This monument is in the courtyard of the Bahir Dar City Hall and where the fire station is located.
At 9 am Gayanne, Muli and I met in the lobby of our hotel and headed off to the Bahir Dar fire station. It was a short walk on a beautiful day with blue sky and a few puffy clouds. We were on our way to meet up with a couple of the fire fighters that we met and talked with yesterday. We were then going to go a primary school and do a presentation on the STOP – DROP and ROLL procedure if one is on fire. We were looking forward to spending some time at a primary school with a couple of the fire fighters but we didn’t know what to expect.
We needn’t to have worried. We met with the principal who was very nice and understood what we hoped to share with the students. She accepted Gayanne’s posters and they will be displayed in the school. She said that recess was in 5 minutes and the children would be out shortly.
Notice how lined up the students are in this picture. That wouldn’t last as they crowded to the front.
We were surrounded by very noisy, excited and curious children who were told to line up grades I think, in front of us. Gayanne introduced all of us through Muli, our interpreter who then basically took over with the lesson. I found out later that he has some teacher education in his background and it shone through. the children were spellbound and all hands went up whenever he asked them a question on the material. I was very impressed to see one of the firefighters interject and I found out later that he told three stories of burnings. One of the stories was of a 13 year old girl who was mad at her mother and to get even, set some straw on fire in her village. Unfortunately, she fell into the fire and was burned plus, half the village was burned down with half of the homes destroyed. We were confident that the fire fighters would enjoy making this presentations to other schools. A great public relations thing for them too.
I don’t think that Muli has seen such excited children before, he thought they were high on sugar. He and Gayanne are hoping to go to another school later this week.