Ethiopia便り Part አንድ (AND)

Hello, this is Yuki Shimazu, a D1 student at Yamada seminar and currently studying at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. I saw the previous blog article which was posted by Kyohei and I decided to write “Ethiopia 便り”.

It has been 2 months since I came to Ethiopia. I belong to the Institute of Educational Research (IER), Addis Ababa University, as a PhD student and am currently researching on "Agricultural Extension to Rural Women through Female Agricultural Extension workers". I would like to see the role of female extension workers in the agricultural extension system in Ethiopia from an educational perspective. One of the challenges of my topic is how to combine agricultural and educational issues. However, I believe it is important to conduct this kind of research since we cannot separate one issue from the others in the field of international development, which covers so many issues. Actually, I am enjoying having many challenges as a researcher. All staffs at IER are really nice and kind. They teach me Amharic language, give me advices, and help me all the time. I am really happy to meet them!

Here in Addis Ababa, majority of the population is Christian. Most of them belong to "Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church". Last month, one of their ceremonies, the Epiphany, called ጥምቀት (TIMKAT) was held. It was celebrated on January 20th; on January 11th in Ethiopian calendar. (Ethiopia has its own calendar which is 8 years and 9 days different from our one: today is February 5th, 2004 according to the calendar... So, can I also be 8 years younger? LOL). I attended the ceremony with my Ethiopian friends with wearing white traditional scarf called ነጠላ (NATELLA) as the photo below shows. There were so many people at the place and everybody was singing and dancing really happily.

Currently, I am also learning Amharic language. The language has its own characters and pronunciations. Remembering the characters was not so hard, but it was really difficult for me to master the pronunciations which I have to use my throat and tong. However, finally I became able to do last week!! I was really excited at the time and told everyone around me about it!

OK, I will stop here. I will write more "academic" thing next time, about the conference and workshop which I attended in Ethiopia.

The next blog article will come on next Monday titled “Senegal 便り” by Ayaka. Yoroshikune☆

Yuki Shimazu @ Addis Ababa, Ethiopia