On Monday the 14th of November it was my 21st birthday. Unfortunately it wasn’t a national holiday so we decided to celebrate it on the Sunday.
Sunday, like most days here, was a beautiful, sunny day without a single cloud in the sky. About fifteen of us set for a walk towards the gorge. We thought we’d find a shaded spot and have our picnic that we'd packed, however we couldn’t find any shade and we all became very tired quite quickly. The first spot of shade we saw was actually a small building site in front of the gorge. By that time we were too hungry and tired to find a more scenic spot so we just sat down and ate. We had a beautiful view of the gorge but in most of the pictures you can just see the building site.
My fellow volunteer, Maeve, and I had made a cake the day before – a fruit cake. We were going to make a chocolate cake but because it is a fasting period at the moment for Orthodox Christians and it would have required both eggs and milk, we didn’t. We don’t have an oven so we had to bake it in a special bread oven that Ethiopians use. It doesn’t have any heat settings except on/off. Consequently the cake was a little burnt around the edges and a little raw in the middle, but it tasted good. I even had candles to blow out!
It was a lovely day even though, on the way home, I stepped ankle deep in a huge puddle of mud covered with dry hay. (A mixture of hay, water and mud is used to make the walls on buildings.) I had to walk back home with a muddy leg. It was hilarious!
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