Virtual Eritrea

We have spent the day in Asmara. At 10:30 we, Mats and Kerstin, went to the Ministry of Education. We wanted to speak to Mr Pedros Hailemariam, the General Director, to ask some question about the educational system. First he told us that he had got our calculators (see report 4) and was going to bring them himself to the school in Keren. Then we asked him for the most important tasks of education  in the future. He pointed out that education of the people is the key to development for the whole country. When 80 % of the population are illiterate its impossible to develop democracy. He also told us that only 52 % of the children in Eritrea have an opportunity to go to school !

The reason for this is lack of teachers, no schools in many rural districts and so on. They are trying to educate more teachers but it takes time as they only have one training school for teachers in the country. The teachers salaries has also been increased with 100 % in purpose to get more students willing to be teachers.

Another problem is that there are few girls in high
school. This is because there are not so many high schools and the students must walk long distances to school. Many parents, especially Muslims, don’t want their daughters to walk alone in the countryside. To solve this problem the Ministry wants to increase the number of schools and also start boardingschools. This costs a lot of money, but the General Director was optimistic as the economy of the country is growing  about 6-7 % per year.

To get more female students to the University they have a lower limit for girls than boys. As Mr. Hailemariam was very busy we asked a woman in the ministry, Mehret, some more questions.

When we were at the school in Keren we noticed that the curriculum was very strict and detailed. She said that they were aware of the problem and explained that the curriculum was worked out during the war . Now they had started to develop it to make it more flexible to for instance different regions and cultures in the country and respond to the new demands.

To increase the skill of the teachers they have compulsory summer-courses for all teachers. We also asked about the reason for having all education above grade six in English. She explained that this began after the second world war when the British ruled the country. When the Ethiopians took over, they went on with this system and now they have no reason to change it as English is the leading international language. Since there is a lack of teachers they can temporally get teachers from all over the world. But she was aware of the problems in grade six when the pupils suddenly are supposed to understand the teaching in a foreign language on a sometimes very theoretical level.

In the afternoon we went out in Asmara to find a Landcruiser with driver as we planed to make a trip to the Denkalia Desert. As we where walking along we found a car-hire. The director of the company asked us to wait a few minutes as he was calling a very good driver to bring their new Landcruiser.

After a while he arrived and crashed the car into the gate of the company. It doesn’t matter, the manager said, but didn’t look too happy.  The car was really nice with air-conditioning and icebox.

We started to agree on a price but then found out that the driver didn’t know the road in the desert and could´t speak the Afar language of the people living there. No problem, the manager said, and called another driver. Then he asked us to get in the car to go to another office to sign the agreement. We went away and came after a while to some mystic blocks where he stopped in front of a shoe shop. It´s in here he said and led us through the shoe shop to a small shabby office.

Here we met the new driver, a fat man with big
mustachios who was smoking all the time. After some new discussions when we where prepared to sign the agreement. We found out that the new driver hadn’t been driving that road either. But he could speak a very god Arabic which some of the Afars could understand. But as he didn’t speak English very well he would translate the Arabic to Tigrinya and the manager who suddenly also wanted to go with us, then would translate into a little less English. We got out of there in a second and later we decided to take the regular bus to Massawa and try to find a driver there instead.
 
 

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