A very quick blog sent from an internet cafe in Addis, where I am spending some time with my mum! We have just come from the orpganage,where together we have sorted out a plan to save the orphanage from having to move out for the next 6 months. This buys them some time to start looking for a place to rent or - the ideal situation - buy.
I will write a longer blog tomorrow when I get back to Lalibela, but the situation was not caused by an increase in rent, as we were first told, but rather tax payments required of the landlady. It's a frustrating system, but money you have donated has bought them some breathing space while we attempt to sort it out. Otherwise, they would have needed to move out by the first week in October.
Thank you thank you thank you.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Sunday, 13 September 2009
8th September
A slightly more cheerful blog this time! Summer School finished on Sunday, which was sad, but everyone had a great time and it was a big success. The smaller classes and ability groupings meant that we were able to give more students individual attention, and create lessons to target particular students’ needs, meaning the more able students got the opportunity to see how far they could go, and the less able ones managed to catch up on at least some of the basics. The students learnt a lot, not only in maths, English and Amharic, but also in terms of increasing their confidence, learning skills and classroom behavior.
I learnt a huge amount, too, both about individual students and about each class. I took a lot for granted when I first started – for instance, it didn’t occur to me that we would need to go over the fact that you must write on the lines of your exercise book, not just in a random scrawl wherever you want on the paper. This is something I have worked with the teachers on before, but they’ve been incredibly reluctant to enforce it. However, the students and I spent a whole lesson on presenting work neatly (it was more fun that it sounds!) and now all children know what’s expected of them, so the teachers have no excuse!
I also learnt that the majority of the children were exceptionally good at the ‘Memory Game’, which I wasn’t expecting at all. The activity involves the students looking at a variety of objects on a table, then covering them up and having to remember as many as they can. We played it as a ‘starter’ one lesson, and each class managed to remember almost all the objects, where I was guessing they’d remember around half.
The same was true of ‘See, Run, Do’, where one member of the group sees a picture for a count of 10, then has to explain it to the rest of their group so they can reproduce it. My (teenage) students in the UK often find it hard, but my children here had no problem!
Of course, some of my lessons prompted some unexpected reactions – some more unexpected than others! When doing the Memory Game, I was slightly surprised that nearly all children in the class identified the balloon as a condom! Clearly the health workers’ messages are getting through to all parts of the community, and T was quite proud when we told her. Ab and I explained to the students that it wasn’t a condom, it was a balloon, and demonstrated how you inflate a balloon … although we were then reminded that you could do that with a condom too. I came out of the class hoping that I’d been sufficiently clear enough to convince the children of the differences between a condom and a balloon!
On the last day of summer school was all about reflection, evaluation and celebration, and I wanted something we could do with all the students. Quizzes are really popular in schools here, usually as a way to monitor the quality of teaching in schools, pitting students against one another in competition. In my opinion, this is a particularly poor way of evaluating the academic performance of a school, but in this instance we thought it would be a fun, familiar way to finish the session.
So each class picked 3 students, who were then combined into three mixed ability teams. Questions had been prepared in advance, and students picked a number from a hat (well, in this case, a bag!) to select which questions they had to answer. After 5 questions each, the scores were very close – 11 for Team 1, 12 for Team 3 and 13 for Team 2 – but Team 2 were rewarded with packs of pencils (very kindly sent by my aunt and uncle) and a big round of applause. We also gave some pencils and pens out as rewards to children who had been really good students or had progressed a lot. I think the children were sad it had ended – and even Ab, who has decided that teaching is not a career he will be pursuing any time soon, will miss it!
So now we are finished, and this week I am launching into the admin I had neglected while teaching. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up, too, as I am taking a week off very shortly when my mum comes over . Plus there are the usual organisational issues that have been the bane of my life for the last two months and appear to be no nearer a resolution, so I certainly won’t lack for things to do!
I learnt a huge amount, too, both about individual students and about each class. I took a lot for granted when I first started – for instance, it didn’t occur to me that we would need to go over the fact that you must write on the lines of your exercise book, not just in a random scrawl wherever you want on the paper. This is something I have worked with the teachers on before, but they’ve been incredibly reluctant to enforce it. However, the students and I spent a whole lesson on presenting work neatly (it was more fun that it sounds!) and now all children know what’s expected of them, so the teachers have no excuse!
I also learnt that the majority of the children were exceptionally good at the ‘Memory Game’, which I wasn’t expecting at all. The activity involves the students looking at a variety of objects on a table, then covering them up and having to remember as many as they can. We played it as a ‘starter’ one lesson, and each class managed to remember almost all the objects, where I was guessing they’d remember around half.
The same was true of ‘See, Run, Do’, where one member of the group sees a picture for a count of 10, then has to explain it to the rest of their group so they can reproduce it. My (teenage) students in the UK often find it hard, but my children here had no problem!
Of course, some of my lessons prompted some unexpected reactions – some more unexpected than others! When doing the Memory Game, I was slightly surprised that nearly all children in the class identified the balloon as a condom! Clearly the health workers’ messages are getting through to all parts of the community, and T was quite proud when we told her. Ab and I explained to the students that it wasn’t a condom, it was a balloon, and demonstrated how you inflate a balloon … although we were then reminded that you could do that with a condom too. I came out of the class hoping that I’d been sufficiently clear enough to convince the children of the differences between a condom and a balloon!
On the last day of summer school was all about reflection, evaluation and celebration, and I wanted something we could do with all the students. Quizzes are really popular in schools here, usually as a way to monitor the quality of teaching in schools, pitting students against one another in competition. In my opinion, this is a particularly poor way of evaluating the academic performance of a school, but in this instance we thought it would be a fun, familiar way to finish the session.
So each class picked 3 students, who were then combined into three mixed ability teams. Questions had been prepared in advance, and students picked a number from a hat (well, in this case, a bag!) to select which questions they had to answer. After 5 questions each, the scores were very close – 11 for Team 1, 12 for Team 3 and 13 for Team 2 – but Team 2 were rewarded with packs of pencils (very kindly sent by my aunt and uncle) and a big round of applause. We also gave some pencils and pens out as rewards to children who had been really good students or had progressed a lot. I think the children were sad it had ended – and even Ab, who has decided that teaching is not a career he will be pursuing any time soon, will miss it!
So now we are finished, and this week I am launching into the admin I had neglected while teaching. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up, too, as I am taking a week off very shortly when my mum comes over . Plus there are the usual organisational issues that have been the bane of my life for the last two months and appear to be no nearer a resolution, so I certainly won’t lack for things to do!
4th September
In the next installment of crappiness, the orphanage have been ordered to move out of their compound in Addis. The landlord has decided she wants to increase the rent by a good lot of money (I think around 2000 birr - £100 a month) and, anyway, has decided she doesn’t want children living there, even if the orphanage (and its supporters) could scrape together the required money.
There seems to be very little protection for renters in Ethiopia, so Landlords can just double the rent on their whim, or order someone to leave. There are tenancy agreements, but in my experience it’s rare anyone actually adheres to them – if the landlord wants to, he (or she) just ignores it. I imagine that if it went to court, it would be enforced, but (again, in my experience) rarely do people take it that far; they wouldn’t know where to start, they are too busy trying to find a new house, or they don’t even realise it’s an option.
I’m not sure whether that’s a road the orphanage will go down yet, but they are definitely in a quandary. This is the second time in three years this has happened. I’m not sure what these Landlords do – do they wake up one morning, a year afer they let the property to the Orphans Home and think ‘Hmmm.... Orphans Home ... I know that name means something to me ... oh yes, Children! Oh, no, I don’t want children on my property ...”. I mean, did they not realise this before? Why did it take them a year to decide they didn’t want children on their property?
And what kind of person evicts an orphanage anyway? It’s not as if they children are damaging the property or making noise so the neighbours complain; the neighbours are a kindergarten, a shop and a garage.
But at the moment, the orphanage face losing their offices, classrooms, kitchen and play area. The only option is to relocate, which will require a lot of money and a suitable building, and may mean moving away from the small houses where the children live. It’s not ideal – and of course, there’s the possibility that this will all happen again in the next couple of years.
It would be so much better if they could find a building that fits their needs and buy it ... but the money needed to do that is way out of our (and other Hanna Orphans Home supporters’) capacity. We’ve researched applying to a few trusts or grant making organisations, but many do not fund orphanages.
We will keep trying and planning and hoping and praying.
There seems to be very little protection for renters in Ethiopia, so Landlords can just double the rent on their whim, or order someone to leave. There are tenancy agreements, but in my experience it’s rare anyone actually adheres to them – if the landlord wants to, he (or she) just ignores it. I imagine that if it went to court, it would be enforced, but (again, in my experience) rarely do people take it that far; they wouldn’t know where to start, they are too busy trying to find a new house, or they don’t even realise it’s an option.
I’m not sure whether that’s a road the orphanage will go down yet, but they are definitely in a quandary. This is the second time in three years this has happened. I’m not sure what these Landlords do – do they wake up one morning, a year afer they let the property to the Orphans Home and think ‘Hmmm.... Orphans Home ... I know that name means something to me ... oh yes, Children! Oh, no, I don’t want children on my property ...”. I mean, did they not realise this before? Why did it take them a year to decide they didn’t want children on their property?
And what kind of person evicts an orphanage anyway? It’s not as if they children are damaging the property or making noise so the neighbours complain; the neighbours are a kindergarten, a shop and a garage.
But at the moment, the orphanage face losing their offices, classrooms, kitchen and play area. The only option is to relocate, which will require a lot of money and a suitable building, and may mean moving away from the small houses where the children live. It’s not ideal – and of course, there’s the possibility that this will all happen again in the next couple of years.
It would be so much better if they could find a building that fits their needs and buy it ... but the money needed to do that is way out of our (and other Hanna Orphans Home supporters’) capacity. We’ve researched applying to a few trusts or grant making organisations, but many do not fund orphanages.
We will keep trying and planning and hoping and praying.
A Crappy Time
One month today, I will have said goodbye to Ethiopia and will be waking up in my own bed, in the UK. Sometimes - more often than not - I am sad about this: I love Lalibela, I love Ethiopia, I love my job (most of the time!) and I love the people I work with.
However, today, it cannot come quick enough.
Quite frankly, everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. First the computer blew up in the storm and we had no computer for a few days. Then we spent a lot of money, expended a lot of stress, and begged a lot of people to get the part sent from Addis, which of course didn’t fit. So we begged and pleaded again with someone from the internet cafe so they would swap it with one that will work , which luckily only took a few days.
Except then the modem wouldn’t work and we couldn’t connect to the internet. Okay, no big deal, at least the actual computer works. We can fix the modem later.*
Except now the printer and USB drivers don’t work, and nobody can fix them (nobody can work out why it’s stopped working). So I’m handwriting endless registers and reports, and trying not to think about the 200 report cards we’re supposed to be printing for when the children come back to school, or the 150 student files I’ve been diligently working on and which need to be printed and filed in hard copy by the 14th September.
So that’s the computer part of it.
The rest is just as bad. The maggots are still falling from the ceiling. My bath still doesn’t drain. Ab is walking around in the worst mood I’ve ever seen (and I have some bad moods!) and yet we can’t moan at him because we completely understand why he’s in a bad mood and he is completely justified. Added to that, his phone was stolen by people he was giving a lift to (for free!) a few days ago. What a great show of gratitude from them.
I am supposed to open the school for the new academic year in two weeks yet I don’t have enough text books, pens, tables and – oh yes – teachers , although in theory all should be here by the week of the 14th, give or take a few days. A and I are trying to employ said extra teachers, except what we want and need to do is very different to what the Ministry of Education in Lalibela are insisting on doing, and although the Ministry of Education have no authority to insist on employing our teachers, we have to get officials from the office in Bahir Dar to confirm that, and the Director who needs to do that is out of the country for a while.
Of course, with crappy communications, we have no way of conveying that to the relevant people. Thank God the phone network is still working!
In the meantime, summer school continues, where I discover that the deaf child who has been in our school for two years cannot even write or recognise her own name. This should have been picked up a LONG time ago ... by me, definitely, and it’s a disgrace that I haven’t, but also by the teachers and other staff before me.
In two days I have to explain to the community that the school will not be providing education for the 100 children from the area as planned in the Project Proposal, and who are excitedly waiting for September to come so they can start school (some even turned up to summer school they were so desperate to get in!). Instead just 30 children will be registered. I don’t know why this is, as it’s not a decision I’ve taken and I haven’t got any information about it, but I am the one who will be passing the message on.
The information and explanation should arrive with the Directors when they come over in two weeks – on New Year’s Day, when everyone will be off work (particularly people in Lalibela, who celebrate every Saints Day). On top of that, the organisational and administration meetings that are going to be going on at this time are really, really not going to be fun.
So, deep joy all round. Consequently, when my TV stopped working today as a result of yet another power surge I very nearly burst into tears, even though in the grand scheme of things a broken TV is not even worth worrying about.
In the good news department, I have a load of trashy magazines that my family have sent, so I intend to shut my door, get into my pyjamas, read my magazines and forget about the world and everything that’s wrong with it.
Ps. Yes, I am well aware of the irony of moaning about these things when I clearly have enough to eat, enough money, an education, a family and a roof over my head – and am working with a lot of people who have none, or very few, of those things. Indulge me.
*We’ve fixed the modem now, clearly, as I have managed to send this update!
However, today, it cannot come quick enough.
Quite frankly, everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. First the computer blew up in the storm and we had no computer for a few days. Then we spent a lot of money, expended a lot of stress, and begged a lot of people to get the part sent from Addis, which of course didn’t fit. So we begged and pleaded again with someone from the internet cafe so they would swap it with one that will work , which luckily only took a few days.
Except then the modem wouldn’t work and we couldn’t connect to the internet. Okay, no big deal, at least the actual computer works. We can fix the modem later.*
Except now the printer and USB drivers don’t work, and nobody can fix them (nobody can work out why it’s stopped working). So I’m handwriting endless registers and reports, and trying not to think about the 200 report cards we’re supposed to be printing for when the children come back to school, or the 150 student files I’ve been diligently working on and which need to be printed and filed in hard copy by the 14th September.
So that’s the computer part of it.
The rest is just as bad. The maggots are still falling from the ceiling. My bath still doesn’t drain. Ab is walking around in the worst mood I’ve ever seen (and I have some bad moods!) and yet we can’t moan at him because we completely understand why he’s in a bad mood and he is completely justified. Added to that, his phone was stolen by people he was giving a lift to (for free!) a few days ago. What a great show of gratitude from them.
I am supposed to open the school for the new academic year in two weeks yet I don’t have enough text books, pens, tables and – oh yes – teachers , although in theory all should be here by the week of the 14th, give or take a few days. A and I are trying to employ said extra teachers, except what we want and need to do is very different to what the Ministry of Education in Lalibela are insisting on doing, and although the Ministry of Education have no authority to insist on employing our teachers, we have to get officials from the office in Bahir Dar to confirm that, and the Director who needs to do that is out of the country for a while.
Of course, with crappy communications, we have no way of conveying that to the relevant people. Thank God the phone network is still working!
In the meantime, summer school continues, where I discover that the deaf child who has been in our school for two years cannot even write or recognise her own name. This should have been picked up a LONG time ago ... by me, definitely, and it’s a disgrace that I haven’t, but also by the teachers and other staff before me.
In two days I have to explain to the community that the school will not be providing education for the 100 children from the area as planned in the Project Proposal, and who are excitedly waiting for September to come so they can start school (some even turned up to summer school they were so desperate to get in!). Instead just 30 children will be registered. I don’t know why this is, as it’s not a decision I’ve taken and I haven’t got any information about it, but I am the one who will be passing the message on.
The information and explanation should arrive with the Directors when they come over in two weeks – on New Year’s Day, when everyone will be off work (particularly people in Lalibela, who celebrate every Saints Day). On top of that, the organisational and administration meetings that are going to be going on at this time are really, really not going to be fun.
So, deep joy all round. Consequently, when my TV stopped working today as a result of yet another power surge I very nearly burst into tears, even though in the grand scheme of things a broken TV is not even worth worrying about.
In the good news department, I have a load of trashy magazines that my family have sent, so I intend to shut my door, get into my pyjamas, read my magazines and forget about the world and everything that’s wrong with it.
Ps. Yes, I am well aware of the irony of moaning about these things when I clearly have enough to eat, enough money, an education, a family and a roof over my head – and am working with a lot of people who have none, or very few, of those things. Indulge me.
*We’ve fixed the modem now, clearly, as I have managed to send this update!
1st September
The rat saga continues!
This morning, A was doing work at his desk when he suddenly cried “maggots!”. Sure enough, there were tiny white maggots wriggling across his desk and onto his notebook. Not nice! We poked around and soon discovered that maggots were (are!) falling from a crack in the office ceiling, which is directly under my living room.
So, we’ve come to the conclusion that a rat or mouse had died beneath the floorboards of my living room, and therefore in the roof of our office, and the maggots have come to eat it. There has been a slightly odd smell in the office over the last day or so, but I thought nothing of it (there are a variety of weird smells in my life in Lalibela!). However, I have smelt the stink a dead rat makes a week after dying, so I know there is a lot worse to come!
The only way to get into the place where we think the dead rodent is, is to take apart the ceiling. This is a job A says he can do, but it’s going to be quite a big job which will take a day or so. However, it may be our only option before it gets so stinky in here that we have to work with pegs on our noses ...
This morning, A was doing work at his desk when he suddenly cried “maggots!”. Sure enough, there were tiny white maggots wriggling across his desk and onto his notebook. Not nice! We poked around and soon discovered that maggots were (are!) falling from a crack in the office ceiling, which is directly under my living room.
So, we’ve come to the conclusion that a rat or mouse had died beneath the floorboards of my living room, and therefore in the roof of our office, and the maggots have come to eat it. There has been a slightly odd smell in the office over the last day or so, but I thought nothing of it (there are a variety of weird smells in my life in Lalibela!). However, I have smelt the stink a dead rat makes a week after dying, so I know there is a lot worse to come!
The only way to get into the place where we think the dead rodent is, is to take apart the ceiling. This is a job A says he can do, but it’s going to be quite a big job which will take a day or so. However, it may be our only option before it gets so stinky in here that we have to work with pegs on our noses ...
30th August
Yesterday, I walked into the bathroom in the way I do most things – thinking of something else, looking at a book in my hand and generally not paying attention. Luckily, something caught my eye before I put down my foot and squished the big, fat rat that was sitting there.
I may have made a slight squealing sound whilst doing a mad hop backwards and closing the door (did I think the rat was going to attack me?!). I definitely did wait a little while before gingerly opening the door again, just in case the rat was going to make a dash for it. I actually expected it to have run behind the bath, which is where they normally live, but it was still sitting by the door.
Was it dead? No, it was definitely breathing. As if to underline the point, it waddled slowly away from me before coming to rest in front of its usual escape hole. It made no move to go through the hole, though, and I realised that it was suffering the effects of the poison it had obviously eaten.
I know poison is hideous, I know it does dreadful things to them and kills them from the inside out in a very long and cruel way, but I was desperate! The glue (another hideous, long, drawn out way to kill something) was completely useless (the mice left footprints as they ran through it) and the rodents simply pushed the traditional mouse traps under the fridge so they could take the food while the cramped space stops the trap from working. I was tempted to let them live, simply for being so ingenious, and I made a deal with them – if they kept out of my bedroom, I would stop planning ways to murder them. But they wouldn’t listen, and I could see the time coming where I would wake up in bed and discover a rodent on my pillow ... I did what I had to do.
So, the poison had obviously been working its magic on this rat, and I was sure it was about to die. I didn’t really want it ot die behind the bath – I’ve done the whole ‘dead rat covered in maggots’ thing before, and it’s not pretty. Having said that, I probably would have been fine getting a dead rat (sans maggots) out of the bathroom, but the fact this one was still moving prompted me call A for help.
He came to my rescue, as he always does, and while H and I hid behind my bedroom door and made squealing sounds every time it sounded like something might be coming towards us, A and G (one of the guard’s sons) scooped the rat up in a bucket and took it outside. G then killed it (quickly) so that it wouldn’t spend the next few days slowly suffering.
I do still feel a bit guilty for the way I am sentencing these animals to a slow, painful death ... but not too guilty, as I slept properly for the first time last night due to the fact there are no rodents crashing round the house!
I may have made a slight squealing sound whilst doing a mad hop backwards and closing the door (did I think the rat was going to attack me?!). I definitely did wait a little while before gingerly opening the door again, just in case the rat was going to make a dash for it. I actually expected it to have run behind the bath, which is where they normally live, but it was still sitting by the door.
Was it dead? No, it was definitely breathing. As if to underline the point, it waddled slowly away from me before coming to rest in front of its usual escape hole. It made no move to go through the hole, though, and I realised that it was suffering the effects of the poison it had obviously eaten.
I know poison is hideous, I know it does dreadful things to them and kills them from the inside out in a very long and cruel way, but I was desperate! The glue (another hideous, long, drawn out way to kill something) was completely useless (the mice left footprints as they ran through it) and the rodents simply pushed the traditional mouse traps under the fridge so they could take the food while the cramped space stops the trap from working. I was tempted to let them live, simply for being so ingenious, and I made a deal with them – if they kept out of my bedroom, I would stop planning ways to murder them. But they wouldn’t listen, and I could see the time coming where I would wake up in bed and discover a rodent on my pillow ... I did what I had to do.
So, the poison had obviously been working its magic on this rat, and I was sure it was about to die. I didn’t really want it ot die behind the bath – I’ve done the whole ‘dead rat covered in maggots’ thing before, and it’s not pretty. Having said that, I probably would have been fine getting a dead rat (sans maggots) out of the bathroom, but the fact this one was still moving prompted me call A for help.
He came to my rescue, as he always does, and while H and I hid behind my bedroom door and made squealing sounds every time it sounded like something might be coming towards us, A and G (one of the guard’s sons) scooped the rat up in a bucket and took it outside. G then killed it (quickly) so that it wouldn’t spend the next few days slowly suffering.
I do still feel a bit guilty for the way I am sentencing these animals to a slow, painful death ... but not too guilty, as I slept properly for the first time last night due to the fact there are no rodents crashing round the house!
Saturday, 29 August 2009
27th August
Ahhh, the joy of living in my little wooden house.
1) My bath is now completely blocked, meaning if I have a shower, none of the water drains away and I have to empty the bath by scooping the water up with a bucket (or an empty tin can as the water level gets lower). If you poke a stick down the plughole, there is something very large and metal which has completely closed off the pipe (God knows what!) and so the pipes will need to be taken apart. Sigh.
2) The toilet used to flush when I filled the cistern up manually, but it has now completely given up and will now only make vague spluttering sounds when I press the button. We think this is because our water is not very pure, so it contains sand and particles which clog up the pipes and general system. The pipes which carry water to the toilet need to be taken apart and cleaned.
3) The rain is getting heavier and more frequent, which is lovely, as I really enjoy the Ethiopian rainstorms. However, my house is very flimsy and leaky, so I have currently got rain dripping from the ceiling in the bedroom (luckily in the bedroom I don’t sleep in!) and trickling in under the kitchen door (there’s an outside door into the kitchen, but it’s not allowed to be opened ... don’t ask, it’s a long story involving the Devil, a bottle – or several – of gin and some concrete steps ...). I also found some kind of mushroom growing on one of the (inside) walls, yesterday – nice!
4) It appears that the noisiest rats in the known world have taken up residence in my bathroom and in my wardrobe. For the last 3 nights, I have been woken up at 4am by the sound of rats careening around the bathroom, banging into buckets and the toilet cistern, and knocking my shampoo bottles into the bath. They sound like they’re doing some kind of obstacle race (maybe they are?).
Meanwhile, the rat in my wardrobe appears to just be throwing himself continuously at the wardrobe doors, rattling them and generally making it appear that I have some kind of ghost in there desperate to get out (maybe I have?!).
Both rats (ha – who am I kidding! All the rats!) have been eating the poison I laid out for them, but they won’t bloody die!! It’s driving me mad! I definitely need a cat ...
On the good news front, though, the fact that I am emptying the bath manually means I am saving water as I use that to flush the toilet, and the constant moving of water is giving me a well needed upper body work out!
And anyway, what more could I want when today I sat outside on my little veranda, watching the brightest sunrise I’ve seen since I got here, and drinking a cup of tea. If only the rats would die ...
1) My bath is now completely blocked, meaning if I have a shower, none of the water drains away and I have to empty the bath by scooping the water up with a bucket (or an empty tin can as the water level gets lower). If you poke a stick down the plughole, there is something very large and metal which has completely closed off the pipe (God knows what!) and so the pipes will need to be taken apart. Sigh.
2) The toilet used to flush when I filled the cistern up manually, but it has now completely given up and will now only make vague spluttering sounds when I press the button. We think this is because our water is not very pure, so it contains sand and particles which clog up the pipes and general system. The pipes which carry water to the toilet need to be taken apart and cleaned.
3) The rain is getting heavier and more frequent, which is lovely, as I really enjoy the Ethiopian rainstorms. However, my house is very flimsy and leaky, so I have currently got rain dripping from the ceiling in the bedroom (luckily in the bedroom I don’t sleep in!) and trickling in under the kitchen door (there’s an outside door into the kitchen, but it’s not allowed to be opened ... don’t ask, it’s a long story involving the Devil, a bottle – or several – of gin and some concrete steps ...). I also found some kind of mushroom growing on one of the (inside) walls, yesterday – nice!
4) It appears that the noisiest rats in the known world have taken up residence in my bathroom and in my wardrobe. For the last 3 nights, I have been woken up at 4am by the sound of rats careening around the bathroom, banging into buckets and the toilet cistern, and knocking my shampoo bottles into the bath. They sound like they’re doing some kind of obstacle race (maybe they are?).
Meanwhile, the rat in my wardrobe appears to just be throwing himself continuously at the wardrobe doors, rattling them and generally making it appear that I have some kind of ghost in there desperate to get out (maybe I have?!).
Both rats (ha – who am I kidding! All the rats!) have been eating the poison I laid out for them, but they won’t bloody die!! It’s driving me mad! I definitely need a cat ...
On the good news front, though, the fact that I am emptying the bath manually means I am saving water as I use that to flush the toilet, and the constant moving of water is giving me a well needed upper body work out!
And anyway, what more could I want when today I sat outside on my little veranda, watching the brightest sunrise I’ve seen since I got here, and drinking a cup of tea. If only the rats would die ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
