I have to say it isn’t easy to run a kilometre anyway - it is a lung-busting, all out effort - but it is harder still with the heat and pollution of the Addis ring road.

And this is what power-athletes have for breakfast.

The golden age of Ethiopian music ran from 1969 to 1978. In the last years of Haile Selassie’s reign, censorship relaxed sufficiently for an outpouring of musical creativity. Musicians thronged the nightclubs of Addis Ababa and about 500 singles and 30 albums were recorded in that period. …

Ethiopian musicians, who had remained aloof from musical developments in the rest of Africa, mixed these influences from American R&B with their own music into something distinctive and strange. At the time, it was denounced. “When you read the press of the time”, says Falceto, “there are polemics against abandoning the culture and so on.” …

Many of the musicians whose 1970s heydays are captured on the Ethiopiques series are still working, mostly playing for the vast Ethiopian diaspora, more than 1m-strong in the US alone. Ahmed and the influential arranger and keyboard player Mulatu Astatké both live there, working largely with American bands. At the Barbican, they will be joined by Alèmayèhu Eshèté, who channels the spirit of James Brown, and by the saxophonist Gétachèw Mèkurya. Instrumental support will come from the Either/Orchestra, a Boston-based group.

(Hat tip to my Mum for spotting the article and sending me the link.)

Their food is provided by Our Father’s Kitchen, set up a year ago by Yasser and Manal Bagersh who own a couple of restaurants here in Addis. Their kitchens provide food every day for these children, most of whom are living with HIV.

It costs 217.20 birr (about $20) a month to feed a child every day. A decent meal is an essential part of staying healthy for a child living with AIDS - the drugs make you sick on an empty stomach - and the simple provision of this meal enables these children to go to school. With this simple investment, Yasser and Manal are transforming the lives of these children.

They want to expand the programme and they are launching a pledge campaign. Yasser is setting up a website for people to donate; until then you can pick up a sponsorship form at The Lime Tree Cafe or email ourfatherskitchen@yahoo.com.

First, eat or drink something that does not completely agree with you, in a tropical country like Ethiopia.

Then spend three days as fluids gush from every orifice, like a three-cornered fountain in a town square.  The fever flushes and shivers last only a day, and the headaches only for two.

(It seems to defy the laws of physics that you can lose more than your own body-weight in water, but I never understood the thing about which way water swirls down a plughole at the Equator either.)

By the third day, your throat may be sore from the acidic vomit, and you may not have regained your appetite, but you’ll be a lot lighter than you were on Thursday afternoon.

We are still in a hotel, so I don’t have bathroom scales to measure the effect. But I estimate that my weight must now be slightly less than zero.

I’ll keep taking sachets of oral dehydration salts in the hope that my equilibrium will be restored.

Addis is a huge building site.  From the air you can see the impressive scale of the new buildings and roads that are springing up over this growing city (5 million people and growing).   I’ve been told be an infrastructure expert that the Ethiopians are managing this construction well, which is consistent with my impression of the government as well-organized, if a bit over-controlling.

Less reassuring is the thick layer smog (or is it just the dust of construction?) all over the lower parts of the city.  The air looks clearer in the surrounding hills.

And Addis is bustling. We ate last night in a restaurant filled with affluent Ethiopians. The man at the next table was using is Apple iPhone.  But the urban poor are being hard hit by the sharp rise in food prices, including Teff (the grain which is Ethiopia’s staple) - one friend noticed that the little group of people who meet on the street near our hotel to share a meagre breakfast has risen from about 5 people to about 15 in the last few weeks.