An "Ethiopian Day"

The word for an Ethiopian person is habasha in Amharic and when a steady stream of issues arise in the day to create havoc for a ferenji (foreigner), we say he/she is "having a habasha day." Here's an example of mine that happened on Thursday.

The lock on the gate to my house compound is almost broken and it took me about 20 minutes of fiddling to get it to open. When I got inside my house, I discovered that the lights in my living room were not working. I checked the breaker and fuses, but I think it is probably electrical which can be a huge issue here. So, I decided to make dinner and the power went out halfway through the cooking process - ended up having a Cliff bar that I brought from Canada for dinner instead.

There were some dirty dishes in the sink and when I turned on the tap to fill the sink with water, the tap would not shut off again. I went outside to the tap that shuts off water to the whole house and the tap just kept on spinning and spinning without any change to the water pressure. The kitchen tap ended up running for the entire night. The house didn't flood though so that's good.  

When I was finally ready to go to bed, I went into my room to discover that I had left the window open all day and evening allowing dozens of potentially malaria infested mosquitoes to take up residence. Luckily for me though, the steady hum of hungry female mozzies reminded me of the trips I have done over the last few years with my friend Frank in Canada's north and the buzzing worked as a sort of white noise resulting in me sleeping like a baby.

And that is what they call "having a  habasha day."