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Bouldering at Portuguese Bridge

Arrgh; further and predictable internet problems have delayed this post even further than it would originally have been finished.

So the year continues to advance at a frightening rate. Time is flying by, it’s almost Easter Break. People are looking forward to some time off, and gearing up for the busiest term. Think I’ll be going hunting over break with one of the other teachers and a couple of the students. Looking forward to it!

Last weekend was the annual Bingham Student talent show. There was the usual mix of singers and other performers with variable mixes of talent. This year, there were not very many teachers who participated; some of us represented the rest of them, I wrote a song about Murray Overton, our director with one of the student teachers here, and performed it to the tune of American Pie by Don McClean. It got a good laugh, anyway.

This past weekend, a couple of us went back to Debra Lebanos, about 2 hours outside of Addis, to check out the place and see if there were any places to do some climbing. It’s a really beautiful part of the country, a huge gorge made by a tributary of the Blue Nile, which becomes the Nile River. The cliffs are very impressive, but a tad too much to undertake in one day, with the lack of equipment that we had. We took instead to bouldering on some of the larger rocks that we found. It was good fun, I’m looking forward to getting back home and back into climbing. Ethiopia is not the place for climbers. The scenery there is always nice, though.

Ethiopia is starting to experience the expected power shortages that happen during this time of the year. At present, it’s only one day a week but it will inevitably turn into 3 and 4 days a week of no power. Fortunately, Bingham has purchased a very large generator which is able to run the whole compound. So at least the IT classes won’t be affected this year. Another problem that Ethiopia is having is a lack of foreign currency. This makes imports difficult and recently, Coca Cola of Ethiopia have had to temporarily shut down. Pepsi is the only available soft drink in the country, which has left some people rather depressed.

Niall

Posted at 6 April, 2009, 6:06pm

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