14th July 2009

I spend a lot of my time in Lalibela feeling foolish, incapable, helpless, and just a general freak. Often, this has nothing to do with my work – despite the fact I still have momentary panics about the fact people refer to me as the Director of the school, and the fact I am responsible for the quality of the education of 200 children, I do actually have all the skills, knowledge and abilities to successfully do my job

No, normally my ‘I’m an idiot’ moments come in my personal life and in my interactions with people. Of course, I feel a freak most times I leave the house, particularly when I find groups of grown men and women staring at me as if I am a two headed monster, purely because I’m white, or when I have small children plucking the hair out of my arms in wonder (“yes, I am farange, yes I have body hair, yes, isn’t that hysterical?”)

It’s not always the inhabitants of Lalibela who look at me strangely, either. Today I went to have some lunch at a hotel (I’d been living on injera for days, and desperately needed some faranji food!), and found it full of UK students dressed in football shorts. Listening to them chat and plan their football match made my day, and I said hi and chatted for a little bit. I have long ago lost my self consciousness about starting conversations with strangers, and people generally welcome the interaction … but again, this time I felt a little like I had two heads, and I soon excused myself to go back to my tuna sandwich.

‘Incapable’ and ‘helpless’ comes when I am in a situation where my baby Amharic is just not up to it, or the conversation is moving too fast and the sheer embarrassment at not being able to adequately express myself just takes over. Like today, when the Area Supervisor came to the office to collect some reports.

The power had just come back on, and I was alone in the office when he arrived. I knew he wanted a report about the final exam results of our students, and I knew S, one of the teachers, had compiled some statistics. I knew this because A and I have an endless fight with most of local government about the fact that they always insist on giving letters, requests for information and directives to the teachers (primarily S) instead of to me and A. No matter how many times we tell them (and they have to pretty much drive past our office to get to our school!) they still insist on doing it.

S always does whatever he’s asked with grace and willingness , and that’s great. Except that S doesn’t always have the right information, or he doesn’t know we don’t necessarily want that information made public at that point, or there is a vital context he doesn’t know about.

This was the case with these statistics. The request had been given to S, who had done it, but the numbers were wrong . So it was sitting on my desk, waiting to be corrected. I knew this, but didn’t have Amharic to be able to explain this to the Supervisor. He has no English at all, which is why he was unable to explain to me that the numbers were wrong, and I was unable to reassure him that I knew that and would be able to give him the right information on Monday.

As I got more and more frustrated at the language barrier, and more and more flustered, I was even unable to communicate that he should come back later when A was there, something I can say in Amharic. He just kept waving the form in my face, talking in Amharic and pointing out mistakes.

One of my many character flaws is the fact that I cannot bear being blamed or thought responsible for something that wasn’t my fault. I realise there are many millions of reasons why this is a very bad character trait, but I don’t have the time to go into them now. I just point it out to emphasize how stupidly frustrated I was at the fact that I was unable to say to him ‘I’m sorry it’s wrong, but this is because S had the wrong information. If you’d given it to us in the first place, like we asked, it would be done!’.

And instead of being calm and not taking things personally, I get all het up and flustered, which does not help anybody – least of all me – and leaves me feeling and looking like a fool.

H, one of the guard’s sons, took pity on me and went off to get A who was finishing his coffee in a nearby café. He came back, we went through the report, made the corrections there and then, gave the info to the Supervisor and all was good. (A also told the Supervisor again to please stop asking the teachers for the information and instead speak to us, as we actually had the right statistics).

But I just felt so stupid and incompetent that I’d had to call A back to come and rescue me. Not being able to understand or explain myself in a simple situation is bad enough (I constantly feel bad that I’m working in a country where I am relying on everyone else to speak MY language), but then I feel like an idiot because I’m getting into a flap over something so stupid.

Such is life. I just have to live with the fact that the Area Supervisor has probably gone away thinking ‘that mad faranji girl, no wonder I don’t ask her for information …’