A candle and a laptop

The school is just finishing. The stress of checking and chasing the kids to do the daily homework is finally finished for several weeks. It is time to go on leave, this time to Lisbon, where we have not been as a family for quite sometime. Most of our family and many of our good friends leave there.

It is dark again in the house, due to the regular power cuts we are having every two days. I had prepared part of the suitcases the day before (anticipating the power cut already), but the last items had to be found and sorted out with the help of a candle or a camping lantern. It is not easy to choose clothes with these sorts of light sources… One of us went out for dinner at night once with one shoe of each…
The suitcases were sorted out but the underwear of one of the girls was forgotten behind. Nothing that could not be quickly bought again…

I would resume the holidays into 3 main parts: medical appointments, shopping for a huge list of items (despite the nearly 150 kg of luggage brought a few items were still forgotten or not found on time) and finally being with family and friends plus keeping updated with work emails at the end of the day, necessary at this last few months of my work project.

The medical appointments ranged from vaccine preventive measures to regular check ups and dental repairing. For half of the appointments, it took much longer than expected. The day we had to handed in the samples from three consecutive days to be tested, we could not be attended due to a failure in the computer system in the whole hospital. We still waited for a while but it was off for the whole day. We wondered around the city avoiding opening the bag were the smelly samples were… Luckily the computer system was working later in the morning of the following day.
The day we managed to sort out our registration to be vaccinated, after being questioned why I had delayed the vaccinations of my kids for so long, we were told they could not give us the tetanus injections, they were out of stock… We tried several places but they were either finished in most places, pharmacies and hospitals or just reserved for people leaving there. I guess the global economic crisis is affecting many sectors (I had to go to several pharmacies to get 2-3 pieces of the same item that were often out of stocks)…Finally, a few days before departure we managed to have them done. It was quite a relief, as vaccinations are difficult (and I am not sure how they are shipped and stored here) to get in Ethiopia.  

The shopping included various items from the usual clothes and shoes to special food items, car parts, violin cords, and off course books and toys. Medicines were also an important part of the items. The eternal dilemma of anyone leaving abroad for long periods of time: which spare parts to buy for my car (which and how many filters will be needed to change in the next year or two? Which parts are likely to break soon?), which medicines we will need for the next year or two? Which books would we like to read in the next several months? Despite globalization, there are still many items we can only find in a few countries.

It was really nice to see so many friends, young, old and not so old members of the family (ranging from 1 to 90 years old!). We spent very good moments with my little sisters, my father, and many close cousins and unties. Kids grow so quickly and it is great to see them (not as often as we would wish) whenever possible and learn about their new interests in life and achievements. The girls were amazed to be seating several times at very long tables and learn that absolutely everyone at the table belonged to their families. They are not used to that. We have often long dinner or lunch tables in Addis, but most of the times full with friends. Pity we could not see and being with still so many other family and friends due to the short time and so many urgent commitments (mostly the medical ones that kept us busy most of the days). Hopefully next time we will have more free time!

One of the highlights was the visit to the Zoo, that greatly improved in the last few years, becoming closer to high standards seen in other international Zoos. The dolphin and sea lion show is a must and as good as the ones we have seen in Florida last year.

We greatly enjoyed the yacht tour on a sunny Sunday along the cost to Cascais and even the freezing cold swim at the sea as well as the great picnic lunch at the boat. We got a bit nervous when two young Cape Verdian guys swam from the shore to our boat (anchored about 200-300m from the beach) and started climbing in without being invited. But luckily a cool reaction and calm conversation avoided major problems.

We were also happily impressed with the great surprise of gathering old friends while over-night in Holland on the way back to Addis.

It has been great to be with so many old friends we did not see for a while and feel like we have seen each others yesterday. These friendships are very precious.

Like everything that is good it feels very short… We are now back at home, with even worse power cut schedules: every other day no electricity from 6am to 10pm and the days in between no electricity either the whole morning or the whole afternoon… Our noisy little generator is just enough for a few items, often just swiched on when is really dark to plug the computers batteries and a few lamps (the inspiration for the title of this blog is still absolutely updated…). I just hope that the electricity constrains will reduce with the starting of the rainy season last week. It is often said that the short electricity supplies we are suffering are due to the low water levels in the water powered stations at the end of the dry season.