Out of Addis....

On Saturday early morning, 2 Maltese, 1 Dutchman and 2 Ethiopians headed to Debre Zeit, a little village 1hr away from Addis and surrounded by crater lakes, lakes which were once active volcanoes, and now extinct……

We once again did it the Ethiopian way….. we took a 4birr (0.40$) bus full of Addis Ababa weekenders and headed off to our destination…

The day was amazing… I got to enjoy Debre Zeit and the beauty of Ethiopia as well as see a bit of the real, crude Ethiopia.

We spent the day riding on boats around the lakes, riding on Gari’s (horse driven carts) around the village, visiting poor people’s home (for Frank’s project), being pointed at and called ‘faranji, faranji’ (foreigners, foreigners), and going to Christian retreat homes where I met yet another Maltese person… A Jesuit priest who has been living in Africa for 26yrs and who was also a prisoner for 2months walking across the border in Sudan due to the Muslim / Christian Conflict.

This time rather than writing… I thought pictures can do the talking for me…

The beautiful crater lake of Babugaya

Jumping on to a boat for a relaxing row around the lake




Maltese showing the Ethiopians how to row – Conclusion – Maltese cannot row!

Gave up rowing so attempted being a Gari Driver

Sjoerd happy to meet an Ethiopian wearing a shirt of his home football team



Maltese Invading Ethiopia



Befriending Ethiopians on a picnic by the lake


Children in the village trying to get a closer look at the ‘faranji’

Fooooooood………..We were hungry!!!!!!!!

We went to visit two poor people’s family so Frank could evaluate whether they were lying or saying the truth….. The conditions these people live in were terrible… a family of 9 would live in 2 very basic rooms, a living room and a bedroom. The village has one kitchen for about 5 families… people also would sleep in the kitchen. The father would have a job as a guard where he would earn about 300Birr (35$) 10Birr (1.15$) would go to rent and the rest would go to feeding and maintaining a family of 9!!!!

One of the women in the houses explained to me (through an interpreter) how Ethiopian coffee is prepared.

Sjoerd and I befriended a little girl on the bus on the way back to Ethiopia…. The story of this girl is actually quite sad…. An 8yr old girl running around with her poor sick mother. The girl and mother were traveling on their way back to Dessie where they actually live with only150Birr (17$) in their pocket. This woman was robbed and thus lost all her money. A policeman nicely gave her money to get to Addis Ababa (0.40$) but she did not have where to stay or any money to get to Dessie from Addis. The daughter although young and very playful was also very mature, very caring for her mother…. As soon as we gave the little girl biscuits the first thing she did was give it to her mother to eat… very heart warming…. Franks kind heart then gave her 100Birr (11$) to see that she gets some food and gets the bus fare to Dessie, which is about 200Kms away from Addis….

Thought of the Day
Today was great, it not only allowed me to see the natural beauties of Ethiopia, lakes, greenery, mountains, pelicans, eagles and donkeys…… but I also saw first hand how people live how miserable people can be and how people struggle to survive… the places I visited were not the poor of the poorest but I know that some people do not even have a roof on their heads or basic food to give them some nutrition to outlive the day. After living in Belgium and Egypt where there is a lot of organized begging I was quite immune to beggars on the street and was very skeptical to the poverty….. but today I got another view, the mafia of beggars is rare here, and I can see, not just on TV, but first hand, this poverty, misery and struggle for survival is real and hard…...

To top it all up, I headed home to open CNN and find out about the bombing in Sharm el Sheik, a place I had only just been to and enjoyed with my friends…. More devastation, destruction, misery and a bigger struggle…. Poverty and sickness in Africa and Latin America, bombs / terrorist attacks in Europe, America, Asia and the middle east, war in the middle east and eastern Europe, religion and racial conflicts all around the world, natural disasters in Asia and America and many many more…..
Where is this world heading to??

Hotel Hunting in Ethiopia

This weekend was what I would call a Hotel Hunting Weekend….

Don't worry I have not been kicked out of the Hilton as yet...!!

It started off on Friday, when I headed off to Debre Zeiyt with a Colleague to find a good spot to hold the Company Team Days……

Firstly the trip took one hour longer than it was suppose to… the driver was driving at 40Km/hr which left me frustrated and irritated…. I kept on trying to be polite and telling him… ‘Could you drive a bit faster?’ And the driver kept on saying ‘It is safe, it is safe....’ useless argueing so I accepted my fate and enjoyed the scenery of mountains and forests on the way to Debre Zeiyt.

As soon as we got there, I opened my trusted lonely planet… my bible in Egypt… and started reading out the hotel list in the area. The book spoke about attractive locations, pleasant courtyards, adequate rooms…. Nevertheless forgetting that the book is a back packer’s guide rather than a high profile company standard…. We thus spent 2 hrs (in a village you can walk around in 30mins) going from one hotel to another….. Needless to say my hotel hunting was a total flop… nothing suitable….. Pleasant courtyards turned out to be drive-ins with some flowers, adequate rooms turned out to be cell like rooms with a bed which you wouldn’t call a bed, and a shower which I doubt even worked!!!

The attractive location was true though…. The place is beautiful, it’s all crater lakes surrounded by mountains with beautiful greenery and tranquility…. I’ll be heading of there for a relaxing weekend next weekend!!! I guess the hotels are fine enough to meet my standards….

This was not the end of the hotel hunting…. On Saturday morning I got a phone call from Sjoerd, an old Dutch friend I had met in Switzerland in 2002 (I think), he had just gotten to Addis as an intern for the UNECA and was looking for a nice budget hotel to stay in for a couple of weeks….

Thus once again we opened our trusted lonely planet and headed to the city for our hotel hunting experience (in the rain). We walked and rode micro buses around the city for about 4 hours, and saw about 10 to 15 hotels, some on the book and some which we randomly passed by and decided to walk into….. This was also not a great success….. The hotels where either ‘white man priced’ meaning extremely expensive or ‘brothel looking’ where you could even rent the room per hour!!!

Luckily we also bumped into the back packers place, coincidentally the first budget hotel on the book!!! We thus decided to take a break and contemplate on all the hotels over a beer at the hostel, and once we are at it also have a chat with the interesting people at the place. It ended up to be a big group around a table and little stools chatting about travels around Ethiopia, travels around Africa, and life. Most of the people we met where from the US, South Africa, the UK and Israel….. Some were just traveling around Africa, another was doing research on coffee for this university, and another had just graduated from medicine and was practicing voluntarily at the Mother Theresa Home….

When Sjoerd finally decided on his home…. We headed off for the last part of the full 24hr Ethiopian Integration, and I took him to a restaurant to experience the infamous beyainatu, injera, and traditional dancing…… which actually I got to love so much I love the massive plate of Injera and the different types of sauces, the washing of the hands process, and the eating with your hands.. I have now gotten used to not offending the Ethiopians anymore, and using only my hands – no more forks and knives!!! …..

A big plate of Injera and numerous types of Ethiopian dishes, and Hanna's (a colleague) hand attacking it!

What a day!!! At least Sjoerd got to experience the full think within the first 24hrs which is more than I got as it took me a month and a half to do what he did in one day!!!!

TAE BO

After a week of intensive Gym, another week of intensive Aerobics and weekends of walking around Addis and Mountain Climbing (down rather than up), I figured that I’ve gotten used to the altitude and feel fit enough to experience a Tae Bo class…..

Little did I know what I was going in for…. The instructor was a nice handsome well built Ethiopian…. Nevertheless the class was a killer! It felt like he was training Rocky or Mike Tyson rather than 4 unfit women!!!

On the other hand, the punching and the kicking was good practice, for the future as well as a good stress relief!!! When punching and kicking you can just imagine that ‘special someone’ you would like to kick or punch and the hour passes very quickly!

The instructor also tried testing our strength by coming next to us and giving us his palm to punch or kick….

I am not too sure I’ll ever attend that class again though. I don’t know whether I was thinking of that ‘special someone’, or the altitude and exercise exertion made me dizzy but I ended up aiming wrongly and giving the instructor a nice punch in the jaw!!

So for those people who intend having a try at this… I advice you to:

1. Don’t do it in Ethiopia as the altitude is a killer (2600mtrs above sea level)
2. Don’t think too hard of that ‘someone special’ cause you might end up punching the instructor instead ( it felt good though!!!)

Nightclubs and Mountains....

MEMO
After a week of work, my colleague and I decided we wanted a wild night out…. So after a couple of beers (for me) at The Old Milk House, a Dutch Restaurant / Pub frequented by many Expats especially UN people due to the proximity we headed out to Memo… a so called Nightclub somewhere on Bole Road.

I was very aware of the large amount of prostitutes crowding the Ethiopian Nightclubs but I had never experienced it. The only prostitutes I had ever experienced were the ones behind the windows in the Red Light District in Amsterdam and Belgium.

It was actually quite interesting; it was a little club, with a bar and some sofas and tables around a dance floor. The room was decorated with loads of mirrors, red lights and the big disco ball in the middle of the dance floor.

The people were a good mix between Prostitutes, Ethiopians, Foreigners and some Rastas. The music was quite a weird mix between Reggae ( a lot of Bob Marley songs singing about Ethiopia and Shashamene – the land in Ethiopia reserved for the Rastas), old commercial, such as Abba, some Arabic music, Rap and African/ Ethiopian Music.

The most interesting is the dancing process……The night started with people sitting on the sofas and having drinks…. While some girls danced to the music on the dance floor ‘showing their wares’. After some time, the men chose their girls – it’s the eyeing process, and started dancing with the girls, and then the rest of the crowd goes down. The dancing was wild!! My colleague and I had a good time, although it was only the two of us, we really enjoyed the dancing, especially imitating the Ethiopian traditional dancing which is a dance where you move your shoulders up and done and your head in and out at the same time… obviously, as I have excellent coordination, I sucked terribly.

Ahhh I also discovered that there is another Maltese guy in Ethiopia, he is currently working with the UN, though he’s on holiday in Malta….. I was dancing away to the Arabic Music showing off the dancing skills I had tried picking up in Egypt ( and which suck terribly too), when this girl came running up to me asking me if I were Egyptian…. How could someone mistake me for Egyptian? Ha ha the funniest is that my colleague is Egyptian, and he started laughing at the girl telling her ‘ She Egyptian??? I am Egyptian!!! She does no look anything Egyptian’ ….. Anyhow it turned out that the girl was Italian, born in Ethiopia and she knows the Maltese guy….. Another one to meet….

Towards the end of the night, you could see white oldish men holding one or even two girls in his arms, heading for his car.... not i sight i enjoyed!


ENTOTO

After the wild Friday night and a good sleep - till 2 in the afternoon, I decided to go mountain climbing….. Endalk, the guy I had previously met in the street on one of my walks had offered to take me to Entoto, one of the mountains surrounding Addis Ababa, so took up his offer and headed up to Entoto…. After the night of dancing, I could definitely not climb up the mountain, besides, the 4hr climb of Mount Sinai was still vivid in my head…… so we opted for the 4 wheel peasant taxi drive up the mountain.

Sheep resting on the way up the mountain

The mountain was beautiful…… a lot of greenery and loads of the famous Acacia trees giving out a wonderful mountain air which immediately cleared my sinuses, I could have stayed up there all day…. We visited the nice and colorful Maryam church on the top of the mountain and I visited the luxurious museum of King Menelik II with the royal silver and gold crowns and clothes and crosses.

The colourful Maryam Church on the top of the Mountain

We then decided to walk down the mountain to the bottom. An interesting and unique thing about walking down the mountain is the firewood carriers. Bent like question marks women where carrying bundles of firewood on their backs, the bundles probably weighed more than they did, the steep downhill road was full of these women, walking down, or resting on the low walls chatting. These women earn about 12$ a month and are probably the only income-earners of the family.

The fire carriers walking down the mountain

Having a rest and a chat

Another interesting thing are the donkey and their ‘shepherds’ ( the people who take care of sheep are called Shepherds, what are the people who take are of donkeys called?) these were climbing up the mountain – little did I know that they were very sensitive to being photographed and that I’d be chased down the mountain by a donkey shepherd…. Well to make a long story short…. As I was playing the tourist, I seemed to have offended this donkey shepherd, and as soon as he saw me taking the photo, he grabbed his stick and started running after me and Endalk…. Well he was screaming in Amharic so I did not really understand what he was saying, but Endalk told me – ‘run’ – so I asked no questions and obeyed!!! So him and I ended up running down the hill with a drunken donkey shepherd following us threatening us with is stick… I guess he soon realized that he’d have to walk up the part of the mountain he ran down so he gave up….

Donkeys and the Donkey Shepherd walking up the mountain (not my attacker)

The running down the hill did not end here, while walking down and admiring the beautiful view of Addis from the mountain, we passed a little village, as I looked at the little village, with mud and straw houses, I spotted a large hoard of children who started running towards me shouting ‘faranjis, money, faranjis money’, ‘faranjis’ is actually the Amharic word for foreigner, as I was the only foreigner who risked the walk down the mountain, I figured they were all heading to for my attack!!!! That is where I realized that I should once again run down the hill and head for the safety of the bus to take me back to the city…..

The village Street

One of the mud houses...

The day ended with a nice macchiato in a café and a daily terrible thunder storm…..

On Sunday I decided to go to Church and enjoy the African church singing, where I also met Frank – the Maltese guy and planned my trip to Lalibella and Bahir Dar.

The amazing view of Addis from the Mountain

Whats the date? What's the time?

Apart from the altitude problem, that leaves you tired and out of breath and spaced out at the end of day...... Ethiopia also has another element to confuse you even more...

Ask any ethiopian at the end of a long day what is the time, and he will nicely tell you 1 o'clock in the afternoon, you stand there pretty confused looking at the sky seeing that the sun is no longer there but it is dark and the moon is shining! So you ask yourself how could it be 1 o'clock, apart from the fact that it is not afternoon anymore, you've also done your fair share of a day's work!!!

Well, Ethiopia works on a different clock! They have the reasoning that the day starts at sun rise (our 6am), while we have the reasoning that a day starts at midnight (00.00). Therefore our 6am becomes their 00.00.

Which makes it quite confusing as when i leave work at 7pm it would be 1pm Ethiopian timing, it took me quite a while to figure this out, especially once i don't have the habit of carrying a watch with me!

Furthermore Ethiopia decided that it does not want to have months that have different days, but it wants all its months to have equal amount of days, thus leaving it with 12 months of 30 days and one more month of 7 days. So we are also 7 days back with the rest of the world as well as 8yrs back!

Thus today, being the 6 July of 2005 in my calendar, in Ethiopian calendar it is the 29th of June 1997!! Try getting used to that!!!

So that makes me a total of 6hrs, 7 days and 8yrs backwords to the world i was used to!!!!

Thank God we don't use the Ethiopian system at work.... but all the newspapers and other out of work places use the Ethiopian calander and timing.....

A Maltese Day.......

Today was my Maltese Day, I got to meet all the Maltese in Ethiopia. Saturday afternoon, while I was making my dish of Maltese ‘Mqarrun’ I got a phone call from this Maltese guy I had spoken about before…… he had just come down to Ethiopia and decided to contact me….

We spoke some Maltese – which I realized I forgot to speak, as I was mixing Maltese and Arabic in a funny accent, and we decided to meet up on Sunday for coffee. I was pretty excited…. Apart from the fact that I hadn’t seen a Maltese in 6months, I had also never thought to meet any in Ethiopia.

It was great. I met Frank and Endalkachu for coffee off in Meskel Square, after Frank made fun of my funny Maltese accent and teased me a bit about forgetting my Maltese, we spoke about Malta, about politics, refugee problems, and Ethiopia. He is currently running a project here in Ethiopia that helps extremely poor and intelligent people educate themselves. A very noble cause in my opinion, and one very much needed in Ethiopia. So they interview loads of people, see their qualifications, see how poor they are and sponsor their education, find them somewhere to live, give them and bed and help them with their tuition. Its very interesting how they do this. The Maltese lira is very strong compared to the Birr and so its not very hard to run such a project with the Maltese donors. He was telling me that they get girls from bars who are prostituting themselves, and boys who are sleeping in garbage cans – he told me that if they have the motivation and the grades he will help them…..

Street Sheep...

He then had a committee meeting of some sort and took me to meet the people in the committee – I had never seen such poverty in my life….. We walked through the little village, the kids were playing in the mud, the women were washing their clothes in the puddles and hanging their clothes in the street, no electricity, and the people lived in little one-roomed metal huts. I also got to go into the room and see, it was heart breaking to see that people could live in such conditions, especially with today’s technology and way forwards. I wish I had the heart to take photos to show them to you…. But I did not have the heart to take my camera and take pictures, though it will forever be a picture in my mind.

I also got to speak to this young teenager, who’s parents died when he was young, and his uncle blinded him after they died so he could beg with him, his uncle then came to Addis and abandoned the child, the project found him and now he this blind boy is studying in university and doing well…. Quite a heart warming story.

Frank was also telling me that this project is running in the north in Bahar Dar and Lalibella, he invited me to go with him to Lalibella though he advised me to fly there, as they were going in a big truck carrying provisions and beds to the poor people there, and I would meet him there and he would take me around…. They should be going around August and I’ll probably take up the offer…. He warned me not to be shocked and to be ready to rough it up, as the poverty is much worse than in Addis – I can rough it up, and roll up my sleeves!!!!

This was not the end!! I had more to see. Thus while Frank was in his meeting I went to Kobbene to see the other Maltese here. Sister Camilla, an old Maltese nun who I think has the heart of a 20yr old!! She was amazing! So nice and lively…. So I surprised her and went to the Children’s Home that her and another Maltese run (the other Maltese is on holiday in Malta) There she was happy to see me…. showing the well known Maltese hospitality. She took me around the orphanage and told me about the children, about adoption. Most of the children there, were already adopted, she went round telling me this one was going to England, this to America, this to Holland, this to Germany and some also to Malta, she says a lot of Maltese want to adopt babies from Ethiopia. The babies were adorable….. She also showed me the babies infected with HIV, she told me most of them get cured at such a young age through blood transfusions. Though she told me that a lot of babies are born positive cause most of the time their mothers would be in prostitution or their parents died of AIDs….. it was very heart breaking to see little babies, healthy looking, but infected with such a cruel disease. I played with some of them for some time and helped the Sister out with some chores, and then we went somewhere I never thought I’d go to…. I decided to go with her to the hospital…. Ahh if only you could see the hospital…. I was in awe, or rather shock, the hospital was not the cleanest, we went to the children’s ward, all sick kids, most of them with AIDs most of them not enough nutrition, kids whose mothers tried breast feeding them but there is no milk cause the mother is also mal nurtured, or kids that were born and abandoned by their parents – the police picked them up from the street and took them to the hospital…..seeing all this actually motivated me to want to help… I cannot really do much though I promised Sister Camilla that I’ll come over to the home as often as I can to help her out. There are about 180 children with only a few nuns!! She is the most adorable! She kept on telling me that if there are any troubles in the next few days I should go to her and she will take care of me….. She had been in Ethiopia for about 35yrs and speaks the language perfectly, everyone loves her……

Children collecting Money for Charity

Seeing this orphanage brought up the urge of adoption even more…. I had always wanted to adopt a child….. but never knew from where, but now I know….. I tell Sister Camilla that I’ll come back in a couple of years to get a child from her. She told me all about the agencies, she told me that they charge a lot of money and the process is long and tedious! In a couple of years…….

I want to do something good for the children and the sisters, I’ll do some craft session or organize some educational games!!! I’m sure they’ll enjoy it! I also promised the Sister that I’ll make Mqarrun for her! I wish I could make for everyone, but I don’t think I have enough dishes in the house and a big enough oven to do that!

I’m glad I spoke to this guy and pushed away my fear of diseases and walking in the streets….. wait till I tell the people at work that I walked around the poor villages and caught micro-busses and went to the hospital and the orphanage with children infected by AIDs…… they’ll think I’m crazy! They also probably won’t go anywhere next to me anymore!!!!!

Coincidentally last night, after this day I sat at home watching a CNN documentary about the poverty in Ethiopia, I couldn’t believe that what they were showing on TV was exactly what I saw that day….. it is hard to believe that on one part of the world people are living in luxury and stuffing themselves up with food while people here are dying with hunger, diseases caused by hunger and dirt…..

Something I was discussing with an Ethiopian here….. Is this poverty actually man made?? If the western world hadn’t built all this technology and cities would the people still be living like this? How was Africa before the Western world invented technology, high buildings, pollution, and dirt? People lived in nature, with clean water and lived quite well…. Now that there is this great barrier between rich and poor, resources decrease, and people get poorer! – I don’t really know….. I wish something could be done to help