Backlog 2: Addis Ababa

Ethiopia is a pretty groovy place. We first had spent the night a hell-hole hotel in Gambella where the overflow rooms may once possibly have been a cinder-block restrooms with rusty orange water leaking from the toilet and walls. The Gambella airport is more of an airstrip, one runway and a lone building that more resembled a school portable than anything else. We were told the day before that the president was in town. Not the president of Ethiopia (Ethiopia has a parliamentary system) but the president of Gambella. He had stayed at our crappy hotel the night before and the dozens of blue camouflaged police sitting in the forest with their Kalashnikovs across their lap testified to his presence. The same entourage showed up to the airport in a tinted car and the same police fanned out in the field across the airstrip. The flight from Gambella to Addis was short—only about an hour, but an hour by plane makes a huge difference in where you are living.

Addis is up in the highlands, where it rains nearly every afternoon but is neither hot nor humid. There is a nice blend of Orthodox Christian and Islamic culture and you can smell amazing food (doro wat, shiro, and a slow cooked boiled beef) as you pass by the small local restaurants. We stayed at the International Livestock Institute, which despite the name is very cool. There was no livestock although there were plenty of people running around in white lab coats. It is more of a huge compound with beautiful landscaping, friendly guards in funny uniforms, and comfortable hostel rooms and access to the InnerTube. Best of all, the rooms had running hot water and a large bathtub, although the general water shortage in Addis meant that it was only available during parts of the day.

About 20 of us came from all over Sudan for a retreat to get everybody on the same page with the different programs that Save is running in the South. Given the state of infrastructure in Sudan, it was actually far cheaper to send everybody to Ethiopia then spend 150 bucks a person

 to house staff in a tent in Juba. Not to mention that The Plane only comes to Pagak every Thursday and only if there has been no rain during the previous week.

The workshop itself was fine. A presentation and overview of the Sudan Office’s programs was helpful in getting me up to speed with strategy and Save’s program plans for the next few years. The next few days were spent going over and smoothing management issues—logistics, grant management, procurement cycle, etc. that while not too pertinent for we three interns, but at least gave us a better idea of the day to day issues and problems involved in running an NGO.

Best of all during the first day, the Pagak crew had some free time to do some exploring while everybody else flew in late from Juba. Judith and I went to the National Museum at the insistence of the taxi driver and saw some sweet archaeological finds, including this—a 3.3 million year old fossil of a child australopithecine (and an artistic rendering thereof) that was recently discovered in Ethiopia.



On Thursday night, we all went out to an Ethiopian restaurant that had live music and dancing. The four man band had a guy on flute and three on electric versions of traditional string instruments. At one point (after a few drinks it should be noted) a few of the Kenyans in our crew joined the dancers on stage. Charles, David, and Joseph went up to help one of the singers with a song in Swahili. The singing continued on the bus ride home with a song list ranging from crazy gospel to The Beatles to country.

During the week, it seemed everyone got sick at least once—either from the rapid change in altitude, or from bad food somewhere. My second day, I discovered Ethiopian coffee—about ten cents for a perfect espresso. Combine that with a bit of equally cheap whiskey and a forgotten reminder to drink water and I found myself down for the count one night with some funky altitude sickness. I couldn’t really sleep or find one of the friendly guards who usually patrol outside to pester for some water. At about four in the morning I got a hot water pitcher, filled it up with city water from the bathroom and boiled it for a good 20 minutes. I didn’t realize that it would be about another hour before the water could cool down enough to drink. I threw back a few Advil and gingerly downed the pitcher of still hot water, with just enough time to catch an hour or two of sleep before the morning meeting.