In one of those coincidence moments that lead you to think life is far from random, the brother-in-law of one of the partners at my old GP practice in the UK introduced himself to me in the Bingham Academy teachers’ lounge last Sunday afternoon, as I was relaxing watching the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix. He was here on a pastoral visit with the Church Mission Society, on his way to Tanzania and Kenya.

It reminded me that his sister-in-law, Ruth, who I worked with for 15 years or so, had said to me once how much she enjoyed the march of the seasons in the UK and how much she would miss it were she to live in the tropics. It’s something Chris and I certainly miss, although this time of year in Addis provides some compensation as the rainy season is about to stop. Plants and trees flower randomly here all year round, except for the bright yellow “Meskel” flowers that for a short time explode everywhere around the end of September. The wooded hillside and riverside fields visible from the window of our gym are turning yellow and provide a beautiful distraction from the suffering of exercise. It’s also entertaining to watch mouse birds, weaver birds, small seed eaters and sun birds with their long curved beaks building nests in the vegetation outside the window.

That is, until the power fails. Running on a treadmill when the power goes off suddenly is quite a shock, as the belt instantly stops. Several power cuts punctuated last Sunday’s session, breaking up our exercise on powered machines into short, unpredictable bursts.

The pleasure of an uninterrupted electricity supply at a constant predictable voltage in the UK is another thing we miss. Sometimes the voltage at HQ is so low our vaccine fridge fails to operate properly. During long power cuts residents at HQ rescue the fridge from oblivion by using the generator. Like last weekend. On Friday afternoon I was sitting happily at my desk tapping away on my laptop when behind me through the window came a bright blue flash followed almost instantaneously by a window-rattling explosion, and equally instantly the electricity went off. I jumped up and ran to the window to see what had happened. A pall of blue smoke was rising over a smoking electricity transformer, which had blown up. This is such a common experience that none of the multitude roaming around in the road below took any notice. It wasn’t repaired until Monday morning.

A similar thing happened on the way to HQ one day not long ago. As Haile was driving me around a ludicrously crowded roundabout behind us came a blue flash and loud bang. I jumped and ducked. No-one else in this crazy traffic did, including Haile who along with everyone else just ignored it. “What was that?” I asked, nervously, fearing some sort of weapon. “Transformer” he explained briefly, and carried on barging through the queue to get me to work on time.

Quite some time ago our journey to work had been interrupted by another electricity transformer. It was sitting on a small platform suspended between two uprights the size of telegraph poles. This time, rather than blow up, it’s two supporting poles had decided just to collapse forwards into the middle of the adjacent crossroads, bringing a tangle of power cables from all directions with it. It was a couple of days before the crossroads was useable again.

So last Monday it was with considerable relief that I arrived at work to find the power back on, and thanks to the efforts of several helpful people our vaccines were all still lovely and cold. Atsede, our cleaner, came in a couple of minutes later, her face swathed in a bright yellow scarf. She has been using this recently to hide her embarrassment at the right-sided facial weakness (“Bell’s Palsy”) she developed a few weeks ago. At my nurses’ request and despite a lack of evidence of a useful effect I had referred her for some physiotherapy treatment, because “that’s what we do here”. “Doctor – look!” exclaimed Sister Aster, as she peeled Atsede’s scarf off. Atsede’s right cheek was enormously swollen. Parotid? Dental abscess? But it’s huge! My look of surprise and horror must have been quite amusing as they both burst out laughing while Atsede extracted a small lime from the inside of her right cheek. Apparently sticking a lime inside your cheek is an Ethiopian physiotherapy treatment for a facial palsy. You live and learn.