Teaching aid

AT Poole High School, she was simply Miss Norman, the physics teacher. But in Awassa, a town 200 miles south of Addis Ababa, she's something of a celebrity.

Michela Norman, 36, went to Ethiopia a year ago. She's halfway through a two-year contract with the Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) organisation to help train teachers, a major priority in one of the world's poorest countries, where almost two-thirds of the population is illiterate.

As we walk the mile or so from the town centre to her home near the college, smiling children rush over to shake her hand, their parents wave and shopkeepers call out and beckon her towards their ramshackle but well-stocked stalls.

She knows every one of her neighbours, unlike at home in Hamworthy, and harvests bananas and cherry tomatoes from her front garden.

She certainly isn't here for the money - she's paid the local rate of about 800 birr, just over £50, a month, although the charity tops up that figure to cover her living expenses and provide something which will pay for her return to England.

Although her home is relatively spacious and comfortable, there's a distinct shortage of mod cons. And even though Awassa seems relatively affluent, by Ethiopian standards, with a pleasant climate, this is hardly a land of plenty.

It's 20 years since the famine that shocked the world as a million people starved to death. "Only last year there was a feeding station 20 kilometres from here," says Michela. She knows that hunger is still out there - and short-term aid is needed - but in the long run it's vital to improve education, infrastructure and health care.

When she was younger she spent a year travelling round the world, including a long spell in Africa, and vowed she would come back.

"I wanted to stay in one place and really experience what it was like to live here," she says. "And I wanted to help make it a better place."

Brought up in Tiptoe, near Sway, and Bournemouth, where she went to Summerbee and Bournemouth School for Girls, she has pictures of the New Forest and Poole Harbour stuck on the walls of her home.

"I miss the sea, especially surfing off Boscombe," she says. "And family and friends, of course, although we keep in regular contact via email.

"It was my mum Karen's 60th birthday this year, and I wasn't able to be there, so I had a big banner made and took a picture of my students holding it up. Mum loved that!

"The food's good, and I can get pretty much everything I want from the local shops, including Mars bars and Pringles - but not cheese and other kinds of chocolate, like Cadbury's, which is what I always ask people to send me from back home.

"There are several volunteers working in Awassa, and we normally get together on Saturday nights for a pizza, or we'll meet up at someone's place for dinner and a DVD. It's hard work, but rewarding."

VSO provide a guard who stays in an adjoining property and keeps watch at night, but Michela says she never feels threatened: "I ride my bike home from college in the dark, no problem."

She was expecting Ethiopia to be a dry, barren place - "You know, like in Live Aid" - but around Awassa it's green and fertile.

"I've done quite a bit of travelling since I've been here, and down south I have seen children with distended stomachs. But on the whole it's a very positive place, the people are positive about the future, not like the image we have in England."

On the other hand, many Ethiopians might have the wrong end of the stick about us. "I'd say their perception is often totally wrong, usually based on TV and films. The first things one of my colleagues asked me was, 'Is it true that all women slap men?' And they think the UK is wonderful, that there's no homelessness.

"Sometimes guys might try it on, or see you as a passport out of here - but generally I'm treated with courtesy and respect."

Dr Solomon Sorssa, dean of the teacher training college where Michela works, is full of praise for her - and VSO. "We have a very nice relationship," he says. "Our students learn more than teaching skills, they also learn English."

Mesfin Gezahegn, head of the physics department, acknowledges there can be problems the other way: for example, explaining a complicated formula in the native Amharic language. "But she has taught us so much about the importance of time management. Her experience has been really useful, not just for her students, but colleagues too."

Michela says the atmosphere at the college, which has about 1,000 students aged between 17 and 25, double the number of just a year ago, is "really good - and very hard-working.

"There's a queue outside the library every morning, two hours before classes start. That's because the students might not have enough room at home to study - or there might not be electricity.

"The people here are really dedicated to education and improvement, and it's great to be a part of all that.

"The bureaucracy can be frustrating at times, and I'll sometimes have big rows with the people at work, but a couple of days later it's all forgotten. That fits right in with my personality. I'm loving it."

For more information on VSO call 020 8780 7500 or visit www.vso.org.uk

Building towards education for all

ALL VSO volunteers are in Ethiopia at the request of the government, which has set itself a target of education for all by 2015.

At the education ministry in the capital, Addis Ababa, I spoke with Tibebu Zenebe, head of the teachers and education staff training panel, who said it was particularly important that girls should be encouraged to attend school in what has for centuries been a male-dominated society.

"In the towns it is not so much of a problem, but in the countryside girls are expected to work in the house, or get married very young.

"The volunteers provide good role models and we will very soon see the impact, I'm sure of that."

Another senior ministry official, Yeshitla Mulat, said: "For a long time after the downfall of Haile Selassie (in 1974), our teaching was carried out only by Ethiopians.

"Now we have ferenji (foreign) role models and that's a very good thing. We're concentrating on producing female teachers, especially for primary schools. Yes, it's positive discrimination. At the moment only about five per cent of teachers are women, and we're aiming for 50 per cent."

Persuasion, rather than enforcement, is key - and by sending more women teachers out into the country, the government hopes to put out a strong and positive message to young girls and their mothers.

About a third of the population is nomadic, though, and these parents are often reluctant to send their children to school, especially daughters.

"It is going to be a big problem, trying to overcome centuries of tradition," admits Mr Yeshitla.

"But we're trying to do it by getting parents more involved in school management, with some success."

I suggest that the deadline, just over 10 years away, for getting all children into full-time education is perhaps over-ambitious. Maybe so, agrees Mr Yeshitla: 85 per cent would be good.

Never mind, I say, because in Ethiopia it's 1997 (the country has never adopted the Gregorian calendar, and each year also has 13 months), and you can simply say you're working towards your own version of 2015, not the West's.

Fortunately, everyone laughs (although maybe they were just being polite), and a diplomatic incident is averted.