Splish! Splash!

Another football match in the morning, so after breakfast for the children at the Project it was the usual mass exodus to the football field to either play or lend support to whoever was playing. The match was supposed to be against some other U-15 side but they didn’t turn up so it was just a kick-about between the younger boys in the Project. The pitch had been recently bulldozed to level it off but unfortunately the thunderstorms from the previous night and early morning had made the surface like an absolute mud heap. The match was a pantomime from start to finish and when it was over we were getting plenty of odd looks from people in the street as we made our way through the town. A horse and cart passed and some of the boys chased it to hitch a ride down the street.

After lunch we took 42 children to the local Emperor Johannes Museum, which involved another procession through the centre of town. It’s quite common for teenage boys and men to hold hands walking in the street. One of the older boys Lemlemu, who is 15, was holding my hand walking through the town. Everything was going fine until we approached a huge mucky puddle between the pavement and the street. As we had been walking on the street, quite common for Mekelle as the pavements are often a nightmare, I decided to veer round the puddle still walking on the street. Lemlemu decided he has going to mount the pavement but wouldn’t let go of my hand. He had to jump into the muddy puddle to stop falling and who do you think got all the muck, Yep, yours truly. It wasn’t very comfortable being wet and mucky but you just get on with it.

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A very hot and sunny day, the boys reckon it is about 35 degrees, so very uncomfortable for me at least. Having let my guard down a few times over the past few weeks, my ears and neck had a bit of sunburn that has started to peel. Some of the boys were looking at my face and peeling off skin wondering what was happening to me. They had never seen sunburnt skin peeling off, so it was a bit of a laugh.

School wise, we covered naming and spelling different countries round the world; with a wee competition to see which side of the class could guess the most. Needless to say it finished a draw, I wonder how that happened, so everybody received a lollipop. The competition was also used as a spelling exercise as whoever guessed the country name had to spell it out. Something to consider when visualising this exercise is that not one of these kids have been outside Ethiopia and they would only have seen a map or atlas from information provided by the Project. Class sizes in Ethiopian schools vary from about 50 to 70, so individual attention and any form of question and answer learning is not normal practice. Many of the countries the children come up with are associated with well known football nations as there is a phenomenal appetite for anything related to football.

Tommy Dobbin
17th August 2007