Pronouncing Ethiopia - Dec '15
I'm sitting in the tropical gardened restaurant of the Rose Mary. It's just after 8pm on the 5th of December 2015. The noise of the road is dulled by the music of crickets and Amharic pop. I've spent most of the day here, rearranging XML layout files. I go home to England in a few days, but feel I won't get another chance to document my thoughts before this journey really starts in earnest.
Perhaps it won't start at all, making this the shortest blog in history (spoiler, it didn't). Though I feel, as I sit in the cool December air, that this might be the beginning of a story. So profoundly do I believe this is the start of something that I've chosen to write a blog, something I would otherwise not do.
At the very least this blog will provide some outlet for an otherwise confused mind, at the very best it might make for an interesting read. So let us begin.
My story starts, as many of my proudest defeats do, in the pub. I am sitting with Gilbert Jolly, we are drinking horrible wheat beer in The Pembury Tavern, Hackney. I had lived with Gilbert for a year previously in a small flat share just behind the pub. After an hour or so of talk he shoots me a smile with hands raised near his face and says "now..." I know this look, I know this 'now'. This means he has an idea, a destructive or crazy idea but one I am going to like none the less. Usually this idea is a bottle of rum and something funny on YouTube. Not this time, this time it was a business idea.
A little about Gilbert Jolly, mid-twenties, he is an app developer, practically built the IOS and Android app for the start up Ref Me. He is what I consider borderline genius, sometimes this is a complement, sometimes I use it to tease him. He has a big problem with over indulgence and he is a complete troll, we get along famously and have done since the very moment I was thrust into the spare room of his flat by a mutual friend.
He was mad, of course. We were drunk, of course. But for every business idea that had ever been uttered to me in a pub, for which there were thousands, this is the only one that in the morning I would still believe in, that I, with limited funds, time or knowledge would invest in.
Gilbert's father was the creator of Jolly Phonics, he had been raised on it, I'd never heard of it. A lot of charities use Jolly Phonics to help teach better English. The way I understand it, it's easy to teach people a bunch of words that equal their words, but pronunciation and the rules involved in reading and writing are to quote a volunteer English Teacher "bloody stupid". Phonics is meant to help with that, they have a whole bunch of text books with actions, stories, songs and characters that help the kids along the way.
Gilbert, as he finished his third pint of the wheat ale, said that there were two clear problems as far as he could see. I asked if we could change to larger, he agreed. Now the first is distribution and the second is pronunciation. I will note at this point that our understanding of the project has evolved and as we did eventually buy a bottle of rum, I am completely ad-libing here.
Distribution; Do you know what it costs to print, ship and train a bunch of foreign countries on Jolly Phonics? No, neither do we but we are assuming it's more than nothing. The amount of smart phones per person in developing countries is phenomenal, really you would be surprised. So there is the gap, digitize the work book, find a simple distribution method and boom.
Pronunciation; What is the hardest part about teaching kids their "oo"'s from their "ou"'s? Not speaking very good English yourself. Most places that teach Phonics have English speaking trainers(I'm speculating based on limited research) that teach a handful of lessons to native teachers and then those teachers go away and try to teach their students. We are talking maybe a day or two of training, learning all the sounds, rules, etc. The problem they have is that after that training there is no way of hearing what the sounds are meant to be. Involved heavily in the app is audio files.
A few weeks passed, the hangover faded, the idea didn't. Gilbert had a prototype already, an old android phone hosted the Phonics work. Sounds, animations, word bank and all. The problem when you stand on the brink, with a prototype in hand, is deciding what to do. Do you start to develop in earnest, hoping that the idea will fly? No. You have to test these things. Two weeks later I was in Millets picking out hiking boots, that night I was drunk, watching Fight Club on a Kenya Airways flight with a softly snoring Gilbert in the seat next to me.
We had a breakfast beer on the stop off, determined to stave off the hangover that drinking at 39,000ft affords you. We arrived later that morning in Addis Abbas, Ethiopia. $50 for 31 day visa, and a grueling 45minute wait whilst passport control apparently had a training day, then we were there.
Cara waited for us at the airport car park, car and driver ready. Something should be said first and foremost about the Ethiopian people, they are happy and they are kind, but damn does it take them a long time to do anything. We were driving around Addis for a while, before I realized we were picking someone else up. Then we were driving along the new Chinese built freeway, on our way to Debre Zeyit.
The first time I heard Cara's voice was when I was sitting in my old apartment with Jack Cooney, the afore mentioned mutual friend, I was coding GTT, a game I was working on for Jack. We were sitting there when Jack began to giggle, I took out my headphones but before I could ask what he was giggling at I understood. Gilbert and Cara had met at some function a month or so before. They were getting along very well.
Cara Fairhall is a teacher, late twenties and full of childish charm, she is a kind and beautiful person. She had previously worked for a school for behavioral problems before being, thankfully, poached for her current role with Jolly Phonics in partnership, probably?, with Link Ethiopia, our new testing base. She was a phonics teacher, I know, what are the odds Gilbert?
She takes us to Pyramid Hotel, where we unload and she shows us her office and introduces us to the staff, including Rory, who we will talk of later. We drank some lovely beer, no doubt some will soon know of Ethiopian beer, and we ate some lovely food. Tibs is meat on a plate of light pancake'esc bread stuff, injera, in which the whole table tares at and uses to grabs at meat, veg and rice in the middle. The next day we are in the Hilton Hotel, back in Addis, Gilbert has signed us up for a 10km run. I unfortunately didn't bring my running trainers, can barely run 10cm anyway, so I endeavor to get drunk at this pre-run party. Back at the guest house, me and Cara buy, very cheap, red wine and stay up till 2am getting to know each other like only, very cheap, red wine allows.
The following morning, with a hideous hangover, Cara gives me my first real understanding of what Phonics is and why I should care. We fly to Gondor, the other Link office site, I stayed with Rory, now he was an interesting sort. I thought he was very off, didn't know if I liked him straight away, it was half way through the first meal that I realized he was bloody hilarious and he was trolling me, I was sold.
Rory Dillon was late twenties, married, projects manager for Link and an all around lovely chap. He lived in a gated house, with 24hr guard, couldn't even open his own gate, quite common I understand. He lived there with his wife Hannah Dillon, a head teacher with a different charity, again, a charming and welcoming individual. I make myself nauseous by typing it but they were truly in love.
The Ethiopian people are charming, they will shout what little English they know, out of excitement to practice and see outsiders. They will stare but not out of rudeness. A smile, a wave or a greeting quickly plucks them out of their daze. You say Salam nuh (male), nesh (female), natchu (group) and they will reply, toothy grinned. Back in the day, Ethiopia was a big trading port, which is why a lot of their language is Arabic, including a lot of the numbers. They serve a lot of Italian food, also they say ciao. It is different, as I understand it, from other African nations as it has never been controlled by another power, not in earnest.
Gondor is lovely, full of life. The castle walls stand high against the town. It's not quiet European, not quiet Indian, complete with Lion Cages and university educated guides. Me and Gilbert took several time lapses, which I may post to bore you, as only other peoples holiday photo's can. A few days of drinking and eating later we finally got see some Phonics training.
Armed with beautiful bhuna (coffee) and a notepad, I watched Cara invigorate an audience of nearly forty native teachers into games and song. It should be said that no one goes out of their way in Ethiopia to become a public school teacher and the training they are given is very limited. Cara was introducing not only phonics but engaging teaching methods. A few things are clear from my notes, which I will discuss in the next instalment.
The next day Gilbert and I were in a mini bus chewing chat with Berhanu, our tour guide for the Siminons mountains, or as I would later hear it called "the roof top of Africa". We strolled along looking down rolling mountains, with Berhanu and our a bolt action rifle wielding scout, chewing all the way, completely in awe by our surroundings. We spent the next few days, without chat, climbing to just under 4,000km. Berhanu was amazing, please do look him up if you need anything in Ethiopia. He ran ahead twice to secure us warm lodgings before any of the other tour guides could fill them. We never wanted for anything, least of all a laugh. As I watched, on the last night, a orange orb hang motionless above the chilly mountain air of Africa, I couldn't help but feel humbled. As Gilbert pointed out, that's a star. There were billions of them, and look around, this is what only one can do. Amazing.
Saturday night we were back in Gondor, in the Brewery, getting completely trashed. We had met a couple of Danish guys that worked for Dropbox, funny guys. Amazing who you meet. Anyway, 30p beer and £2 whisky later, I am out cold.
We spent next week or so, here in Debre Zeyit, where I am typing this. I won't bore you with the other people we met or the other things we did. I hope this post finds you well. Ciao.
Perhaps it won't start at all, making this the shortest blog in history (spoiler, it didn't). Though I feel, as I sit in the cool December air, that this might be the beginning of a story. So profoundly do I believe this is the start of something that I've chosen to write a blog, something I would otherwise not do.
At the very least this blog will provide some outlet for an otherwise confused mind, at the very best it might make for an interesting read. So let us begin.
My story starts, as many of my proudest defeats do, in the pub. I am sitting with Gilbert Jolly, we are drinking horrible wheat beer in The Pembury Tavern, Hackney. I had lived with Gilbert for a year previously in a small flat share just behind the pub. After an hour or so of talk he shoots me a smile with hands raised near his face and says "now..." I know this look, I know this 'now'. This means he has an idea, a destructive or crazy idea but one I am going to like none the less. Usually this idea is a bottle of rum and something funny on YouTube. Not this time, this time it was a business idea.
A little about Gilbert Jolly, mid-twenties, he is an app developer, practically built the IOS and Android app for the start up Ref Me. He is what I consider borderline genius, sometimes this is a complement, sometimes I use it to tease him. He has a big problem with over indulgence and he is a complete troll, we get along famously and have done since the very moment I was thrust into the spare room of his flat by a mutual friend.
He was mad, of course. We were drunk, of course. But for every business idea that had ever been uttered to me in a pub, for which there were thousands, this is the only one that in the morning I would still believe in, that I, with limited funds, time or knowledge would invest in.
Gilbert's father was the creator of Jolly Phonics, he had been raised on it, I'd never heard of it. A lot of charities use Jolly Phonics to help teach better English. The way I understand it, it's easy to teach people a bunch of words that equal their words, but pronunciation and the rules involved in reading and writing are to quote a volunteer English Teacher "bloody stupid". Phonics is meant to help with that, they have a whole bunch of text books with actions, stories, songs and characters that help the kids along the way.
Gilbert, as he finished his third pint of the wheat ale, said that there were two clear problems as far as he could see. I asked if we could change to larger, he agreed. Now the first is distribution and the second is pronunciation. I will note at this point that our understanding of the project has evolved and as we did eventually buy a bottle of rum, I am completely ad-libing here.
Distribution; Do you know what it costs to print, ship and train a bunch of foreign countries on Jolly Phonics? No, neither do we but we are assuming it's more than nothing. The amount of smart phones per person in developing countries is phenomenal, really you would be surprised. So there is the gap, digitize the work book, find a simple distribution method and boom.
Pronunciation; What is the hardest part about teaching kids their "oo"'s from their "ou"'s? Not speaking very good English yourself. Most places that teach Phonics have English speaking trainers(I'm speculating based on limited research) that teach a handful of lessons to native teachers and then those teachers go away and try to teach their students. We are talking maybe a day or two of training, learning all the sounds, rules, etc. The problem they have is that after that training there is no way of hearing what the sounds are meant to be. Involved heavily in the app is audio files.
A few weeks passed, the hangover faded, the idea didn't. Gilbert had a prototype already, an old android phone hosted the Phonics work. Sounds, animations, word bank and all. The problem when you stand on the brink, with a prototype in hand, is deciding what to do. Do you start to develop in earnest, hoping that the idea will fly? No. You have to test these things. Two weeks later I was in Millets picking out hiking boots, that night I was drunk, watching Fight Club on a Kenya Airways flight with a softly snoring Gilbert in the seat next to me.
We had a breakfast beer on the stop off, determined to stave off the hangover that drinking at 39,000ft affords you. We arrived later that morning in Addis Abbas, Ethiopia. $50 for 31 day visa, and a grueling 45minute wait whilst passport control apparently had a training day, then we were there.
Cara waited for us at the airport car park, car and driver ready. Something should be said first and foremost about the Ethiopian people, they are happy and they are kind, but damn does it take them a long time to do anything. We were driving around Addis for a while, before I realized we were picking someone else up. Then we were driving along the new Chinese built freeway, on our way to Debre Zeyit.
The first time I heard Cara's voice was when I was sitting in my old apartment with Jack Cooney, the afore mentioned mutual friend, I was coding GTT, a game I was working on for Jack. We were sitting there when Jack began to giggle, I took out my headphones but before I could ask what he was giggling at I understood. Gilbert and Cara had met at some function a month or so before. They were getting along very well.
Cara Fairhall is a teacher, late twenties and full of childish charm, she is a kind and beautiful person. She had previously worked for a school for behavioral problems before being, thankfully, poached for her current role with Jolly Phonics in partnership, probably?, with Link Ethiopia, our new testing base. She was a phonics teacher, I know, what are the odds Gilbert?
She takes us to Pyramid Hotel, where we unload and she shows us her office and introduces us to the staff, including Rory, who we will talk of later. We drank some lovely beer, no doubt some will soon know of Ethiopian beer, and we ate some lovely food. Tibs is meat on a plate of light pancake'esc bread stuff, injera, in which the whole table tares at and uses to grabs at meat, veg and rice in the middle. The next day we are in the Hilton Hotel, back in Addis, Gilbert has signed us up for a 10km run. I unfortunately didn't bring my running trainers, can barely run 10cm anyway, so I endeavor to get drunk at this pre-run party. Back at the guest house, me and Cara buy, very cheap, red wine and stay up till 2am getting to know each other like only, very cheap, red wine allows.
The following morning, with a hideous hangover, Cara gives me my first real understanding of what Phonics is and why I should care. We fly to Gondor, the other Link office site, I stayed with Rory, now he was an interesting sort. I thought he was very off, didn't know if I liked him straight away, it was half way through the first meal that I realized he was bloody hilarious and he was trolling me, I was sold.
Rory Dillon was late twenties, married, projects manager for Link and an all around lovely chap. He lived in a gated house, with 24hr guard, couldn't even open his own gate, quite common I understand. He lived there with his wife Hannah Dillon, a head teacher with a different charity, again, a charming and welcoming individual. I make myself nauseous by typing it but they were truly in love.
The Ethiopian people are charming, they will shout what little English they know, out of excitement to practice and see outsiders. They will stare but not out of rudeness. A smile, a wave or a greeting quickly plucks them out of their daze. You say Salam nuh (male), nesh (female), natchu (group) and they will reply, toothy grinned. Back in the day, Ethiopia was a big trading port, which is why a lot of their language is Arabic, including a lot of the numbers. They serve a lot of Italian food, also they say ciao. It is different, as I understand it, from other African nations as it has never been controlled by another power, not in earnest.
Gondor is lovely, full of life. The castle walls stand high against the town. It's not quiet European, not quiet Indian, complete with Lion Cages and university educated guides. Me and Gilbert took several time lapses, which I may post to bore you, as only other peoples holiday photo's can. A few days of drinking and eating later we finally got see some Phonics training.
Armed with beautiful bhuna (coffee) and a notepad, I watched Cara invigorate an audience of nearly forty native teachers into games and song. It should be said that no one goes out of their way in Ethiopia to become a public school teacher and the training they are given is very limited. Cara was introducing not only phonics but engaging teaching methods. A few things are clear from my notes, which I will discuss in the next instalment.
The next day Gilbert and I were in a mini bus chewing chat with Berhanu, our tour guide for the Siminons mountains, or as I would later hear it called "the roof top of Africa". We strolled along looking down rolling mountains, with Berhanu and our a bolt action rifle wielding scout, chewing all the way, completely in awe by our surroundings. We spent the next few days, without chat, climbing to just under 4,000km. Berhanu was amazing, please do look him up if you need anything in Ethiopia. He ran ahead twice to secure us warm lodgings before any of the other tour guides could fill them. We never wanted for anything, least of all a laugh. As I watched, on the last night, a orange orb hang motionless above the chilly mountain air of Africa, I couldn't help but feel humbled. As Gilbert pointed out, that's a star. There were billions of them, and look around, this is what only one can do. Amazing.
Saturday night we were back in Gondor, in the Brewery, getting completely trashed. We had met a couple of Danish guys that worked for Dropbox, funny guys. Amazing who you meet. Anyway, 30p beer and £2 whisky later, I am out cold.
We spent next week or so, here in Debre Zeyit, where I am typing this. I won't bore you with the other people we met or the other things we did. I hope this post finds you well. Ciao.
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