CARS

Shortly before we left the UK to come here our pastor at Spicer Street Church said publically that we were "bonkers" to leave leafy St Albans to live in Ethiopia. His tongue was in his cheek, but when you hear what I am about to tell you maybe you'll think he was right.

This week I bought a petrol engined 2006 Toyota Corolla saloon with a 1.3 litre 84 HP engine that finds hills difficult for £20,000. Yup, £20,000. Ouch. Allow me to explain - for the first time in my life I have genuinely invested in a vehicle.

The car market in Ethiopia is apparently unique in the world. As with everything else here you sort of have to suspend disbelief and not ask "why?" about anything. I don't really know the reasons behind this automotive lunacy but it is something to do with all vehicles being imported and the import duty that the government extorts (presumably to finance something or other) being massive - double the price of the car sometimes. So if you buy a new vehicle and it is loaded with duty you have to sell it in a way that reflects the price you paid. Hence the retail cost of a car is huge initially, and it holds its value thereafter as so few new vehicles make it through to the roads. Then the second hand value stays up as demand is so high. Sometimes the second hand value is greater than the purchase price even on vehicles 20 years old. An outgoing missionary is advertising his Toyota Land Cruiser for US $63,000 which apparently is a bargain to keep it in the missionary community. If he sells it on the open market he will get a lot more for it. And it is at least 10 years old, possibly a lot more. This explains why there are so many very (and I mean very: 20 - 30 years very) old cars on the roads, falling to pieces and belching foul exhaust.

So, SIM bought this Corolla new 7 years ago for $32,000, it only has 9000 km on the clock so I've bought it from SIM for the same price. When I sell it I will possibly get more for it than I paid for it. So as long as I drive £20,000 around the city carefully and don't wreck it, it will be a good investment. Here's a picture. Don't be fooled by how good it looks - it comes pre-scratched. Everything here does.

CODES

This is one for all the medics out there reading this, especially GPs. Every person I see has to have a diagnosis recorded for the Government to know what we are up to here in my clinic. I have a list of diagnoses on a sheet of paper with codes attached - so for instance "087" means you have a URTI  (a cold); "063.1" means you have diabetes. I am keen to get the EMIS computer software I brought with me to generate these statistics automatically, so I began looking into what this coding system was. I initially thought it looked like ICD-9 - a slightly out of date system used internationally for classifying diseases. I thought Ethiopia might be a bit out of date on this front. I did some research and I found this code list. It is the "Intermediate List of top 150 Diagnoses" published by the WHO in the WHO Bulletin Supplement in ... wait for it ... 1948. So this coding list is more out of date than my entire life. This explains why I have codes for things like "General Paralysis of the Insane" and "Mental Deficiency". So the Ethiopian Government is collecting statistics from it's medical facilities based on a 67 year old coding system. Now, I know quite a lot about medical coding systems, but I didn't know they outdated me!

COUNTRYSIDE

Daniel is from Germany; Anders is from Norway. Together they like to use weekends to explore. This weekend we were invited to go with them (they are the same age as Aaron). Chris would have loved to have come, but the need for hair colouring was overwhelming so I went alone. Knowing some of Daniel's antics (he loves exploring non-German cultures in an uninhibited way) I expected some excitement. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you are looking for a rivitingly funny story right now) everything went remarkably smoothly. We drove south from Addis, visited a rock-hewn church where some worship (orthodox Christian) was going on; wandered all over the countryside looking for some man-made caves we never found, then visited a 13th century graveyard with standing stones that look like they have pictures of space shuttles on them - they are actually swords (Daniel pronounces the "w"). I've created a picture gallery of the best of the 200 photos I took. Of note is a poor quality picture of a man carrying a coffin down the road on his shoulder. We assumed it was empty. Sadly Daniel's term here finishes this summer. We will really miss him.

FINALLY...

We bought a new bath mat, and the washing instructions (reproduced literally) were as follows:

• Please lave with the water in the temperature under 30 degrees.
• please wash with neutral detergent.
• A little fiber will fall in the beginning of washing.
• Twitter gently to make it loose after dehydrating, air outdoors, and avoid the direct irradiation of the sunshine.
• Cannot drying, never iron.

Finally finally - we were looking at hotel rooms in Bahir Dar - 10 hours drive north from here where we will visit in half term with another couple. On one of the hotel websites booking page (along with the usual stuff about how many people, which dates etc) there is a drop-down list of room sizes for you to choose. You can book a single room, a twin room, a double room, a king-sized double room, or an auditorium. We thought we might book an auditorium each.