Week 8: Zambia/Ethiopia

We wrapped up our time in Zambia with one last sunset viewing, complete with hippos and elephants in the water above the falls. We also spent some time enjoying Mukani Park downtown Livingstone, and said our goodbyes to all of the locals we had so much fun with. Before leaving, we washed most of our clothes by hand. Lakson, the yard boy for the house, indicated that I was taking way too long to wash our items by the way he said, “you STILL wash??!” when he came by the house. Because of the dirt and dust here, most of our clothes were pretty filthy. Who brings white socks to Africa, anyway?!

On Friday, we boarded the plane in Livingstone, and flew to Kenya. Everything went really smoothly at the airport, and we even got dinner on the plane. We arrived at the Nairobi airport at 10:00 pm, and spent a fairly restless night trying to get comfortable enough on the airport chairs to get some sleep. At 6:30 am, we were able to board our plane and get a little bit of sleep on our way to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

When we arrived, we checked into our clean, spacious hotel room at the Menarol Guest House. It was such a treat to have a cozy bed and a private bathroom with hot water! On our first full day in Addis, we took the pills prescribed to kill the flatworms we might have contracted from swimming in the Nile and Zambezi. We were required to take one pill for every 10 kg of body weight, but we were able to spread all of these pills over three meals. Luckily, neither of us experienced any of the negative side effects from the pills, and were still able to enjoy the day!

We toured around Addis for two full days. We even found some hiking trails close to our hotel and headed up for a great view of Addis. We haven’t had many opportunities for hiking recently, and the higher altitude left us pretty tired! During this hike, we saw many people who were walking for miles with huge loads, including large water jugs. There were many spots where I slipped on the wet rocks in my hiking boots, while the locals walked easily in their flip flop sandals.

The streets of Addis after a heavy afternoon rain

Meskel Square

On Tuesday, we had to get up at 3:30 am to catch a bus up to Bahir Dar. The whole process of getting a bus was more organized than we expected. We bought bus tickets at a ticket office that were printed with seat numbers assigned. We got a taxi that came at the time requested and were dropped off at the location where buses and people were waiting in orderly lines. We went to the bus parked in front of the 'Bahir Dar' sign, and had our bags placed under the bus with tags attached for retrieval. We sat in our assigned seats, and took off shortly after the time on the ticket. We fully realize things will not always be this organized! Although many of the side roads in town are dirt/mud, the highway was paved and is in pretty good condition. During our drive, we saw many goats, donkeys, and cows on the road and in the fields. There were areas with houses very spread out, and others with many houses packed in close together. We also saw quite a mix of scenery, including large grassy fields, rolling hills with trees and shrubs, sunflower fields, and mountains. We zigzagged up and down a number of large hills. When we pulled over for a five minute break, people quickly moved into the grass on the side of the road and urinated. Just after we had a 30-minute lunch break, we got a flat tire, which was changed quickly and efficiently on the side of the road. There wasn’t a lot of traffic either way on the road, but any vehicles we did pass were large trucks or other buses. This bus ride took over 11 hours, so we were pretty stiff getting off the bus at the end!

Please excuse the blurry pictures... they were all taken from the shaky bus, but we wanted to showcase the scenery along our drive!

Allie, check out these beautiful sunflowers!

 20 New Experiences in Ethiopia:

• We have travelled back in time! Ethiopia has their own calendar, and September 1^st marked their New Year, celebrating the year 2010! Ethiopia also has their own time, where 6:00 am World Time is 0:00 Ethiopian Time. So far, everything we have had to do has been communicated to us in World Time, so we hope we don’t miss any buses or flights because of this time difference!
• Although we have had it pretty easy communicating with people in the other African countries we have visited, we have not met many people who speak English here. This makes for a lot of confused looks and stilted sentences from us, and a lot of headshakes and nervous laughs from the locals.
• They use birr as currency here in Ethiopia, with 100 birr equal to $5.20 CAD. They don’t seem to have any larger bills than 100 birr, so we have been left with a decent stack of money to tote around each day.
• The weather is a lot cooler here than the other African countries we have visited. It has also rained a LOT each afternoon, flooding a lot of roads. We have finally made use of some of the warm clothes we packed, and have our fingers crossed that there isn’t a lot of rain for our upcoming hikes in the mountains here.
• Ethiopian food is eaten with your right hand. We have tried quite a variety of dishes already. Most dishes include injera, which is almost like a very thin teff flour pancake. You rip off pieces of the injera and use it to pick up the saucy vegetable or meat concoctions that are poured onto a second piece of injera. We have already learned to ask for dishes without berber, which is a HOT green pepper. Our absolute favourite dish is a fried pastry with honey they serve for breakfast. Will is developing a taste for the coffee here, but it is SUPER strong!

• Addis Ababa has a light rail system! Tickets for the light rail cost 2 birr each (10 cents), and we took it twice between a stop near our hotel and Meskel Square. The cars of this train are SUPER packed, and Will had to pull me off the first time we rode it.
• If you have flown into Ethiopia on Ethiopian Airlines, the flights within the country are very reasonable. We were able to book flights between Gondar and Lalibela, and then Lalibela back to Addis for less than half the regular ticket price, just by showing them our Ethiopian Airlines ticket stub. After riding the bus from Addis to Bahir Dar, those airline tickets became even more valuable!
• Addis a very busy city, and has many people begging in the streets. We have seen many children begging, as well as many people who are missing limbs or are blind.
• The scaffolding and state of buildings makes it very confusing to tell whether the building is being built, being rebuilt, or being torn down. All buildings in any of these states look the same to us, and none of them have scaffolding (which is built out of eucalyptus trees) that we would trust.
• In terms of clothing, we have noticed many people wearing more modern clothing (not modern by our standards, but items that have most likely been donated from western countries). These items are often ill fitting and torn. These items are also mixed with more traditional clothing, such as large scarves over their heads and shoulders, which are in much better condition. Their shoes are very worn and we've seen multiple people walking with flip-flops that are not attached in the middle.
• Just as we have seen in the other African countries we have visited, there is garbage everywhere. As we walk down the street, we are often hit with the smell of sewage and burning. We have also seen a lot of people bathing in the muddy rivers here.
• We have seen a huge variety of homes. We haven't seen any of the large and luxurious homes we saw in other countries, but we've seen sets of 4-5 small tin shacks in a row, small concrete/homemade brick homes, and mud huts with thatch roofs.
• Men are very comfortable with contact with other men. Many hold hands and hug while walking down the street, and they stand very close to each other.
• You can buy airtime/data literally everywhere... even small villages have stands!
• The toilets here cannot support toilet paper being flushed, so toilet paper gets tossed in a basket beside the toilet. Hand held sprayers, or ‘bum guns’ as we prefer, have shown up beside the toilets now that we are in Ethiopia, and we’re seeing more squat toilets.
• All other countries we've visited so far have been left hand drive, but Ethiopia is right hand drive. It’s crazy how quickly you adjust to looking the other way before crossing streets!
• The drivers are fairly calm on the streets here. The streets of Addis are filled with old cars and minibuses, and as we moved up towards Bahir Dar, many tuk tuks were added to the mix. We haven’t seen motorcycles on the roads here.
• It is illegal to drive on the highways at night.
• There are traffic lights in Addis, which we haven't seen much of yet during our travels through Africa.
• We have come to understand the honking system for vehicles here, and it makes a lot of sense. A single honk is used to signal that you're passing a vehicle in front of you, and 2-3 honks says you're coming through to incoming traffic… or pedestrians…or cows.

Random act of kindness: After navigating the streets on our first day in Addis Ababa, we got to a shop we thought would sell SIM cards. We were able to get a SIM card pretty easily, but communicating about why it wasn’t working in our phone was very difficult. We walked away with the understanding that it might work in 30 minutes, or it might not work at all. We then met a guy who spoke decent English, and after asking him what he thought about the SIM card situation, he willingly went back to the shop with us and acted as a translator. He helped us clarify everything, and helped us feel much more comfortable in this new country!