We grew strawberries and plumbs at Mulu and sent them into Addis Ababa to sell and also exported plumbs to Jabuti we had a special car to take them into Addis Ababa and Tafesa was our driver. I don’t think he was a local person but his job was very significant.
He would take the fruit into Addis Ababa to our sales centre which was in the district of Cabena, and then Zarafu (our salesman) would take fruit off on our sales bicycle, and deliver the fruit to the nearest groceries who would then sell our produce. He hated it as there were so many hills, he used to have to push it.
If we were exporting any of the fruit (mostly plumbs) he would get the permit from the export office and then take the fruit down to the airport. When the fruit was so much that the bicycle could not cope with it he also took the fruit to the various groceries who sold it. I would then bill these groceries for the fruit they had had.
Vaporides, Ghanotakis and some hotels took the fruit. If the groceries paid he would collect the cash and give it to me to be accounted for and banked. Monday was my accounting day in Addis Ababa, I would bring Piers, Christopher and Janet into Addis Ababa and drop them off at the Sandford school where they borded for the week with my sister Eleanor and her husband Lesley. Michael would then collect them on Fridays and bring them out to the farm. One day Janet fell while practising the high jump and broke her arm so badly that the doctor told us that iff we wanted her to gain full use of her arm then we would have to take her to England to the Great Ormand Street Hospital for children. This was a terrible blow for us all but of course we did it and Janet and I set off for England, we went straight to my cousins house in London and then onto the hospital, it must have been so frightening for Janet, I had to leave her there overnight but I visited her each day and spent the day with her. Luckily her arm healed well though she still has scars to this day. Piers remembers that him and Christopher came to England also and used to go skating on the nearest skate ring everyday.
Tafesa stayed loyal to us and continued selling the fruit and banking the income until told to stop by the Dergue (communist government).