Enlightening last week of March 2014

Lots of things happen here... just a few here, to give you an impression

1. A nice dog was having puppies, just outside our compund wall. So we started to give her food in the evenings. Now that all but one of the puppies have been taken away, we would like to keep the mother dog. But she's not used to living in an enclosed compound, starts whining and escapes, so we  took up the last pup. 

This little one stays with us and mum comes to visit her morning and evenings, they play together and after that, mum goes out again.  

2. One day, driving through a particulartly crowded street in the centre of Addis, I saw an old man with a bulging bag of fire lilies, obviously intent on selling them. But I couldn't stop there. Amazingly, he had noticed me looking at them, so after I had parked a little further up the road, he walked up to me through the heavy traffic.  When I saw that they really did have bulbs on them I bought the whole lot 

Now you must know that fire lilies have a special place in our hearts as they were the first flowers to bloom at the very start of the rainy season in Northern Nigeria. After having had a dry spell of at least six months, those flowers literally were a treat for sore eyes.
Meanwhile, we've put them in the garden, and a few in pots to give away as a present. And what happened? The beautiful (female) Tekezze sunbird came to eat from them.



3. On sunday Robert and I visited the annual Rotary event, where all Addis Abeba Rotaries (at least 12) came together. To my surprise there weren't any old grey guys but there were many many young professionals running the show, at least 300, all speaking English fluently, interested, and intent on imprving the world. The T-short speaking for itself: Join rotary for a better world. Wow, what an atmosphere! I met a very nice guy - teacher social studies at the Greek school- who will introduce me to someone of the board of the Addis Abeba University Printing Press. They may want to print my book in Eglish/ Amharic.

4. After that, I went to the launching afternoon of AraKele, the vocational training for women, set up by a friend of mine, Arabella Stewart. She transformed her hobby/ volunteer work 'project pencilcase' - to provide poor schoolchildren with a pencilcase - into a training in sewing for women school drop-outs, in order that they can start their own business after 9 months. Beautiful Chinese sewing machines. No electrical ones in case there are electricity cuts. You can sponsor one woman's training course with 230 euro. Or give your left over materials to the school. Look at .. http://projectpencilcase.org/arakele-vocational-training/
 

What is so amazing here is that there is an 'after the war' kind of energy here, it is buzzing! There are so many initiatives, set up by young professionals, by women's cooperatives, or by foundations set up by interested foreigners (often dependants).

They make leather bags, shoes, pottery, gowns, handwoven scarfs; I know of 3 Dutch women that have organised a home for women with babies that live on the street. I myself am involved in BSBL , Better Sight Better Learning, which provides glasses and frames for poor schoolchildren with bad eyesight. And so on and so forth.

5. Last week we had invited Arjan van Dijk and his wife Geertje to our house. Arjan - based in the Netherlands - has made the most beautiful books about the people of Ethiopia. I have offered to be the contact person for his selling the books here. I am actually captured by the smaller book he made, about women. He choose to make this book to stress the fact that women all over the world provide for our daily food. On each page there is a picture of a woman, or woman with child. On the opposite page is a wise African saying.

I suggest to whoever this reads, to order it as a Christmas gift. http://www.arjanvandijk.nu/ and 

http://www.arjanvandijk.nu/en/publications-news-links/

I will quote a few:
"Eat when the time is ready; speak when the time is RIGHT" - Ethiopian proverb.
"Every head must do its own thinking" - African proverb
"Every human being chooses his goal in life even before he is born"  - Sabonfe Somee
"When one is in love, a cliff becomes a meadow"  - Ethiopian proverb