Chris and I now live in a world where change is a way of life. People come; people go. Friends are made; friends depart. The days of missionaries coming to an area to live and work for decades have largely gone – “short term” is king. We have been as responsible for this situation as any – with my trip for two weeks in 2006, our five-month stay in 2007 and now being back for who knows how long, but given our ages it will not be longer that a few years.

We will be saying goodbye to Tim and Muriel this week. Tim was the first person I met here in 2006 and has been a good friend and confidante ever since. He’s led an extraordinary life as a missionary doctor – first in Haiti, then in Rwanda during the war, then Ethiopia for the last 16 years. Never short of a story or a pithy quote, Tim has been a great example of dedicated self-sacrifice on behalf of many poor and needy people, and all for the sake of the Gospel of Christ. We will surely miss Tim and Muriel, but their new base in Provence in southern France opens up new opportunities for visiting.

We attended a gathering yesterday evening to honour Tim and Muriel and their 16 years here. It was held at another SIM compound a short drive from Bingham, which is the work place for Fekadu. In December 2014 Fekadu was suffering with an old ankle injury that was threatening him with the loss of his job, long term pain and a possible slide back into the poverty that his job working for SIM at the Press Compound had rescued him from. Fekadu came to see me this week. Thanks to the generosity of Spicer Street Church and the skills of a British SIM missionary orthopaedic surgeon working in Addis Fekadu has had his surgery under expert modern care at the CURE Hospital, is back at work full time, and is smiling again. Fekadu is one of our “starfish”. (Confused? Read this.)

I had the privilege of driving Tim and Muriel to the gathering. Safely negotiating a u-turn just past the Press Compound entrance we drove back along the road then up the steep drive to the gate. The guard, wrapped in his big overcoat against the cool of the Addis night and looking thin and a little gaunt opened the gates. I wound down the window. With a big smile he shook my hand, we greeted each other warmly and he said he was very well, praise God. In his late thirties the greeting belied the fact that a few short months ago he had watched as his wife and the mother of his children had developed a blood cancer (myeloma) that had taken her rapidly to her grave. A disease that had she been able to access it modern treatment could quite probably have controlled for several years at least. Not here. Her husband has had no option but to get himself back to work and carry on as best he can. His family and friends will be very supportive as will SIM through his work at the Press Compound. But bereavement here is a common and frequent thing and with few resources, scant medical care and minimal social support people just have to get on with it. That’s just the brutal truth in a country as poverty-stricken as this.

You may remember a man we called “B” who needed life-saving chemotherapy for leukaemia. As I have related previously the medication arrived, and we have covered the cost helped in no small part by donations from several readers of this blog for which I can only say a big, big “thank you”. Last week B came to my clinic and we sent him over the road to the Black Lion Hospital with the first dose of this precious drug in a cooler to start his treatment. A short while later he was back, a little despondent. He needs two other drugs (for the medics reading this - cyclophosphamide and fludarabine) and had to get them from the pharmacy but he only had 800 Birr on him (a little less than £27) and he needed the equivalent of £90. We loaned him the extra 2000 Birr he needed (for him this is several weeks’ wages) and he has now started treatment. It’ll take six months; but he’s on his way. His gratitude to those who have made his treatment possible is palpable - another “starfish”.

The blue and white minivan taxis that buzz the Addis streets in their tens of thousands often sport pictures and writing on their back windows. The frequently importunate pleadings to various saints and angels for help and safety (and by the way they drive they surely need divine help) are often accompanied by pictures of Jesus, Mary, the angel Gabriel, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Che Guevara and Emperor Haile Selassie. This week I saw this taxi (click the picture) that pretty much sums up the driving habits of this most prolific method of public transport. I also saw one with an “Apple” trade mark (something you see on all sorts of vehicles, not just minivan taxis) under which was written “God is gret”. They may have slightly misunderstood the nature of Steve Jobs, but when you learn a bit of Amharic, the writing of which is totally phonetic, you learn fairly quickly that spelling doesn’t realy mater.