Addis Ababa. Around the 1940s, Outside the sitting room on the steps leading down to the garden below.
Back row left to right:
Haili Ato Gwadu KT Zoldi
Front row: Stephen Philippa (with cat. Dimit) Woldi Jill; 0
Centre DAS (Daniel Arthur and Christine Sandford)
Hailli, was the man who kept an eye on everyone else who worked for us.
Ato Gwadu, was the laundry man and was respected by everyone (including Stephen and me if we crumpled up our clothes unnecessarily
I think he was the oldest person of the people who worked for us, although Woldi also was quite old.
However Ethiopians on the farm did not observe birthdays —they were far more interested in what saints day they had been born on and as there were many, many saints days, some of the people who worked for us were bound to have a special saints day ( I think I have written about the saints days that we observed St Mary (Mariam) and Giorgio’s (St George)
Nearly all the people who worked for us wore no shoes. They just walked barefoot, and the soles of their feet were very hard.
Stephen and I had to wear shoes to stop the jiggers from getting under the nails of our feet and making them very sore.
The people who worked for us were not bothered by jiggers ——-probably because the soles of their feet were so hard that jiggers did not trouble them or try to get under their footnails.
KT was an old friend of my mother’s as they had both gone to Girton College at the university of Cambridge.
She used to come out for holidays initially, but she had no family alive so gradually she became a permanent fixture in our family.
I think she and Padre Matthew could trace some mutual ancestor, so she became a member of the family. I seem to remember that I was a bit scared of her) or was it jealous of her as she seemed to have known my mother for longer than I did? But looking back on it many many years ago I’m glad she had somewhere she could call home I think she also taught us when we were home educated using the PNEU home schooling programme.
So she is still a vivid memory of my childhood all those years ago, but a slightly frightening one ………I think she might also have been with us in Ewhurst, Surrey England but I am not sure.