Virtual Eritrea

Today we went up early, about five o'clock. We were supposed to leave Barentu at six o’clock with the famous Toyota pick up. An interesting experience to tell the truth. The driver should go to Asmara to buy new tyres and we could go with him instead of taking the bus. We left Barentu behind us with its warm people and unbelievable nature. The journey was long but not that bad compared with a warm, slow bus with 30 persons in it.

We had only four problems:
 

1. The sun is strong here. You can't be to careful when   you are out for three hours.
2.  We had four water bottles. One managed to keep the water while the others kept water as good as a paper bag without bottom.
3. The tyres where in so bad condition that we had three punctures during the journey.
4. When you go where there are no real roads, just a track in the sand it intends to be sandy. So it was in this case too. It was very sandy. We were not so clean when we arrived to Asmara. To make a long story short, it was hot, bumpy, sometimes wet and definitely dirty but fun.

 
During the short break in Keren we went to Keren High school to collect some letters from the students and to have a last word with the headmaster. We promised him that we would try to get our schools to raise money to help Keren High school. The things he pointed out as the most important for the closest future was to build a wall around the compound to stop the goats from eating the newly planted trees and to build a water reservoir to be able to save the rainwater. Environmental problems in other words.

When we first came to Asmara last Saturday it looked as a small provincial town, but now when we came back from Keren and Barentu it seemed to us as the liveliest town of the world with asphalt on the streets and houses instead of huts. It was even "cold", only 18 degrees in the evening. Africa does change you.
 

Here are some answers:

• Nils you wondered about how to teach in religion in Keren high school?

The answer is that they don´t. Religion is not a subject in the curriculum.
 

• The second question is about how one can recognize the different religions in the same town?

Here it is easy to see. You can hear the prayer calls almost in the same time as the church bells are ringing. Another thing that is easy to notice is the way of burying people. The Catholic graves are richly decorated while the Muslim graves just looks as a pile of stones with some branches on. In the town Keren you could see the differences in the way people dress. The Muslim men had long, white shirts in an arabic style and the Muslim women had brightly colored fabrics around the body and the head while the Christians had "normal" clothes.
 

Greetings from Mats, Kerstin, Ida, Maria, Fredrik and David