So I’ve managed to miss Jay’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, and our one year anniversary by being in Ethiopia! We agreed not to do Valentine’s Day and I sent cards in the post. There is a pretty limited selection here, so some of them had random pictures and Amharic script on them! Still, it’s the thought that counts right? There are no post boxes or shops that sell stamps in Addis so you have to trek to the post office to do everything. 2 buses and a trek past a bit of a slum so I posted everybody’s card at once!
We have been planning our holiday, and desperately hoping coronavirus won’t scupper our plans.
I’ve not had particularly busy evenings or weekends recently, but have mainly been scouring google, the lonely planet and Ethiopian airways websites. I went out for lunch with one of the doctors in my last week which was lovely. She took me to a restaurant run by Syrian refugees. It was incredible, Syrian chicken and rice and flatbread and a watermelon juice. Apparently the Syrians had arrived a year ago, set up a food stall on the street 6 months ago and now have taken over two shop spaces and created a large restaurant. Impressively quick movers!
I’ve had more blunt advice from my colleague. Apparently my visits to the canteen at lunch time render me ‘lazy’ as due to the fact I am a woman, I should be cooking food and bring it in with me. All the other women who frequent the canteen were deemed lazy too, but the men weren’t!
She explained that in Ethiopia men don’t cook and she would shout at her husband if he entered her kitchen. I said in the UK we encourage men to cook, and I would expect them to do so. Also, women tend to appreciate a man who can cook! This seemed to cause a bit of an uproar with a lot of laughing and exclaiming… I said a man who can cook enables a woman to sit on the sofa and relax a bit.
Had a very frustrating taxi experience (again). I order a taxi on the app, explain where I am, he drives off in completely the wrong direction, so I cancel him (like Uber) and get another. I arrive at work 20 minutes later, sit down at my desk and start work. The phone rings – it’s the first taxi driver (that I cancelled over half an hour ago) asking where I am! I explain I cancelled him a long time ago and have arrived at work. He hangs up. 10 minutes later, the phone rings again, ‘Madame, taxi, where are you?’ I hand the phone to my colleague, who initially gets the wrong end of the stick, and thinks I want a taxi! Finally we sort it out….
Anna’s adventures 