Hi. Well it appears the communications in Eritrea are very poor (by UK standards at least) and Liz is experiencing great difficulty in doing some of the most basic tasks, e.g. creating an email, so updating this blog has been an issue! The following extract from one which did get through demonstrates:
Hi Dad, having spent hours and hours over several days trying to open my hotmail messages I have given up and decided to start a new account. Apparently Googlemail is quicker here as I can select the one with no images etc... Its terrible cos I'm having a great time but by the time I've managed to get anywhere near an email I'm always completely frustrated by the speed!!! I have been on the computer for 1 hour and 15 mins today and this is the first mail I've been able to write - average page loading speed is 10 mins!!! And even then its often a frozen image!!! aaaaggghhhhhhh
The new account is lizleetravels@gmail.com and she would like you all to send her an email so she can set up a directory. Please also send your UK addresses as she may resort to sending updates by post if the comms don't improve. (It seems the British Council in Asmara may let them use some of their bandwidth which will make things a bit better - we'll see.)
She also now has a mobile phone (00) 291 7192645 but we don't yet know how much it costs (at either end) to use this so I suggest you hang fire before using that.
I am happy to copy on emails which manage to get through, if you are interested. Just email me (richard.n.lee@btinternet.com) and I'll add you to a distribution list.
Apart from that, she continues to have a great time. The following comes from the same email:
We went to a village yesterday - Sade Christian. About half an hour out of Asmara. It was a cool experience. Followed by children everywhere and when we took photos we got completely swamped cos they all wanted to see themselves and their friends on screen! Went to visit a school to get an idea about the classrooms and stuff. It was the best school in Eritrea but still really small and overcrowded, but definitely forward thinking - they had a room with no desks so children can do drama work and stuff with enough space. One volunteer had supported the school in getting paints and they had painted the outside walls with learning charts - the solar system, digestive system, world and country maps etc- that was pretty cool! We have a day with our employers tomorrow. I'll meet the supervisor who will be my counterpart, and also the directors of a few schools in the region. We do a whole day's training together and then there is a dinner in the evening. Its a bit scary but hopefully it'll help to get to know people before I move out there. I'm going to try to send this now- fingers crosed that the internet doesn't bomb out! I'm going to put some of my photos into a word document and add them as an attachment next week. It is meant to cut down the upload time. I was then hoping you would be able to put them on my blog. Hope everything is ok at home!
I was able to ring Liz and it appears the day with her new boss etc. went very well. Hopefully she (or I) will be able to give more details later. On Tuesday she goes to her house in Segeneiti (where she will be based) but she has to return to Asmara for 3 days to complete her motorbike driving course (Eritrean version!)
Dad (Richard)
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