Advertisement
Published: February 7th 2010
Most of these events went down during the time when the two girls were missing. Earlier Sunday one of the students noticed that $200 of hers was missing from her money belt. She was fairly certain that the money went missing in the Jimma hotel. I doubted this but said alright, lets tell management that some money might have went missing here just so they know. The Jimma hotel has individual door locks and there is only 1 key, the maids need your key to clean the room, but Hotel Abebe in Assendabo has pad locks that were jimmied open on at least 1 occasion when a student was locked out.
When they got back to Assendabo one student could tell that her stuff had definitely been gone through and stuff was missing. They went to the owner, he went into the rooms of the girls who worked in the hotel and he came out with two bags and dumped them on the ground. The girl reached down and pulled out one of her bras and was like, “Oh. My. God.” I was not there for any of this but evidently the girl got beaten pretty severely in the presence of the students. He was standing on her legs and they thought he was going to break them. She was eventually dragged off into the woods. I think everyone had something missing. Most items were recovered except for the $200, and iPod player, and 1 pair of bra and panties, assumed to be being worn by the perpetrator who is in jail.
The Assendabo team was justly freaking out; they had been staying in a place and getting robbed. Should they move out of Hotel Abebe? Where would they go? The program can’t come back to Hotel Abebe and it shouldn’t come back to Assendabo, etc. During the next several days the team was negotiating with Abebe, who doesn’t speak English, over what they owe and what they should be compensated. Everything was eventually settled in Jimma on Thursday a day before the group left to Addis Ababa, two days before they left for home. They were not happy with the settlement, and they were also not happy with the level of involvement of their preceptors and the fee they had to pay them. It was a stressful final week. They left thinking they made no impact and that people, including our preceptors, saw us as nothing but money signs.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.115s; Tpl: 0.04s; cc: 8; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0562s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
encinitasdad
non-member comment
That is sad
It is a shame that the other students had things stolen. Even a greater trgedy that the employee was BEATEN! I hope things are different for you in Jimma and that you feel your project is worth something. Be careful and use common sense. Spoken like a parent. Your experiences are truly memorable.