. Now they are able to offer Grades 1 and 2 and have students ranging from 5 to 17. Two teachers politely requested help to build another two classrooms, one so that they could take in another Grade 1 class next year to meet demand and one for a Grade 3 class. These two young teachers had taken part in the model classroom training at Keye Ameba last month along with over 100 other teachers but hadn’t really had a chance to try out the materials and would welcome some extra input.


Teachers in front of last year's classroom

I promised we would come to Abbaba next week for some additional training and added that I would buy a volley ball and net for the playground. They will have to walk for at least one hour to Abbaba, there and back for next week’s training.

Matt promised to help fund the new classrooms and maybe the following year, they would look into providing toilets. The prospect of water is a long way off.


Smart Boards!

The children at this school gathered around us and followed us wherever we went – no prospect of classes with such exotic visitors to stare at. They asked for nothing. No begging. They have nothing. Their clothes are little more than rags, many of them have or have had ringworm. It is most unlikely that they have sufficient food. Seeing it and writing about it has moved me to tears – sadly, it will be one of the lasting images of my time in Ethiopia.

Class of 2000 visit to Anichow School