Addis Ababa. Day 2.  Saturday.  My cold disappears partly due to a weird and delicious hot peanut milk remedy which a waitress insists I drink at breakfast. I run 4k at the gym. Wuleta and Salome roll by and swoop me into Addis. First we go to where scarves are made. It’s a factory of weavers and sowers.  For a brief period I was a  cloth cutter in a clothing factory in lancashire.  Different designs from different regions of Ethiopia are all woven from memory.    Like any self respecting child of the diaspora I like to buy  stuff to remind me where I’m from in case I forget.   Wuleta knows just the place.  We leave the scarf factory.   Wuleta  always knows just the place. So we go to market.  I am a diaspora. I like shiny things with the words Ethiopia on them.  I hve my football shirt.  We go onwards to a restaurant and art  Gallery near Hotel Ras Amba. It is is fasting time for many people here. This means no meat.   The restaurant is fusion food and it’s delicious. There is a Simpsons episode that features Ethiopian Food.  Yes there is!   Wuleta  is in the picture below  and above to the right is  her close friend, Salome.  Salome is the director of Baroque Interiors and events.

What is the fabric of family?  What is woven and what is sown together?    Who are woven and who are sown. Who weaves and who sows?  In the factory I visited today the men did both. With the fabric of family it is often the women. And yet both men and women are capable of tearing the seams and ripping the cloth.  Let us weave. Let us sow. Let us find the designs from memory.