Dec 3  *photo* Day 3 of Gwama Word Collection

Today was a day that did not go exactly as planned. It started off routinely enough, with no indication that anything unexpected was coming. All morning long, things went pretty much according to the script that I predicted in yesterday’s post—word-collection groups producing words at a pace fast enough to keep the glossers busy, and glossers working quickly enough to keep the typists supplied, with no significant backlogs anywhere. Everything moved along very predictably, lulling us all into thinking that the entire day would be like that. But it was the calm before the “storm.”

It wasn’t a huge storm, but it still came as a bit of a shock to me, and my impression was that the others who were there were similarly affected. At about 2:45, four people not part of our group walked into the meeting room where we’ve been working  (see first photo on Day 4). One of them was obviously the leader, and it was he who walked up to each of the word-collection groups in turn and told them to pick their things up off the table they were working at because the table was needed elsewhere most urgently.

Ten minutes later, the glossers had lost their table, as had each of the word-collection groups. No excuses were made, nor were any replacement tables offered. For the next few minutes after the last table had disappeared out the door, everyone sat in stunned silence, wondering what to do next and how to continue the workshop.

Our workshop’s logistics manager came to the rescue, appearing just as the typists’ table was being replaced with another, longer one, and after a few minutes he announced that some of the participants should go and fetch some tables from another room and bring them to our meeting room. In the end, the disruption lasted only about 15 minutes, after which everyone was happily back at work around tables different than the one they had been at before the storm had struck. And just that quickly, the storm moved on to bring unexpected change to someone else’s otherwise tranquil day.

Today was market day, so at 8:00 Wendemu was scheduled to put in an appearance at our house to get our order and do our shopping for us, then when he was back, wash my dirty clothes. We usually leave at 8:15 to walk to the Education Bureau, where our workshop is taking place, so when no one had arrived by 8:05, I began to wonder if the arrangements that Andreas had made for us before he left to return to Addis Ababa would really pan out. But, quite a bit early by “African time,” Wendemu arrived at 8:10 and I was able to pass on our order to him, with Anne-Christie had graciously hand-written in Amharic so he could read it.

When I stopped by the house during our coffee/tea break, Wendemu had returned and was in the process of washing my clothes. Then began my attempt—probably hilarious to an Ethiopian observer, since Wendemu speaks no English and I’ve learned only a few words of Amharic—to communicate with him about what he had and had not found in the market and how much he had paid for each of things he had found. Unfortunately, some of the things on our shopping list “were not there.” Our estimation of the amount of money Wendemu would need was low, so he ran out of funds. Whether the other items on our list really were not there or if they “were not there” because he ran out of money, we’ll probably never know. But we did end up with a few important items from the market and my clothes are now clean.

Kevin Warfel

Ethiopia woman carrying wood up a slight slope.  Ethiopia is mountainous.  The people work hard and are friendly.

 

(Several photos have been added to the November blogs for the Koorete workshop.)