The most frequently asked question when I was back in the UK was “What do you miss the most when you are in Ethiopia?”. This was a hard one to answer because I try to get on with living here rather than dwell on how much easier day to day life is back home.

However I did notice that I am beginning to appreciate certain things whenever I return to the UK. Here are a few, litter bins on the street, ice creams, plasters that stick to your skin, wild flowers, seat belts and walking trails. All of which featured during our holiday.

This time however there were things I was looking forward to on return to Ethiopia. Not least was the promise of endless summer days from the end of September, Ethiopian greetings and the possibility of moving into a new apartment. We had simply accepted living in our previous apartment, which we had affectionately nicknamed ‘The bat cave’ with all its quirks (rats in the walls and mushrooms that grew through the ceiling, to name but two).

So when it was suggested that we may like to move to the second floor of a new apartment block we were equivocal at first, after all we loved the open wood burning fire. As we left for our break  in the UK the new building was a shell, indeed the windows were just being fitted. Could it be possible that we could move in just six weeks time we pondered?

The overnight return flight was OK if you don’t count the bang in the middle of the night, the plane briefly banking and loosing height and people screaming before the pilot regained control. We will never find out the cause of that!

But when we arrived and entered the new apartment we were amazed and delighted. The voluntary housing team had ensured that we had furniture and household items. The older teenagers on the compound had moved our packed boxes in and Seble (our house worker) had cleaned and unpacked most of the boxes.  We were really thankful to so many.

Is it fully functional? Well not quite. Who really needs curtains, gas, towel rails, keys and drawers anyway? Our new abode is level with the tree tops and vultures circle and land in the top most branches. The view extends across the rusting corrugated iron rooves peppered with satellite dishes that cover many of the dwellings outside the compound walls, to the mountains beyond.

Amongst my holiday highlights were taking my two and a half year old granddaughter out for lunch (just her and I), making shortbread with my grandson of a similar age and being there to witness my 8 month old grandson progressing from a wobbly sitting position to fast crawling. So the answer to the most frequently asked question has to be family. It is  them that I miss the most. However I have a role to fulfil here in Addis and can now do so encouraged by so many happy holiday memories.