Arrivals and Adventures in Addis

Hopefully I will find time to blog about my last few days in Rwanda and I will definitely write more about my research at some point but I’m sitting in Addis, Ethiopia and it all already seems a world away.
I almost didn’t make it to Ethiopia. My flight was scheduled to leave at 4pm from Kigali International Airport on Monday and I diligently confirmed this online. Jen picked me up at 1:30 and we arrived at the airport somewhere around 2pm. Looking at the departures screen my flight number was nowhere to be seen and the only flight to Addis was scheduled for 2:40. Talking to the guy at the front of the security line I asked him about my flight. “That flight no longer exists.” .... What?! How does it no longer exist?!

You know that person that is late for the flight and makes everyone wait for them, because heaven knows the world revolves around them? Don't you hate that person?! .....well this time that person was me. The 2:40 flight was already boarding and they had to hold it for me while I checked in and had to pay extra for my really heavy bag and went through customs and immigration. Running across the tarmac I realized I was that person. I wanted to apologize to everyone on the plane but I just slunk sheepishly into my seat. My flight landed at 7:05 pm after a stop in Entebbe Uganda and I easily got my visa and went through immigration. They sent our luggage to the wrong terminal so it was almost 8:30 by the time I claimed my bags and went to find Fiona. We left the airport, found her taxi driver and headed into the city. That first night I stayed in a guest house down the street from Fiona’s house because her landlord is crazy and wouldn’t let me stay there. Now I’m staying with a friend of Fiona’s named Nora who just moved into a huge three bedroom house by herself. It has a working shower. With hot water. I feel genuinely clean for the first time since I left Halifax. Or at least I did until I stepped out of the house...

Ethiopia so far is like another world to me. Addis is insane with its traffic and general lack of traffic lights. It feels like the half the city is under construction and the rest is either falling apart or seems somehow out of place with a mix of architecture styles. Ethiopia is the only country in Africa never to have been colonized, although it was occupied by the Italians at one point. The Italian influence remains to some degree but there also seems to be a significant Soviet influence. Ethiopia also has an ancient Christian tradition that has influenced it in a lot of ways, although now the population is estimate to be half Christian and half Muslim. I woke up this morning to the call to prayer from a nearby Mosque and the chanting is starting again as I sit down to write this. The whole city is at once modern and bustling yet ancient and haunting as well. The city was only established as the capital in the late 1880s (according to the Brant Travel Guide I was reading this morning) but to me it still seems older.

Yesterday Fiona and I explored a part of the city called Piazza, a very busy area with lots of shops, restaurants and jewellery stores. There are winding little alleys lined with booths selling everything from cell phones and CDs to scarves and leggings. Along the main roads you can find a large theatre, an old post office that looks like it should have been a train station and shops with brightly coloured shutters on the second floor windows. We had coffee, bought some stunning silver necklaces and wandered around a lot. It is heartbreaking to see children sleeping in the street, people crippled and disfigured from polio and even from elephantitis sitting on the side of the sidewalk begging. The peddlers and beggars are overwhelming and at one point one guy followed us down the street for a short distance insisting we give him something. I don’t think I’ve done the city justice in my descriptions so far. It is an interesting and complicated city. There are pretty little details like the metal flowers wrapped around the posts lining the boulevards and little gardens on some of the street corners, but it is by no means a pretty city. I’ll try to post some pictures later but wifi is not as readily available here as in Kigali. I’m going out today to try to get money from the bank and to find some internet so I can post this and to do some more work on my research. Fiona has to work today so I am navigating on my own... should be an adventure!