The long BLOG silence is partly because I have been making a poor job of chasing my tail and partly, because for various reasons including bad phone line (home), flooded offices (work) and slow internet Service (national while Telecom upgrade), the Internet is almost un-usable. For example, as I write, I have been, so say, connected, for one hour twenty six minutes but have yet to get further than the opening page of Google mail!

But of more interest:

1 Great news is that Caroline and Anthony got engaged – on a Mozambique beach under a shooting star last week. It looks as if the wedding will not take place until they finish the planned two years in Tanzania. This could give me time to get back to work to provide the sort of wedding they deserve but in practice the sort of wedding they want may be somewhat wore modest in scale. Hopefully I will get to combine celebrating the engagement and Christmas on a Tanzanian or even Zanzibarian beach.

2 Work is going well in that I am very busy, finishing off the adult literacy project and trying to gear it up for the next phase, helping plan celebrations for World Literacy day, organizing a workshop for the end of September which is all good. The down side is that the more there is to get done the more the regular and enormous frustrations of working cause stress and even despair.

3 The lease on our VSO house is not being renewed – the rent has doubled, Sara has already started work in Awassa and Anna goes soon. So I will be moving out in about 10 days time and then homeless for a month and so staying with Stef. In early October Nigel (of Sir William Romney’s fame) will be going home and so vacating his little house just up the road from VSO. It will feel very small after our current palace (by VSO standards anyway) but I am looking forward to being on my own and happy that I will have a spare bedroom in which to accommodate the steady stream of friends and family who are planning to come out from now on, starting with Rupert who will arrive within days of my moving in. The scale of visits and the stretch on leave is such that I have had to put it all on a spreadsheet as many of you have already seen. If anyone else is still playing with the idea of coming – you probably need to ask to see it!

4 The weather continues to be unpredictable but more wet than dry despite the fact that we had glorious sunshine in Debra Berhan – see the article for more details and photos.

But I realise many of you are having it equally gloomy and wet. Take care all.