Timkat

The plan was that yesterday a friend would be coming to pick up my husband so that they could both go to some of the Timkat celebrations.

Timkat is a huge Ethiopian Orthodox celebration of the baptism of Christ – Epiphany. Its interesting really, because for Christian churches in the west, there is not much emphasis placed on it at all. Even though I’m a practising Christian, before I came here, I wouldn’t have even been able to tell you what Epiphany was.

Anyway, as our phone doesn’t work, yesterday morning our neighbours downstairs took a phonecall for us and stuck a note under the door saying that our friend couldn’t come as there was a large fire across the road from their place, that was blocking the road.

Unfortunately the top three floors of the building were completely gutted, and our friends looked on as 3 people jumped out windows to their deaths.

How absolutely horrible, and on a day that is such a happy celebration for Ethiopians. However, any day would be a bad day for such a thing to happen…

So my husband didn’t get to see Timkat, but under the circumstances, I’m completely ok with that. We just had a quiet day at home instead. Our girls had a lovely time playing with the Norwegian girl across the road.