October 7th

Two lots of photos added. The first set in “Millennium Gifts” show the Aspiration Hope runners giving me a series of Millennium gifts – an event I was COMPLETLLY unprepared for when Martha announced she was coming to visit me (at Stef’s house) – I suppose I should have guessed. She made the wonderful bright red, orange and yellow platter herself.

The second set, New House Oct 2007, includes one shot of all the possessions I had a Stef’s house being carried down the road, again by the runners, and then some views of the house so you can better imagine me/it.

Some dimensions of moving:
Nicest difference: Not feeling ill on the day – as I did for the previous move
Biggest embarrassment: Walking down the road feeling like a white memsahib clutching my laptop while 8 young fit people carried all my stuff
Biggest new treat: a tea pot that pours quickly and without leaking
Most nerve wracking: Getting the electrics to work when every socket is falling out of the wall – I have resorted to a fused and most case switched, plug block/extension lead on every socket so I don’t have to touch the walls
Greatest relief: Not having to worry about waking other people up in the early hours of the morning
Most painful; Stubbing middle toe on sink
Saddest –(in the nerdy sense) activity: Labelling and arranging all the food containers in the kitchen – ex milk and oat tins.
Most annoying: To find Nigel’s “friends” have taken some of the things he wanted to leave for me including spare mattress in spare room and mirror in the bathroom.
Biggest change: The silence
Best bit of DIY : Unblocking the sink which had clearly been almost totally blocked for months if not years.
Two most eagerly anticipated events: Meal for Aspiration Hope on Friday, almost as soon as Rupert arrives, so we can hand over the 60 pairs of shoes, vests and other stuff donated and shipped by Cirencester Athletics club (with a lot of help from Rupert)

And getting the table tennis back into one piece so that we can use it now that the rains have finished. (don’t even ask about the process of collecting same from Ethiopian Airways Cargo warehouse!!)

Work update;
Loads of things going on;
• Literacy project now moving into delivery phase, trained volunteers starting to support groups of women and funding and on going support nightmares might be almost over – in the short term any way.
• October work shop (funded by Save the Children UK) postponed while we recruit a consultant using the proper procedures.
• Recruiting a second consultant to work with Abynur and I evaluating all the Adult literacy work going on up and down the nation.
• Hope to have non-formal education, special needs education and gender issues firmly embedded across major new funding plans
• Doing more and more for my department in both Gender and SEN and hoping to get short term volunteers involved
• Quite a lot of time spent with 49 new volunteers both as member of Volunteer Committee and rep of Ministry
• Also helping SOS Addis – the environmental group - and am thrilled that they are to get a short term (Japanese) volunteer soon.
• Still helping Worknesh and Bristol Tigist with For Ethiopia but they are pretty self sufficient.
• Working with Great Ethiopian Run - Richard Nureka et al on using a regional run to raise awareness of gender issues in education in Somali and Afar.

Best news: we finally, finally seem to have emerged out of the rainy season - as you can see in the photos it is sunny, dry and warm.