A wet birthday

Well last Sunday Gillian – my housemate and colleague headed off to Addis Ababa to meet her daughter and from there they went travelling to Axum and Lalibella, they just arrived back yesterday, but a quiet week for me it was not, people seemed to think I would be incredibly lonely without Gillian and so very kindly made sure I went out for either lunch or dinner everyday which was really nice of them.
Tuesday was my birthday. I am now a quarter of a century old!! Very old, if I lived here I would have two children at least by now! When we were training with VSO before we came here on one of the courses they showed a video of a volunteer somewhere in Africa, and it was his birthday but he didn’t tell anyone and he felt really depressed, well my birthday wasn’t at all like that! Ethiopians don’t celebrate birthdays but everyone was happy to celebrate mine, my colleagues took me out for lunch and Steve (Kenyan Volunteer) came for dinner as it was Steve’s birthday too.
It rained as well on Tuesday which is a happy occasion here as seemingly there should be more rain so people are afraid there will be a drought, so everyone was in good form. Our water supply here comes and goes so sometimes you turn on the tap and there is no water which was obviously what happened to Sercalum on Tuesday and she forgot to turn off the tap again and locked up the house and went home. At 3pm I decided to nip into the house on my way back from the post office, every other day last week it was after 9pm when I came home so it was a happy chance that I came to the house when I did as our garden was uncharacteristically wet (it hadn’t begun to rain at this point yet), then I opened the door and the hall was covered in water and there was a tremendous noise coming from the kitchen, I waded through the water in the kitchen to the tap which isn’t over the sink like you would expect but actually over the drainer so the water was thundering out onto the drainer and onto the floor instead of down the plughole. So I spent an hour and half bailing the water out of the house until it was raining so much outside and I was so fed up of baling that I just headed back to work.
So I had decided to cook Tibs for Steve it is like fried meat Ethiopian style, but mine didn’t turn out slightly spicy and very tender it turned out black and as tough as an old boot! Possibly because I had to wade through the water back and forth from the stove to the counter etc so wasn’t really taking good care of my cooking, a bit of a disaster, but we had a good evening, we had birthday cake and some drinks and listened to songs from the 80s and 90s and told Abdu (Steve’s guard) about all the things you can get in Ireland and Kenya that you can’t get in Ethiopia. It is funny that although Steve is just from Kenya which is next to Ethiopia, it is still totally different here from Nairobi. So if anyone has been to Kenya and thought it was pretty bad poverty wise just think there are worse places!
On Wednesday two of the younger women from work and one of their sisters came for lunch and we had a nice lunch and a good chat and then on Thursday evening I went for dinner with one of the other lecturers and on Friday I went to one of the women’s houses for lunch so a busy busy week!
In work there wasn’t much to do this week I typed, wrote reports and plans, did illustrations for a book, and made a new Aesthetics display.
Today another volunteer James was coming to Dessie to stay for a few days but he missed the bus, so he will come tomorrow instead and on Friday I am heading to Mekelle for a few days and meeting with some other volunteers so it should be a good weekend.
So not much else to report really, life is as normal here in Dessie,
Take care
Ciao,
Orla