Addis and Lalibela - Ethiopia

A few photos from my recent trip to Ethiopia. I'm relying on memory as I forgot to take my notepad, but will let the pictures tell the story!

This is the view overlooking Addis Ababa. It's a relatively new city, being only 125 years old and the name means 'new flower'. I enjoyed the clean streets, smooth roads and the cooler climate, due to the high altitude. I wish we had more time there to enjoy a spot of Italian food though!

Some of the most impressive sights were the rock hewn churches of Lalibela. Many of the churches are carved out of a single piece of rock and date back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  Each church has its own cross (like the one shown by the priest on the photo) and the devout locals go to worship most days. 

It was a proper ABC tour (Another Bloody Cathedral) - am sure my Dad would have been impressed!!

International Day 2012

UK Contingency 

Ugandan National Dress?

Henna tattoos

Today I learnt that you get more exercise from carrying the croquet set up 4 staircases than actually playing the game!

We thought this may have been the world's biggest ever Hokey Cokey - but then discovered that the world record is over 7000 people, so we fell short by about 6500!

Who's the queen? I'm queen!

Ozzies finding a way to surf in the middle of a land locked country in Africa!

Feeling the heat!

You may have noticed that my posts have been a little thin on the ground recently. It's not for lack of trying, but the internet has no been very co-operative of late and has not been letting me write. Humph!

It's been a hot and hectic few weeks. The hottest I have ever known it to be in Uganda. To my knowledge, it has not rained in Kampala at all THIS YEAR! Temperatures in my classroom are soaring well into the thirties, and this combined with a couple of weeks of broken generator make it almost unbearable. I have had to disperse the children into shady and breezy corners in the afternoons just to make it through! I have been trying my best to drink gallons of water to avoid going home with a dehydration headache. Today clouds gathered around lunchtime, but to no avail.

The dry season has brought new challenges to the biking. Gone is the sticky and squelchy mud, replaced with deep patches of sand and dust. What they do have in common though, is that they can both make you wobble and fall off your bike if you're not careful! Today the leaves appeared to have taken on an autumnal tinge, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a thick layer of orange dust! It takes a serious amount of scrubbing to get rid of it too. I didn't quite manage today and when I looked down at my legs it looked like I'd done a really bad job with the fake tan!

We have one more week before we break up and I'm off to Ethiopia. One more place to tick off the bucket list! Plans are for a quick loop around the north, taking in Lake Tana, Gondar, Lalibela and the Simeon Mountains. My friends who have been before say it was one of the most inspiring and amazing holidays they have ever taken. If nothing else, I'm looking forward to a spot off cool mountain air in Addis!

Liberation Day!

Today was Liberation Day in Uganda. A day to celebrate nearly 3 decades of ruling by M7 and the NRM party ...

Today I liberated:

• A few braincells as I had my last glass of white wine around midnight last night
• A couple of hundred thousand Ugandan Shillings from my wallet as I shelled out for a new phone. Last night, I came home to no light whatsoever so thought it would be a great idea to perch my phone on the sink as a light source. It was, until it dropped into the sink and appeared to die. I dismantled it and dried it out as best I could in the pitch darkness, but in the morning it still appeared to be dead. I invested in a new phone that can access maps, You Tube, Facebook, Internet and God knows what else, but have no idea how to make a call or send a text. Old phone now seems to have resurrected itself. Will dedicate time at the weekend to a spot of manual reading!
• At least a million calories on the roasting hot mid-afternoon bike ride
• A few tears as my eyes watered when I got suncream stuck in them
• Much orange dust that was washed down the plughole after the bike ride
• Most importantly, the beautiful bike ride with views overlooking Lake Victoria liberated me from all of the stress of the job fair weekend

Feels good to be liberated!

Teacher Idol ... The Job Fair!

Exciting news ... Ali's Adventures will soon be coming from a new location - Singapore!

I am currently in post job fair recovery, after an incredibly hectic and stressful weekend. I know I got to enjoy a few more bites of Cadbury's and caught up with a couple of friends, but this was no holiday.

For those of you who have never experienced a job fair, it is some kind of cross between a cattle market, speed dating and X-Factor auditions. At sign-up, armed with only a CV, you have approximately 2 minutes to wow the recruiters and convince them to give you an interview. I'm an old fashioned kind of girl - I thought a CV was the way to get you noticed. Clearly, it had never occurred to me to go to the extent of designing personalised chocolate bars, with my own logo and a brief resume on the wrapper. The sour aroma of BS still lingers ...In my view, there were far too many candidates and not enough positions. Being told that there was a 40-60% of walking away from the fair with a job made my heart simultaneously sink and panic.

Once the interviews start, it's an emotional roller-coaster.Painting on the smile for an interview after you've just had a rejection is NOT easy! I nearly went to the pub instead of the final interview, having convinced myself that all the jobs had been given away! What a good job I didn't!

So soon it will be farewell to potholes and power cuts and hello to more sunshine, shops and  Singapore life!

Are you bearing arms?

Today, my friends, I bring you another classic example of Ugandan tact and diplomacy.

This morning, as I pulled up to the supermarket car park for the obligatory glove box check (surely any would-be terrorists are not storing their bombs and firearms in the glove compartment anymore), I was greeted with a wide smile and the disturbing words ‘good morning, sir’.

“Sir?” said I. “I am not a sir, I am a madam!”

I paused, to give the guard the opportunity to retract his opening greeting. Perhaps to apologise and say he was distracted and didn’t really look at the driver of the oncoming car.

I wondered how I could possibly be mistaken for a ‘sir’, given that I was wearing a low cut, lilac top, positively feminine sunglasses and had my chin length bobbed hair down.

But no. This is Uganda, where the foot never strays far away from the mouth.

“Oh madam. I thought you were a sir because of your arms!”

I’ve always quite liked my arms. They are quite normal looking arms, spattered with a few freckles and of average size and length. They’re not particularly muscly, but then the bingo wings aren’t that bad either. Nor are they hairy or covered in sailor style tattoos.

For the sake of my sanity, I decided not to delve any deeper.

I told the ssebo I was not bearing any dangerous arms and drove off.

Cutting For Stone

This is my first post of 2012 - so if it's not too late to say so, Happy New Year! I decided to take a little holiday from blogging when I was on home shores, so I think my writing has got a little rusty.

Yesterday, we had our first book club of the new year to discuss 'Cutting for Stone' by Abraham Verghese. It was a feast for our bellies as well as our minds as we tucked into some Eritrean food, that was kindly prepared by one of the generous mums from my class. She explained what all the food was ... then I lost the bit of paper, so you'll just have to look at the pictures ...

According to the book:

The mark of a native is that your fingers are never stained by the curry; you use the injera as your tongs, as a barrier, while you pick up a piece of chicken or beef sopped in the sauce.

We ate like ferenjis!

Now I thought we had made an effort by organising to have some traditional food from the region. It would seem not though, when you compare to this website that I found when I googled some book club ideas. Most disturbing is the fact that this woman decided to recreate the amputated finger in a jar for her party. Some people have too much time on their hands!

For the record - I highly recommend the book (but won't give any more away now)!