Monday 3 November 2008

Bahir Dar ICT purchasing trip



We were supposed to leave on Thursday at 0700, so both me and Goran got up early and were ready by 0700. We finally left Gilgel at 11:20. What can you expect! At around 0800 we went up to the college to find out what was going on. After a lot of questioning of various people, it turned out that the cashier was off with morning sickness and she is the only person with the key to the safe*, and in the safe was the 10000ETB needed by the purchaser who was going with us to actually pay for the computer equipment that Goran needed. Finally they dragged her in with her key, we were picked up from our house and after sitting 5mins outside someone’s house while a fridge was loaded onto the car, for another 20mins outside the college entrance while some paperwork was completed and a further 5mins outside another person’s house while a bike was loaded on, we were off.


We, of course, stopped so the driver could have lunch about 45mins later, but then we were really off and had travelled the 94km to the start of the asphalt road by 13:50. We covered the remaining 116km to Judith’s apartment in Bahir Dar by 15:30 (after another brief stop to pick up Goran’s and the purchaser’s bags from the road after they had blown off the back of the truck!)


At least it was more comfortable in the Toyota Hilux, than the bus and there were some good views on the way, including the highest point of 2646m


We had a look around town and ate overlooking the lake (as usual) but that night I felt very nauseous. The following morning I had a mini-squits and felt really weak and achy and basically slept the whole morning. I managed to get up for the 1400 rendezvous with the purchaser and driver to buy computer stuff with Goran, but we phoned them around 1420 and they told us at they would not be ready until 1600… I took Goran on a short lake walk, then we purchased our own supplies and by then I was all-in again and went back to the apartment while Goran was collected (at 1640) to do some purchasing.


I managed to eat a pizza later in the evening and pretty much felt back to normal after a good night’s sleep.


The next day I went with Goran to do some more purchasing (both for the college and for me) and on-and-off that took most of the day. We had a rather disappointing “special Chinese fried rice” which was basically “egg-fried rice” with no veg or anything else – but that did mean we got out of going to an Indian dance thing to celebrate 60 years of freedom or something. We did have some good chips (which took so long, I commented that they probably had to go out and kill the potatoes) and we laughed when they came up on the bill as “Plain of Cheeps.”


On the final day, we did some last minute purchasing and checking out the market, then left Bahir Dar around 1100. The highlights of this journey were big bowls falling off the back, the tyre deflating, being “mended”, deflating 15km down the road and being mended again – lots of coffee at each stop, a chicken being transported with us on the back, a very heavy rain storm (which never reached Gilgel by the way) possibly soaking all the paper that had been purchased in the back of the truck, and certainly soaking the chicken. The tyre deflating again, being “repaired” by two guys with a sledge hammer completely ruining the rubber of the spare tyre and making dents in the rim of the hub.


Anyway, we are back in Gilgel finally, after nearly 7 hours, and it is good coming back to our own house. The only problem so far was that Goran saw a bird fly out of one of my hanging shirts. I looked inside to see lots of moss and twigs etc. When was the last time you arrived home to find a bird making a nest in your shirt?



*I commented to the vice dean, that with only one person holding the safe keys, what would happen if she was in a car accident and she and the key were lost, to which he replied “She’s been in car accident?” and it took a while to explain that my comment was hypothetical. Goran was almost in hysterics at this point as you get kind of “high” when you’ve been hanging around for a long time. A similar thing happened in a computer repair shop when a miscommunication resulted in the answer to “When will the repair man be back from lunch?” being “one week.” “He’s gone to lunch for one week?” (It was the time the repairs would take!)



1 comment:

Andy said...

Great blog! I've been looking around for VSO blogs since I'm going to India for two years in a week or so. Reading yours will give me more ideas about what to expect or not to expect!