Penultimate blog from Assosa, well possibly!
on J and M in Assosa (Ethiopia), 27/Jan/2008 19:17, 34 days ago
I have been told twice this week to keep calm. I am not sure if this is in comparison to my usual horizontal laid back Ethiopian state or if I have reverted to my pre Ethiopian frenetic self in my last week. I hope the former.I keep being asked what I will miss when I leave and it is quite a hard question to answer. Things I would like to keep are the healthy eating, the calm state!, but I will not miss the toilets, the cold nights, Amharric. I will miss the friendly people and the sunshine to name but a few.VSO have been to visit us this week and we learn that there are 7 more volunteers coming to Assosa in February– a young German couple who are coming to the MI which will be great for the MI, a young couple from Bristol, a Kenyan, a Pilipino and another lady from UK. We know little about any of them except for the 2 couples who have been in touch and in fact the couple fromBristolhave done intensive research even meeting some of our visitors to Assosa! They are going to live in our house and hopefully take over Mulatu and Martha. At least they have a house as there are very few houses in Assosa with indoor kitchens and flush toilets. The VSO Logistics officer spent 2 days in Assosa trying to find 3 such houses while he was here but only managed to find one.We have been asked in the street by Ethiopians if they could have our key when we leave.The weather this week has been very strange from pouring with rain to very hot sunshine It is unbelievable to have such rain in the dry season. I am not sure what I am going to do if it continues as I have given Mulatu my super 50 year old blue pacamac (he thinks it is wonderful), left my one functioning umbrella in Addis and given away my old umbrella. I think it is definitely the time to leave when even the weather has turned funny. If this continues I think our last week will be a wash out as I have also given away my 2 pairs of waterproof shoes as they are completely wrecked.We were given a lovely farewell send off by the other volunteers last night where they had each cooked food and Lesley had even managed to make 2 delicious trifles.It was a great evening to which Mulatu and Wurku (Lesley’s helper) were also invited and thoroughly enjoyed. It made us reflect on our 2 years and what a great time we have had in total.As you may have gathered from the title we still have no definite news from our departure from Assosa. If all else fails a car/truck can be hired in Addis to come and collect us. As long as we get the flight toZanzibaron Wednesday 6thMarch it does not matter when we get to Addis.