Getting ready to leave Africa

In 13 days (that's 312 hours, or 18,720 minutes) I'll be leaving Addis and Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa and Africa itself to head back to the UK. I have to admit, I'm getting all sentimental. What was annoying yesterday is going back to being endearing.


Peter, The British teacher who came in to teach grades 3 and 4 did a runner. He took a two-week holiday, returned to collect his pay and then disappeared. After two weeks we started to get a bit concerned, we tried to track down his friends though facebook. After 3 weeks, we called the British Embassy and told them we had misplaced an Englishman. They took my number and called me back the next day to tell me that he was safe and well in Thailand where he had been for the past two weeks.


So, leaving and not telling us was a bit rubbish, so was taking a two week holiday, popping back for pay-day and then naffing off. But in his defence: after he collected his waged he left the flat money for the maid and the phone bill. He also left behind a load of teaching materials and some computer equipment that will be given to the school which is properly equivalent in value to his monthly wage. And he left behind a load of (unmarked) tests and his mark book, so we have something that we can use to give the kids grades. So despite the fact he did a runner, his departure leaves less of a bitter taste than Ebony, who still hasn't paid her phone bill nor has her boyfriend returned the stuff he took... ok, let’s face it: stole.


Grade 3 and 4 are getting a bit paranoid, their foreign teachers keep leaving them without saying goodbye. Poor kids.


My computer had a few virus problems, so I got the whole thing re-formatted at an internet café around the corner from the school. It was one of those strange moments: walking down the un-sealed street through a small herd of mixed animals carrying my CPU. As I made my way through the goats, sheep, two cows, a donkey and a horse, the herder, wearing a traditional blanket around him and carrying a long stick, reached into his pocket to answer his mobile phone.


The yearbook is done. I really enjoyed doing it, there are many changes that I would like to make, but it's at the printers and I'm hoping they do a good job.


I've done most of my work, what is left is giving and grading the final exams. Then the closing day celebrations. I have been told that I shall be the master of ceremonies. Yep, get that white face up there on stage, always looks good for the public image.


The school really wants me to stay another year, hey have been very persistent, it is flattering; I respect and like my bosses. But I said that the only way I would do that is if they moved the whole school, all the students, most of the staff and the owners to a different country. I really love the school and the people, but I would go insane if I lived here another year. Unfortunately my ‘no’ was not good enough. So I enlisted the help of my mother who wrote an email detailing the reasons why I just can’t stay another year in Ethiopia. The second they read her letter, they all backed off and are no longer insisting I stay. Even in my 30s my ma has got my back.

May: not spectacular

This is the third time I’m writing this, last time I managed to complete the whole thing before the computer fucked up. It’s so typical here. It is so frustrating.


May has not been the best moth all told. The best bits seemed to come from the anticipation of leaving. I’m at that exciting time of planning and booking journeys. I depart Addis on the 8th of July. I’ll spend 4 days back in Yemen before heading to London. There I’ll hang with Tristam for a couple of weeks, acclimatize to modern living, give myself a make over. There is going to be a lot of scrubbing and strategic hair removal. Then I’ll spend a few nights with Missy and up to Edinburgh in August. I’ve been counting down the days for ages. 24 days until I leave Ethiopia.


Some kid stole my wallet. I share an office with 3 other unit leaders. It is where the naughty kids are sent. This particular 15 year old lad was left alone in the office and found my wallet on my desk to be irresistible. I went to all the upper grade classes and told them that the wallet was protected by ‘the law of karma’ and that whosoever had it would feel the ‘curse’ until it returned. They would be plagued by bad luck, their friends would exclude them and their parents wouldn’t listen to them … and all other things that adolescents feel anyway. I was exploiting my dark wardrobe and innate weirdness.


It could have been the threat of the curse or the other unit leaders’ interrogation methods. But the boy confessed and brought it back, two weeks later he bought back the photo of missy and myself from the good-ol-days and the money (4usd). He was suspended for a week and won’t be accepted back next year. I asked him why he did it: “the devil made me do it.” He got a lecture on personal responsibility. Also missing from my office is a thesaurus that AK brought back from India and all my photo CDs… yes, all my photos. I now only have photos from Ethiopia. Crap.


If you have something stolen in Ethiopia is always your fault, your locks weren’t strong enough or you didn’t hide it well enough. It is never considered that the thief shouldn’t be stealing. This could be why in the 10 African countries this is the only place where I have had stuff stolen. Also could be because it is poor and Christian. Christianity promotes forgiveness, redemption and salvation. Islam promotes hands of thieves being cut off… guess which places have less theft.



The rains have started again. It’s nice. They are fresh and cooling and sometimes there are thunderstorms. It kind of feels full circle for me again. We are also starting to get bitten again. First I thought it was the usual mites, fleas and mosquitoes, and then Sarah pointed out the two tiny puncture wounds on each bite… from the fangs of a spider. I don’t have spidy-sences just yet. I’m hoping super powers will develop soon.


My birthday was this month; I’m now 32 years old. I cooked my flatmates a half Scottish breakfast (like a full Scottish breakfast but without the black pudding or haggis). It was the first time in a long time that we had had bacon. We (Sarah, Daruis our two maids and I) went to the post office for too long, attempted to see a museum but it was closed due to power cut, and then hung out by the pool at the Hilton hotel. The maids loved it; they swam and took photos of each other in their new bikinis. We ate at a Yemen restaurant and caught a movie at the only cinema that plays western movies. It’s just exhausting leaving the house here. All that is an amazingly big day here.


Once again it is Sarah who has the best story of the month. She was attacked in a taxi late one night. Driving home he pulled over and started grabbing her, She said “No” “enough” etc, when that didn’t deter him she slapped him a few times, he got more aggressive so she punched him in the head and got out of the cap. She ran to a (very rare) open petrol station and got another taxi home.


She went to the police who are inept, corrupt and impotent. Then she called the US embassy ho are open, efficient and capable. The next night we went with the secret police who questioned all the taxi drivers from the area where Sarah got the taxi. That’s pretty much as far as it’ll go. Sarah was a bit shaken and really pissed off. It’s not very night that you fight your way our of a rape (it wasn’t a potential rape, if Sarah hadn’t punched the guy in the head and got out there is no doubt how it would have ended). That chick is though as steel.


The yearbook is going slowly, between teaching, technical difficulties and power cuts I think we can still pull it together. I’m still chasing Ebony and Kevin to return what they have taken from the school. Everybody else gave up a long time ago, but I still believe that there might be some shred of integrity within them that invokes a response.

April: I got a pimple in between my butt cheeks I've never been a really zitty person. But since living in the 6th dirtiest city in the world I have d

I've never been a really zitty person. But since living in the 6th dirtiest city in the world I have developed a bit of a pimply back. bacne - eugh. But the zit between my arse cheeks was a new low for bad skin.

Akanksha has left. She has gone back to Turkey to live, there she swims in the beautiful Mediterranean sea and eats delicious food everyday. we are all very jealous, and we miss her a lot. Akanksha has one of those really open and welcoming personalities. It was her more than any of us that got to know the other staff members and befriend them. She put in the work to know Adddis Ababa and enjoy what it had to offer. She is an inspiration, and now she has gone, well, we are kinda deflated.

Darius has taken over Akanksha's classes and We have a new flatmate: Peter from the UK. He's mad. He's mad in a good, interesting, lively way. He gets drunk on weekends, comes home late, breaks into really loud song, brings back stray dogs to the house, fall asleep in taxis and doesn't regain consciousness, that kinda thing. He does really well teaching 3rd and 4th grade though. Every time I walk past his class he is standing on the desk or rolling around on the floor explaining some concept. it's the kind of active teaching methods that are very unfamiliar and really loved here.

We have also had another Peter for the UK live with us. He was a volenteer in the same programme I did in Sudan. we breifly met in Khartoum. He decided to leave Sudan but stay in Africa. Ethiopia is the most logical next country. So he spent 7 weeks awquardly fitting his 6 foot plus frame onto our 5 foot something sofa, hanging out with us, and generally being a flatmate and freind to all. He has gone south for a while, something to do with permaculture, but will be back again soon.

I got trapped in a school toilet for 15 minutes. It took one PE teacher, one computer teacher, two administators a science teacher and the school bus driver to get me out. The smashed off the door handle and lock, it has not been replaced... maybe it never will.

Sarah has the best story of the month. she went on a weekend trip to Ambo. a wee town where they make fizzy water. She and her friend were riding down a street in a horse drawn carriage when the horse went mental (as horses sometimes do... big animals should not be so jittery) and started bolting down the hill that they were on. The driver freaked out and jumped off the moving carriage Sarah took this as a logial clue that they were in shit so she jumped off too.. her freind stayed on right till the end of the hill thinking it was safest to stay with the horse. All of them ended up with minor injurys. Sarah was a mess of cuts and brusies and got a sprained wrist.

Ethiopian Easter is celebrated on some random day that is different (of course) to the random day that the rest of the world celebrates easter (ok, it's not random, it's pagan, it is the first Friday after the first full moon after the spring equinox) we had several 4 day weekends in April. On the easter weekend our lovely bosses phoned and said they were bringing over a chicken curry. our lazy maids (we have two now, we hired another one) sprung into action doing all the cleaning that they should have done throughout the week. something was lost in translation because our bosses turned up with two live chickens and one live sheep. A man also turned up later in the day to kill the chickens, we asked him to come back in a couple of days to kill the sheep. The sheep was cool, we named him Tibbs which is the name for fried mutton in Ethiopia. before his death we got him drunk on a bottle and a half of Ethiopia's finest red wine. I don't know if it made a difference to the meat but he died happy.

I have a new task, I'm the sole editor and designer of the school magazine. I'll let you know how that goes.

March: met the man of my dreams

If you are a regular reader... i.e. my mum, you would have noticed a huge void in this blog. It mostly comes down to the ample power cuts that we are experiencing. Some say that it's due to the water levels being low so hydroelectricity is in short supply. Others say it is because the government sells most of Ethiopia's power to to Sudan and other countries. It's properly both, it's definitely inconvenient. We are scheduled for 3 days a week without power from 7am-9pm. but they throw in a few extra days here and there as a bonus.

So I'm going to try and catch you up on the past 3 months over the next week. honestly, nothing of great consequence has happened but that is no hindrance to this little blogger.

I met the man of my dreams. He was in his tattoo studio (which was excetionally clean) He has a prickly-shaved head, soft brown eyes, both lobes gently streched with 15mm steel ring plugs, and facial tattoos that are a cross between Maori moko and Sudanese Dinke scarification. Beautiful. In his studio he has the most exquisit shelving system. It's calved oak, a balance of drawers, files and bookshelf space. The man of my dreams has unfortunatly only made an appearance in my dreams. I think he might be some sort of idealised animus... all the books on his superbly organised bookshelves were on occult symbolism. I'm now considering how I'd look with facial tattoos... maybe when I'm older.

Addis Ababa hosted its second international film festival. Oh it was so good to have something to do! somewhere to go. All the films were on human rights and mainly focused in Africa. For one week I was very happy.

Akanksha returned back from India bearing gifts of books, books and more books. What a legend. She looked so refreshed and clean.

We got a new foreign staff member, her name is Salam, she now teaches in the KG section. She is mixed race from a rasta family living in Ethiopia, but she is from north England (fa naw watta mean.) She tells strange stories. Really strange. for example she said that she had to go south for a funeral, a friend of the family had died. then she discovered that the man who had died was actually her biological father, then we hear that he had been stabbed twice and set on fire... all this information was given in a chirpy hey-what-can-you-do type manner. Other stories include being robbed 9an needing a loan from the school... which is exactly what happened to one of her sisters the year before, she borrowed money from a different school and didn't pay it back), chased, having a man at her door tying to kill her. tough week huh. She is nice, but I don't really trust her.

Ebony is not responding to her emails. Her boyfriend got back to us and promised to bring back the stuff he took, he did bring back one bed cover and payed off $30 off her $210 phone bill. he hasn't been back since. This is not doing a great deal for race relations. The school unfortunately believe that white people are better than black people because us honkys appear to have a different work ethic. Now with Salem telling extreme stories and asking the school for money, and Ebony not exactly falling over herself to pay the school back for her phone bills... they haven't represent the most ideal employees and them being the only foreigners of African origin - it doesn't look good.

I got a filing cabinet in my office. Anything I ask for they get me. S I have bought a bunch of suspension files (I've been hanging out with Texan Sarah for way too long .. now everything comes in bunches) and it brings me great delight to order and file every piece of paper in lovely ordered systems. there once was a time when I found great pleasure in swinging topless around a pole... Now I find my joy comes from filing lesson plans and creating upcoming event calendars that the staff here don't use.