It’s always pleasing when you can facilitate something helpful here but you can almost guarantee that it won’t be straight forward. The Head teacher from the UK school I worked at before moving here suggested that the pupils may like to raise money for a project of my choosing. Just prior to the winter break a ‘Christmas Jumper’ Day was held.

I wanted to help an Ethiopian school for some of the poorest children called Big Home Academy. It is located on land next to Lemma (our chief guard’s home). He started the school and it has stood the test of time. I suggested he may like to use the money to paint his school buildings.  He declined this offer. (Ethiopian schools have educational pictures and diagrams on the outside, but inside there are frequently bare mud walls as internal decoration simply isn’t a priority). Lemma preferred rather to lay a playground for the children. The current muddy ground cover is a problem as wind causes dust  to be blown about and in the rainy season it can become a quagmire.

Initially I thought that a bank transfer might be possible. However in this cash dependent society the school has no bank account of it’s own and Lemma was unable to establish either the sort code or the international bank code required for his account. Thus I decided to pass the money through SIM (our own sending organisation). This required a visit to our finance director, emails to the UK to both my school and the SIM HQ, a further meeting with finance, an email to SIM Ethiopia HQ and withdrawing the money on two separate dates as there is a withdrawal limit of 8,000 birr and I needed 9,000. –simple really. However, I look forward to recording the results of this project in the future.

Have you ever been asked to bake for a number of people at an event, maybe ten or more? This happens quite frequently here as we are living within the school community.

Using my trusty high altitude cookbook I have kind of mastered cookies and muffins (so long as we have power throughout the cooking process). However big quantity tray bakes are much more of a challenge. Zanesh was my previous house worker back in 2007. In the intervening years she has mastered conversational English and is also able to bake a variety of recipes that she has assembled over time. So it was that she has visited on a couple of afternoons recently and we baked together.

Our efforts also required some shopping locally. We went upstairs (meaning it turned out, up the road which is on a hill), and stopped at a small souk where we purchased milk in plastic bags. Zanesh seemed to be talking for some time to the shopkeeper and when I casually enquired the nature of their conversation, she told me that she had instructed him to only sell me his good milk if ever he saw me out shopping alone. I appreciated the gesture but wasn’t entirely sure he did. We bought eggs from a tin shack (further upstairs), where trays of eggs were stacked. Ferenje (foreign) on one side of the door and abasha (local Ethiopian) on the other. The difference is apparent. Just as the abasha chickens you can buy are yellow and scrawny, the eggs were smaller and more grey in colour. I chose six brown ferenje eggs. They were counted out into a hand made paper bag. It was made from a folded sheet of A4 paper with printed pictures and text from someone’s English class.

So far Zanesh and I have made a chocolate cake and a lomee cake. Lomee is the name given to both lemons and limes so Ethiopians are not clear on the difference. Despite selecting fruits with the yellowest skins we ended up with a rather tasty lime cake.

What’s the variation between high altitude cake mixes and the sea-level variety. It seems to be the fact that mixtures need to be fairly liquid before being placed in the oven. The cooking time is also increased  to at least half an hour.

I was able to contribute a plateful to an after school pre-wedding event for an English friend Clare (and ex Bingham teacher) who has just married Hennock an Ethiopian. We selected the lomee cake for this as Zanesh assured me that it was Clare’s favourite.