Back in Harar this week and trying to get back into the swing of things at work. My last week with Calum here was spoiled by a nasty bout of gastroenteritis, which pretty much stopped me from seeing anything of Hawassa, in southern Ethiopia, other than my immediate surroundings. The immediate surrounding were however lovely, and were quite nice enough to keep us occupied for a few days. We treated ourselves to a stay at the Lewi resort which is a lovely but expensive hotel on the shores of the lake. It has free boat rides, mini golf, table tennis, badminton and a lovely pool for its guests to take advantage of. There are beautiful gardens and trees full of very cheeky monkeys who spend most of their time spying on other people’s lunches from their aerial vantage points, and then mounting co ordinated raids on the unsuspecting diners below stealing what they can. Very amusing to watch – and we managed to keep all our food, only sharing a left over saucer of tomato sauce, which one young monkey came right onto our table and stuck his face into, ending up looking much like a toddler who had just fed himself a bowl of spaghetti hoops! Very comical.
Since being back in Harar, we have been visited by Baroness Blackstone, who has come with VSO on a two week parliamentarian scheme to see development work in action. She is also chair of the board at Great Ormond Street, and was very interested to see the paediatric ward at Hiwot Fana.
Every night we are having big displays of thunder and spectacular lightening forking across the sky and the small rains continue, although interestingly we seem to get the lightening most, often the thunder, and uncommonly the rain. The total opposite of Scotland where you get loads of rubbishy drizzle and occasionally a clap of thunder, but rarely a good full on thunder and lightening display. I really like a good storm, it’s quite exciting and we get an amazing view from the full length windows in the living room. Being on the top floor of a 4 story apartment block has some perks!
Finally I have received my first instalment of baby hats from Calum’s Mum- thank you! They are beautiful. I was able to put 3 of them to use as soon as I got to work as we had a set of twins born 10 weeks early and weighing about 2.2lbs each who were so cold the thermometer could read their temperature (pics to follow) and a bigger full term baby, who’s temperature came up from 34.1 to 35.6 with an hour skin to skin and a hat on. She was still a bit cool but I’m confident that as long as she stays with her Mum things will continue in the right direction. The hats are massively appreciated -all of the mothers want one for their baby but at the moment I’m rationing to those that are cold or very small until we get a few more – so thank you, and do keep them coming!
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