Saturday 29 September 2007

Thursday 27th continued and Friday 28th

It was quite difficult emailing off the last blog entry. The office staff at the university where we are staying wanted to go home. Also the internet here is slow. I'm not just talking about it being a dial-up connection, it's the time it takes from the click on a link to retrieving the page that takes ages. (see below.) After emailing we had dinner – more injura and separate dishes with different meats and non-meats to eat. It's a good spread.

It is a religious festival today (Meskel – Finding of the true cross) and there was a bonfire and the people danced around it clapping and chanting. Then we went to an even bigger one and there was an outside disco and bar – as well as the festival, it was the last day of another group (Ethiopian) training here at the university.

Oh, a man came about the shower this afternoon, fiddled around with the hot tap (it fell off in his hand) and said it needed a plummer. He may have also said in Amharic ((inhale) that's gonna cost yer!) but I'm not sure !! So I had to have a cold shower. The water isn't as cold as in the UK, but it was still very cold and I didn't stay in there long and probably said a few words I shouldn't have as I was rinsing off.

Friday 28th

Laid in again. Cleaner popped in again. Got up at about 0930, got ready and started to sort my stuff out a bit. I also took some pictures of vulture-like birds soaring in the distance. The cleaner came again twice, and then two of them appeared and I had to let them sweep and mop my room. They wanted to make my bed, but it was covered in all the stuff I had been sorting.
Then I got really tired again and had a nap until it was time for lunch. This was delayed a bit so I went to the computer room to find all the PCs had gone (I thought they were university ones, but they belonged to the people on the other course which explained why they were so anxious for us to finish using them yesterday.) A VSO guy had set up a laptop and I again tried to email. It was incredibly slow (lunch time is bad as everyone is using Internet cafés in Addis at that time and the phone network isn't up to it.) Anyway, after a long time waiting for the blue line to
slowly progress across the bottom of the screen (probably 5 minutes) I got to the log in page of my web mail!. In the end it took about 20mins to send a short message and read one of the 13 waiting in my in box. Someone else was waiting and as it took about 2mins from message to message, I didn't dare read any more.

Then I went to lunch, more injira – I'm getting used to tearing off a piece of the roll using one hand, collecting food in it, then eating it – all with one hand.

The altitude isn't affecting me much, although I seem to get a little more out of breath than usual, and every now and again I get a little dizzy spell. Some of this could also be tiredness though.

Tour of Addis

After lunch we had a bus tour around Addis Ababa. When
we got to the outskirts, there were hundreds of
"shops" lining the roads. They had no lights inside
and all the goods were out the front on display.
Everywhere you look you see corrugated iron. It's used
for fences, walls and roofs in the city, the shops
were also made of this. What was strange was seeing
modern goods like trainers, backpacks etc all on
display, but in these small dusty corrugated iron
shops. As well as the shops there were little stalls
(maybe even just mats) with fruits and other goods in front of the shops, or anywhere there was a free patch of ground. There were lots of children running the shops, and at one point I saw a boy who was probably about 6 or 7 under an umbrella, in the mud, selling fruit. (PT – I saw some shoe-shine boys!)

I knew the culture was to be smart in Ethiopia but it was funny seeing one family – a dad and his two sons (one only about 5) wearing suits in the market. Also, our tour guide on the bus was wearing a suit.

Of course you tend to look at and seek out the different, or what you're not used to, but among
everything I have written about above, there were also buses and cars, lit shops with windows, tall modern skyscraper buildings, people in sweatshirts, jeans and trainers etc.

I know we were isolated in our tour bus, but even through all the differences, I had a very big sense that there are a lot of similarities also between us in the UK and here. There were people selling things, buying things, getting on with their lives. I know this is a big city and it will be very different where I am going and that this is a bit profound or "lecturey" for this early in my tour, but I think it's easy to see we are all the same, we're all humans on this planet and we should just all get along!!!

It began raining heavily again and all the people crowded under shop fronts, or even under the shelter provided by telephone kiosks.

As we drove around, the roads were bad and traffic seemed to be everywhere, but as the guide told us, this was a holiday and it was much better than usual.

We passed some important buildings like the Ministry of Education, the university, the US Embassy (heavily fortified) and through what is apparently Africa's largest open-air market.

There are lots of decorations up (Ethiopian flags, and huge banners of the Ethiopian flag colours
"wrapping-up" buildings – this is for the Ethiopian Millennium (their calendar is 7 and a bit years behind ours and it was 2000 only a couple of weeks ago)

Some other things I noticed: The satellite dishes that are around in the city are basically pointing upwards – this is because we are near the equator and the satellites in geosynchronous orbit are basically zooming round thousands of miles above the equator. Also, the scaffolding on buildings being repaired or newly built (even up to about 5 storeys) all used wooden poles, not metal like at home.

As we got to the far side of Addis we started climbing (very steeply) up a mountain that over-looked Addis. It was a bit misty, but the countryside was beautiful – green, lots of trees and the view was very good. Apparently, when we were at the top it was 3200m high.

Finally, we arrived at the VSO Ethiopian Office which is surrounded by a high wall and is like a very large detached house building. Some people emailed home, some rang home although they only had about 30secs and we could all hear them! At the office, we also got our
Ethiopian money. My US$100 had been changed to 905birr. The 5 birr note (which is worth about 25p) looks like about a thousand people have used it before me – it's brown with all the wear.

The volunteers that had arrived early this morning looked very tired – like I was yesterday and I felt a bit sorry for them as they probably didn't enjoy the tour as much as I did.

It's true what they said about the sunset in the equatorial regions. We left the VSO office in dimmish light, and 30 mins later it was totally night when we got back to the university.

Once there, it was straight into dinner – variations of the same. It's becoming natural to use the injira as cutlery although I tend to use too much and need to get another roll to finish my food, or too little and the food goes all over my fingers.

This next part is a special request for Lynda: It's 21:15, exactly a week after you asked me to tell you what I am doing. (I can't believe it was only a week ago I was having a school leaving do!) Well, I'm typing this blog entry to send tomorrow, sitting at a table in my room – so that's a bit boring, although the noises outside are very different: There is traffic passing on the road a short distance away, and a little while ago I heard the call to prayer of the mosque next to the university, there is that cricket-type sound you hear on all videos set in Africa, but the worst are these very noisy birds that sound like smoke alarms going off in 5 second bursts every 30 seconds or so. Worst, because of trying to get to sleep! As I look to my left I see my A3 paper
blutacked to the window as curtains and two mosquitoes have just flown in front of my laptop screen. (We have been assured there is no malaria up here in Addis. I thought that meant no mozzies, and to be fair, there are probably less flies and insects buzzing around than there would be at home on a mild summer night, but still!) The temperature is 20'C in my room and
18'C outside. I really have been given a gentle introduction to Africa!

I'm not going to write this much all the time, it's just all so new at the moment and I keep noticing everything that is different.

*** I have literally taken 2h15 to send this blog entry. The first 1h45 then the battery failed. I
started again and have finally used someone elses account ***


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