Day 4 - final village, another school and I'm feeling ill...

Posted by Sadie - Friday, April 18, 2008

Off to the next village – and a very rocky road. We drove for about an hour and I don’t think I could see where the road ever was supposed to be. But we arrived finally...and what a welcome! The people danced and sang a welcome song for us. The Tigraian traditional dance is a sort of shoulder shuffle and a whistling sound made through their teeth. Then 280 children came marching down the hill from school to join in the greeting – all of a sudden we heard a rumbling noise and turned round and there they were coming towards us. They were clapping and singing ‘welcome, welcome, welcome’ to us. We all found it quite emotional that they were so pleased to have us there.

As I was feeling quite fragile at this point, Rona, Marco and I stayed at the school house to collect some case studies and take photos whilst Serge, Naomi and Mark trekked up the mountain to the source of the gravity flow scheme which had been in place for just 2 months. We met the principal of the school who told us that before the water they had less than half the students they do now. Again I was struck by what a massive difference the water has for these communities.

By this time I was feeling really ill so was taken home, missed out on Serge being dressed up as an Ethiopian shepherd but I needn’t have worried as the secretary of the EOC came back to the hotel after dinner to dress me up in front of everyone in the bar! Dinner was hosted by EOC again, and they presented us with a special gift of a photograph of some of the projects. We had lots of thank you speeches – I was just so amazed at how thrilled they were to have us there, and how much it meant to them.