First Day in Addis

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We arrived in Addis Ababa late, after a delay in Heathrow and surviving the traumas of the film Poseidon. The person, sitting next to me, covering her mouth with her hands at the most shocking bits, made the tense moments even worse. Just what you need - a disaster movie during a flight!

I finally got to bed at 4am, as dogs were beginning to bark and the sky appeared to be getting lighter. I did drop off to sleep, only to be wakened at 5 by the call to prayer - a very evocative sound, which always reminds me that I am in a different culture.

After breakfast (of toast, juice and coffee) I met up with two other volunteers to go for a walk. A man, who just happened to be outside our hotel said that he was going to a celebration for Halle Selasses’s birthday and did we want to go. We all thought that he was heading to a public celebration, but we ended up going through a yard into a small house where 8 or so very attractive young women were dancing for 2 white men. We told our guide that we had no money as we had just arrived that morning. We also made sure that we told the women. It was lovely, but uncomfortable as we were aware that they would probably expect us to pay. But we did keep saying that we had no money, even though they were happy to accept any currency. They said that we were invited to drink coffee anyway. So it was, that on our first day in Ethiopia, we ended up participating in a coffee ceremony. The smells were amazing and the coffee was incredibly smooth. The whole process involves washing and roasting green coffee beans over a low stove on the floor, grinding the beans and then boiling with water in a coffee pot. Strong, black coffee - but not at all bitter.

Although we all wanted to believe that this was a genuine invitation, increasingly we came to the realisation that we had gone along with one of the most common scams in Ethiopia.

In the evening, a group of us went to a local restaurant and, with the help of a current volunteer, partook of injera and local beer. Accompanied by the smell of incense.

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Photos

First Coffee Ceremony
First day in Addis Ababa and we ended up at a local coffee ceremony!

Great food
Especially on a Wednesday and Friday when you can get "fasting injera" (vegetarian). Injera is the local staple and is a bit like a sour pancake - it tastes much nicer than it sounds.