Yesterday, the camping where I have my static caravan opened for the season. This post explains how I ended up in the Netherlands via Ethiopia.

Marianne Carolan and I met through being students at the Open University. She had come across a young boy while on a study tour of Ethiopia. She started to sponsor him. Her friends, colleagues and neighbours followed suit. As the young people finished secondary education, the cost became too much for individuals. Therefore, Marianne set up the Lalibela Educational Trust (LET) in 2006 to raise funds which paid the fees for University and Nursing College.

With Marianne and several other sponsors I travelled to Ethiopia in January 2007, during Timket, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church celebration of Epiphany. I met my ‘son’ and his widowed mother. With its rock churches, Lalibela is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Early this century Marianne had bought a second-hand static caravan in Wassenaar, the small town near The Hague which was her birthplace. At the time of her death in July 2008, the charity was sponsoring 26 young people. They are now doctors, engineers, nurses, IT professionals and entrepreneurs. She left her old caravan to me and I bought a new one a few years later.

Night Flight, January 2007

Addis Ababa to Heathrow.
Us two, stretched out
across three seats
at the back of the plane.

Lalibela and the rock churches.
We wear the Shamma
they gave us for Timket:
The boys we sponsor.