Just a normal week, teaching at two schools, two Amharic lessons, a couple trips to the Gym, two lots of friends round for meals, Y’tesfa Birhan (the local girls group), a local meal out with colleagues, marshalling at a cross country meet, a bazaar and church.

Except that…

This was the week when I watched some builders creating a roof support. This was done by building a wooden mould floor to ceiling and pouring concrete into the top. They were however adding one household sized bucketful at a time which was passed hand to hand between half a dozen people and up the scaffolding to the person at the top. Could it be done quicker with a machine? Most certainly, but how many people rely on such manual labour for their livelihood?

This was the week that a new craze blossomed in school. Young children living on compound here are desperate for a pet to care for. They can’t have a dog or cat because they may bring disease, but small Ethiopian boys living on Entoto mountain are only too happy to sell Chameleons at pocket money prices. £1.50 for a large one and 75p for a small one. Hence children of a certain age here have been out searching for flies amongst the flower beds on campus all week with a small brown creature resting on their finger.

This was the week that I learnt about the ‘Bamboo Powderpost Beetle’. About a month or so ago we purchased a set of bamboo nesting tables, we were surprised to see a small pile of powder regularly appearing on the edge of the smallest one. I showed an Ethiopian who visited. “It’s a bug”, she confirmed confidently. Now I am only too familiar with biting insects here that you simply cannot see and just have the itchy spots as evidence. I nervously looked on the internet. This new character it seemed was only interested in the starch in the bamboo. Good news for me, bad news for the table!

This was the week that a small boy, selected to be the innkeeper in our Kindergarten Nativity, listened intently to his teacher’s explanation about Mary and Joseph being unable to find a room. “They should have gone to AK’s” he said confidently (a hotel in Minneapolis). “We go there and they always have plenty of rooms”.

Just a normal week…