Hanna's Orphanage Newsletter - January 2010

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the January Hanna’s Orphanage newsletter. As you will have noticed, there hasn’t been a newsletter for quite a while – but this does not mean we haven’t been doing any work! We’ve been making new contacts, fundraising, making plans, spending time with the children, working out just how best to help the orphanage ... and of course, helping the orphanage spend the money you have raised for them.

Below are highlights of the things you’ve helped us to do in the last year, and our plans for the new year ahead ... As ever, we’d love for you to get involved, so if you fancy helping with anything, please do get in touch with us at info@hannasorphanage.org.uk

The Hanna’s Team



Our Time in Ethiopia
Jenny spent the majority of 2008 and 2009 living in Ethiopia, visiting and working with the orphanage, and helping them spend the money you’ve raised. She wrote several articles for Telegraph Weekly, which raised awareness of the charity and brought many new donors to the orphanage. If you want to look at the blog of her time there, please go to www.hannasorphanage.blogspot.com



Anne-marie, the Hanna’s Orphanage treasurer, and her partner, David, also travelled to Ethiopia, bringing lots of donated toys, books and clothes, while supporters Amie Liddle, Nicole Masri and Paul Tew visited during 2009 and spent time with the children.

One of the huge advantages of being out in Ethiopia is being able to talk face to face with the staff of the orphanage, especially Hanna, and find out exactly what they need. Sometimes this isn’t so easy, especially when we’re trying to contact the orphanage from the UK! Unreliable phone lines and unexpected cultural differences can cause difficulties on both sides!

Being ‘on the ground’ really helps. This year we were in Ethiopia when the orphanage found out that they were going to have to leave their current premises if they couldn’t pay some extra taxes. We were able to help with the problem immediately, and using money you raised, we’ve paid 6 months’ worth of the taxes, giving the orphanage some ‘breathing space’.

# Everyone who went to Ethiopia paid their own air fare and expenses, so no donations were used.



New Chairs for the Library
One of the people who saw the article in the Telegraph Weekly was Peter Hansen, who challenged his company, Pacific Environmental Consulting, to match his donation. Their money they all raised paid for a refit of the orphanage’s library, specifically buying new chairs.
The chairs are really good quality, and have a desk attached to the arm, so the students can study without having to squash round tables. It means there’s space for a lot more young people to come and use the library and classrooms.



Any other money is going to be used to buy up to date books for the library.


Wells Hall CP School
Jenny spent a day at Wells Hall during their ‘Africa’ week’ talking to the children about Ethiopia and Hanna Orphans Homes. They had a collection at one of their Christmas Concerts and raised £166 for us.



Droxford Junior School
When the school council of Droxford Junior School decided they wanted to help Hanna’s Orphanage, they planned a ‘Sponsored Spell’ and planned to raise around £300 ... Instead, at final count last week they’d managed to raise over £1784.29!



We’re so grateful for their hard work, and the money they raised will go towards the children’s education, including covering the registration fees for school and paying for uniform.




Christmas Donations
We had several donations made in leui of Christmas presents/card this year. We then sent a Christmas card to the nominated person informing them of the donation. Another good way for us to spread the word about our work!


Get Involved in 2010!
We’ve got some great ways you can get involved over the next year!

• In August, Danyele and Jenny will be jumping out of an aeroplane (parachutes may be involved!) to raise money. Details on how to sponsor them will be coming soon – but if you’d like to take part yourself, please email Jenny at honeyjenny@gmail.com

• Get your skates on, as Maria will be organising a ‘Sponsored Skate’! Want to get involved? Got the stamina for a LONG skate? Get in touch: maria@blueskyonline.co.uk!

• We’re still collecting foreign currency, which we can turn into pounds sterling. If you have any foreign currency (from any country at all; notes or coins!), email us at info@hannasorphanage.org.uk.

• We’re going to be linked to a new fundraising initiative called ‘Football for Africa’ which will help, through football, Hanna’s Orphanage and another charity called LEAP. More about this in next month’s newsletter.

Twitter and Facebook!
Join us on twitter (www.twitter.com/hannasorphanage) or Facebook (Hanna’s Orphanage). Tell all your friends! The more people who know about us, the more fundraising we can do!

24th September 2009

I’ve kind of lost momentum with this blog over the last couple of weeks. Partly this is because I am leaving very soon and I am swamped with trying to complete tasks and tie up lose ends, but it’s also because so much is going on here that I would like to write about, but it would be unprofessional too. Admittedly, I do often skirt the line on unprofessional, but this would be a giant leap over it. So, unable to give context and details, I’ve not be inspired to write anything.

However, I do need to write something – not, I’m sure, because you’re all waiting with baiting breath, but mostly because I don’t want this blog to splutter and die so near to the end. Plus, I do actually have some things to write about.

For a start, my Mum and her partner , D, came to visit last week, so we spent a few days in Addis visiting the orphanage then flew to Lalibela and to Bahir Dar. It was great to be able to show them my life in Lalibela, as well as take them to the orphanage – both of them do things for Hanna’s Orphanage in the UK and it’s good to be able to show them the people their work benefits.

D was a big hit with the children wherever we went! They were fascinated by the fact he had hair on his legs and arms, by the colour of his skin and by his muscles. We did try to explain that he’s a farmer, so he’s always lifting heavy things, but of course that made no sense to the children in Lalibela as all their fathers are farmers
and they don’t look like D …

Of course the other attraction to D was that he had the video camera! If you ever want to break the ice with a group of children in rural Africa, bring out a camera (video or otherwise). There were several moments during their trip when mum and I wondered if we should rescue him, but he dealt very well with 20 children hanging over him, trying to see themselves in the pictures.

In general, it was a great trip; I was happy to see them, and I think they saw how beautiful Ethiopia is. Of course, it wasn’t all plain sailing, and I turned into a bitch from hell (albeit a polite bitch from hell) when various people tried their luck or simply neglected to provide a service we’d paid for. I’m not talking about no electricity or a lack of water, those things people have no control over. It was the lost hotel reservations, the people trying to add on an extra 250 birr from the original quote, or charging full price for a breakfast they only served a quarter of that really annoyed me.

Speaking of being a bitch from hell, trying to employ new teachers and starting the new school year has been an exercise in frustration for all of us. First of all, we need to employ two new teachers. As an NGO run school school, it states in the Project Agreement that the organisation can employ teachers with advice from the Ministry of Education. However, the current head of the Ministry believe this means they employ our teachers: we give them a job description, they interview them and then send us our new employees. We want to be able to interview and employ our own teachers (adhering to all Ministry of Education guidelines and requirements, of course), and we did employ our own summer school teachers, as the Ministry was too busy to do it, so they told us to.

Apparently, this situation has happened previously (before my time) and then someone from the Regional Government wrote a letter stating what we could and could not do. The letter was given to all the relevant departments and all was sorted. Now, of course, everyone seems to have lost the letter, and getting a new one is a lengthy process.

Bizarrely, the Head of the Ministry of Education abruptly changed his mind yesterday. It was very welcome, but it does make me slightly curious as to why the sudden change of heart? I know it certainly wasn’t to please me, as there’s no love lost there. Anyway, it means we can employ the teachers we need, so I’ve put back my flight by one day (so that we can fulfill the Ministry’s requirements for the length of time an job advert is displayed) and we interview on Monday. Hurrah!

Another thing teacher-related that made me look around at everyone, open mouthed, to see if they agreed with me that this was completely insane, was the meeting that all teachers had to go to. I have no problem with the notion of teachers going and being trained – brilliant! Except, schools have just been closed for over 2 months and yet they decide to hold a meeting for all teachers in the 1st week after school starts. So millions of children, who the government are supposed to be providing education for, lost over a week of school so their teachers could attend a meeting. Where’s the logic in that?

I think I would have minded less if the meeting had been training on teaching methodology or theory. I asked my teachers what they learnt. They said they learnt that a teacher’s performance is judged on the performance of their students, and then they learnt a lot about politics (elections in Ethiopia are next year). This is what children missed around 10 days of school for (although ours didn’t – the powers-that-be were late informing us that our teachers had to attend, so thankfully our students only had to miss 3 days of school).

Complete insanity.

Oh, and the last thing that is making me want to tear my hair out? Flies! Goddamn flies! Apparently, September is the month for flies, and they are driving everybody crazy! They get in your eyes, your nose, your mouth, and no matter how much you swat at them, they keep coming back, leaving you looking like someone frantically trying to land a plane, yet still covered in big black flies. Eventually you give up trying to swat them away and get used to the incessant tickling of every exposed part of your body.

Everyone says the flies will be gone by October … and so will I! (Did you see what I did there?) I’m very excited about going home, but I’m also sad that I’m leaving so many lovely people, and the fact that I’m leaving at such a stressful time. No, ignore that: in my very selfish way, I am thrilled I’m leaving at this stressful time, as it’s hideous, and I do not want to deal with it, but I’m feeling very guilty and sad about the fact that the staff here do not have such an escape route. All I can do is make my leaving as stress free as possible, and continue to ensure the work I’ve done is sustainable.


Anyway, I’ve told the teachers I’m coming back in February and if I find they haven’t carried on with the changes we’ve made, there’s going to be serious trouble!!

18th September 2009

I am now back in Lalibela, and have found two minutes to write a blog post. I leave Ethiopia fairly soon, so I’m desperately trying to get everything done, plus of course my mum and her partner are here, so it’s all go, go, go!

The main news is the orphanage. After the email I received about their imminent eviction, mum and I wanted to go and talk to Hanna properly to see what we could do. What I was initially told about the situation wasn’t completely accurate, and I think something was lost in translation, but when we started to talk to Hanna it all became clear.

Basically, it’s a tax problem. The orphanage have to pay tax on the house they rent , which is all fine and expected. However, if the landlady doesn’t register her building with the Government, the tax rises from 2% to 30% a month – and the landlady does not want to register with the Government, so the orphanage have to find an extra 3500 birr a month. That’s way beyond the orphanage’s capability, and if they can’t pay the tax, they have to move out.

Apparently, if it was a private tenant, then there would be some breathing space – people wouldn’t be asking about the tax, and they’d probably be able to avoid it. However, as an NGO, the orphanage are audited annually and so it would definitely be picked up. And, of course, they want to follow the law, too.

(There is a dodgy ‘middle man’ involved in all this, too, but I’m not entirely clear how, so we’ll leave that for the minute!)

Long term, paying the 30% tax is not an option; the orphanage already struggle in this economic crisis, and finding an extra 3500 birr a month is impossible for them. However, the urgent thing at the moment is to ensure they can stay in the building for the next few months so that they can concentrate on finding somewhere else.

So, Hanna’s Orphanage UK have given the orphanage the money to pay the extra tax for the next three months, ensuring they are able to stay in the building while they try to search for somewhere else. If we can raise £500 by December (which we will do, I’m sure!), we can then buy them another 3 months. Hanna has somewhere in mind to be able to rent, so we will all keep our fingers crossed that they agree and the rent is reasonable.

The ideal situation would be to find somewhere to buy, so that these situations don’t happen again, but we would need to 1) find a suitable building and 2) raise enough money. Property is very expensive in Ethiopia, as in the rest of the world, and we certainly don’t have that kind of money. However, we’re working on it, and trying to support the orphanage in applying to various other organisations that may be able to help.

So if anyone has a few £100,000 to spare, please contact us!

Ps. I have lots to catch up on - not least New Year - so I will post that as soon as poss!

16th September 2009

A very quick blog sent from an internet cafe in Addis, where I am spending some time with my mum! We have just come from the orpganage,where together we have sorted out a plan to save the orphanage from having to move out for the next 6 months. This buys them some time to start looking for a place to rent or - the ideal situation - buy.

I will write a longer blog tomorrow when I get back to Lalibela, but the situation was not caused by an increase in rent, as we were first told, but rather tax payments required of the landlady. It's a frustrating system, but money you have donated has bought them some breathing space while we attempt to sort it out. Otherwise, they would have needed to move out by the first week in October.

Thank you thank you thank you.

8th September

A slightly more cheerful blog this time! Summer School finished on Sunday, which was sad, but everyone had a great time and it was a big success. The smaller classes and ability groupings meant that we were able to give more students individual attention, and create lessons to target particular students’ needs, meaning the more able students got the opportunity to see how far they could go, and the less able ones managed to catch up on at least some of the basics. The students learnt a lot, not only in maths, English and Amharic, but also in terms of increasing their confidence, learning skills and classroom behavior.

I learnt a huge amount, too, both about individual students and about each class. I took a lot for granted when I first started – for instance, it didn’t occur to me that we would need to go over the fact that you must write on the lines of your exercise book, not just in a random scrawl wherever you want on the paper. This is something I have worked with the teachers on before, but they’ve been incredibly reluctant to enforce it. However, the students and I spent a whole lesson on presenting work neatly (it was more fun that it sounds!) and now all children know what’s expected of them, so the teachers have no excuse!

I also learnt that the majority of the children were exceptionally good at the ‘Memory Game’, which I wasn’t expecting at all. The activity involves the students looking at a variety of objects on a table, then covering them up and having to remember as many as they can. We played it as a ‘starter’ one lesson, and each class managed to remember almost all the objects, where I was guessing they’d remember around half.

The same was true of ‘See, Run, Do’, where one member of the group sees a picture for a count of 10, then has to explain it to the rest of their group so they can reproduce it. My (teenage) students in the UK often find it hard, but my children here had no problem!

Of course, some of my lessons prompted some unexpected reactions – some more unexpected than others! When doing the Memory Game, I was slightly surprised that nearly all children in the class identified the balloon as a condom! Clearly the health workers’ messages are getting through to all parts of the community, and T was quite proud when we told her. Ab and I explained to the students that it wasn’t a condom, it was a balloon, and demonstrated how you inflate a balloon … although we were then reminded that you could do that with a condom too. I came out of the class hoping that I’d been sufficiently clear enough to convince the children of the differences between a condom and a balloon!

On the last day of summer school was all about reflection, evaluation and celebration, and I wanted something we could do with all the students. Quizzes are really popular in schools here, usually as a way to monitor the quality of teaching in schools, pitting students against one another in competition. In my opinion, this is a particularly poor way of evaluating the academic performance of a school, but in this instance we thought it would be a fun, familiar way to finish the session.

So each class picked 3 students, who were then combined into three mixed ability teams. Questions had been prepared in advance, and students picked a number from a hat (well, in this case, a bag!) to select which questions they had to answer. After 5 questions each, the scores were very close – 11 for Team 1, 12 for Team 3 and 13 for Team 2 – but Team 2 were rewarded with packs of pencils (very kindly sent by my aunt and uncle) and a big round of applause. We also gave some pencils and pens out as rewards to children who had been really good students or had progressed a lot. I think the children were sad it had ended – and even Ab, who has decided that teaching is not a career he will be pursuing any time soon, will miss it!

So now we are finished, and this week I am launching into the admin I had neglected while teaching. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up, too, as I am taking a week off very shortly when my mum comes over . Plus there are the usual organisational issues that have been the bane of my life for the last two months and appear to be no nearer a resolution, so I certainly won’t lack for things to do!

4th September

In the next installment of crappiness, the orphanage have been ordered to move out of their compound in Addis. The landlord has decided she wants to increase the rent by a good lot of money (I think around 2000 birr - £100 a month) and, anyway, has decided she doesn’t want children living there, even if the orphanage (and its supporters) could scrape together the required money.

There seems to be very little protection for renters in Ethiopia, so Landlords can just double the rent on their whim, or order someone to leave. There are tenancy agreements, but in my experience it’s rare anyone actually adheres to them – if the landlord wants to, he (or she) just ignores it. I imagine that if it went to court, it would be enforced, but (again, in my experience) rarely do people take it that far; they wouldn’t know where to start, they are too busy trying to find a new house, or they don’t even realise it’s an option.

I’m not sure whether that’s a road the orphanage will go down yet, but they are definitely in a quandary. This is the second time in three years this has happened. I’m not sure what these Landlords do – do they wake up one morning, a year afer they let the property to the Orphans Home and think ‘Hmmm.... Orphans Home ... I know that name means something to me ... oh yes, Children! Oh, no, I don’t want children on my property ...”. I mean, did they not realise this before? Why did it take them a year to decide they didn’t want children on their property?

And what kind of person evicts an orphanage anyway? It’s not as if they children are damaging the property or making noise so the neighbours complain; the neighbours are a kindergarten, a shop and a garage.

But at the moment, the orphanage face losing their offices, classrooms, kitchen and play area. The only option is to relocate, which will require a lot of money and a suitable building, and may mean moving away from the small houses where the children live. It’s not ideal – and of course, there’s the possibility that this will all happen again in the next couple of years.

It would be so much better if they could find a building that fits their needs and buy it ... but the money needed to do that is way out of our (and other Hanna Orphans Home supporters’) capacity. We’ve researched applying to a few trusts or grant making organisations, but many do not fund orphanages.

We will keep trying and planning and hoping and praying.

A Crappy Time

One month today, I will have said goodbye to Ethiopia and will be waking up in my own bed, in the UK. Sometimes - more often than not - I am sad about this: I love Lalibela, I love Ethiopia, I love my job (most of the time!) and I love the people I work with.

However, today, it cannot come quick enough.

Quite frankly, everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. First the computer blew up in the storm and we had no computer for a few days. Then we spent a lot of money, expended a lot of stress, and begged a lot of people to get the part sent from Addis, which of course didn’t fit. So we begged and pleaded again with someone from the internet cafe so they would swap it with one that will work , which luckily only took a few days.

Except then the modem wouldn’t work and we couldn’t connect to the internet. Okay, no big deal, at least the actual computer works. We can fix the modem later.*

Except now the printer and USB drivers don’t work, and nobody can fix them (nobody can work out why it’s stopped working). So I’m handwriting endless registers and reports, and trying not to think about the 200 report cards we’re supposed to be printing for when the children come back to school, or the 150 student files I’ve been diligently working on and which need to be printed and filed in hard copy by the 14th September.

So that’s the computer part of it.

The rest is just as bad. The maggots are still falling from the ceiling. My bath still doesn’t drain. Ab is walking around in the worst mood I’ve ever seen (and I have some bad moods!) and yet we can’t moan at him because we completely understand why he’s in a bad mood and he is completely justified. Added to that, his phone was stolen by people he was giving a lift to (for free!) a few days ago. What a great show of gratitude from them.

I am supposed to open the school for the new academic year in two weeks yet I don’t have enough text books, pens, tables and – oh yes – teachers , although in theory all should be here by the week of the 14th, give or take a few days. A and I are trying to employ said extra teachers, except what we want and need to do is very different to what the Ministry of Education in Lalibela are insisting on doing, and although the Ministry of Education have no authority to insist on employing our teachers, we have to get officials from the office in Bahir Dar to confirm that, and the Director who needs to do that is out of the country for a while.

Of course, with crappy communications, we have no way of conveying that to the relevant people. Thank God the phone network is still working!

In the meantime, summer school continues, where I discover that the deaf child who has been in our school for two years cannot even write or recognise her own name. This should have been picked up a LONG time ago ... by me, definitely, and it’s a disgrace that I haven’t, but also by the teachers and other staff before me.

In two days I have to explain to the community that the school will not be providing education for the 100 children from the area as planned in the Project Proposal, and who are excitedly waiting for September to come so they can start school (some even turned up to summer school they were so desperate to get in!). Instead just 30 children will be registered. I don’t know why this is, as it’s not a decision I’ve taken and I haven’t got any information about it, but I am the one who will be passing the message on.

The information and explanation should arrive with the Directors when they come over in two weeks – on New Year’s Day, when everyone will be off work (particularly people in Lalibela, who celebrate every Saints Day). On top of that, the organisational and administration meetings that are going to be going on at this time are really, really not going to be fun.

So, deep joy all round. Consequently, when my TV stopped working today as a result of yet another power surge I very nearly burst into tears, even though in the grand scheme of things a broken TV is not even worth worrying about.

In the good news department, I have a load of trashy magazines that my family have sent, so I intend to shut my door, get into my pyjamas, read my magazines and forget about the world and everything that’s wrong with it.

Ps. Yes, I am well aware of the irony of moaning about these things when I clearly have enough to eat, enough money, an education, a family and a roof over my head – and am working with a lot of people who have none, or very few, of those things. Indulge me.

*We’ve fixed the modem now, clearly, as I have managed to send this update!