Needless to say my line manager has not come to see me to apologise or just to talk about what happened in our meeting. I tried to see him the following day when I planned to take the moral high ground and apologise for any offence I might have caused. His response to my request to talk was met with “I’m busy all day”. I can deal with him behaving like a child as long as he doesn’t cause difficulties for the sake of it.

This whole incident has focused my thoughts on the perceived roles we each have in the cluster unit. Alemayehu is supposed to be in charge. He is an instructor who also has the title of Cluster Unit Co-ordinator. I’ve always seen my role as supporting, advising and developing training, while trying to develop the capacity of my two colleagues. In reality everybody seems to look to me for leadership and little happens unless I make it happen. Now I just have to wait to see how things turn out while I focus on what’s important: my work with my immediate colleagues.

Friday night was spent at Gemma & Steve’s. They have a particular luxury: an oven. We spent the evening eating baked potatoes while sitting on their balcony by the light of the full moon. Fantastic!

Work is painfully slow but sometimes seemingly small activities can have a positive effect. I’ve wanted to re-arrange the cluster unit office for a while and finally got Mulugeta and Meleshew to help me shift furniture around. When I tried to sweep the floor Meleshew practically ripped the broom out of my hand. Men don’t do domestic work in Ethiopia. Having transformed the office as a working environment Meleshew then announced that she would help Mulugeta sort out his workshop, which I’ve been hinting at for a while. The power of inspiration!

Gill and I watched Brokeback Mountain on DVD last night. It’s easily the most beautiful and moving film I’ve seen in ages.