Visiting Lemma's school with friends from Spicer Street Church
Jerry cans full of water will be carried using the wooden supports on these donkeys
A weaver bird weaving a new nest near Lake Langano
I joined the Year 1 class at RICE School as they had just started a lesson on ‘Toys and games of the past’. The young Ethiopian teachers showed the children how to play ‘Wedem’ similar to ‘jacks’ but using stones. They also demonstrated ‘Chocolatta’, a version of ‘cat’s cradle’.
There are aspects to life in the community that foreigners are rarely aware of. Take “berbere” for example - a spice essential for Ethiopian cooking. In the month of “Hidar” (the third month of the Ethiopian calendar - 10th November to 9th December) many women make it – from scratch! The only awareness a temporary resident here may have that something unusual is taking place is the slightly increased price of garlic and onions.
When somebody who is either mentally ill, high on something or both attacks your car whilst in a traffic jam and rips the door mirror off, it’s easy to think “I’ll blog that”. Blogging about the difficult, the troublesome and the crazy things that happen here is fairly easy, and it’s tempting to think that’s what will grab our readers’ attention.
It all began with the pork pie. Not any old pork pie. A Sainsbury’s special Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. It almost hit Chris on the head, and bounced on to the floor of the minibus as we sped along the M9 towards Edinburgh airport.
The cannons going off in the middle of Addis Ababa at 5am or so were very faint. But it wasn’t that that woke me up. It was the Imam in the local mosque who had cranked his PA system volume up to full and was calling the faithful to prayer through the loud speakers on his minaret. It was like he was in the room with me.
“Spider urine”. Taking my eyes off the pot-holed road ahead full of minivan taxis going in seeming random directions, I looked askance at Haile as he was driving. “Spider urine? For impetigo? Really?” Noting my raised-eyebrowed, wide-eyed expression (something he takes great joy in producing) he chuckled. “Yes. You rub it on.”
I don’t know if this is true in any other country, but here in Ethiopia we buy cake by the kilogram. While we were here in 2007 Chris ordered a 2 kg birthday cake for me that turned out to be quite a large partially defrosted Black Forest gateau, brought to me on a trolley in a French restaurant with fireworks blazing from the corners. It was accompanied by two Ethiopian waiters trying somewhat unsuccessfully to sing “Happy Birthday” to someone named on the cake as “Dr Phlioig”.
If young teens in the western world search the Internet for careers advice they will be inundated with ideas and opportunities. It’s rather different for our local girls. In Ethiopia, further education particularly at university is allocated to rather than selected by the individual.
I put a suit and tie on. Such a rare sight - I was receiving compliments pretty much all day. But apart from pleasing many of the folks at HQ, it had little effect at the Ministry of Health. Here’s what happened.
7:25am and the sun was streaming through the window of the stairwell from our apartment as I staggered down the stairs carrying nearly all I would need later for Y’tesfa Birhan, and with my computer and school bag over my shoulder.