Impressions of a Distant Land

I arrived in Addis Ababa early morning on Friday, 2^nd of May. I didn’t have much sleep on the plane and I knew it would be a long day. However, I did not quite know what exactly was coming my way.

For all the news and special documentaries reporting from Africa, they all do little in showing what it is really like to be there. A camera only catches what it is aimed at and only presents visuals and sound. To be there, and sense it all in 360° from a rackety old Russian Lada, is an entirely different experience.

I was picked up, along with another volunteer, from Bole International Airport by a Projects Abroad coordinator and given an orientation of the city in a taxi hired for the purpose.  As we exited the airport we turned left onto a small road well over its capacity teaming with loud and congested traffic.  Looking to my left, I saw children in dirty clothes splashing water from a bucket over the tires of a minibus and begin cleaning it in such a way that told me they have done it over a million times. Then, I saw a boy standing up from behind a bush, grab a leaf to wipe his behind and pull his pants up.  It was 8:15. School begins in 15 minutes. As Freweini was saying something about Ethiopia being different, a man walked past holding up the front legs of a sheep on either side of his hips as the animal trailed behind, clumsily on its hind legs.

I began reading Dracula by Bram Stoker on the plane and I can’t help but feel an eerie parallel that can be drawn with one of the novel’s most famous quotes, “We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things”. This would follow me the rest of that day and quite possibly the rest of my time here.

Volunteer Ken taking me to the shared taxi stop

However, this encounter outside the airport hardly captures Addis Ababa in its entirety.  We were brought to a café for a quick breakfast and had lunch at a restaurant that might as well have been on the Malaga beach promenade. Both places were filled with the new Ethiopian middle class there on business, with family and friends or on a date.

The food is cheap.  An omelette at the café was 35 Birr, approximately €1.50. A large beef stir-fry with spaghetti cost 85 Birr, just €3.15 (the exchange rate is around €1 – 27 Birr).  While there was a blackout towards the end of our lunch, I was surprised to see a reaction that probably would have happened in Sweden.  Everyone took out their smartphones, some putting them on flashlight mode, so that they could continue eating until the problem was fixed about 5 minutes later.

The road where I live

After driving around town all morning, we were heading to the Projects Abroad Office. On the way, a torrential rain began to violently bear down on us. After weaving our way through the chaotic traffic of a construction site for a new road, we arrived at the office… only to find it flooded with water pouring down from the ceiling like a breach in the lower decks of a ship.  Minassie, director of Projects Abroad Ethiopia, was there barking madly into his phone, probably at maintenance. We began to use everything we could find to get the water out.  We used brooms and mops to push, pull and whack the water down the stairs or out onto the balcony. 4 buckets were collecting the incessant rain. Water was everywhere, in every room of the office. In some places it made puddles that would swallow your shoes and soak your socks. When the skies finally calmed, it took us another half hour at least to clear the office of water.  For us, the new volunteers, the whole situation was so crazy that we just laughed about it. “What a reception!” joked Minassie when we finally had a chance to meet him.

Children playing football on the asphalt in front of the
communist monument 

After being introduced to Projects Abroad, our volunteer programs as well as the country and her culture, we would meet our host families and get settled in our new homes. And how different a European home is from an Ethiopian one! You enter the house into a courtyard of sorts.  Straight ahead you see a sheep tied to a tree baa-ing at your arrival. To the right is a path that takes you around to the entrance of the house. However, houses are not organized the same way as in the West. The central building is only used for bedrooms as well as the living and dining rooms. The kitchen, office and other working areas are all in separated rooms outside the main structure.  Walking in this path that separated house and working rooms, one comes across curious new smells emanating from the kitchen, leaving one interested in discovering what it could possibly be. 

However, at this point I was utterly exhausted. I was tired from lack of sleep, I was finding it difficult to breathe because of the thinner air at 2500m and was overwhelmed by a completely new people and way of life. It is at these times when one wonders what one is actually doing. I have never felt this far away from home and Stockholm is a little more than a weekend trip away. However, I do believe that in time I can learn to like and enjoy this place. It will take time and it will be difficult.  But if I begin to enjoy my placement as a journalist I think I might just be realizing my African adventure.