18th November

Today is my birthday and I have to say it has been interesting to experience this Ethiopi-western style. Actually, people here don’t really celebrate their birthday as they generally don’t know what date they were born on. They may know the month and perhaps the year, but nothing more specific than that. Mind you, the village women often say they are 20 years old as they hide their greying hair underneath their head scarf. I think they just don’t keep track of the years as they pass by.
As a special birthday treat, the much waited for parcels picked up form the post office were opened - a lovely selection of goodies, which will be rationed over the upcoming weeks. I'm looking forward to afternoon tea on Sunday with cake and I think Friday's supper will be spaghetti bolognese, using the ppuch of bolognese sauce that the Lowtons sent over. Oh such a varied diet coming up.....

Makabe, the cook baked a cake with bananas and raisins (brought over courtesy of Waitrose) in and iced it – not sure how she made the icing as I was out in the health centre all day. We had a little birthday tea with cake and orange squash (also courtesy of Waitrose) and some of the Ethiopians, Danes and Brits came along and sang happy birthday. Heidi and Andrea bought me a chicken for my birthday and Clara bought me some Spanish sausage. The chicken has been named Buttercup and has been put in the cage with the other two. I'm a bit worried that they will be mean to her - three's a crowd and all that stuff.

Then we headed off to the green bar for a beer but had to come back after a while as the kitchen there was closed. So birthday supper was pasta with tomato sauce and a real treat was a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese courtesy of a Danish shop (Heli is visiting from Denmark and brought supplies).

Oh and then we cracked open one of the bars of Green & Black chocolate that the wonderful team from the Postgraduate Medical School sent over - thanks ladies; really appreciated - and everyone savoured a square of chocolate. Amazingly, it hadn't melted at all. Even more amazingly, the customs people hadn't eaten any of it.