There is always a lot of fuss made about errors of translation, however pronunciation mistakes can also lead to some rather awkward moments.

Now I know it has been a while since the last post, but if you are good I’ll try and put another one up this weekend!

I have had a few problems with my serategna, mostly in terms of her not turning up when she is supposed to.  This came to a stressful point where I had to actually do my own laundry.  One evening after work I trotted across to the Vice-Dean’s house to borrow their bowl for washing laundry.  I was greeted by a “get in” and finally managed to extricate myself 3, well-fed, hours later.  By this point I felt that it was too late to start doing laundry.  The following morning I was up and ready to dig in to the delights of hand-washing laundry.

• Bowl – ready
• Soap – ready
• Hot water – ready

…and in I went.  It didn’t seem too bad.  There was some splashing around and a certain degree of water spillage, but all in all I felt I was doing okay.  I’d got about half-way through when a knock on the door heralded the return of my serategna.  She immediately insisted that she would do it – after all this is what I am paying her for (as well as to not turn up half the time aparently).  I indicated the pile I had already done, rather proud of my efforts.   She took one look, shook her head and threw them back in to be done again with the others.

On a second occasion of absence I had started doing laundry again, determined this time I was getting it right and again she turned up half-way through.  I’ll leave it to your imagination what her feelings about my efforts were.

However, her irregularity led to my colleague, who had also hired her, to fire her and I was coming to the same conclusion, when she came to see me and quit.  So now I am once more without a serategna and deciding whether I should do it myself.  However, given the look of disdain I got for my efforts, maybe I’d better look for someone else!

And now my second tale for this blog entry.  The Dean at the college told me about an important meeting to discuss tourism in the Guji Zone (which is the area around Adola and Negele Borena) that was going to happen at the college on the coming Friday. I thought this was good thing, and starting to rack my brains for ways that tourism could be promoted around here.  Much as I like being the town foreigner, it would provide a useful source of income and there is certainly enough amazing countryside around here.

One of the great bonuses of this was the whole college got taken out to lunch and in the afternoon I was discussing with a couple of the staff here about the meeting.  We talked about areas where it was common- in the North (Tigray and Amhara I agreed- where a number of historic sites are), in Addis Ababa and I kindly added Hawassa.  I also went on effusively about how good it would be to have more in and around Adola – I have after all become quite attached to my home here.

The conversation progressed and to my horror the words “sharia law” were mentioned.  With a growing sense of dread I realised that the meeting was not about tourism, but rather about terrorism.  I can only hope that my colleagues misunderstood what I was saying and don’t now think I am a big advocate for terror in Adola…