1st March 2009

I’m sitting in my living room, on my sofa, watching the thunder and lightning over the mountains. A mouse is making a racket in the kitchen (haven’t got rid of them all yet!) and the television has no reception, but there’s still electricity, at least at the moment.



This time of year is called the ‘little rains’ which makes me smile as there’s nothing ‘little’ about rain in Ethiopia! I’m sure I’ve written about it before, but African rain is not delicate – it literally throws itself from the sky to the ground. If you’re out in it, you’re soaked to the skin within seconds, but if you’re nice and warm with a cup of tea, it’s an amazing sight. In Lalibela you can see the rain coming about an hour before it arrives – huge clouds gather over the far mountains, and last night I could see rain pouring from the sky, backlit by the setting sun. It’s an awesome sight.

The funny thing is, when it stops raining, Lalibela smells like England – particularly the England I remember when growing up in East Anglia or living in London; wet mud and grass, and a kind of clean, fresh smell. It creates quite a weird juxtaposition, when the world around me smells like England yet I’m surrounded by goats and Priests wrapped in white gabis, with woodsmoke drifting over the mud huts.

There have been a few of those moments in Ethiopia – one earlier this week, when a Scottish couple came to visit the school, and brought bagpipes. None of the children have ever seen bagpipes before, but then neither have any of the project staff, teachers or local government. The children were excused from lessons for ten minutes and came and sat on the stones under the big tree, while J started playing. The children stared at him, goggle eyed, as he managed to beat the altitude-induced breathlessness and play various Scottish standards. I normally hate the sound of the bagpipes, but this was really good!

Within a few minutes, drawn by the sound, some of the local kebele (like council) officers had come over the hills and the workers had stopped building. All stood watching, amazed.

It was a very surreal moment. I’m stood in this hot, arid landscape, with lots of Ethiopian children sitting on rocks, and goats, donkeys and cows wandering around, while a Scottish man plays the ‘Highland fling’ on the bagpipes. Incredibly bizarre.

But just another day …