4G 2023 04 06

 Thursday today so one more day of school (for us both), oh, oh,

You have holiday ayeeeee I am the only one still at school!

Plus + I have lesson on Saturday anyway!

Saturday, one week before landing at Manchester,

Meeting your aunt and driving north.

A week to meet

Up with you,

And mommy, and Teddy.

And nanny and aunty and uncle and who knows who else.

Will the weather be good, do you think?

Walking in the rain sounds fun

Until the water runs

Down your neck and into your shoes.

Here Ihave an exciting day tomorrow,

I move house! Well . . .

Sort of!

I have got a new apartment.

It is directly above my apartment now.

It is the same size and has the same things in it.

But . . . instead of a dark and dismal wall

It has a large and light window.

My view is the school building to the left

A new apartment building to the right

And somewhere down the middle a vista of buildings and green and hills.

From where I will sit (beside the window)

They look like hills, but if they were outside of your window they would be

Mountains!

If you put Scafell Pike on top of Ben Nevis,

These mountains would be higher.

The other day I went to a big hotel (Ghiom)

area in town and enjoyed the gardens, and then yesterday I went with some students from my school to a nearby local school to help teach English.

Does those classrooms look like yours? No? Nor mine!

We are lucky :-)

4G 2023 04 01

 One feels duty bound,

To write to you today.

How can I let the first

Go by.

Not just any first,

The first of April!

I would indeed a fool

Be

To miss the day.

I told you of dates and times

That were different

To the ones you use.

Now in 1582 the French

Changed their calendar.

From Julius to Gregor.

New Year was no longer

The onset of Spring.

Julius liked to welcome the buds and growth

While Gregor has a Midwinter

Party.

If you had a party for Spring,

Say, on April 1^st?

Instead of yeehar, your friends

Said eeyor, eeyor to know better.

You were apparently a Fool.

Party poopers all!

I say, like Bill and Ted, (and Julius),

"Party on dudes."

4G 2023 03 29

 When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

To make a good lemonade you should have plenty of sweetness.

In fact, roughly equal parts in volume of water, lemon juice, and sugar.

That is alot of sugar, more than I have in a month of coffees.

Now you may wonder why I give you a recipe for lemonade?

I think I just got given a sack of lemons.

At this time I have no idea how it will end.

My neighbours where I stay have left. Left work at school,

Left the building, left the country.

Firstly, there was a mix-up. The person in charge made some bad words and people thought it was me who had left.

Secondly, their place next door has become a building site.

Working on the shared wall in the evening yesterday.

Today in my flat much dust and noise and less space because of their building.

Yep, a sack of lemons for sure.

While they finish their noise for the day, ha, ha, I write and wait away. Looking for the sweetness to smile and make some lemonade.

I hope your day has been a lemonade day and not a lemon day?!

4G 2023 03 26

 
Sunday morning, cloudy, humid, sticky,

A storm impending.

Out to walk and finding many people

Walking slowly. Out of respect.

Two important men of the church,

Popes have passed.

I watched as their funeral passed,

Heading to Holy Trinity Church by Arat Kilo.

I will picture the church for you in the week,

Many famous or important people are remembered there.

Today I am happy to be here

In many ways.

I am out in the cafe with people

Writing to you.

Instead of a day travelling, which with the weather

The way it is may have been a problem,

I can decide for myself what to do.

Those are good days aren't they?

When you choose what you will do,

Where you will go, what you will eat,

Et cetera . . .

Yesterday was odd because it seemed

That other people had taken over

My time and decisions. Today

I reclaim me.

It is important that when you have

Many things to do you can feel that

You are deciding how to do them at least.

Being told and decided for are not

What we do best.

When people who want to make other people

Do stuff want to write books

About how clever they are, they call this process

"Buy in". Capitalism eh?

I am not sure I my free will should be for sale.

I hope that you will learn to live

Consciously and without the dependence

That our last few generations have developed.

Deep and meaningful and caffeinated and

Many words there for your mom to explain!

Tee hee :-)

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 :-)

4G 2023 03 12

 Cooking a roast dinner after being out.

I walked to the Indian Embassy to celebrate Holi, the festival of colour.

I took the picture in the grounds before it all got started.

If you ever get the privilege of being invited to celebrate Holi you will find out that to have the most fun you should put away cameras and phones!

Afterwards I walked down to the nearest metro station having decided that the answer to yesterday's low feeling was to have a day of exploring not working.

The station I got on at was the one marked on the picture in red, St Urael. At least I am guessing that the writing says in Amharic, "You are here" :-)

There were lots of people on the train and I had to push inside the doors before they closed. At the next station people getting off pushed me out and I had to get back on again!

We were near the end of the line (the last station is at Ayat) and I could tell because I had room to breathe with people getting off. I could even shuffle my feet!

Then, just by a road – what we used to call a level-crossing – junction the train stopped and only a few judders later the doors opened and everyone laughed and got off.

I understand this is not a new thing so most people knew what I learned a little later. The power on the railway had failed.

I am sure you can work out where I was on the map. No trains expected because I walked up to the next station (which I could see ahead) and asked at the ticket office.

By the way, if you turn the screen around the route looks like a heart-shaped balloon on a string :-)

I knew I should head back and was thinking of a minibus taxi when one of the larger buses called out "Megenagna" (I am sure you know that it was the ticket man hanging out of the bus doorway who called, not the bus itself?) which was a name I knew.

Firstly, the train route goes through there and secondly, more important, I know my way by road and which buses to get from there.

Needless to say I jumped onto the step as he passed. That is literally not figuratively, accuracy not literary. Ooohh you are going to need a dictionary momma :-)

Anyway, got back, did a little shopping, and now have the vegetables roasting as part of my dinner.

Fun times.

The end . . . for today.