Bigger, smaller, bigger

I lost weight while I was backpacking, it's hard to be sure exactly how much weight I lost as I didn't weigh myself before I went away. I was certainly the fattest I'd ever been, I was wearing size 24 jeans.

I didn't diet while I was away, but when I got to Australia I lost weight because I was very active. I walked about 3 miles a day and my eating patterns changed. I wasn't picking at food all day. I was avoiding junk food and bread and eating more fruit and veg. When it was nearly time for me to leave Australia I got a bit depressed and ate more and put back on a little weight - not a lot but enough to notice.

I arrived in Thailand and had a suit made, but while I was in Asia I was once again very active and eating less. Then I got back to England - put on a little again as I was stuck at home eating while looking for a job.

I got a temp job and went on a healthy eating diet and joined the gym. I lost lots of weight. The suit I had made for me in Thailand was now too big for me and looked awful (Yay - that I was getting thinner - Boo that all that money I spent on a custom made suit went to waste!).

I bought new clothes and I felt good but I started to grow more and more disturbed by the fact that although I had lost weight, handsome men were not throwing themselves at my feet - neither were average looking men or even ugly men.

I didn't understand - isn't loosing weight supposed to make men like you? Isn't your life supposed to become fabulous? I was going straight to the gyme after work and straight home from the gym. I spent my weekends alone, just the same as before. Do I have to become a waif for my life to change? Why am I constantly seeing women fatter than me with babies? It's not fucking fair.

I started a new job and kept up the diet for a while then I got complacent and started going to the gym less & started buying sandwiches from Pret for lunch like everyone else in the office. Winter set in and I got depressed, again. I wasn't so happy at work, it was cold and miserable outside and I started to comfort eat again. (Having a Krispy Kreme a few doors down from the office didn't help.)

I made an appointment for the diet club at the gym.

Ethiopia on you tube

An excelent travel show covering the areas I can't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmslJ9OeSzw part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPcTV11ehis part 2

Earth Girl in Ethiopia 3

If you can afford to buy a car you look after that car. you repair it and repair it and repair it until it can't be repaired any more. then you sell it to a mechanic who will tear it and several other cars apart to construct an entirely new car. Nothing goes to waste in Ethiopia, if it can me patched up and used again - or recycled into something new it will be. Hence the vast number of original 1960's Beatles still on the road.
Thick back plumes of smoke emanating from you exhaust pipe? Not a problem and long as the car will still drive. The air quality (actually it's just smog) is shocking. but there is an alternative to the cars and trucks belching out fumes. Donkeys. Donkeys although not as comon in the city as they once are still used for carrying heavy loads.

Earthg Girl in Ethiopia 2

I would love to be able to say that I was in Addis Ababa doing charity work but I wasn't. I was accompanying Mother Earth while she sorted out some legal stuff and visited family.

She is Ethiopian although she now has spent more of her life in England. She classifies herself as a British-Ethiopian since she departed for the bright lights of London as a teenager on a Nursing scholarship ended up staying married an Englishman and had 2 kids.

She goes back now and then and a couple of years ago decided to build a house there, as so many ex-pats have now done. About half the houses on the development have been built by foreigners who want a place to call home in the land of their birth.

On our daily strolls around the estate we found out about some of the more impressive houses. There was an almost finished ground plus one built but the American sisters (unusual as most of the houses are bungalows). The immaculately landscaped house of the Italian man and his Ethiopian wife, the very grand house being built by a foreign Ambassadors, the house owned by the Germans - protected by 2 large and aggressive Alsatians specially shipped in from Germany and the house which I christened The Palace - being built by and American couple.

Mother Earth bring the extremely nosy soul she is managed took us on a tour of all the unoccupied houses one Sunday when no one was around, peering in windows analysing floor plans and garden sizes and coming to the conclusion that although some of the houses may have looked fancier on the outside her house was indeed far superior in design.

Everyone in Ethiopia who has a marginally good income has home help. It's normal and expected for everyone except the very poor to have at least a house maid to do the cooking and cleaning and make coffee (the coffee ceremony is an integral part of everyday life for Ethiopians). Those with a little more income will also hire a Zebinya who acts as a security guard and sometimes gardener and handyman.

All large houses have servants quarters known as the 'service' which are regarded as a perk of the job. Servants are always from extremely poor families - often coming from the countryside to the city to find work. Their homes are simple village mud huts or tin shacks in the cites slums. So a bricks and mortar servants quarters with electricity and running water are considered quite the luxury.

Most of the completed but unoccupied houses on the development have a Zebenya, which is a necessity to deter thieves and keep the gardens in order. Owners typically only visit only once a year so they have a fairly easy life earning reasonably good money, having a nice place to live and working on the side labouring for the construction company still building houses on the estate.

The following pictures are of typical rural dwellings just a few miles outside the capital city Addis Abeba. Although you can actually find this type of wood and mud dwellings in the poorest areas of the city.

This is a traditional style round house made with wood and mud which you now don't often find outside of the most rural areas - villages deep in the countryside. Houses are now typically made square or rectangular so that a tin roof can be easily fitted.

Earth Girl in Ethiopia

Heya Bloggsters,

Sorry I hven't posted in a while but accessing blogger has been impossible untill now. When i have been anble to find a fairly fast internet connection the computer hasn't been able to loasd blogger. (I have been told this is becouse ETC the givernement owned ISP has blocked acces to it).

Anyway, How are you guys? I heard the news about Tony Blair from BBC world. It was a bit unexpected. Whos the new PMthen ? Gordon? I don't know 'cos we don't have satelite TV and I havent been anywhere that has.
The weather here was really nice last week. This week it has been raining a lot.

I'm alternatig between having a nice time being, bored/frustrated and incredibly guilty.

Although the country is improving in leaps and bounds and has improved so much since I was last here. There is still a heartbreaking amount of poverty. I'm not talking about the western kind of poverty - living in a council flat and being on the dole no being able afford an ipod povcerty. I'm talking about living in a mud hut - If your lucky, collecting dried cow dung from the road to uses as fuel for the cooking fire besoue you can't afford to buy wood kind of poverty, the walk down to the river to collect water and wash your clothes kind of poverty.

There is so much construction going on demolishing the tinshack- mud hut slums and replacing them with blocks of flats, construcing new water mains and sewage pipes and surfacing roads which were dirt tracks (in the middle of the city!). There are shiny new office blocks and even a couple of shopping malls. But in many its just as third world as before.

The begging is horrible. Ragged street childern, limbless civil war veterans, polio cripples women with babies and old people with no one to care for them all ask you for money all the time. Especialy us as speaking english we stick out like a sore thumb. The advice from all quarters is not to give money so we bought some meal vouchers from the Hope Enterprises charity to give out instead. Most of them people especialy the children are really greaful for the voucher which they can exchange for a nourishing meal at the feeding centre (many of the street children also get a free breakfast there). There unfortunatlyhave been a few who sneer at the vouchers or even hand them back to you becouse they only want money- but thankfuly these are few and far between. Most peiple are genuine and extreemly greatful for any help you can provide which usualy helps aleviate the guilt for being realtivly rich, just a little...