Once in a blue moon

Happy New Year! (Although in the Ethiopian calendar it’s still 2002, 2010 won’t be reached until Sept 2017)
We celebrated with meal out with some friends from work, letting some fireworks off in the street a little early as our friends children were getting tired and needed to go to bed. We were little concerned to start with about letting fireworks off in the street, we were quite near the military communications facility, plus all week there’s been the Ethio-Sudan Joint Border Commission Conference, so there’s been a high police and security presence in town with all the visiting ministers and Sudanese Ambassador. We didn’t think that some loud explosions late at night in the centre of town would go down very well, but we had been reassured that all would be fine and fortunately it was.

After the fireworks, we celebrated midnight at a local bar with a flaming sambuka and despite Thashika’s best efforts at burning the place down after dropping hers on the floor, we had a fun night. Not a single attempt at singing Auld Lang Syne was made.
One the way home, with the blue moon I got a few decent photos of our house and street just lit by moonlight. But the photos look a lot brighter on my camera screen than they do on my laptop screen… see how this looks on your screen:
If anyone feel like a challenge, work out when the next blue moon will be in the Ethiopian calendar. The Ethiopian calendar starts on 12 Sept with 12 months of exactly 30 days each, then a month of 5 or 6 days depending on whether it’s a leap year or not. Post your answers below.











