Totally Unauthorized

Still no luggage.

Beth, the Travel Goddess, is working her skinny butt off, contacting American Air, contacting my travel insurance company.

I’m hounding Ethiopian Air.

Everybody says the bags are in Cairo, and will be here soon.  I’m of the opinion that someone is trying to sell extra large jockey shorts in the Cairo Bazaar.

The levels of incompetence are mind boggling, even within the “TIA” (this is Africa) attitude that prevails here.

This morning I tried to take my laptop to the little internet shop down the street where they told me I could plug it in–that’s much easier, since I can write articles on the laptop at night and then just copy them to the blog.

Of course they couldn’t get anything to work.  They have 5 computers, all ancient, all as virus infected as a Bombay street hooker.  The women who run the place are very nice, but they know less about computers than I do, which isn’t saying much.

And yes, I could do this with a flash drive.  I even brought two.  They are in my luggage.

So I guess I’ll just whine and gripe, and then we’ll go out and do what we came here for–help some kids.  That’s the point, anyway.

I wrote this early Monday morning.

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Except for the fact that I still have no luggage and I’m getting reallllllly tired of these pants, today was a great day.

Isn’t that what I wrote yesterday?  Well, same thing today.

Sunday started off slowly.  You don’t really need an alarm clock in a city where the muezzin begins the first call to prayer at 5:00 am. Although Ethiopia has been a Christian country since 325 AD, the Moslem presence is strong; huge sound systems have supplanted the need for excessively strong lungs, and the still of the early morning is broken by a recorded (I think) Allah is great, Allah is good, come to prayer! Not a lot of sleeping in goes on here.

Eventually, we tumbled into the van with yet another new driver.  This one says sure if you ask him if he knows any particular school or orphanage.  I think he’d claim to know where Lunardi’s grocery store in Walnut Creek is.  Since there are few named streets, this depth of knowledge is critical, and I have my doubts that he has it.

First stop, a pottery to buy more clay.  Kechene Womens Potters is a collective pottery here in Addis which is the source of pretty much all the good ceramic work you can buy in the upscale hotel gift shops, fancy boutiques, etc.  We bought another 12 kilos of clay, which isn’t weighed out—they just pull out what feels like a 1 kilo ball, then another, then another, until they have 12.  Close enough for government work.

I then got dropped off at the Hilton, the town’s second best hotel, to luxuriate in a couple of hours of high-speed broadband internet.  Hence the three posts in a row.  Cleared up the 67 emails that had passed through 2 different spam filters.  Still a lot of spam.  I treated myself to a Baileys from the bar.  The young lady carefully measured out precisely one shot, hand pumped the water out of a 5 gallon bottle to give me glass, then charged me $5.00, tip included.

We had a meeting at 1:30 at the Hilton with Samson Tesfaye to discuss possible future Rotary Club involvement with the foundation.  Sam is perhaps the only Rotarian in Addis; he’s one of those guys who knows everyone, is involved in many things, jet sets around to “do deals”.  He is a real asset for us to know.

Then we went back to AHOPE for another workshop. Today we did animation, making things out of clay, photographing them, moving them a fraction and doing it again.  We have no fancy equipment, but just taking 40 or 60 photos and playing them back quickly on our cameras shows the basics of animation and the kids love it.  We could have car crashes and monsters eating each other and turning into new monsters.  The kids got to do all of the clay work.  One of our volunteers, Shauna, is an animation major in art school so it went really well.

The other volunteer, Shannon, a sculptor and one of Eric’s helpers, turned 26 on Sunday, so for a birthday dinner we went out to Yod Abyssinian, a truly tourist oriented restaurant where we enjoyed  authentic music and dance while digging into an enormous platter of local food.  Eric and I ordered kifte, which is marinated minced goat, served cooked or raw.  We went the manly raw way, of course.  The waiter looked aghast, saying that the tourists never like the raw version, but we were adamant.  Heck, I eat steak tartare and carpacio, why not this?

It was fine.  I had a problem with how spicy it was, not the raw meat part.  I loved the entire meal.  Since Shannon is vegetarian, we needed an extra dish.  What else? Shiro. But this was different than the others; it was pureed and tasted like an entrée pudding, just fabulous. We drank kef, which is some kind of fermented honey wine.  Not pretentious, with little nose but excellent body.  Hints of orange and pineapple, short legs, no tannins.  Wine spectator would give it a 38, but it was just the sort of thing I like.

The tab for this feast, beer, wine, Pepsi, extra shiro, music and dance was 628 birr. There are 13.5 birr to the dollar, so we blew $42 for the five of us.  The doorman sprang to attention and saluted as we left.

Religion:  I mentioned above that this has been a Christian nation since some Emperor was converted in 325 AD. The countryside is very heavily Christian, the cities have a significant Muslim population but they seem to get along fairly well.  This is because Ethiopian Muslims are not of the fanatical fundamentalist streak.  I see many women with the hair covered, but no veils or burquas.   The Christianity here is of the Orthodox variety, and part of it is “fasting” two days a week.  Fasting mean no meat or dairy products.  A couple of days a week of vegan food would probably do us all a bit of good.

Things I’ve Missed

Modernity has yet to come to agriculture here.  There are vast flower farms, which are a major export for the country.  Buy flowers in Europe, and most likely they came from here or Kenya.  Yet the subsistence farming is all hand work, no tractors, nor even steel plows.  Coming down the volcano Saturday, we saw a group of young men threshing wheat the old fashioned way—throwing it on the ground while the cattle walk in a circle over it, then throwing it all high in the air to sort the wheat from the chaff.

The countryside is spotless.  Not, I think, because the people are all so tidy, but rather because every last thing has to be used and re-used until there is only enough left to burn.  The city is filthy.  Such is progress.

Every school teaches English.  Amharic is the official language, and the one spoken in Addis, but there are 80 or so other languages spoken in the country and English ties them all together.  All the kids leading the horses and hanging around hoping for a tip as we made our way down the volcano spoke good English.

Ethiopia is a huge international adoption center.  Eric and Charlotte adopted their son Noah here 7 years ago, but then Angelina Jolie adopted one of her kids here and things just exploded.  At the restaurant around the pool at the Hilton yesterday I saw at least 6 white families with a tiny black baby, all just glowing with joy.  The whole subject of international/interracial adoption is fraught with controversy, but living in Wisconsin with loving parents just has to better than begging in the streets of Addis.

Saturday was a day of rest, in theory.  We had no workshops, and were just going sightseeing.  Sometimes work is easier than fun.

We set out early with a new driver, who doesn’t seem to have a name and doesn’t speak any English that I can discern.  But he does a great job, and doesn’t disappear on us, so I’m happy.

The plan was to drive 2 hours northwest to Ambo, a secondary city, and then head over the top of a dead volcano, down the other side and home by another route.

The ride started out beautiful.  Wide green fields, people plowing by hand or with an ox, using a homemade wooden plow.  The rich guys have a piece of steel to attach as a blade to the plow.  There was really nothing to see in Ambo, so we left the excellent paved road and headed upland on dirt roads to Wenchi, the town in the caldera of the volcano.

Our timing was perfect;  Saturday is market day, and there were thousands of people streaming into Ambo and we got to see them all, carrying their chickens and vegetables, leading the sheep and goats and cattle, dressed for a day in town.  They were walking from great distances, all downhill, and would have to make the 3 or 4 or 5 hour trek home, uphill, at the end of the day.  The most common means of transportation here is by foot, and people think nothing of walking 5 or ten miles.

Nearing the crest of the road, (remember that we started out at 7700 feet in Addis), we saw a crew working feverishly to build some sort of radio or telecommunications tower–the feverish part came from the Chinese bosses who were directing the Ethiopian crew.  The Chinese are a big presence here–lots of commerce, lots of public works which are in trade for mining and power licenses.  America just gives aid–China ties it commercial rights and privileges. Guess who’s more successful?

The town of Wenchi is pretty amazing.  It absolutely stunning in a wide caldera, very clean, all new corrugated steel roofs on the houses, which are either squarish mud/dung/straw buildings or round huts made of straight branches of Eucalyptus.  Either type of home is usually thatched, but the sight of a town with all new steel roofs is wonderful.  We saw a crew of men dragging heavy electric cable to be strung on brand new cement power poles, most likely imported from China as well.

Just out of the town is the entrance to the park, where we stopped and paid the entrance fee and then paid for horses and a guide.  There is a beautiful crater lake at the bottom of a 4 km (2.4 mile) path, and we weren’t going to go hiking up and down at 11,000 feet.

When it came time to mount up, the adventure began.  There are the smallest horses you have ever seen, more like big ponies.  I am the largest man these people had ever seen.  The combination was not good.

After considerable arguing amongst the guides, a loser was chosen and I got a horse.  Then that didn’t work, so I got another horse.  Off we went, slowly walking down the steep and rocky hill.  I had guides on both sides of me holding on so I didn’t fall, but the saddle still slipped once and over to the side I went.  They caught me and righted me and tightened up the saddle (which is nothing like one of ours, much smaller and more simple).  All along the road we were greeted by kids–this is a land of children, young women popping out new Ethiopians early and often.

Finally, the bottom of the hill. And,……nothing.  A pretty lake.  No amenities, no nothing.  So after 5 minutes we started back up.

With, of course, a huge fight among the horse drivers to see who would get stuck with me (all new horses from the trip down).

So some poor kid with his horse had to make it back up the hill with the biggest guy they could imagine.  Slowly, slowly, we did.  I gave the kid a tip of more than the original price of the ride, and still he was unhappy–or they are so accustomed to insistently begging for more that he couldn’t help himself.

The begging is pretty tiresome, but that’s the price of poverty, I guess.

Next on the agenda was a greet lunch at a resort.  Italy has had a strong presence in Ethiopia for generations, since long before their abortive occupation in 1940.  I had a tagliatelle with oil and garlic that was splendid, and we all enjoyed our meals.

Back on the paved road, we ran into a huge thunderstorm which included so much hail the side of the road looked like there was 3 inches of snow.

One more trip to the airport to continue to find that my luggage was in Cairo, and would be here “tomorrow”, and I fell into bed.

Today we are all sunburned and sore from using strange muscles on the horseback ride.  What a great adventure it is.

I’m here. Addis Ababa. Took forever, but it should be worth it. I spent Tuesday in Madrid–8 hour layover. So I checked my bags and took the Metro into town. At first, I thought I’d be cultural and go see the Prado and Reine Sophia. But when I got in front of the museum all I wanted to do was lay down on a bench and take a nap. Japanese tourists are the same the world over. There in front of the Prado is a statue of Velasquez.  Sure enough, there was a group of 30, each one of whom had to have a photo of themselves with Velasquez.  Despite the fact that it was high noon and the photos will be dreadful, they will all have one.

More walking.  Madrid is made for walking and people watching.  I notice more women wearing headscarves all the time. Back to the airport.

Iberia to Cairo–their idea of business class is to say it’s business class, the seats are the same as coach, but they don’t sell the middle one.  Better than nothing, and the drinks are free.

Landing in Cairo.  Old fashioned airport–no jetwalks.  The plane parks out on the tarmac and you take a bus to the terminal.  Now the fun starts.

I get to immigration, and they want me to buy a visa.  I tell them I’m just in transit, leaving in 5 hours.  So they send me to the transit lounge.

The guy in transit assures me that they will get my luggage and transfer it.  I tried to check it all the way through to ADD from home, but that was impossible.

Five hours waiting in a FREEZING (yes I was thinking of Judy Timmons) waiting room.  I’m in bloody Cairo, on the edge of the Sahara desert, and shivering.  There is something wrong with this picture.

I wander around.  See a couple of women completely veiled.  McDonalds and Cinnabon in the airport.  I have a nutella crepe, which is darned good and the service (at 2:oo am) is impeccable.  Able to pay with Euros, which I picked up in Madrid.

Board Ethiopian Air for Khartoum and Addis.  It’s fairly crowded, but I manage to move to an  exit row seat on the aisle.  Ethiopian is one of the more respected of the non-mainstream airlines.  There is television–I don’t bother with the headsets, but I’ve seen those episodes of Everyone Loves Raymond and Two and a half  Men.  If this is what the world see of the US, no wonder they think we’re idiots.

Land in Khartoum, but don’t have to get off the plane.  Most of the passengers exit, they clean the place up and another group boards.  I still score an exit row seat.

The pilot announces we are 3rd in line for takeoff, about 10 minutes.  At home, 3rd in line is 90 seconds.  After 15 minutes, we start to move.  I find out what takes so long–the taxiway is not large enough for a full size jet, so we have to taxi the full length of the runway, then turn around and take off.

I notice a number of jets and large propeller planes apparently mothballed on the side of the airport.  It always makes we wonder how much money was lost in what kind of venture that led to such a pathetic end for fine flying machines.

Finally, Addis.  I have to buy a visa–$20 US.  You see one man who starts the forms, then passes you on to his colleague who process the cash and writes you a receipt, in triplicate, with carbon paper.  Can you even buy carbon paper in the US anymore?

Luggage.  Nope.  It turns out that American didn’t get it to Iberia in Madrid.  We get it all figured out and they promise it will be on the plane today.  I’m not holding my breath.

Eric meets me.  We head out to buy a few necessaries until the luggage arrives.  Cannot buy contact lens solution.  Only one place even has lens cases, and they will not sell me any solution because they need it for their own clients.  I’ll use bottled water.

We find socks and underwear and t-shirts.  I’m  set.

Go back to Mr. Martin’s Cozy Cabins, our Ethiopian pied a terre .  The Sheraton, it ain’t.  But the sheets are clean, and every guest gets his very own roll of TP.  I crash for 8 hours.

Eric goes to the airport and collects Charlotte, his wife.  I wake up, and we walk up the street for dinner.   Many little “bars” with lots of friendly, very friendly, women standing in front.  We have a plate of shiro, a chick pea stew served on injera, the local bread which is much like a wet washcloth.  It isn’t my new favorite food, but I enjoyed it.

Slept another 8 hours.  Now I feel great.  Went to the airport and picked up Shannon and Shauna, our other volunteers.  They dropped me off at an internet cafe, and here I am.

We have our first workshop this afternoon.  More to come.

And we’re off. Or at least I am; Gail has no interest in spending two weeks in Addis Ababa. She’s playing in sacramento this week–it will be the first time in forever that I’m not.

Another too-early flight. Six fifteen flight means the alarm goes off at four. SFO to Miami to Madrid to Cairo to Khartoum to Addis. Hardly the most efficient route but the one I could get with frequent flyer miles. The photo is the girl in the seat behind me who got on the plane with the neck pillow eyeshade and ear plugs already in place. And I thought I came prepared.