Who would have thought that a day spent wearing rubber gloves and getting sweaty could be so satisfying? Now that our house-mate Bruno has returned home to Belgium we have the house to ourselves. While Gill was at her college this morning at a lecture, I scrubbed the kitchen. There were fewer cockroaches than expected although plenty of droppings. Removing the layer of grease from the walls that has obviously accumulated over many months was particularly satisfying.

Even more exciting than spending the day splashing disinfectant around, was being taught by our landlord, Fasil, and his sisters how to make proper coffee the Ethiopian way. The process starts with washing raw coffee beans, roasting them in a clay pan over a charcoal fire, grinding them in a special pestle and mortar and then boiling up the ground beans in a clay coffee pot called a jubuna. The resulting brew, even though it had been made by a Ferenji amateur, was coffee far superior to ANYTHING you can get at home. The quality of the beans is important of course (Ethiopian coffee is probably the nest in the world) but making a drink by hand, starting with the raw ingredients is incredibly satisfying. Perhaps the really important part is the hanging around together and chatting. We spent nearly two hours making and drinking coffee. In exchange for such an enriching experience, we exposed our Ethiopian family to the jar of instant coffee left behind by Bruno. Curiosity got the better of them and they tried it, despite my warnings. Needless to say, instant coffee will not become a popular product in this country. Quite right too.