Astronomy fascinated me from a young age, so in my early teens as soon as I had saved enough of my paper round money I bought myself a telescope (a 60mm refractor if you must know). My incredibly tolerant parents managed to fit it in the car when we went on holiday and I could be found outside in the dark on the cliffs of Cornwall stargazing to my heart’s content. (I overstretched myself a bit when I decided to create my own star cataloguing system). That self-same telescope showed my family the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter and is still wrapped up and stored away in my St Albans lock-up – it was one of the few things I couldn’t bring myself to throw away when we moved to Addis.

When comet Lovejoy turned up in early 2015 I asked around the school to see if anyone had some decent binoculars, and was told there was actually an astronomical telescope in the science department that had not been used. It had been donated to the school after someone brought it from the USA as hand luggage (see the photo – however did they do that!) and it was languishing in a corner gathering dust. So I rescued and adopted it.

An 8 inch Dobsonian reflector had been the stuff of my dreams as a young boy. I found it and all the accessories, cleaned it up, collimated it, and had a good look at Comet Lovejoy which it is safe to say was a hugely disappointing faint blob. I’ve baby-sat the telescope since, with the occasional trip out on to the Bingham field to peer at the wonders of the night sky through the Addis pollution.

A good friend here will be leaving Addis this year and in the course of cleaning out his house found a telescope and suggested the school might like it. This had come into his hands by a circuitous route involving a veterinary missionary and had similarly sat unused for several years. A 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain motorised polar-mounted telescope had been the stuff of my extra special dreams as a young boy, so I’ve set it up, cleaned it up, tested it and adopted it. There was a set of 8 Duracell AA batteries in the base with expiry dates of 2008, so I was pleasantly surprised when I switched the drive mechanism on that they actually worked.

Whilst these telescopes are great educational devices, getting students together to use them would involve travelling out of Addis after dark – an unusual possibility given that one of SIM Ethiopia’s few rules for its members is that we should never drive in the dark outside of Addis (it’s incredibly dangerous). However, baby-sitting these two bad boys I’m in telescope heaven.

Texts Galore

If you have a government that is only slowly shaking off the shackles of its communist past and a single state owned telecommunications company you have an immediate recipe for unsolicited texts. I receive them almost daily; sometimes several times a day. Would I like to invest in the Renaissance Dam? (no); would I like to enter a lottery to win a Bajaj? (no); would I like to donate to famine and drought relief? (yes, but not via the government thank you); sorry about the traffic chaos caused by the African Union conference (thanks, but I was more concerned about the Kalashnikovs sported by the Federal Police on the Kolfe roundabout); Happy Christmas (thanks!); Happy Prophet’s Birthday (thanks again but I don’t usually celebrate that); would I like to invest in the Renaissance Dam? (you’ve asked me that once – no!); on it goes. This week the similarly state-owned Ethiopian Broadcasting Company (EBC) got in on the act. They have apparently been broadcasting their characteristic mix of patriotic songs and dancing for a very long time. Several times Berhan K/Mariam, CEO of EBC, has texted me thus: “Your time with us is precious; we are grateful of your being with us in the past 50 years. Thank you! Grow old with EBC.” Hard to know how to respond to that. How long exactly has EBC been around? In another text I have received from Berhan K/Mariam he explained: “Join the celebration of the Ethiopian Broadcasting Company 50^th golden jubilee. EBC, Voice of Diversity and Renaissance!” (Not that dam again. And “diversity”? Really?) “50^th golden jubilee” - so 2,500 years then. Broadcasting when Romulus and Remus were building Rome…