19th September 2008

A blog actually about the orphanage!! That makes a change, doesn't it?!

You will probably have seen on the TV – and experienced yourself – the economic situation: the rise in inflation and the rise in food prices and other day to day items. I don't pretend to totally understand the situation (despite being glued to BBC World most evenings!) but I do know that the price increase has really affected the orphanage. Due to cautious use of resources over the last few years, they are not in dire straits yet, but they are starting to struggle to find money to pay the increasing costs.

Because of this, we have decided that the rest of the money we raised in the last year (around £1500) will be put towards paying rent. It leaves the Hanna's Orphanage bank account rather depleted, but we have decided that it's best that the money is helping the orphanage rather than simply sitting in our bank account 'just in case'.

So the money you've generously given will ensure that 25 children have stable homes for at least a year by paying the rent on 3 houses for the orphanage. This ensures the children have a safe place to live, and don't have to keep moving around while the orphanage looks to find cheaper places for them to stay. Also, money people have raised by running half marathons (rather them than us!) will be used to pay the rent on one house which will house children who are HIV+.

Paying rent is not exciting and it doesn't make a good picture, but it's really what the orphanage desperately needs right now. So that is what we will provide. Of course, we have brought some fun stuff too (particularly a 'swing ball set' which Colin Mckenna donated … a lot of fun putting that up at Shiro Meda!!) – for a full breakdown of what we have bought, you can see our newsletter, coming to an inbox near you soon …!!

On a happier note, plans for 'Make a Difference Day Ethiopia 2008' are underway! Make a Difference Day is run by charity CSV (www.csv.org.uk) and is one day a year where as many people as possible are encouraged to volunteer to make their communities a better place. I've brought the concept with me to Ethiopia, and 18^th October 2008 will be our Make a Difference Day!

The concept of volunteering is not big in Ethiopia, although it is arguably more a way of life than it is in the UK or America. The generosity of Ethiopian people never fails to amaze me – no matter how little someone has, they are always ready to help someone worse off than them, and they are very willing to give their time to help you.

Our Make a Difference Day will involve the children of the orphanage as well as many expats and family members I have roped in, and we will paint the orphanage's main compound, including the offices, library and classrooms. This compound is used by the orphanage children, of course, but it is also used by the local community, including many older students studying to get a place at university.

The outside of the offices will all be painted green (so I am off to the famous 'Mega Paints' Factory to buy 6 gallons of green paint next week!) and some of the boys who are studying technical drawing will design a mural to go on the classroom walls. They will draw it on with chalk, while the less artistic among us will 'colour it in' with paint. Even the babies will be able to wield a paintbrush and help!

One last thing – Hanna's Orphanage is desperate for a volunteer to help us do all our IT stuff (updating myspace, maintaining our soon-to-be-unveiled website, sending out our newsletters etc). Could you give around 2 hours a week to do it? Do you know anyone who could? If you do, please email me at honeyjenny@gmail.com, cc'ing anthonyh007@gmail.com and I will send you some more details. Thank you

18th September

I'm in the classroom at the orphanage, marking some work, complete with audience as usual (who knew my day to day life could provoke such interest!). One of the older girls ventured a question.

"Do you have a husband?"

A common question – and my answer varies depending on who's asking! But this time I told the truth. "No, no husband."

The girl thought about this and then asked, finally, with no malice at all "Is it because you are not beautiful enough?"

Yes, honey, that's probably why. Sigh.

I love this country! :o)

New Years Day

We spent most of New Years Day at B's mother's house with various aunts, uncles and cousins. B's mother is a fantastic cook and the lunch table was full of traditional Ethiopian food, including (obviously) injera, dorro watt (chicken curry), shiro, spinach etc. There was also a dish called 'doulet', which is cut up sheep's stomach mixed with … er … something else! I've tried it once before, in London, and thought it was revolting, but B persuaded me to try it again – and it wasn't too bad. Not something I'd chose for my last meal, but not too bad. The trick is to clean it well (!), apparently, but I didn't take the recipe …

Much tastier were the cakes everyone had brought with them … mmmm! Lots of people laugh when I say Ethiopia cake is fabulous, but it really is! There is nothing I like more than to sit in a café on Bole Road, drinking shai and eating cake; chocolate, lemon, black forest gateau, it doesn't matter! So, with the cakes and the dorro watt, I ate so much I could barely move, and my belly was nearly as big as E's!

Later in the afternoon I went with E and M to go to visit other relatives, and at each house we were offered food and drink again – dorro watt, injera, shiro etc etc. At one house, I had a glass of 'talla' which is a kind of home brewed beer, but I managed to avoid the alcohol at the other houses – otherwise, everyone would have been carrying me home! It's hard to refuse food and drink without being rude – and I am no stranger to packing in a lot of food! – but I felt like I was going to burst if one more piece of injera passed my lips!

Food is a very social thing in Ethiopia – often, you all eat from the same plate, and whenever you go to someone's house, or even their office, you are always offered food and drink. Ethiopian New Year, although not as religious like many other holidays and celebrations here, is mostly about eating and food – and sharing it with relatives. For a few days before New Year, progress along the roads was slow due to all the goats and sheep being herded along, and on New Year's Eve itself, I could see all the animals tied up outside houses, ready for eating for New Years Day lunch! In the same places on the road, I can now see the left over bits of those animals, the bits that didn't make the pot – intestines and skin, mostly. Lovely!

It took me quite a while to be able to face food again after our New Year Celebration, and any weight I've lost while I've been over here has been grudgingly welcomed back! There is another celebration at the end of September, which happens in Meskel Square, and I have a feeling it will be another eating holiday …

New Years Eve

Happy New Year! Yes, it's the beginning of 2001 - Ethiopia follows a different calendar to the UK, so September 10^th is Ethiopian New Years Eve and New Years Day is 11^th September. Despite having many Ethiopian friends in London, I've never celebrated Ethiopian New Year before, so I didn't know what to expect!

On New Years Eve, I went to E and M's house with Y for dinner (pay attention to this, it may become something of a theme ..) - a meal of injera (Ethiopian bread), watt (Ethiopian curry), spinach (which isn't spinach at all, but a kind of cabbage) and shiro (mashed lentils and chick peas). After dinner, we created a 'shubbo' (a fire) in the garden.

M had already made the shubbos (bundles of wood about 10 feet long, all tied together) and gave one each to Y, E and me. He then lit his shubbo from the cooking fire in the house before carrying it outside and then lighting our ones from it. M and E's caught fire without a problem, but mine took ages – apparently even fire has something against faranjis!!

The shubbos are laid down in the shape of a cross on the grass, and the fire continues to burn. According to M, it's the women who have to lead the traditional song – but E had forgotten the words (she's pregnant, she has an excuse) and obviously I was no help at all! So instead, Y put on a Lauryn Hill CD and we danced around the fire to that (there is video evidence, but hopefully it will be destroyed shortly!).

The New Year tradition is to jump over the fire three times, which M and Y did with no problem at all (with M doing a little mid air spin on the 3^rd jump, just to show off!) but I was worried about my jeans catching fire, so I waited until the flames had died down before I attempted it!

Around 11 o clock, M took us somewhere to dance the New Year in. As we drove through Addis, we could see all the shops decorated with bright lights and the streets packed with people dressed in traditional dress and twenty-somethings out to party. Every so often a firework would shoot into the night sky.

We ended up in a club called Gazebo, watching a singer called Ma Dingo, who is quite well known in Ethiopia. As we paid to get in, the heavily pregnant E barely raised an eyebrow, but of course the word 'faranji' was immediately mentioned by the door staff! It makes me tempted to start wearing a mask or something. There wasn't much dancing done by us, but there was a little count down and we all cheered in the New Year.

We tried to move onto somewhere else – this time playing English music – but by now everywhere was so packed there wasn't really enough oxygen left for us all to breathe! Eventually, we admitted defeat and went home to bed, to prepare for the eating marathon that is New Years Day!

Things I Miss

Forgive my (constant) self-indulgence, but since I did a blog post
about all the reasons I love Ethiopia, I wanted to do one about all
the things I miss in the UK. Obviously, I miss my friends and my
family, and I miss my own home, but these are the little things that I
miss having in my day to day life:

- Text messages!
That little envelope in the corner of my phone screen used to make me
smile! I love to text. Text messaging has is now available in Addis
(I believe the government 'enabled' it for the Millennium celebrations
in September 2007) but people don't use it very much as far as I can
tell. And anyway, anyone who is likely to text me is in the UK, and
it doesn't work internationally.

- The Metro
My morning routine in London was my favourite part of the day: listen
to the radio as I doze on the bus, then jump on the tube with the
Metro. Yes, it may just be a collection of press releases with no
in-depth reporting (and they did write that Ethiopia is a West African
country, which annoyed me!), but my morning wasn't complete without
it. And how am I going to know whether my day is going to be good or
bad now I can't read my horoscope?!

- Chris Moyles on Radio 1
See above! The bus journey was never the same without Comedy Dave, Aled, et al.

- Nandos
I make small involuntary mewing noises when I think of the peri peri
sauce, of chicken breast in pitta with chips, of the fat free
chocolate frozen yoghurt that we all got a sugar high from at
Miranda's birthday … mmmmm ….

- The mix of cultures
Spend a day in London and you will see people from nearly every
country you can imagine, and hear 100s of different languages spoken.
There are restaurants serving every cuisine in the world, from
Ethiopian to Chinese, to Spanish to Lebanese, and there are always a
variety of cultural events happening. The multiculturalism is
something I've always loved about London, and I miss that in Ethiopia.
Not that there aren't different nationalities in the city, there are,
but simply not to the extent that there are in London – and a
foreigner (be they black, white or otherwise) is still a source of
amusement and interest. It can get wearing after a while.

- Have I Got News for You, QI, Mock the Week, Friends etc
All those TV programmes I enjoy so much! I particularly miss the TV
channel Dave, and all the programmes on it (even Top Gear, though I'm
doing okay without that so far!), but generally I miss comedy and
satire. As you may guess, satire is not big in Ethiopia! I miss
watching a panel of comedians make comments on the week's news – even
if that week was July 27th 1998, as is sometimes the case on Dave!

- Indian food
What I wouldn't give for a chicken tikka masala with garlic nann bread
right now …! There is a very expensive, very posh Indian restaurant
in the Sheraton Hotel which I am saving for when I am feeling really,
really homesick, and the craving for curry is just too strong…

Jimma: Part 3 – the bus journey back!

I'd like to say the bus journey back was better – we knew what to
expect, we could prepare better. But no, it was much worse! We had
to be at the bus station by 4.30am. 4.30AM!!! As it was, I was awake
at 4 as my stomach was hurting and I felt sick – this did not bode
well for the journey ahead.

The Jimma bus station was not quite as busy as the one in Addis, and
we got better seats (possibly because we got there earlier) with
Anthony, Danyele and I able to sit together. The bus ceremony
continued for a good hour, while Danyele slept and Anthony and I
groaned at intervals 'come ON!', but eventually the bus pulled away.

The ride was okay – not too bumpy and we stopped a few times, just to
give some men the chance to pee in a bush and for the driver to have a
quick smoke. Danyele slept heavily, while Anthony read his book and I
leant forward onto the seat in front of me and tried to stop the
contents of my stomach exiting through my mouth. There was a lot of
yogic breathing going on!

About two hours into the journey, when the cold sweat was starting to
pour off of me, Hanna gave me a lemon to smell, to stop any feelings
of nausea. Well. One sniff of that, and I was throwing up
everywhere. Luckily I threw up into a ziplock, airtight bag in which
I'd packed our toiletries. But it had a hole!! It's supposed to be
airtight, and it had a bloody hole!!! So poor Anthony's bag got … er
…dripped on (sorry).

The rest of the journey passed fairly uneventfully, punctuated by
small vomiting sounds, and the rhythm of yogic breathing. Danyele
woke up, Anthony continued his book, and a few other women joined in
the being sick competition, except they managed to stand up and throw
up out of the window!

We stopped at the same small town for some fresh air and refreshment,
and we pleaded with the pub landlord to let us use his toilets again
(the ones at the bus station made Danyele retch as she approached them
… not a good start!). This time they weren't as clean, but there were
no goats trying to come in with us, so that was a bonus.

From this town, it is a 2 hour journey to Addis so I was really happy
we'd be home soon. Except I didn't know about the searches. Busses
that are coming back to Addis from the countryside are subject to
searches by policemen – Hanna says they are looking for big quantities
of coffee or khat which we are planning to sell in Addis without
paying taxes. Three times we had to pull over and half of the
passengers got off (I'm not sure why only half) while a policeman (or
someone) came on and had a look round. As Anthony pointed out, if
we'd wanted to smuggle something, we'd just have to NOT leave it on
the seat with a big label saying 'Smuggled Stuff'. Easy!

The last search was the big one, as Hanna warned us. We all had to
get off of the bus this time and they started going through bags etc.
After about 15 minutes some people got back on the bus, and we
followed. The policemen on the bus angrily waved the men back off the
bus, but allowed the women in to sit down and of course us (sometimes
there are advantages to being faranji!). They appeared to be giving a
Rastafarian guy quite a hard time about the khat he had, but
eventually they were satisfied and we were able to go on our way.

Because of all the stopping and searching, the two hour journey took
nearer three, and I have never been so glad to see a bus station!!
D was there to pick us up and take us back to the hotel, where we
spent a good 3 hours recovering before venturing out to dinner.

I did tell Danyele and Anthony I'd show them the 'real' Ethiopia!

Jimma: Part 2 - Jimma

We were all really hungry by this point, and we went to the 'upmarket'
hotel in Jimma for some lunch. The food was good, the hotel was
really pretty (lots of pink chalets clustered around a swimming pool
and a restaurant terrace) and the TV was playing a report about the
closing ceremony of the Olympics. It was in Amharic, but all three of
us paid attention when we heard the words 'Gordon Brown' in the mix of
unfamiliar words!

After lunch we went back to the hotel for a rest, at Hanna's request.
Danyele and Anthony didn't need a rest, so they played Uno, but I
definitely did. I slept really well, only waking to beg Anthony to
give me just another 10 minutes until I had to get up …

Then we took a walk and a short minibus ride to the children's house.
Instead of being called 'farange' as we walked, we just got 'you, you,
you' from the kids that passed us. If someone calls you 'farange' you
can call back 'abesha (Ethiopian)' which usually gets a laugh, but
with 'you' there's no real comeback!

The house is lovely – large, with quite a few rooms, and set on a
large compound where they can grow their own vegetables, the children
can play, and they can keep the sheep we are buying them. There are
19 children at the moment (although it does change, depending on
mothers being released, and new people being put in prison). They are
mostly between about 2 and 11, although there are a few older
children.

They were very quiet and smiley to start with, but as soon as I got
the camera out, they were up and away! If you ever need to break the
ice with a group of under 10s in Africa (or Aisa, I'd guess!) bring
out a camera. Works in seconds!

We gave them the footballs and some of the Haribo (the next step in my
'E numbers to Ethiopia' masterplan!) and started quite a boisterous
game of catch. The baby of the house, Fraser, decided that the
brightly coloured football was hers and hers alone, so she carried
around like a baby and her face broke into a beaming smile when she
managed to throw and catch it.

While they were playing, Hanna told me the stories of some of the
children. A very strong motivation for mothers taking their children
into jail with them is that they are at risk of revenge attacks by the
victim's family. For example, one of the boy's father is in prison for killing a
man (I don't know why). For a while he, his mother and his brother
stayed in their house while the father was in prison, but then the
victim's family set fire to the house in revenge. The mother managed
to get the smaller boy out, but the older boy was trapped in the
flames and suffered severe burns. He is fine, a happy and healthy
boy, but he has lost the sight in one eye and has a lot of facial
disfigurement. He is safe in the orphanage now, though.

Hanna told me another story of how one of the boys was 2 or 3 when he
watched his mum and her new boyfriend kill his father and bury him
under the orange tree in the garden. His mother told everyone that
her husband had disappeared, and soon set up house with the new
boyfriend. But the little boy knew where his father was, and he kept
saying to people 'my father is there!' pointing at the orange tree.
Nobody listened to him until many years later, when they finally dug
up the tree and found the body. He is now safely in the orphanage
too.

It was hard to connect the stories with the shrieking and laughing
children in front of me. I hope the orphanage can give them the
stability and safety they need, and we intend to help them do that in
every way possible.

We couldn't stay for very long at the orphanage as Hanna wanted us
back to the hotel before dark (which was a shame, as the kids had
started to watched Shrek 3, which I quite wanted to stay for …) but I
will be back. The house is quite bare at the moment, and there are
likely to be more children coming in September, so we will use some of
the money we've raised to buy the things they need – some toys, books,
bright things to go on the wall, bedding, blankets etc.

This time though we might hire a minibus rather than using the normal bus …

Jimma: Part 1 – the bus journey there!

Jimma is a place about 350km outside of Addis where Hanna has set up a
children's home for the children of the prisoners (see blog post 3rd
August!). Hanna's Orphanage is paying the rent for the house over the
next few years, so we wanted to go and visit and see what else we
could do.

This is why Anthony, Danyele and I were at Addis Ababa bus station at
ten to six in the morning, trying to find Hanna in the millions of
people who were also taking busses. I have literally never seen so
many people in one place – and I live in London! – and it looked like
absolute chaos, so I'm glad D was able to walk with us to the
gate. Of course, it was fairly easy for Hanna to find us as we were
the only white faces for miles around!

After a scary moment where I began to disappear under the wheels of a
bus (thanks to whoever pulled me clear – I don't know who it was!), we
found the bus we needed and were squidged onto the back seat between
two quite disgruntled Ethiopian men. There is a section in the Brandt
Guide to Ethiopia which describes something called the 'bus ceremony'
which makes me laugh every time I read it, and although we didn't go
so far as to walk round the bus three or four times, there was a lot
of fuss as people were seated and then moved, and friends and
relatives got on and off. We finally left at 7.00am and began the 7
hour bus journey …

It wasn't too bad, but it wasn't the most comfortable bus journey I've
ever had. Danyele and I could sleep by resting on Anthony's shoulders
or on the back of the seat in front of us, but poor Anthony only had
the aisle in front of him, so couldn't sleep at all. When we weren't
sleeping, we could look out of the window at the passing villages and
fields. One time I opened my eyes and the bus was completely
surrounded by water – I thought we were actually driving on a lake!
But the fields had flooded in the night's heavy rain, and we could see
women wading from their houses to the road, food held above their
heads, skirts rolled up. It's apparently a place which floods
regularly – one house even had a makshift wooden bridge, connecting it
to the road.

We stopped once on the journey, at a town which I forget the name of.
We got off of the bus and all of a sudden we were surrounded by
hundreds of people selling seeds, lemons, mango juice and, of course,
khat. Khat is a plant which, when chewed, produces a mild narcotic
effect (so I'm told!). It's very popular in Ethiopia and surrounding
countries (particularly Somalia) and if you drive along the road out
of Addis, you can see people sitting on blankets by the road, chewing
the leaves and enjoying the sun. Quite a few people were chewing khat
on the bus, presumably to make the journey more bearable. I
considered it myself …

We didn't buy any khat or seeds or anything, we just stood and enjoyed
the sun and got some fresh air. Danyele and I decided it would be a
good idea to find some toilets, and a nice man who owned a pub (next
to a hotel called the Semen Hotel!! Is it bad that that made me
giggle a lot?!) let us use his. They were the 'hole in the ground'
type, but fairly clean and okay – except that there were three goats
in the garden who seemed particularly interested in what Danyele and I
were doing. Nothing like intruding goats to give you performance
anxiety!

The rest of the bus journey passed without incident, although I was
very, very glad to see Jimma Bus Station appear as we turned round the
corner.