8 March. Monday. Marlene and I have an appointment to see a local school today, but it is not until 2:30pm, and so she will write this morning and I will take one last opportunity to get back up the mountains. Today Destow and I hike alone because Chloe and Alex have returned to Addis. […]

7 March. Sunday. Lalibela is high and surrounded by spectacular arid mountains that are sparsely covered with grasses, brush, and the occasional grove of trees or bamboo (the latter only in protected locations near water sources). The town itself sits at over 2, 500 meters and the surrounding mountains range upwards of 3500 meters. Today […]

6 March. Sadly, Jeff left us today to return via Addis and Germany to Vancouver. It is the weekend, and Marlene and I will take two days break given that the universities are closed and we do not wish to impose on our colleagues during their days off. We elected to fly to Lalibela to […]

5 March. This morning we were somewhat pressed for time. Jeff must connect with a flight to Vancouver from Addis tomorrow. His flight goes from Gondar, not Bahir Dar, and so we must travel overland to Gondar, an distance of 180km that we hope to make in 3 or 4 hours if the roads are […]

4 March. Marlene offers the following report, through which I’ve interspersed some additional observations: Today we met first with the Head Librarian of Bihar Dar University, Getachre Setotaw to follow up his offer to learn about the library system and services. There was no power on campus due to a scheduled 9-hour outage, and many […]

3 March. Bahir Dar University is much smaller than AAU, with 16,000 students on campus and 16,000 in distance education programs. Although the second-biggest city in Ethiopia, this municipality feels much more rural. There are bicycles on the streets — something that would not be possible in Addis because of traffic — and a good […]

2 March. March 2nd is a holiday in Ethiopia and so campus was closed. Dean Tirussew therefore met with us in our hotel, bringing along his 9 year old son, who had taken a number of pictures with one of the digital cameras and had also prepared a short introduction of himself employing the video […]

There have been some problems with Internet access at the Ghion Hotel the last days, and so I’m posting two entries today: the entry below delineates our ECERC activities on 28 February, and this one delineates our activities March 1. Ethiopia is 13 hours ahead of Vancouver, and so as we began our day’s meetings […]

Shirley Lewis generously invited us to tea yesterday (Sunday, February 28) in order to continue discussions about library projects, etc, at the Addis home wherein she presently rents a room. This is a lovely old mud and plaster home with wooden floors, the walls of which are covered with stunning Ethiopian art collected by one […]