In mid-March, when the weather in Toronto is still unreasonably cold, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel to Ethiopia to help deliver a train-the-trainer workshop to a group of lawyers and judges who are members of the Ethiopian Arbitration and Conciliation Centre. I always find training in a different country to be an eye-opening experience and the workshop in Addis Ababa was no different. The participants were eager to learn our facilitative model of training. I kept thinking about how challenging I would find it to take part in a train-the-trainer workshop in a different language and I was thoroughly impressed with their ability to participate in a language that was not their mother tongue. We encouraged them to use Amharic if they felt more comfortable doing so, but some of them simply preferred to speak in English, which obviously made it much easier for us to provide feedback. I was only in Addis for a short time, but I did manage to make a quick trip to the National Museum to see the remains of “Lucy” (a female hominoid that lived in what is now called the Awash Valley in Hadar some 3.2 million years ago) and the Mercatto (one of the largest markets I have ever seen!). I hope to return to Addis again and have some more injera (Ethiopian bread) soon.

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