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.

Lat month I was in Manchester, walking down Portland Street on my way to Piccadilly Station. It reminded me of my brief time (seven months) when I worked for the Greater Manchester Council (GMC). With my boss I ran workshops helping to prepare staff for job applications, CVs, interview techniques and salary negotiation. The GMC was the top tier local government administrative body. Its 106 members came from 10 district councils with which it shared power from 1/4/1974 until 30/3/86. Most of those district councils were Labour: not to the liking of Margaret Thatcher. Her Conservative Government abolished the GMC as well as the GLC (Greater London Council). Hence all that preparation for new jobs.

Abolition Greater Manchester Council, March 1986

That was the time I went as a dominatrix.
I wore my jodhpurs, riding boots,
carried a whip. I had my Cleopatra eyes,
and black bra under a side-less top.

Rebecca, my boss, had dyed her bob orange.
Tony, always modest, in dinner jacket,
bow tie, trainers, and baseball cap.
Black lace gloves for the HR woman in the wheelchair.

The young clerks were versions of cowboys and Indians.
We conga-ed across the zebra crossing onto Piccadilly Gardens.
Later we carried on drinking in the empty offices,
stroked and kissed the bricks of County Hall.