Christmas, New Years and Christmas again.

The night of the 25th was spent at the luxury Sheridan hotel. The Xmas buffet catered for everyone. Akanksha enjoyed hummus and pita, Sarah had several chocolate mousses, Darius kept returning to the meat section and I had gorged myself on sushi.


We are getting to know our workmates more, mainly thanks to Akanksha who makes an effort to get to know people… unlike myself who is making an effort to get to know the television timetable. We have had a couple of parties over at out house. The first one I crashed early, after I went to sleep some bought out a hash cookie, has a few bites each and eventually retired. Our maid Kasuge (who was told not to touch the cookie) decided to eat the remainder. Poor girl, she has never touched alcohol and suddenly she was dealing with being stoned off her tree. Her friend Tizita (who now lives with us and does the work that Kasuge is hired to do) woke me up at 4am to sort it out. They had come to the logical conclusion that Kasuge had been possessed by something that was in the bad breath of one of the guests.


New Years was forgettable, we went to the home of a friend of someone Sarah had met. Fire, drinking, banter, bar afterwards, bit of dancing all on the posh side of town. I got talking to a Portuguese ex-pat it-boy, good lad. A lot of the people I know here are a bit boring; they are in their 20s and still seem to consider getting trashed as an achievement. They go out a lot and spend money that I need to save to get my arse over out of the country in the holidays and back to the UK… hang on, maybe I’m the boring one.


Christmas here is on the 7th of January. I guess the Ethiopian Orthodox Jesus was born on a different day (The Ethiopian Orthodox Mary talks and has adventures). People get together with their families, eat sheep, drink and dance a lot. On the 6th we had the staff over to our house (the board members rocked our party). Darius arranged a sheep for us. It made a valiant escape attempt, but was caught by physics, biology, mathematics and early primary teachers several hundred meters from our house. The Junior English grammar teacher slaughtered it. This was quite a biology lesson.


Cats in the developed world recognise and respond to the sounds of the refrigerator door, or electric can opener. The cats here respond in force to the sound of butchers knifes being sharpened. Christmas is a good time for cats.


It was an excellent barbeque; we invited the neighbours the ex-pats from New Years. The next night (Christmas night) the neighbours returned the favour and we went over to their house to eat with their family. Dancing is as common a part of family gathering here as bickering is where we are from. I lead the family in a spiral dance, a common circle dance done at pagan rituals. Cool.


I have been utterly spoilt from the outside world lately I have received calls from Star (now in UK and a published author) and Tristam both with terrible phone lines. Both my parents called over the holiday season, I think they were using skype rather than phone cards so the line was clearer. Aside from the wondrous pre-Christmas package from Cat filled with chocolate and other goodies, I have also been privileged to receive a package from my mother, Jan-Andrew Henderson (.com)’s fantastic soon-to-be-published book which my flatmates are now reading, and just yesterday a whole load of socks and jocks from Missy, that girl has great taste in underwear and despite Ethiopia having a booming cotton industry, they have not yet started to apply their natural fibres to undergarments. And best of all… a promise from Tristam to visit next month, he will accompany Darius and myself to Somaliland; actually he’ll probably lead the trip. That just can’t be beaten. So thank you all, I’m feeling very loved from your attention.

Promotion, Ponytail and Poo.

A new foreigner has arrived: Darius from Canada. So now we have 5 in our house. The maid has moved out to a room in the back of the house and her friend (who actually cleans and does laundry) has moved in with her. Having a guy in the house really changes the chi for the better. I don't recall ever living with just females before... it's different. The flat has become a hell of a lot more social, we have even arranged a secret Santa, and are going out for Christmas dinner. Today is the 25th of December, but Christmas is not for another 2 weeks. All us foreigners have got the day off. we even have new years day off too despite new years being in September.



Darius has taken my grade 5 classes (the shite kids) and I keep my grade 6 classes (the cool kids) and I have been promoted to "unit leader" which means I'm half in administration and half teaching. Yep, I'm moving u the ladder of Ethiopian primary education, at this rate I'll be headmistress by June. I have an office I share with 3 other unit leaders, my own desk, which I don't quite know what to do with at I don't have a computer. I get sent all the naughty kids to deal with which I quite enjoy. I'm trying to convince management to get me a computer so I can write curriculum's or training manuals or something.



It was over a year ago that Star shaved my head for me and I have finally acchieved ponytail day. Yes, ponytail day is the day that anyone growing out short hair marks the magnificent accomplishment of being able to get all their hair into a single ponytail without the use of wax or clips. It's a momentous day.



Another momentous day is always a good-poo day. I'm proud to report that after months and months of every possible combination of liquid solid and gas finding it's way out of my body in a variety of surprising force and in an unexpected spectrum of hues at unpredictable times... finally, finally my bowels are back to normal. Well as normal as can be expected here. I still consider myself to be the most resilient in the flat. My immune system has had a work out and I would say is at peak strength now.



I tried to post on facebook but no luck, It might be linked to blogger and therefore blocked, but I think that it is more likely just me. So I'm dependant to Gemma posting for me even that is dodgy. I get the feeling if I mention g o v e r n m e n t or s o m a l i a my emails won't go through, maybe just paranoia.



In other news I'm not going to go to P a l e s t i n e in the February semester break as I had hoped. I could afford it, but I wouldn't be able to afford anything else. So I'm going to stick with the overland travel and head for S o m a l i l a n d in the north of S o m a l i a. I know that S o m a l i a is not most peoples ideal holiday destination, check out S o m a l i l a n d on wikipedia and you'll see why I'm attracted to the place. And my last bit of really exciting news: I'm going to be aunt. My brother is going to have a baby next year which is awesome.



Right, I'm now going to attempt to send Gemma some photos to add to this and the last post. If there are no photos, it is most likely my fault, not hers. And then I'll head home to eat all the incredible Christmas chocolate that the wonderful Cat posted to me. Merry Christmas.