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Published: June 12th 2009
The Big 4-oh!
It is pretty big and it is pretty clever, thanks, Sara :)Er, thanks.
That was the assessment of one of Sara's colleagues from the Education Bureau about my passing of the middle-age milestone. People say things here like "you look like a baby" when what they mean is "you are very young looking" so I hope he got his adjectives muddled, but maybe not...
I'm not a vindicitive sort who remembers such slights; but he can forget any PC support he needs on HIS b** laptop!
Silicone Implants Before I move on and talk about the birthday in Addis, I should pass on a great discovery of mine, courtesy of eBay. Silicone ear-plugs!
Since that infamous rat did my Emirates ones I have been looking for a substitue and have tried 4 different varieties - bought on eBay, posted to my father, who ships them in a parcel with kids soccer clothes across to Assosa. None have done the job.
I have even had one type stuffed in my ear vertically with another brand stuffed on top of the first type mounted horizontally across the ear canal.
Even this double layered defence met with mixed results.
It seemed that the only noise the ear
Juventus Club
Celebrating the famous Italian naked 10-pin bowling champ... plugs blocked out was Sara's voice!
The all night church chanting I could hear like the priest was outside the window; and the neighbour's Chinese drum torture was as clear as a bell, but Sara? Her mouth would move and I couldn't hear a thing?? Very odd.
These new ear implants though, they are the bee's knees. Bit weird at first but you get used to smudging them up into a kind of pancake, which adheres itself across the opening of the ear canal. Blocks 'em up, good and proper! Now I even sleep through the alarm clock.
That said, the rainy season has started and some of the storms with huge overhead displays of thunder, lightning and torrents of rain hammering on our tin roof challenge the effectiveness of even my new silcone superstars.
Fillet 'O Feline In the last rat-focussed update I mentioned we feed the cats meat from the "sigga bet" (literally 'house of meat') or "butchery" as people call it in Ethiopian English (barber shops are also called a "barbery" which threw me a few times; "I will be back later as I am going to the barbery...).
Now some
Ciao time
Deep fried cheese? What a great invention was that ;) of you dear readers are probably tut-tutting and questioning the logic of feeding stray cats meat when Ethiopia is a nation that has suffered from food security issues in the recent past.
Well you tut-tutters can sleep easy - try a silcone earplug! 😊 (I'm not obsessed. Honest. I know, I know, I'm not funny either...)
No, the meat we buy is the offal that humans will not eat. As a vegetarian I have to say most of it looks and smells pretty minging, covered in fresh blood and flies, but these bits. Eugh! Well try and guess which part of what animal that was?
Yes, there are Ferengis in Assosa who feed their dogs prime cut meat (40 birr/kilo). Our friend Mulatu who does our shopping for us also shops for them.
When you consider Mulatu eats meat about 3 times a year - usually on festivals like Easter - to get him to buy better food than he eats himself, just to feed their dogs seems a bit, well, inconsiderate. They do let him eat bread and water. Which is nice.
Our attempts to buy meat for the cats has met with mixed
Not a pizza in sight
Can't be a real Italian resturant then... success. Mulatu is not very good at getting these off-cuts, mainly because he is a teenager and cannot get out of bed until about 9.30am, by which time most of the cheap, rubbish meat is gone. We, however, seem to go and get meat for the cats fairly easily.
We did realise we had been making something of an grammatical error when our request for "demut sigga alleh?" was met with blank looks or general confusion. Then someone pointed out, after a few weeks, that we had been asking "is there any cat meat?" to the butcher.
Now Ferengi in Ethiopia are a bit mysterious and myths circulate about their strange habits and customs. Eating cat is clearly a no-no for most, if not all, Ethiopians, but Ferenge? Hmm. Maybe there is business to be had here...?
Anyway we now know we say "sigga leur demut alleh?" or "is there meat
for a cat?". I add a few pretend cat mews and everyone laughs and gets the point.
Light Industry At the risk of becoming a bore, the electricity situation has changed once more.
It was 1 day (sometimes 2 days) ON then one
Outside Juventus
Finished one party - off to another! day off. But on the off days, the power was cut at 8am - so you had time to make breakfast - and came back at 9pm - so you could recharge your laptop batteries and boil water to drink etc etc.
Now the regime is definately one day on and one day off, and each day the power is off for the entire 24 hours i.e. midnight to midnight. As our friend Mustapha said with a smile and a nod, "things are getting better!".
There was a rumour that we would have no power for 15 days straight (as parts of the region have had no power for 3 weeks) but that was just people misinterpreting the Ethiopian TV news. Yes there will be 15 days off this month, but not in a row.
Another rumour is that due to the lack of foreign currency reserves, the government is only supplying power to companies that export their goods, rather than those that supply the domestic market.
It's a cracker! While in Addis we were also told a joke doing the rounds in by one of the Ethiopian VSO drivers.
- Man goes to
Jackie
Heading to the UK the following weekend - say Hi! to the bad guy back home :) the market to buy a sack of t'eff (the flour used to make injera - the staple diet and source of carbohydrates for most Ethiopians) and is told it costs 1,000 birr.
WHAT! He cries, 1,000 birr? I can't afford that. I'd rather die than pay 1,000 birr for t'eff!
Fine, says the market seller, go ahead and kill yourself.
So the man goes home to kill himself.
He runs a bath of water to drown himself but there is no water. Doh!
So he gets a rope and hangs himself but the rope snaps - Made in China. Doh!
Finally he sticks his finger into the power socket. Nothing happens. It's a 'mabrat yellum' (no power) day...
Guy sits down defeated and cries - Ethiopia! Can't live here and can't die here either 😊
Any-way...back to the main event. Addis
No Fokkers for a Fortnight OK, ok, maybe I'll never tire of that old Fokker 50 gag, but equally the service industries here never seem to tire of springing surprises on you at the last minute.
The plan was to leave Assosa on the Saturday flight (in case
Sunday was cancelled), attend the one day VSO workshop on Tuesday, before flying back on the Thursday flight.
Anithya, Sara and I manage to blag a lift to the airport with our friendly driver, Argenyo. On the way he tells us the airport closes this week.
Eh? We say. We are supposed to be flying back on Thursday? He shrugs.
We check in at the tin shack and ask the question "is the airport closing this week?". Yes, says the man. The asphalt on the runway needs another layer. We close on Tuesday for 2 weeks!
"What about our flight on Thursday?" we ask.
(shrug)
"But Ethiopian Airlines sold us tickets this week, for a flight coming back on Thursday? Didn't they know the airport was closing?"
(shrug)
We retire to the bamboo bench outside the hut where the Kenyan head of the local UN office has just found out the good news herself. She asks the airlines officials and (I think) they even got his boss, but ultimately it ended with a shrug. She was meant to fly back on Sunday and had two UNHCR missions arriving during the week by
Al & Clare
and no we didn't eat all the profiteroles between us! air and no-one had told her.
She leaned over and said in an irritated voice - "someone probably woke up this morning and decided today is a good day to close the airport!". We just smiled as we had all been here long enough to know that probably wasn't that far from the truth. "And", she added, "when they say two weeks, they mean four"...
No one had contacted us to tell us the airport was closed. No one called us in Addis to tell us not to go to the airport on Thursday.
And we also heard that the airlines offices were still selling tickets for flights that would not happen, even one week after the airport closed. The local Assosa office knew but had not told any of the other offices around the country!
We would have to try and beg a lift back on a car. We knew what a stressful experience trying to find a car was so we just put it to the
Sara's birthday gift
Wow - looks just like Haile Gebre Selassie....with a beer gut back of our minds and concentrated on Addis, my birthday and getting to the workshop.
Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? Before we could pass through to the departure lounge there is the hand baggage security check.
There are two small tables, divided by a flapping cutain that lead from the check-in part of the hut to the departure lounge part of the hut. Here you are divided by sex. The men go one side, the women the other.
For any woman taking a flight that has flown from Assosa before there is the pre-security check mixture of amusement (sharing "war stories" about the security-check woman) and trepidation.
The woman on duty is famous for rummaging through baggage, with a keen interest in anything Ferengi.
Anything that looks interesting (ferengi food, ferengi makeup, ferengi underwear) is subject to intense, almost catalogue-like scrutiny, before she finishes her inspection with her trademark squeeze of the female passenger's breasts. What she is checking for, nobody knows? Maybe she just needs to reassure herself that ferengi boobs feel the same as Ethiopian boobs?
Fortunately I avoid all such shenanighans. My moobs are clearly below the radar and I seem
Al-emu the Ethiopian
This'll confuse 'em down the Emirates to get a different guy every time I get checked.
Normally there is one surprise for me. Each time I get checked, something new is not allowed in the cabin and I must check it into my hold baggage. Batteries. Mangos and this time it was the needles in my small VSO medical kit.
Not unreasonable for sure, though this is the first time in over 10 flights this particular item was identified as suspect.
Anything electrical must be turned on and tested, and this time anything ferengi and unknown needed a demonstration.
"What is this?" (holds up green tube of Berocca vitamin pills)
- Vitamin pills
"Eat it"
- Er, how do I explain the word 'effervescent' in Amharic and that these pills need to be dissolved in water not eaten whole...? I finally touch a pill to my tongue and he is satisfied.
"What is this?" (hold up plastic bottle of talcum powder)
- Talcum powder
"What is it for?"
- Oh no. How do I explain this? I shake it over my b*lls after a shower...(mild panic sets in)
- I shake some into my hand and hold it out to him.
Best I 'earn the shirt'
Inn training with the Germans. Rehydration essential :) "Show me"
- Yikes! How can I manage this? I kind of point at my midrift and do a sprinkling motion and he seems happy.
"What is this?" (holds up the aluminum-free crystal I use as a deodorant)
- Oh dear. And this was *already* turning into a long day...
Now, you don't see THAT every day Ah. On the plane at last (I got on 10 mins before everyone else as I had to carry my first aid pack needles to the plane so they could pull my bag, well, Sara's bag, out of the hold so I could stash the kit).
Sitting in 4 different rows were the oddest looking Ferengis I have yet to see on an Assosa-Addis flight! A whole family of 6 foot+ tall, blonde Germans. Mum, Dad, 2 or 3 boys and 2 girls, going through the age ranges. I was like I'd just booked a flight with the Von Trapp family!
The flight had come from Gambella, another emerging region of Ethiopia that VSO will not work in for security reasons. Given the number of ferengi you normally see geting on or off at Gambella, I reckon the
What do I do with this? Drink it, inject it or rub it in?
Hmm, think I'll leave this at home next time I fly from Assosa! entire population of Ferenge in Gambella had just dropped by 50%! (MISSING)
Friends, Romans and countrymen We make it to Addis and settle down in the Yonas Hotel. I have my usual chat with Mr Haile, the Arsenal fan and owner.
Sunday lunch we have my party at an Italian sports club called Juventus - just behind Meskel Square (go up the stairs by the second huge statue of a white pigeon and hang a right along the wall, through the derelict gate and it's on the left).
The place was fantastic. Amazing floodlit 5-a-side pitch out front, kind of 70's come 30's decor inside, very tasty (cheesy) food. Gnocci, deep fried mozzerella, real ice cream. Hmmmm.
Nice company too. Got to see Jonathan & Ellie, Allan, Amy, Anithya, Clare, Sophie, Emma & Binyam, Tadas, Ruta and the crew.
Afterwards we headed to Jackie's house for her leaving do - she was going back to England on the following Saturday. It wasn't a well-timed flight as Gordon was in Edinburgh watching the Tiggers play Leinster in the Heineken Cup Final! (It's OK Gordon, I'll not mention the result).
A really nice cake of profiteroles
had been arranged, along with a big 4 0 candle and we drank and ate our way through the afternoon. Us country folk enjoying the tastes and drinks you can't get in Assosa.
I spent some time chatting with Jeremy about The Arsenal and whether he was interested in taking a share in a season ticket next year when he gets back. He seemed amazed that you could get an Arsenal season ticket for £900 (which includes all home league games, home FA cup ties and every home European Cup match). I did explain it is in the middle of the guys that like to sing a bit (myself included) but he seemed keen...
Life Begins Monday morning I turned 40.
Apart from the terrible news about Jeremy, which tempered my celebrations, and reminded me frequently that day of Dave - who was killed last year by a drunk bus driver as he walked home with a bunch of volunteers, Sara had planned a good itinary to mark my passage into middle age.
We started with a croissant at a new cafe opposite Get Fam called Cafe Milano. Then we went for a brunch at Bagel Corner - a great new bakery/cafe set up by an Ethiopian returned from time making money overseas - including time in London.
The place was recommended by Jonathan and what a recommendation it was!
Feels like a coffee shop in London or NY. Very clean, good menu, nice music.
I treated myself to a buttered bagel with scrambled egg and french fries which helped calm the belly after yesterday's excesses.
Then we went to the Edna Mall cinema and watched X-Men: Wolverine. Just sitting in a cinema, staring at a big screen is a pleasure. Quality of film doesn't really matter.
Next up a litre of beer at the German Beer Garden Inn.
Then real ice cream at Brunos, near the Hiyatt Hospital. Tasted great but was expensive and the taste soured somewhat walking back past the big Bole Road Church with beggars camped outside. Kind of hard to walk past when you have just spent 80 birr - enough to feed a family for a fortnight - on ice cream.
We walked up to Hiya Hulet and had dinner in the Zebra Grill (in the dark - power cut) before back to the Yonas and (as luck would have it) Aliens vs Predator on the TV in the room!
I went to sleep thinking if this is how my life as a 40-something will continue then I'll be one happy bunny for the next decade 😊
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