The Fife coast


Cadderlie bothy


Cadderlie bothy with Dave and Ian


Gill half way up a Munro


Finishing an orienteering course after my usual bad run

When we left to go to the UK I felt very happy to leave everything behind and not think about our house. Returning to our house yesterday was like walking into a rented villa in Greece at the start of a holiday. The sun was shining and we could walk barefoot on the the tiled floor. After nearly 24 hours of travelling being home was a relief. Our flight left Heathrow at 1300 on Monday and arrived at Addis Ababa at 0030. We then had to hang about in the airport until our flight to Gondar at 0710. Our various attempts to sleep in the airport weren’t very successful but at least we did manage to sleep a bit on the plane to Gondar. We hadn’t even boarded our flight to Gondar when I had my first truly Ethiopian experience. We spent most of our time trying to sleep in the International terminal because the Domestic terminal didn’t open until 5am. As we were getting ready to make our way to the Domestic terminal, I stepped outside one of the exit doors from the International terminal to see if it was raining. The policeman at the door watched me step outside (literally ONE step) and then refused to let me back in. My attempts to point to my bags lying just a few steps inside the terminal and the fact that he had seen me hanging around inside for several hours were pointless. I had left the terminal through an “exit” door so I could not enter throught he same door. Hmmm...OK. As there’s no point arguing with a man with a gun I walked up to an “entrance” door a few meters away. However, you need a flight ticket to get in which of course was with my bags inside the terminal. The policeman on the entrance door wasn’t going to compromise. I applied the principle of not arguing too much with a man with a gun and walked back to the exit door, where the policeman was waiting to see if I would threaten national security again. Fortunately Gill had seen me stranded outside through a window and came out with all the bags. Welcome to Ethiopia.

Visiting the UK and coming back to Ethiopia has felt quite different from our last visit one year ago. Last time, being in the UK wasn’t always comfortable and coming back to Ethiopia felt like coming home. This time I enjoyed almost every minute of being in the UK and have very mixed feelings about being back here. After an eventful year in Ethiopia I loved the UK. It’s a beautiful country. Transport is so good it’s a pleasure to use (even in London). I can buy almost any food I want almost anywhere I am. I can sit in a café with a coffee while reading a paper and be completely ignored. I can walk the streets and be treated like anyone else. The trees are stunning. I can understand anyone speaking (apart from in London). I can use broadband internet (the term world-wide web is a complete joke – most people on this planet cannot access the web even if they know of it and most web content is effectively inaccessible with a dial-up connection, which is the only way most people in most countries can access the web). There are opportunities everywhere to do almost anything you want. Even the smallest town has at least one bookshop where I can choose from a bigger selection of books than any Ethiopian will ever have access to in their lifetime. The one aspect to life in the UK I really noticed more than anything else was that most people are more friendly than I remembered. I think I just didn’t notice the friendliness of most strangers in the UK before I came here. Perhaps I’ve been too cynical and closed to notice.

During the weeks leading up to arriving in the UK we planned our visit like a military campaign. I still remember the child-like pleasure of booking cheap UK train travel via the internet from Gondar. As a result after spending the first couple of days in London I visited a friend in Salisbury for two days, met my PGCE Tutor for career advice, bought some bits and pieces that we need in Ethiopia, travelled to Leeds to meet a previous VSO vol to discuss a trial of a textbook he developed, spent a week in Edinburgh with my mum and sister, spent two days walking the Fife Coast Path with my mum, hung out for three days with two friends in a bothy in the Highlands, walked and camped with Gill for a week in Scotland and finally camped in Speyside for the Scottish Six Days Orienteering Event (Gill ran all six days while I made do with four). We returned to London via Easyjet from Inverness (cheap via the net but environmentally costly I know) for one more day in London before leaving the UK. Sue and Sue in London were very hospitable in putting up with us descending on their house and cluttering it up with our stuff for several days. A great trip.

Within an hour of landing at Heathrow we were sitting in a Pret a Manger in Piccadilly eating sandwiches. I can’t do justice to the simple pleasure of that sandwich. Every part of it was delicious: the brown bread that didn’t turn into dough when you squeezed it, the humous and the salad that was safe to eat. I think we both felt during the first day that we were mentally and emotionally ready to come home to the UK for good. I have lots of work to do in Gondar, in fact the next six months should be my busiest time, but I’m ready and want to be part of UK society. In our remaining time as VSO volunteers (at the moment it feels like serving out the rest of my sentence) I have lots of training to develop and lead for Gondar schools, we both will be doing Open University courses and we need to sort out what we do next with our lives. We both want to move north and want to be involved in education. After that, we have a lot of exploring to do.