Cake

Someone who knows him well said Haile would be far more than a taxi driver if I needed help with anything. Well I needed help on Chris’s birthday – where on earth do you get a birthday cake in Addis? I had seen some cakes in a coffee shop chain, and also in the Hilton. However “I’m just popping out to get a cake” is not something you can say to your staff at lunch time here, because popping anywhere is almost impossible, and cakes are few and far between. Cake is a western introduction to Ethiopia, so the Amharic word for “cake” is … “cake” (or “ኬክ” as they say here).

I wonder when we'll have a normal week? Just when you thought Christmas was over another holiday happens. We took the usual days off over Christmas and New Year (the British ones - Americans don't do Boxing Day but we did), then the Ethiopian "Gena" happened (7th January), then this Monday there was another holiday. It wasn't entirely clear that it would be Monday or Tuesday until the last minute, but Monday it was so the clinic was closed.