In 1971, teachers Barb and Clark Olson, together with the two small children, moved to Gondar, Ethiopia. For four years, Barb kept a detailed journal about the family's experiences, recording people's stories and events both domestic and political, local and national, chronicling the early days of the revolution, as well as the drought and famine moving across this East African nation. Barb now lives with her husband in Springfield, Illinois where she writes and is a community organizer. This book is a Thank you to the people of Gondar and a tribute to the resiliency and vision of Ethiopia's youth. Several of these stories are published separately, including the children's book, Christmas in Gondar, Five Ethiopian Stories, available soon.

Christmas in Gondar, Five Ethiopian Stories, are true tales of Christmas in the early 1970's in this East African nation, many set in the Public Health College International Elementary School. These true stories, written for children as well as for adults, weave together adventure and intrigue, cultural clashes, pageantry and revolution. They tell about celebrating Christmas with people of many different ethnic groups, customs, and faiths including Ethiopian Orthodox, Islam, Beta Israel, Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Protestant. All while the winds of turmoil and revolution build. The cover art was produced by Teshager Demisee, a resident of Gondar.

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Organisation and administration - Public administration, grade: Very Good, , course: Business Administration, language: English, abstract: The main objective of the study is to establish the performance of GWSSS in terms of quality of water services, economical efficiency, and operational sustainability against widely accepted key standard performance indicators and benchmarking the water utility against other well-performing utilities around East Africa for purposes of development of decision support tools for better management of the system. The last eight-year data from the annual report and from the management information system of the Gondar utility are used in the analysis of indicators and to see the performance trend. Performance evaluation of water supply services for Gondar city was carried out using thirteen key performance indicators. From the first category six indicators in the quality of water services, one indicator on water quality compliance has the utility performing well. The other five indicators that are water supply coverage, average total per capita consumption, average per capita domestic consumption, continuity of piped water supply, and the number of persons per domestic connection are the performance of the utility is poor and much below the benchmarked utilities. From the second category of four indicators in improving economic efficiency one indicator in improving personnel expenditure has moderate performance; one indicator on tariff cost recovery has shown low performance, and two indicators in improving bill revenue collection efficiency and operating cost coverage are well performed. The third category of three indicators in improving operational sustainability; one indicator in staffing level is poor performance and two indicators in nonrevenue water and treatment capacity utilized the utility is performing well compared to benchmarked utilities. In general, GWSSS is performing well in five indicators, moderate performance in one indicator, and the rest seven indicators the performance of Gondar is poor and much below the benchmarked utilities. Therefore, it is highly recommended that Gondar utility should take much focus on improving: the water supply services, water production, number of water connections, water consumption, tariff cost recovery, and staffing level.

Gondar is the exotic, fantastic story of the struggle for control of the fabled 19th-century Abyssinian kingdom. Richly created and lushly told, it is peopled with unforgettable characters both real and imaginary, set in an Africa of violence, spectacle and romance.

The city of Gondar served as a permanent seat of government in Ethiopia for about four centuries, during which time the city witnessed the evolution of various quarters such as Ichage Bet, Abun Bet, Kayla Meda, Islam Bet and Digaye. While some of these quarters pre-date the city itself, others are new additions that are related to the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, 1935-1940. This book is of the saga of Gondar: its quarters tell stories of its socio-economic and cultural operations; about its Judaio-Christian and Islamic population and of its glorious past, its decadence and decay.