Blogs from Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa Region, Ethiopia, Africa - page 7

B-E- AGGRESSIVE. ! It's the only way you'll get on to the local transportation. I wouldn't say there's a stop post, you sort of just wait somewhere (only known to locals) until a mini-bus pulls up. When it comes towards you, someone will stick out their head and call out a stop, but by then you should already be crowding the door and pushing your way onto the bus. It's insane. There was no way all 6 of us could get on one bus together, so we split up to make things easier. After some pushing, shoving, and having a guy try to pull me back, we stuffed onto this bus heading towards Mercado. The air was dense with the smell of body odor and smog. I didn't know I could hold my breath for so ... read more

Salem. Welcome to present day Ethiopia, the date is October 19, 2002. Ethiopians do not operate on daylight savings time nor do they adjust to leap years, so it's behind the Gregorian calendar by 7.5 years. We've spent an entire day here in Addis now and I find the place rather comfortable. We are currently staying at Panorama Hotel in Bole City, away from the center of Addis, which has been a blessing for the many conveniences. The people do not stare much and go about their lives as if we ourselves were Ethiopian. They are so friendly. The first day of clinic (which happens to be a 10 minute walk from our hotel) consisted of a tour of the place and a breakdown of patients that we will be seeing in the next few months. ... read more

The second destination on our travels is Ethiopia, a country I was really looking forward to seeing, but also held some doubt simply due to the unknown. Addis Ababa We flew into Addis Ababa, from Cairo, to a pleasant 25dg (had been hovering in the high 30dg in Egypt) and were met by our friendly airport transfer. Upon leaving the nicely paved roads leading from the airport we began to realise that we were definitely no longer in Kansas... The streets in Addis Ababa tend to be a combination of main arterial routes, which are ashfelted, with a spider web of side streets of the gravel variety. We arrived at the Mimosa Hotel without any incident and proceeded to familiarise ourselves with the local neighbourhood. This is when we discovered that in Ethiopia the streets literally ... read more

I keep meaning to bring my journal to work so that I can whip a blog entry out at lunch; when I HAVE remembered to do this, I haven’t had the time and then I have stupidly left it at the office so I can’t write at home either! So here’s the bullets version of some of the highlights of the last what? Three weeks? • I got chased by a dog down a street. He was actually more of a large puppy and all I really wanted to do was stop and pet him because he was so freakin’ cute, but as the travel doctor completely terrified me to my core about the very real prospect of death resulting from rabies before I left, I did not. It therefore took me a good 5minutes to ... read more

Stamping a passport and writing down the name and number of its holder takes half an hour. Or at least it does in Ethiopia. Once Radek and I had yawned our way through this process we jumped on a truck heading from the border town of Metema to Gonder, our preffered destination. Yawns were soon replaced by laughing and shouting as Radek and I, in the open trailer, hurtled through the Ethiopian contryside, a land of beer, gorgeous women and crazy people. Within 15 minutes of the journey's beginning I had my top off, a beer in hand and had already been told by a voluptuous girl that she loved me. People waved and children came running towards us screaming variations of 'you, you, you, give me money, give me birr, you, you, you, faranji (white ... read more