New House & Hotels

So I feel like I should do this now before I move out of the hotel on Wednesday. Hooray! I have a house to live in. It doesn't have hot water and it only has a sink in the bathroom, but it's not a hotel, which is a relief. I've also been told I get to keep the sofa which is a really nice one. But more on my new house later.

The hotel trade in Ethiopia is huge. Way bigger than I thought it would be for a nation where a lot of people never leave the town that they are born in. There's a lot of hotels everywhere you go and there's a reason for this that I initially found puzzling. Apparently despite having phones (sort of reliable) and the internet (a little less reliable) Ethiopians insist on conducting as much business as possible face-to-face. No one can really give a more satisfactory answer for this than cultural differences. As a result the majority of people who have to do much business outside of their town are traveling quite regularly to meet their business partners. For example when I arrived in Gondor the dean and both vice-deans of the college were away on business trips that were about two weeks long to a variety of places. They got back a little after me. Talking to other volunteers this sort of behaviour is quite common with most of their bosses disappearing without warning to go to another city with some regularity. As a result of this there's a thriving hotel industry in Ethiopia and if you're so inclined to the thriftier hotels it's actually quite cheap, probably because there's so many people who use it. (think $2-$3 a day for a small room and shared bathroom, but watch out for fleas).

That's all for now will post again later this week about my job (which has started), my house (after I move in), my possible trip to Bar Hadir sp? (we have a long weekend coming up) and the Battle of Adwa (the reason we have a long weekend). But no guarantees I'll post on all these things.

Thoughts on arriving in Gondor

Before I start I would like to clarify that yes I can read your comments. As to Jessica's statement that Lucy is in London I have not the slightest clue which of the two museums hold the "real" Lucy, but I definitely saw a skeleton claiming to be the "real" one. Also my analysis of Ethiopia's thriving hotel trade will be replaced by thoughts on Gondor until a later date when I can't think of something better to write about.

So I made it to Gondor and I am once again living in a hotel... woooo... [/sarcasm]. Gondor is a very different city from Addis. For one it's not much of a city being more of a thriving mountain town. Secondly, the people here seem really really excited to meet foreigner's. A trip into town will gain you a flock of incredibly cute street children who will follow you around the entire time, shouting things in English at you, eagerly introducing themselves, attempting to sell you tissues, and asking you a lot of questions about yourself, pretty much any question they can remember from whatever English classes they've taken. My favourites are Solomon and Betty, which are rather unlikely to be their Ethiopian names.

Aside from the children the locals seem to gain a bit of prestige by hanging out with a foreigner although some of them seem more interested in attempting to get you to buy them a beer. Any walk out of the hotel will almost certainly guarantee someone shouting either "Hello" or "You! You! You!" in order to get your attention smile and then move on delighted at some attention. My favourite instance of this being when I was walking and the following conversation happened:

Him: Hello! Hello!
Me: Hello!
Him: How are you?
Me: Good.
Him: I love you!
*blows me a kiss*

I blew him one back as seemed polite in the situation.

Jordie out

Museums and Line Taxis

Today I went to the National Museum because I got lost on the way to the University's Ethiopian Institute Museum and figured one museum is as good as the next when you don't really know anything about what's inside either one. In the museum I saw Lucy who is the missing link between homo erectus and homo sapiens apparently. She was quite short. I also saw a fairly amazing surrealist painting by an artist named Skunder. It is Untitled so I can't really direct you to an image on the internet easily, but I'll search around for it when I get back in Canada.

To get to the museum I had to take several line taxis on my own, which I am proud to say I managed adequately. For those of you who are unsure what a line taxi is as I was they are a sort of cross between a bus and a taxi that exists when public transit can't handle everyone who needs to use it. They're usually vans although I've seen trucks modified to work as such that the drivers take along specific routes as you would take a bus except they are all privately run and there's hundreds of them leaving all the time along most major routes. Here they are blue, but when I encountered them in Mexico they were green. Also they are much much cheaper than a taxi cab. Essentially they are a privately run group of microbusinesses that take the place of public transit. They are also quite confusing if you don't know the city as the call-guy who shouts out their destination shouts quite rapidly and it all sounds like a lot of jibberish if you don't pay close attention. I caught the right ones although I've heard of people getting horribly lost on account of a misheard shout or two.

Currently I'm in the capital... still... but I'm leaving for Gondor tomorrow. Since spelling of Amheric words is phonetic it is apparently "OK" to spell it that way which is fairly awesome, as I thought you had to spell it with and A or an E (although I wasn't sure which). I will be living in a hotel there while furniture is found for my house. I think my next post will be on the thriving hotel industry here and why it is so thriving. Stay tuned!

Jordie out

Tegebino

In the spirit of both adventure and attempting to integrate I decided to order something at random from the menu of a restaurant that has phonetic spellings of Ethiopian dishes for us ferenji. So I ordered something called tegebino. Before I got it I determined through my waitress that it could be served hot or cold. I arbitrarily chose cold.

Upon recieving and eating tegebino I have determined the following: tegebino is a brownish orange mush.

Ferenji's and Prince

So the Amheric word for foreigner is ferenji,* and we are called such both by the locals and amongst ourselves. Ferenji culture here is unusual and forms a strange double standard with what people are here to do. Most ferenji's in Ethiopia are there to do some form of aide work in an attempt to raise poverty levels, gender awareness, HIV/AIDS work, etc. At the same time though we're quite rich here because of exchange rates and even our pay levels our pay levels are up there by the local standards. Recently myself and some others went to a fairly amazing restaurant. Probably the fanciest restaurant I've ever been to. It was an Italian place that was also a contemporary art gallery. I just split a pizza with someone and got some water and this worked out to 30 birr with tip, which with the conversion rate is about $4 CD. My meal was on the cheap side though and some people got bottles of wine and the meal altogether was about 500 birr between eight of us, which is about $70 CD. There's people who live on a birr or two a day and we're throwing it around like water. It's a strange way of volunteering, where on the one hand ferenji are doing our best to improve the standard of living here, but simultaneously we are able to live as if we are amongst the very wealthy, because well... we are made wealthy just by being here. There's differing opinions on ferenji culture over here, with some people avoiding it entirely and attempting to go local, some people taking full advantage of it in order to feel wealthy and most people falling somewhere in between. At VSO most people seem fairly aware and a little guilty of our new found wealth, but it's a very unusual thing to try and come to terms with.

On to lighter things though because I really want to share this with people. Ethiopia has it's own calendar system, which is lunar and also some years behind our own. Guess what year it is? 1999! I can still party like it's 1999!** I won't be around for the New Year's celebration, but still this is exciting.

*It's so close to Ferengi that I was really excited and still think that it's pretty hilarious how close it is. I have shared this joke with no one who is here as I don't think any of the other volunteers are nerdy enough to get it.

**Thank you Michelle for pointing this out to me.

Getting settled in

I'm starting to settle in. I think between the malaria medication, lack of sleep, jet lag and new climate my body was rebelling a bit. Now though I have a tan, lots of sleep and a few showers (I'm a little spoiled right now). In fact I think that between all the above things the last traces of my acne are clearing up, probably mostly due to the malaria medications side effect of drying out your skin. Thanks doxycyclene!

Last night all the IT volunteers went to a restaurant, a bar and then a night club, but I was so tired (curse you jet lag!) I went back to the hotel with the other Canadian when everyone else went to the night club. We have unfortunately given ourselves a reputation for not enjoying things that are fun with the other IT volunteers, that seems unlikely to be let up anytime soon as the people I've met are the sort to rag on about something like that.

It's so hard to describe what Ethiopia is like so I won't really try to hard to capture everything. However, today a child tried to sell me a live pigeon he had caught by the feet. I don't know how he caught it or what use he thought I'd have for a pigeon, but it really drove home how poor everyone is here. I don't think he thought I had a particular use for the pigeon, but I would be surprised if he couldn't find someone who wanted it. Catching a pigeon was probably a pretty good day for him.

To hot to handle

Not the temperature. The temperature is actually quite mild. I'm told I'm crazy for not being cold yet. That's just by the people who've been here too long though. There's a British guy who wears big wool suits everywhere he goes. I'd die in that heat. I'll acclimatize soon though.

I already have a good story though. So last time I posted on this blog I attempted to read my entry afterwords, but it wouldn't load. I just figured that the connection was too slow as the connections here are damn slow. Apparently, this entire domain is blocked by the Ethiopian government. I'm censored! This is exciting for me. I can post, but not read my own blog. So it's only for non-Ethiopians. I can however read your comments because they're emailed to me. So goodwork Alasdair on the first post.

I've been told of another volunteer who started a basement recording studio here in Addis so I'm going to try and look him up to talk about the music scene here. Anywho still lots to do today and I'm still in the capital. I expect to have some downtime for serious storytelling when I get to Gondor (this is apparently a correct spelling because it's just a phonetic translation.)

Jordie out

The flight

That was probably the worst flight ever. I am as usual when I say something so absolutely, exaggerating. However, it was far from anything that could be considered the best flight ever. My flight to London was delayed by a couple hours and as a result I missed my connection to Addis Ababa. So I got rerouted through Paris (also a delayed flight) and then to Addis Ababa. My toothpaste, hand sanitizer and maple syrup that I had brought as a gift for my host employer were all confiscated in case they were bombs at this point. Apparently Ethiopia still worries about the really small amounts of liquid form of terrorism. When I eventually arrived my luggage had decided to kick around in London for a bit. It should have arrived at the airport by now, but I have not been able to get out there and get it yet. Afterwords I missed my driver who had arrived to pick me up because I was busy trying to find my luggage. I felt really bad for the poor guy who had also arrived at the airport two hours previously to attempt to pick me up from the flight I'd missed.

So far Ethiopia itself is amazing, but also really tiring. Everyone is very nice and helpful, but the resources are lacking. I am told that there can be a lot of hassle procuring necessary things. So hopefully I won't need to get much. I'm going to be leaving the capital on Monday to go to the college I will be working at. More later.

Jordie out

Still in Vancouver

So I've created this blog to document my experiences volunteering overseas in Ethiopia. I'm going to be training people in IT over there and it'll be an exciting adventure for me. This blog will eventually host all sorts of exciting news about my experiences over in deepest, darkest Africa, but for now it'll host exciting news about me getting ready to go.

So most of the paperworky things are complete at this point and now it's mostly packing that is on my mind. That and panicking because I'm starting to realize that I'm actually going to be leaving for Africa soon.