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The dim one & the vegetarian
A comedy duo playing in a kitchen near you...Halellujah! The power is back! Well for tonight at least.
It's been really shocking recently - one day on, one day off, which has kind of made it hard to find time to update the blog. When we do have laptop battery power, we use it for emails, banking tasks (ok, ok, eBay) and preparing for our trip back to the UK in, oh, under three weeks now!
In fact is, the power is worse than last year, which is a shame. Plus the mobile network has been dire for the last week or so in Assosa.
Normally it would take about 5-10 attempts to get through, with a record of 35, but recently it has been nearly impossible.
Instead of the usual 3 or 4 sounds - engaged tone, silence then solid beeeeep, "line is busy now, please try again later" or just silence - you get a constant engaged tone.
Plus the 100% SMS texting - last year the reliable alternative to a mobile call - success rate has fallen to about 30%, and this week texting has been completely out of order.
As I am sure I have said before, it is
Goodbye Antero
Safe trip back to Finland! sad to see services in a developing country get worse, not better, but I will at least add that the Internet has been more reliable than during Q1 2009, when it seemed to be on a permanent go-slow.
There's a Rat in the Kitchen So it's 9pm, power back, time to sit down and recover from an incident within the last hour that got my heart pumping and the neighbours laughing.
We had just completed a Davina workout by candle light and I was taking a cold shower when I heard a scream from the bedroom. Sara tells me a big, fat rat had plopped out from the ceiling onto the floor and scuttled off along the wall towards the bed.
Bearing in mind the house is in total darkness, but for one candle and a rapidly fading solar torch, hunting down the beastie called for more guile and night vision than a middle-aged Ferengi with a broom posses.
Enter the cats.
Er...where are the cats?
The cats? The same cats we bought a 2birr chunk of lung for this morning and who have spent the entire day with bellies bent out of
Remember the munkey?
Same munkey. Same business. shape on our sofa snoring?
That'll be them. Completely absent when required, but always present and crawling under your feet when you have a hangover and really need to feed yourself first before some cute, fluffy bag of fleas.
We push the bedroom door closed and head outside banging plastic plates and calling for our stuffed and bone idle feline friends.
Of course they are cats. No one orders cats around. We leave the front door open, I finish my shower and am getting dressed when up sneaks Nibbler.
Well, sneak is probably the wrong verb. Drags her bloated, furry carcass through the door in an attempt to either sniff out some more free meat or finish her kip on the sofa.
Quick as a flash I pick her up and throw her into the bedroom to earn her corn and butcher the rodent. Five minutes of pitiful mewing later we realise that either the cat is stupid or the rat has scarpered.
Ok, plan B. Rat must be in the kitchen. Scoop up puss and in we pile.
Sure enough, catty pricks up her ears and nature takes over. Ratboy is somewhere
Giant Panda spotted in Assosa
Police say 'vegetarian and mostly harmless...' near the fridge.
In fact he might be behind the fridge (shine torch down it).
Pull fridge away from wall.
Catty goes behind and guess what? Ratty is INSIDE the fridge - inside the engine!
Natural Born Killas? So while the pair of shout "get 'im" and "there he is" Nibbler stalks up and down the rear of the fridge waiting for Mr Rat to make his move...and so he does. He's OFF!
The next 10 minutes were pure chaos. Sara anticipates mayhem and exits in haste, shutting the door behind her while Me and Kit-e-Kat stalk ratface in the dark kitchen armed with nothing but a broom, a head torch and harsh language.
No motion sensors in this scene. Nothing but the a pair of cat ears and the wrath of an angry Ferenge.
So it begins. The hunters stock still listening for the rustle or rattle of rattus rattus. "He's there!" I shout as rat makes a dash across the kitchen.
After 5 minutes the kitchen is a mess - bottles on the floor, a near miss with the kersoene stove (better blow it out), dirty washing everywhere. Cat
Bekema (aka Daddy Cool)
He's crazy like a fool... loving it; rat not amused; and Alan in a adrenaline-fulled sweat.
At last the rat makes an error and is cornered.
Little terrified and - imagination runs riot - tearful ratty eyes stare back at me, trapped in the beam of my torch, as I prevent it's exit stage left with a broom and a pair of mobile claws and jaws prevent stage right.
Do rats cry? I doubt it. Besides I'd given it a few pokes with the broom to flush it out of hiding holes and that'd be enough to make anyone or anything's eye smart a tad.
While I analyse possible rescue scenarios (look, I am a vegetarian after all) I remember the plugs.
What plugs?
The EAR plugs! The Emirates earplugs!
The only ones that have ever kept out the sound of the all night church chanting and bing-bong drums of the neighbours.
The plugs that were eaten by a RAT!
Thereby damning me to months of sleepless nights and directly damning the entire rat species to an eternity burning down below, in the inferno, with the filth hounds of hades...
"KILL HIM", I scream, "DO
Bekema as The Rock
He's got 50 Bentleys in the West Indies... IT!"
The cat looks at the rat; then looks at me.
Looks at me. Then the rat.
"OH FFS, F FF FFFFF FFFF FF F - KILL IT" (I am losing it)
"YOU'RE A CAT. This is YOUR JOB. Some pieces of meat have LEGS and do not arrive via a pair of scissors and plastic dish!! KILL IT"
(I have edited out most of the swear words, but the discussion was getting somewhat heated)
By now Sara is on the other side of the door asking for a progress report.
"Our cat is a PUSSY!" I shout and head off into another tirade of abuse at the poor, confused moggie (it's amazing what adrenaline does to you).
While Sara tries to calm me by reminding me the cat cannot understand English, the rat, seeing that he is up against a vegetarian and a domesticated ball of fluff, fires off into the darkness.
Not all pussys are pussys So it begins again.
A crazed waltz around the increasingly messed-up kitchen - it's here, it's there, pause for breath; give Sara an update, there it is again.
At one
Computer Says No
Can someone call an IT Expert P-L-E-A-S-E :) point the rat was sitting on a pile of clothes above the cat while Nibbler is sniffing around below and I think if rats could laugh, then it'd definately be taking a time out an a chuckle ("It be larfing at you, my babber").
The rat decides to enter a third dimension and shins up the leg of a table.
I beat it down.
It hops onto a shelf.
I poke it onto the floor.
I realise it really is a big old b*gger when I see it close up and am beginning to think we need to play our joker.
"Sara! get the other cat in here NOW"
No doubt - along with the rest of the Kebele - the other cat, Kate, has heard the commotion and has trotted over to see if it involves food or stroking.
Sara scoops him up (yeah, yeah, we called her Kate as a kitten but now 'she' has developed some features that would, ahem, quite clearly make her a boy) and turfs him in.
Aha! Game over my old china.
Ratfink makes his final bid for freedom and runs into an
A big 4
Sneak Peak at the next blog entry accidental maze of upturned empty wine bottles with only one exit; and it ain't guarded by the stupid one or the vegetarian.
Kate doesn't mince her mews and with a final squeek El Rat heads off to join his fellow rodents in that special hell reserved for ear-plug munchers.
Kate saunters out, dinner dangling from jaws ("good girl, er boy, and you didn't even spill any blood on the kitchen floor..") and heads off into the night. Job well done.
Nibbler pulls a long face and slides into the dark, probably off to do a jigsaw puzzle or arrange some flowers...
Drama over we can resume cooking pasta on the kerosene.
I then realise it seems very quiet (not just because there is no power). The neighbours are not making a sound.
I sit on the arm chair and imagine what they just heard.
A Ferengi man crashing round his kitchen in the dark shouting the F word, KILL IT and Nibbler (which means, "let's eat" in Amharic). ..
It's OK really because I think they think we are all mad. It's just our culture...
Well, that was meant to be
0 lucky man
Happy images from our VSO experience so far! an update from Addis about my birthday; but it kind of got hijacked. Oops, sorry.
If there's power tomorrow I promise, promise, promise to make amends.
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