Richard Clowes and Samson Workneh, our Country Director, at an orphanage in Addis

Our Desk officer in Mexico, Jery Lee, will be spending a month in Addis Ababa supporting our staff at one of our newest destinations, Ethiopia, where we had our first volunteers in February. She was kind enough to send along some of her initial thoughts after first few weeks there.

Well here are my first impressions……

The program is very well set up here and there are no problems with finding work for the volunteers. There are plenty of great orphanages and schools for our volunteers to work at.

Concerning the city, Addis Ababa is a great place to be. Although it is a bit polluted like most big cities, it is pleasant in general and surrounded by mountains. The view is amazing. It is very different from the other side of the world, especially Guadalajara! Volunteers will easily adapt in one week, but the beginning is a bit difficult because everyone stares at you out of curiosity and tries to speak with you which takes some getting used to for our European or North American volunteers. But as soon as you adapt there is no problem as it is a safe place and you can get around the city very easily on minibuses or public taxis that take you everywhere. You can learn the routes in a few days or so. All the people in the schools and working placements are really happy to have volunteers including the host families. The overall reaction towards us is very positive from everyone so I hope many volunteers apply to come here soon as there are lots of things to do and the people are excited to have them.

The food is spicy and very hot sometimes but good. You can also get food from all over the world as there are many restaurants and cafes with good food so volunteers can always go and have a meal out if they want a break from Ethiopian food as it won’t cost more than 3-4 dollars.

Overall, I really like the place and it will be a very good experience for the volunteers coming here. I hope many more will come here in the future!

The Orozco Family

We at Projects Abroad would like to send hearty congratulations to Chava, who is part of our great design team based in Guadalajara, Mexico on the birth of his second daughter, Emma!! I was able to work with Chava when I visited Guadalajara this February and not only is he a great designer but also an avid “Little Britain” fan. In the photo you can see Chava, his lovely wife Angela, his daughter Renee and baby Emma. What a good looking family!

For the volunteers in Mexico or who are about the go to Mexico, make you ask Chava to see some more photos, especially as Emma starts getting bigger.

We wish the Orozcos all the luck in the world and welcome the newest member to the Projects Abroad family!

A view of Brasov, Romania from the tram

As a former volunteer in Romania, the country has always had a special place in my heart and I have followed it closely since then. Consequently, it was a momentous occasion when Romania joined the EU earlier this year so I have asked our Country Director, Mircea, to comment on this and how it will affect Romania’s future and our volunteer’s fine work there.

With mixed feelings on the part of the populace and huge official parties in the central squares of the country’s biggest cities, Romania joined the European Union on the 1st of January 2007. Some of us Romanians expect things to get better financially, some to lose some of our freedoms. The general consensus though is that it’s a step ahead for our country. We don’t need visas for Europe now, the legislation pertaining to certain business ventures is more relaxed, there will certainly be a lot more foreign money coming into the country. This is not to say everything is now peachy, and Romanians are a rich, happy nation, with nothing left to learn. Personally, I think this is where the hard work starts. Joining the EU has placed responsibilities on Romania’s shoulders. We need to sort out the Gypsy integration problem, the still rampant corruption, education reforms etc.

Romania still needs help, in expertise, material and in terms of manpower, and therefore, we at Projects Abroad, still need volunteers. Archaeologists who receive our volunteers on digging sites love working side by side with Western young people who have a passion for this field instead of hiring workers who do not care about valuable artefacts. Although the orphanage system has been reformed and the children do not live in horrible overcrowding conditions anymore, the local staff still does not have enough time to give all the attention they deserve. So our volunteers provide a relief to the staff members and engage the children in educational and fun activities through games, excursions and participation in the daily chores. The Brasov Visitor is still the only publication in English in Brasov, and in a country where the true importance of ecological conservation has just started to become understood, there is plenty for volunteers to do. As for Teaching, there will always be a need for native speakers to help our local teachers. And in Roma (Gypsy) communities, our volunteers might actually be the perfect incentive to attract children to school, and through alternative, fun ways of teaching, to make them enjoy their classes.

The crowd walking to the Jan Meda raceground during the Ethiopian Epiphany celebrations in Addis

Jo was able to send along some of her observations about one of our newest destinations, Ethiopia. Enjoy!

I spent two and a half months in Addis helping set up our projects there, and I’ll admit I was really surprised by Ethiopia. Before I went, my only vision of Ethiopia was that of starving, wide-eyed children in a drought prone dusty wasteland, and I half expected that Addis would be similar, and I couldn’t have been more wrong! Addis Ababa has to be one of the most welcoming places I’ve ever had the pleasure to live in.

The city itself feels like a challenge at first; there is no discernable city centre, few known street names, and a huge sprawling expanse of suburbs, many of which appear to begin right in the centre of what you thought was a business district – but once you find your way around (which took me about a week, but which takes volunteers a lot less time with our help!), you get that special sense of achievement that you always have when living as a foreigner overseas, of “I know where I’m going, I use public transport, and I’m one of the masses”. People who see you on buses stare in amazement, since they are only used to seeing white faces behind the wheel of huge white SUV’s, and I’m sure they imagine that people don’t use public transport in the west! I love surprising people, and changing their ideas, so every short trip to meet friends or go for coffee brought a smile to my face.

Addis is set in the central highlands at an altitude of 2500-3000m – the main benefit of which is that the whole city is surrounded by mountains covered in beautiful alpine forests, so sunsets are stunning, and if you ever get the chance to get to the top of a tall building, the view is amazing! The other benefit is that short day trips for picnics or to visit churches in the hills are really easy to do – perfect if you love the great outdoors and can’t stay too long in a bustling city!

The altitude also makes for lovely weather. Ethiopia claims to get “13 Months of sunshine” – and it’s almost true – the sun really does shine everyday! During the day it’s warm enough that you can get away with just wearing a shirt, but without being so hot you break into a sweat, and once the sun goes down at around 6pm, it turns cooler.

Learn more about transportation around the city, using two different time systems and Jo’s favorite things after the jump!
Transport in Addis Is superb. Everybody in Addis owns either a donkey, a Lada, or minibus. Being a westerner, I don’t think the novelty value of crossing the street next to a heavily laden donkey will ever wear off!

All the Lada’s and minibuses are painted white and blue, designating them as taxis, and the minibuses are by far the cheapest and best way to get about. They cost as little as 65 cents (about 0.01 USD), run all over the city, and you never have to wait more than a few minutes for one to come along – it makes public transport in England look shameful!

One amusing aspect of life here is the use of two clocks - Ethiopians (quite rightly) argue that the day doesn’t start at midnight, rather the day starts when the day starts, i.e. when the sun comes up. Thus, 6am is 00.00, 9am is 3am, 4 pm is 10am, and so on. As you can imagine, this makes it somewhat impossible to meet anyone without an obligatory ten minutes of confusing discussion about whether you mean 4pm Ethiopian, or European time! In the annual sense, Ethiopia also has it’s own calendar, which is 7 days shorter out of every year than the Gregorian calendar we use in the west, making January 13th 2007, actually 5th May 1999! They’ve got some amazing millennium parties planned for about 7 months time if anyone fancies it….!

My two favourite things about Addis though, are the people, and the coffee. Ethiopian people are so welcoming, generous to a fault, and absolutely fascinated by westerners – having a ‘ferenje’ (foreigner) friends here is considered quite “cool”, so I had offers of meeting up for coffee coming out of my ears! People here love laughing and dancing, so there’s always a celebration around the corner.
We’ve had an amazing response from locals about the projects we’ve set up, and there’s a huge variety of work on offer.

Teaching English is really important here, since the lingua franca, Amharic, hasn’t developed sufficiently to adapt to the wealth of new words used in fields such as Science and Technology, which is why all subjects are taught in English from grade 7 - so it’s especially important in Ethiopia that children get a good grounding from an early age.

If you chose to do care work, there’s plenty to be done, and again, a huge variety – you could chose to work with babies, toddlers, under-privileged or disabled kids in day care centres, or even join in with our new public health education campaign to teach kids about personal hygiene.

I truly loved Ethiopia, and even though I’ve only been back a week, I miss her dearly. Now all I need to do is convince my boss to give me about six months off so I can go back as a volunteer…..!!