Yesterday, a hyena broke into a kindergarten in the middle of the city. The children spotted him in the morning; still and scared beneath a large bush in the playground - and they scattered, screaming. My brother-in-law, an engineer also known for a good eye with a hunting rifle, was called in to shoot the animal. “But I left it to
Addis Ababa is a city hustling. In the open markets, the messy intersections, the ‘blue donkey’ minivans and in the coffee shops of Ethiopia’s gritty, bulging capital is the effort and enterprise of at least 6 million people. When I open my gate in the morning and close it at the end of each day, I see a man without legs
Full-lung singing and the wild clapping of a hundred small hands are heard well before stepping through the tall metal gates of Jerusalem Inclusive School. In a small compound - on a cobbled back road in one of those outer suburbs of Addis that wind coolly into the Entoto foothills - students shake off the early chill with song and
In the five months my daughter has been learning to talk, she has learnt the word rain but not the word shower (or, for that matter, flush). At least every afternoon, rain falls on us hard and fast with a dramatic storm that lasts well into the evening. Often, we wake to the sound of gushing pipes outside our window
