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.