2 Weeks in Africa: Addis Ababa with Cali & New Bosses

Way back in September, Compassion wrote to me about joining a group tour to meet my sponsored child in Ethiopia.  Because of some particulars, I wouldn't be able to join the group tour.  But it got my mind rolling with the idea of going to visit her on a custom visit.  I really didn't like the idea of going to Ethiopia by myself, though.  Fast forward to February, when the BonFils left for Tunisia.  I began looking at tickets to go there, and wondered how much it would cost to tack on a trip to Ethiopia.  Turns out, it was cheaper for me to book a round-trip ticket to Ethiopia from Tunisia than from France, or to make a multi-stop ticket.  And then I remembered that my friend Cali was studying language in the Horn of Africa.  I wrote her and asked where she was...and turns out she was in Addis!

So...I booked my tickets, arranged the tour with Compassion, flew over the Sahara, and landed for the first time ever in Sub-Sarahan Africa.  Wowzah.  My flight landed at 3 in the morning, which apparently is normal.  After I got my visa, I saw an ATM and thought that maybe I should pull out a little bit of cash before heading out into the arrival part of the airport to meet my friend.  I knew that I would need plenty more money later, and that she would take me to an ATM, but I thought, in my 3am grogginess, that it might be good to have a little bit of cash on hand just in case of some potential problem.  

However, I didn't know how much the local currency was compared to the US dollar.  I looked at the amounts offered in the machine: 100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000, or 4000.  Hmmm... 4000 seemed like a lot.  But what did I know?  I figured most machines I've been to have around $20 as the lowest amount you can pull, so I thought, "Maybe 100 birr is $20?"  Seemed logical in my 3am grogginess, and so I pulled out 100 birr.

Imagine how much I laughed at myself later when I found out that I'd pulled out less than $5, and then had the international charges to pay on top of that.  Oh lala.

I apparently went through all the arrival stuff faster than Cali had planned, because she hadn't arrived yet to meet me.  I sat on a bench and stared at the trees in the dark and listened to the birds and thought how different it was there from the arid desert Africa I've always known.  She eventually got there to pick me and we headed to her place where I was able to drift happily to sleep for a few hours.

The next day (my first real day there), we got up and went to her language teacher's house for Cali's lesson.  I had fun with the kiddos in the backseat of the taxi.

(I warned you a few days ago that many pictures of this trip were taken through the window of a moving car.  That is certainly true of my time in Ethiopia.)  There were cattle in the road.

I loved watching all the people on the roads and sidewalks.  It seemed like constant motion.  No one was still.  No one was sitting or standing around.  Everyone moves.

At the language helper's house, we got to eat these sugar-coated donut holes she made us.  Delish.  Seriously, my love handles have a little more love because of that plate right there.

The kids played a local game called Ladoo.  It's pretty much like Parcheesi.  You have to roll a certain number to enter your piece to the board, then you move your pieces around, until you can get them to the home in the middle.  Apparently, Happy and her friends love this game and play it every night.

Happy is aptly named.  She has the most beautiful smile.  She spoke some English, so I was able to talk with her a bit.  Also, her language has some Arabic in it, so I was able to catch those small few words as well.

Happy is not from Ethiopia, but is a refugee from another neighboring country.  Even though she is a refugee, she has a house on a nice street, and an Ethiopian house-helper working for her.  This is her street:

This is Cali (my friend)'s street:

Cali lives in a neighborhood where there are many ambassador's houses, which were HUGE and elegant.  But the roads were rough.  Also, the electricity would go out daily, and not on any kind of schedule.  I learned to charge my phone battery when there was power, not when my phone battery needed charging, because I wouldn't know if the power would go out or how long it would stay out.

After Happy's house, we went to a local coffee shop.  I was pretty excited about drinking real Ethiopian coffee, since that's already the kind I like to buy.  I normally don't like milk in my coffee, but since that's how they do it, that was how I was going to do it!  Here's my macchiato.  As can be expected, it was delightful.

We stopped for some vegetables on the way home, and across the street from the vegetable stand was this bamboo-furniture maker.  It was amazing to me how, in the middle of the capital city, there were trees, (#Iliveinaconcretejungle), and furniture makers on the side of the road.  (Although, there are guys who make wicker chairs on the side of the road in Marseille, so I guess it's not all that different.)

If you couldn't tell from the photos, it was cloudy and some major storms rolled in.  I don't get to hear lightening often, and I love it when I do.  There was rain, lightening, thunder, and it was glorious!  Rain in Africa, hitting the tin roof, is the most lovely sound.  I took this photo on the way home that day because it showed what I felt like I saw: people in motion, rain clouds, beautiful trees and flowers, unpaved roads, and plenty of life.  I loved it even from day 1.

So here was a surprise!  As it turned out, my new bosses from the country I'm about to move to in the Middle East, just happened to be in Addis!  So they came over for dinner that night so that we could meet each other and get to know one another a little bit.  That was so unexpected and delightful.  I'm really glad to have had that opportunity.  (This photo wasn't from that night, but a few nights later when I ran into them again at a restaurant.)

All in all, it was a good, quiet, peaceful day.  Just like a vacation ought to be.