Day 4 - "Has anyone here ever heard of Tottenham Hotspur?"

We again visited the street children's breakfast programme. It was a quieter session, as the school kids has exams, and so we had around 20 children to deal with, none of whom are yet in schools. It's hard to write about how lovely they are without coming over all touchy-feely, but they genuinely are great kids, and you don't actually feel any sadness or pity because they are so positive about life. I don't really have the words to describe the feeling you get when a hungry child offers to share their breakfast with you.

We then headed out to the Hope School to sit in on some lessons and help some of the students with their English. Throughout the course of the day, we worked out way up from Year 6 to Year 9, and once the children had got over the novelty of a trio of "Faranji" (foreigners) in the room, and had finished running through every premiership footballer they knew (everyone here either supports Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal), we were able to help them with some grammar and spelling. It's a tough job being a teacher here - class sizes of over 50 mean it's hard to identify either talented or struggling pupils, and text books are one between four. This is not due to money but simple availability (state schools get first dibs on text books), and the high cost of printing or photocopying means there's no easy solution.

On the other hand, the school is the nearest thing to normality for a European visitor. You can see some of the same clique-iness and striving for cool as you'd see in the UK, especially amongst the older students. But there is a greater respect for the teachers, and a much greater desire to learn. In the UK, Reed in Partnership is placing an increasing emphasis on the NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) group - what my father would refer to as "disaffected youth", and my grandfather as "layabouts". It would be an interesting exercise to bring a dozen of them over here to see what their equivalents in Addis are prepared to go through to get a basic education.