In Darkness and Rain

At the Univ: Had brief meetings with some of the library staff and also met the director of the Inst. Last week, I was invited to tag along to visit bookshops in Addis to peruse future acquisitions. There has been a lot of material published both in and out of Et. I started looking at some databases which might be helpful in retrieving citations for my work. There are many! Also, the head of the Abysinnian Baptist Church, Mr. Butts, was here with a delegation. They visited the museum and had some meetings. Met some of my former colleagues from various area libraries as well.

Other: Last week I turned on the hot water heater for my shower (or geyser as they say here). It sort of blew up and knocked off all the lights in the apt. I called the guards who decided to find the main fuses, but it took them about an hour since that room did not have lighting! This week the univ. is supposed to fix the heater, so we shall see. Meanwhile, am boiling water on the stove and then dumping it in a bucket so I can have a bath that way.

Actually, each day the power goes out for 10-20 minutes. There seems to be a generator that then restores things. Since it is a high-rise apt building, I heard there was an elevator as well but would hate to be stuck there, even for 10 mins. At work, I have only seen the power out once.

Rains and heavy rains continue. Yesterday was a bit eerie with it being so dark and just sheets of heavy rain for hours. Just when I thought it would end, it would continue pouring endlessly. These rains were supposed to have ended a month ago.

Started up my Amharic lessons twice a week with my former teacher. The verbs are the trickiest as they agree with fem, mas, polite (that is big here!), etc. From years ago, I mostly remembered the nouns. I would like to learn to read some Amharic. The menu in the Staff Lounge (Univ restaurant) used to be in Engl and Amharic but now is only in Amharic. Most shops and office are in Engl and Amharic.