1st January - Part 1

A day in my life

7.15am: My alarm goes off and I groan a bit.
7.30am: My alarm goes off again and I get out of bed. At home in London, I'm always up early, and by this time I would be leaving for work, but here in Ethiopia I hate getting out of bed. One of the reasons for this is that it's soooo cold in the mornings!
7.40am: I say good morning to George the rat and to Rita, Sue and Bob, the mice, before going in to the kitchen, just to warn them that I'm coming in and tell them that I'd prefer it if they stayed out of the way. Then I fill a saucepan and put some water on to boil for my morning cup of tea.

A day in my life

7.45am: It's filling the toilet cistern time! It takes 3 ½ litres to enable the toilet to flush, and it has to be filled manually, or I can fill a bucket of water and flush it that way. Flushing happens only when necessary, to conserve water.
7.50am: If there's running water, then I attempt to stand under the cold drips of the shower for as long as I can – if it's a 'no running water day' then it's washing with bottled water. Fun!
8.10am: Washed and dressed and back into kitchen with a shouted warning to George et al, I make my cup of tea and do my 30 second commute down the stone steps to my office.
8.15am: If it's a 'visiting school' day, we leave the office and drive the 30km out of Lalibela to Efra. Most of the road is asphalt, but the last quarter of it is barely a road! Even with our slick 4x4, it's like riding a kangaroo!
9.15am: We arrive at the school in Efra. Efra is a small community of about 300 people, and the NGO I'm working for right now, LEAP, has built a school there. It serves around 100 students at the moment, but they are currently building more classrooms and it will expand in the near future. I am going to work with the teachers and the students, but at the moment I am just observing things and learning how the school and the community works.

So I observe classes for a couple of hours while A. checks on the construction of the new classrooms. It's insanely hot out here, and with barely any shelter from the scrub trees, so I am always smothered in suntan lotion and with water handy.

11.00am: We drive back to the office.
12.00pm: Lunch! I either eat in my house (something mind bogglingly exciting like tuna fish and bread) or I eat at a local restaurant. Seven Olives Hotel is a popular tourist hotel which does great steak, or there's a restaurant called Unique which does really good Ethiopian food.
1.00pm-ish: Back to work. At the moment, I am putting together a report on the teaching and learning at the school, plus I am computerising some of the feedback from visitors etc. I'm also reading many reports and minutes of meetings, getting an idea of how the charity and school work. An important lesson was learnt fairly early on when we were without power for a whole day – when that happened in London, we were all
forced to finally do our filing because there was nothing really productive we could do without the computer. Here, power cuts are a common occurrence, so you have to make sure you can work without a computer. In fact, most of the local government offices don't have one – can you imagine that in the UK?! We all live and die by email!
5.00pm-ish: Finish work. And finishing work at 5pm is a novelty I have fully embraced! Not that there are a million things to do to Lalibela, but I am trying to teach myself to relax without the aid of TV!
6.30pm: Make some kind of food. So far, my range is limited to lots of pasta dishes involving tuna, tomatoes and garlic, with banana as desert. However, occasionally I branch out and buy meat. Beef is actually really cheap here, and involves going into a butcher's shop where they will carve a chunk out of a dead, skinned cow hanging from
the ceiling. The meat is tough, but edible, and I can make a mean chilli con carne (er … without the kidney beans as I can't buy them in Lalibela).

Chicken is more expensive, but available. A.'s girlfriend was going to the market and offered to get me some chicken as I wanted to make a curry. Fabulous – saves me doing the walk back up the hill! That afternoon she came back and placed a live chicken in my kitchen, which looked at me contemptuously and then strutted into the living room.

After a frantic moment of panic (and a small glint of hope, wondering whether the chicken could be encouraged to eat the mice?) I went to A.'s house and admitted that I was a city-girl-farange and couldn't kill the chicken by myself. Amid laughter, the chicken was dispatched to be killed (not so contemptuous now, huh, chicken?) and I was presented with a prepared chicken with everything, even the liver, ready to cook. I shall stick with beef in future.

7.30pm: If there is electricity, I will watch TV (God bless MBC and Dubai TV!) and do admin work for the orphanage. If there is no electricity (every Wednesday eve, all day at the weekends, and any other time they are doing work), then it's to bed with a candle and a book or to write some letters. Rock and roll.
10.00pm: At this time I used to watch Greys Anatomy (if there was electricity). I had no interest in this TV series in London, but I became obsessed with in Addis. The series has now ended and I have been left bereft with only the series 'Las Vegas' to replace it. Admittedly, 'Las Vegas' does contain a few attractive men, but is not a patch on Greys Anatomy!

So now, 10.00pm normally means sleep. I need a lot of sleep in Lalibela. I blame it on the altitude.