During the last two weeks my classroom notice boards were due to be painted. The American guy who was tasked with this ran out of time before his return to the States so left me the paint and brushes. It took two days and four coats of paint to achieve that goal. The paint had a tendency to be absorbed by the very old pin board so needed to be ‘worked in’. One thing I learnt the hard way. It is advisable to ensure that you have enough to finish an entire board before you ask for a refill of paint. I discovered the paint room. You have to stoop to get in but once inside you can appreciate the huge piles of paint cans stacked floor to ceiling.

 I handed over my used can, and by gesture I conveyed that I needed more. Well who needs B&Q or Homebase when you can approximate to the appropriate hue by opening a half used can of light blue, adding black and stirring with a stick until you have more or less achieved the correct shade? How the Ethiopian worker who was helping me was able to find any particular can as none appeared to be marked, I cannot guess.

The classroom now complete I’ve been working on planning issues. Have you ever tried to compile a multi-cultural list of birthdays? The British would record the 4^th of August 2014 as 4 8 14 whilst the Americans would understand the same date as 8 4 14. It doesn’t help that Ethiopia is still in 2006!

This week the new teachers and their families arrive. We have signed up for entertaining three lots of guests for meals. I love entertaining but the question is always the same, should I prepare a meal using the gas hob (the attached canister rarely runs out)? Alternatively should I ‘run the gauntlet’ of using the electric oven? If the electricity runs out at the crucial time I’m stuck. An example of this happened recently. I had almost finished cooking a chocolate courgette cake as guests were due later that day. It had risen well but was still gooey inside. At this point the electricity failed (Generator power has no effect on our oven). It was a shame to waste the ingredients so I ran down to the office to get a couple of keys to empty apartments to see if they had working ovens. To no avail. In the end I took the half-cooked cake under a tea towel to the school kitchen. The cook had an oven that was still warm and kindly saved the day.

Yesterday evening we collected a South African couple from the airport or attempted to. We were prevented entry at arrivals by a guard and sent down to departures to get a ‘permit’. These were no longer available for purchase it transpired, as the time was past nine o’clock. So we returned to departures and peered through the closed doors at the arrivals board which was not showing the flight we needed even though the internet on Phil’s phone suggested it had already landed. Guards with sticks then began ushering the thronging crowd of anxious families and individuals waiting to greet friends and relatives, into the car park. This location was a good way from the building and at a lower level. So all we could do was peer upwards in the growing gloom and chill hoping to spot a Caucasian man and his wife of about our age with a couple of trolley loads of luggage looking confused. Despite many possible variables we succeeded in our quest eventually. Next time I’ll be prepared with thick clothing and a flask of soup or something similar.

If life is inevitably more complicated here and I feel frustration looming, it is good to spare a thought for the women that we see more often than not whenever we go outside the gates of Bingham. They are the ‘wood carriers of Entoto’. Often barefoot, these women carry bundles of eucalyptus branches weighing 75-80 pounds over 10 miles down Mount Entoto to markets in Addis. Their task appears impossible but they repeat it day after day. Their presence can always put my own life swiftly back into perspective.