Sitting here on my porch, at the Ghion Hotel, Bahirdar, in Ethiopia. I'm trying to write a blog, but struggling. I'm sitting in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to, from here I can see flower filled gardens, the thatched round house that's a bar, and, beyond, the waters of Lake Tana.

"Life is like a toilet roll, the nearer the end you get, the faster it goes" I read that somewhere just recently, and it appears to have lodged in my brain, now I hope I've still got a fair bit of roll left, at least a third or so, but it's so true, time flies past now, and I can't believe that I haven't done a blog since last august!

I usually keep my ramblings pretty general, but this time I'd like to tell you about a lady I met last week. I'm in Kenya at the moment, looking at the progress made with the harness since I was here in December last year.

I reckon that one of the most common phrases in our language must involve the word 'tea'. "Shall I put the kettle on?", "Fancy a cuppa?", "Make a brew" we say, and do it without much thought really, some of us continually throughout the day.

I normally write these from a hotel room, in some far flung country, but, for most of April I've been here at the Sanctuary, at my under-used desk in the Overseas Department. Why? You may ask, well the answer is Donkey Week.

Hi it's me again! I'd like to tell you a bit more about our work in the brick kilns of Egypt, but I'm not quite sure how to begin. I think I'd like to start by taking you back to my first month at the Sanctuary. I was supposed to have been going straight into Kenya, but, as you may remember, in January of last year they were in the middle of a political row that led to killings and massacres in many of the areas that we work in, and, two days before I was due to leave, the Sanctuary decided I shouldn't go.