Well, I’ve been here nearly a month now and I’m still having a blast. I’m still in the “honeymoon” phase of life here so everything is still new and exciting. My arrival from into Berbera, Somaliland was quite an adventure. We landed in the middle of the desert on one of the longest runways in the continent. Apparently the runway was built by the Russians during the cold war to counter act the US presence and was later used as an emergency runway for the space shuttle. After going through immigration in very small building used for the airport I hoped on a bus provided by Ethiopian airlines to Hargaesa for a three hour trip across the desert. The landscaped looked not much different than that of Nevada or Arizona but with the exception of small villages every few miles and goats, camels and baboons crossing the road every so often. I could constantly smell charcoal and burning trash which would be a common theme especially in Hargaesa.
Hargeisa has got to be one of the most ridiculous places I’ve ever visited. I knew my expectations would be blown but not this hard. Hargeisa is by far not what you would think of when picturing of a city. The capitol “city” of Somaliland is more or less an extended village with very few tall buildings or paved roads. Metal roofed shacks crowd the rocky streets and goats wander aimlessly everywhere.
Teacher and Baboon in Hargeisa
The first few weeks of teaching have been fun but extremely challenging and a lot of work. I teach six days a week have 120 students from grades 10-12. I’ve been spending most of my time working on getting internet access to the computer lab and teacher housing unit as well as lesson planning. The school runs on a diesel generator which is run for most of the day but when the power is off I am not really able to work anything technology related. For the fist few weeks we only had a small generator that could power the computers only if the the generator was turned up all the way. Often the smaller generator would run out of gas, overheat or be turned down so I was not able to work on the lab and would loose power to the computers during class. One thing I’ve come to realize here is that any job you think might take you a short period of time to complete easily take double the amount of time. I figured the computer lab would be finished two weeks ago and we would have internet in rooms by now but I’m far from close to finishing either of these tasks.
Sunset on the teacher housing side..the water tower seen to the left is what I have been climbing to work on the teacher’s wireless connection
Jumping ahead a few weeks. Today is Eid al-Adha or “The Feast of Sacrifice”. Many students have gone home but the 30 or so that live far away are here for the weekend. In honor of the holiday the parents committee has bought 5 sheep to slaughtered for the students to eat during Eid. I woke up to a nice surprise of rain (apparently I won’t see rain for the next 7 months) and getting word that some of the students were going to slaughter the sheep.
Students celebrating Eid with the slaughter of a sheep