December 2nd 2007

I am writing this on a sunny Sunday in Gondar having been on the road for a week. It has been an exhausting combination of interesting visits and writing up reports of demanding interviews, 99% of which are conducted in Amharic, and hour after bone shaking, mind numbing hour over rocky mountains on precipitous, dusty roads.

We did manage to sneak in a quick visit to Axum home of the ancient stellae and the religious and historic centre of Ethiopia despite being only miles from the, thank fully quiet, Eritrean border. It was the biggest day of the year and we had been passing white robed pilgrims making their way their by bus and on foot for several days. We eschewed sleeping out in the church grounds in order to partake in the early morning service so I failed to see much more than streets thronging with many thousands and lined with almost as many sellers of pilgrim memorabilia and other tat.

I have put a few photos of this trip to date and of an earlier visit to Wenchi crater with my niece Heather, husband Jamie and a fellow VSO – Gill. There are in an album called November 2007 and you need to move to page 2 of the albums to see both this one and the earlier one of the Simien trek. It was lovely to have H and J here at the end of their year long wanderings, to hear some thing of Rwanda and to use Heather’s hard earned knowledge of Arabic to compare it with Amharic.

In three weeks time I hope to be sitting on a Zanzibar beach with Caroline, Anthony and others. It will be lovely to see them and the sea after such a long time and, to be honest, to have a couple of weeks recharging away from Ethiopia. I am not sure what form our Christmas celebrations will take but I will do my best not to miss English shops, English weather and English stress!

Meanwhile Dennis, Dionne and baby bump are still doing well and certainly giving me something far more important to get excited about!