4G 2023 03 25

 After I wrote to you last week we had a fantastic hail storm. Stones of ice half a centimeter or more in size. So many falling, so quickly, that when I walked out around the roads in the early darkness the piles looked like snow drifts. At the edges of roads, in the corners of buildings. Dusk light with ghostly piles of white.

How has your week been?

Over the weekend, after I wrote to you, I made some food for the week. A soya meat dish (you have to try these things once!) and a chicken with papaya dish whose recipe I got from my friend in Oman. I made a big tub of nutty, lentil rice too.

There I was, all set for my working week, but on Sunday night someone nearby left an alarm running, set for every hour on the half hour. It first woke me at two thirty in the morning, then three thirty, then four thirty, then . . . no I had already got up and was making breakfast when it went off next.

Your mom is getting used to Teddy doing similar to her, for me it made a strange start to the week. I feel as though I have spent all of the time catching up. On Friday when I was fully back to myself I found that somehow I had missed an important announcement about the weekend.

On Thursday I was up in Shiro Meda and you can see that I found another coffee place high up in a building. The green and white building is where the sling for Teddy is being made. In the view of the buses and buildings you can see the main area. Almost everything you see is either a place of making, or a shop for selling, or both, traditional clothes.

Now it is Saturday and I am cooking the last part of my chicken with papaya. I have made some other things for next week but I deserve to enjoy this. Outside the rain has been heavy and the thunder loud.

I think it could be movie night, night :-)

4G 2023 03 19

 The roast dinner!

How has your week been? Cold? Snowy?

Here it has been wet with thunder and lightning on and off through the week.

One of my jobs has been to see a lady about making a carry sling for Teddy. The first day I was going it rained very hard and I got as far as the bus stop.

I sat at a street coffee shop and waited with an excellent coffee but a leaky umbrella.

When the right bus came I decided not to get any colder and returned to my place. I was soaked through all of my clothes and needed a hot shower.

Next day was much better and I met Sebele.

She works as a seamstress on what is the first floor of a four storey building, one building among many in this area. Generally the ground floor levels have shops and above are the workrooms.

On a global scale someone might say this was a "sweatshop" and it is true that many people work here and they work hard for very little money.

But, they are not mistreated and in this area it is good employment. Mostly they sell to the shopkeepers of the area. You will notice the fashion aficianado wearing the Burberry leggings who is camera shy!

Sebele is a friend of someone at work and is happy to give me a good price while earning more money than she would making the same thing for the shopkeeper.

It is always interesting when trying to arrange such a thing. I speak no Amharic and she speaks almost no English.

This coming week I will go back to see her and find out if anything was "lost in translation"!

The picture here is taken from a rooftop of another workshop and shop building across the road from where Sebele works and is a view that was hidden from me when I made the video panorama a couple of weeks ago.

The grounds immediately near are those of the Spanish Embassy and behind you can see the city stretching out to the mountains away to the south and west.

Yesterday I got wet again, not heavy rain, not windy, quite warm while I walked back in the night from the Embassy. Time difference means my rugby finishes much later than yours.

Today is a work, chores, and chill day. For you it is wish your mom a Happy Mother's Day day!

Enjoy, be good :-)