Blogs from Benishangul-Gumuz Region, Ethiopia, Africa - page 9

After our introduction to shoulder banging and mucky handshakes we spent the afternoon listening to a very interesting briefing on Ethiopian geopolitics and an “Addis Survival Guide”. Addis is not a particularly dangerous city for things like random muggings or kidnap - your major risks are trip-hazards and crossing the road!! Cheers Drive! We also had line taxi etiquette explained to us. Line taxis are these blue and white Toyota minibuses that hare up and down the roads, horns tooting, jam-packed with people while a young boy hangs out of a window shouting out something fast, loud and unintelligible at you. Given that the private hire taxis usually up their rates by at least three decimal places when they see a “ferenji” coming, your best bet, given our local salary, is to take a line taxi. ... read more

*HobNob biscuits *Ploughman’s sandwich (actually and whole lunch with French bread and pickles and a pint of beer) *Pizza (I think it’s a cheese thing) *Pasty and chip shop chips (Cheese pasty of course) *Cucumber (preferably with cheese) /... read more

Come to Addis to get fat Strange though it may seem and contradictory to everything you might expect in Ethiopia, I have been getting fatter since I arrived in Addis! The restaurants serve up all the European dishes you dream about whilst out in the regions living off of injera and shiro, you are usually at a workshop taking very little exercise on a nice per diem and you normally have the company of like-minded VSOs who are itching to get stuck into a casa-casa jambo (pint of ice cold draught) and catch up on the gossip. Besides, my good work on Weight Watchers was rapidly coming undone after a Christmas of excess, 12 days in Harborne Hall (3 cooked meals a day + beer) and then TV dinners for a fortnight as our house was ... read more

Al has been so diligent getting the blog up and running I thought I’d better start adding some comments and also get it up to date. I thought we’d have time in the first few weeks to work on this and we’d have a easy paced introduction to the country, when I’d have to keep myself entertained reading my books and watching episodes of Dawson’s Creek and recuperating after a hectic few months in the UK, what a naive women I am, it’s been none stop since we got here. We’ve not been in Ethiopia for 1 month yet and it’s been a whirlwind, of introductions, training, travelling, new houses, new jobs, new friends, new food and new routines, I could write for pages about each day of the past few weeks, suffice to say it’s ... read more

It is currently the year 2000 in Ethiopia. It is currently the year 2008 in the UK. In as brief a history as possible, here is the pre-Ethiopia time :) It's a monster entry this one, so make sure you read it while getting paid e.g. at work. VSO Application & Early Training We applied for a two year placement through VSO in January 2007. People ask us what made us do it and I guess it was a number of reasons. We have no kids, we were getting a bit stale at work maybe, maybe I was a bit fed up of dedicating my life to adding zeros to a milometer and a bank account and I guess we really just fancied a shared adventure. Better to do it and at the worst, regret it, ... read more