Blogging this week has presented me with a few challenges.

Firstly, it’s not "Timkat" it’s "ጥምቀት" but you wouldn't be able to read that although bizarrely I now can (in a very similar way to how a two year-old Ethiopian child would). Those squiggles do not represent anything you can write down using your rather restricted Roman/Latin alphabet because you have to spit slightly to say the first "t" and also the "k" in the middle. But you mustn't spit the last "t". (In trying to speak Amharic it is possible to make huge errors in addition to accidentally spitting on people. The other day I tried to say "take off your sock" and actually said "take off your witch doctor").

Secondly in trying to make "Timkat" interesting I mustn't accidentally mock what was a huge and very serious event for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. However the sight of a priest sitting on a fence with a hose pipe spraying some devout people with holy water was difficult to see without a flicker of a smile because to a British non-conformist protestant it was quite an amusing scene.

Thirdly I could very easily get boring because I realise what is fascinating to us here may be of little interest to anyone outside of this extraordinary country. So I won't bore you with the facts - Google "Timkat" and all will be revealed. Suffice it to say it is one of the huge religious festivals held here by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (Google that as well if you want) and celebrates the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan by John the Baptist. Hence the water thing. Included in the celebrations are models of the Ark of the Covenant (every Orthodox Church has one) paraded around the streets in huge processions under ornate cloths and equally ornate umbrellas. It's a two day affair focussing on and culminating in a mass gathering in a huge field in the north of the city where there is an enclosure containing a pool of water that is blessed and then used to wet people who are renewing their baptismal vows.

It was to this field that Chris and I, accompanied by a few others from Bingham, travelled at stupid o'clock in the morning so we could (a) get into the field by dawn and (b) get quite a good view of the goings-on near the central enclosure. We became tourists for the day and I took a goodly number of photos which I have honed down to the best few in a gallery. As we were getting into his vehicle in the dark Brad the school director pointed out to me the stars that make up the "Southern Cross". I've never seen that before. (It must be right because he's an Australian.) We drove across a slowly waking city festooned with bunting, flags, balloons and various gazebos set up in convenient places like the middle of roundabouts. We walked quite a way to get to the field where not a few people had slept the night on the ground. The grass was peppered with the scars of small fires lit the previous evening. We stood near the central area as a vast crowd of several hundred thousand (I don't think I'm exaggerating) slowly assembled. Women often wear white shawl-like things but today so did a lot of the men. Priests in ornate garb, clergy from dozens of churches, all sorts of choirs and youth groups wandered around.

We were there for several hours as dignitaries were driven into the central area and singing began both over the speaker system and from the crowd. An air of reverence and joyful expectation permeated the atmosphere. Chris and I had little idea what would happen which staved off the boredom of standing around for hours. There was preaching from the centre, and occasionally things were translated into English especially when the visiting big cheese from the Indian Orthodox Church spoke. I heard something about measurements announced - I'm not sure for what - and when translated into English it turned out whatever was being measured was done using a unit of measurement unknown to us before - the length of a sheep's intestine. Whatever was being measured was the length of 8 sheep's intestines. (Possibly the length of the priest's hose pipe?) Once all the blessing, singing, preaching, chanting and parading about was over the crowd surged towards the hose pipes and Chris and I were caught up in the press, being whisked along somewhat against our will towards a rather wet destination. Happily we edged out before being baptised. We felt the considerable police presence both on foot and on horseback was rather excessive as this was a very well-behaved gathering and at no time were we uncomfortable or threatened. Egress from the field was much harder than getting in, as several thousand people wanted to leave with us. We inadvertently became part of a carnival-like parade involving all sorts of dancing and rejoicing down the crowded street outside but eventually returned to our vehicle and tried to get to a restaurant for lunch. People thronged the streets and of course there were no warnings, diversions, or any hints that anyone in authority had offered a single discharge of a single synapse to planning how the city would function if millions wanted to go out and party and half the ring road was closed to allow for a procession of clergy, colourful umbrellas and models of the Ark of the Covenant.

I thought it was all over. I was wrong. I hadn’t take St Michael into account.

On Monday I was in my clinic consulting room which looks out across a busy, chaotic and sometimes grid-locked road junction (there are no white lines, no lights, no signposts and so it’s every man for himself). As lunch approached I became aware of things going on. A gazebo with a top cover designed like an orthodox church was carried down the dual carriageway and set up in the middle of the junction. People gathered, the roads closed by default (you can’t drive through that many people), singing and rejoicing commenced, Umbrellas paraded down the road and priests gathered in the impromptu gazebo. By the time things were at their peak I was trying to have a serious conversation with a patient who kept getting up to look out the window (no double glazing here!) It turns out St Michael’s Ark of the Covenant comes out the day after the main celebration to have its own special parade. Fortunately this junction cleared by the time my taxi driver came to get me.