ETHIOPIA – WEEK 1 – ADDIS ABABA / GURAGHE / AWASSA

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Day 1 – 25th June

Monday 25th June morning we landed almost on time in Addis Ababa at 7am after nearly 14 hours flight. Flying low over the country I could see the immense challenges faced by the Ethiopian people. It is rainy season here and so quite green, but the terrain is very mountainous, with cliffs and valleys and extremely uneven and unstable terrain. There were no visible roads until we were almost landing and even that appeared to be a muddy winding path.

I very quickly arranged for my visa at the airport and we got our baggage and entered the arrival hall. There we were – 4 PwC Partners willing to spend the next 8-10 weeks in this country and eager to help! But – there was nobody who wanted our help at the airport…. Although we were told, that a World Vision Ethiopia representative would pick us up at the airport there was none…

As our project partners were not at the airport to meet us we spent a couple of hours sitting in the airport, drinking coffee and having a sandwich for breakfast. The coffee served as a cup full of steamed milk and separate cup of espresso to share amongst the group. It was very tasty and perked us all up.

Thankfully the driver finally showed up and escorted us to the van. We experienced our first interaction with locals who insisted on putting the bags in the van for us and then insisted on payment and went as far as grabbing the money from the hands of Katherine who at this point was the only person who had USD in change. Finally we negotiated 4 USD and I think that was a fair price and 4 US dollars will go a long way here. So we were on our way to our first accommodation.

On the drive into Addis we passed through some very poor areas. Each time the van stopped in traffic we were surrounded by children pressing their hands and faces to the windows, asking for money and singing. The people, dressed in very colourful clothing, many in long skirts and head dress and flowing turbans, were gathered along the roads, often crouching at the side in the gutter or standing outside the small store fronts in tin sheds selling everything from bridal gowns, to corn husks, to toilet bases.

We turned off the main road and all of sudden the car stopped and here we were at the Hotel Leopol. As agreed before this was not the Hilton or another international high quality hotel but it is referred to as a "standard" hotel. So far I gather that "standard" means that it ascribes to some standard as opposed to no standard (which in Ethiopia is a good thing). I got a room on the 7th floor and had a good overview over the nearby buildings and environment (I have attached a few pictures). The hotel is surrounded by slums. Inside it is relatively clean but very basic. The bathroom looks like it has seen better days, but apparently is just a few years old. It has its very own water heater with instructions probably in Amharic, concrete mess, assorted flying and crawling insects and interesting lighting. It is nevertheless, a bathroom and I am sure in the coming days I will think back on this with fondness. As I checked the bathroom further I found the flush not working so I myself fixed the toilet flush in this standard hotel…

After a short rest we got again picked up by a driver who helped us buying those things which in the course of our first week we realized we had forgotten. We also had lunch and I immediately tried one of the Ethiopian national dishes – injera (made out of the Ethiopian cereal 'tef') for me it tasted interesting and according to a travel guide an experience never to be forgotten – we shall see… and you may ask me once I am back ...

Our "driver" Bekele is quite a character. His English is quite good and he went out of his way to make us feel welcome. He took us to the Central bank first. It was an interesting building with gold bars outside. All entrants are body searched and our cameras were stored away. The money exchange took about an hour, a detailed process where each note provided is tracked by serial numbers by hand written records. There are 9 Birr to a dollar and so we walked out of the building with huge wads of cash - an interesting way to feel rich.
We invited Bekele to have lunch with us and Katherine and I took lessons from him on how to eat Injera…… which is an Ethiopian traditional dish only to be eaten with the right hand and the left hand below the table. It was very tasty, even though they modified the spiciness for wimpy westerners.

Than we got a short insight into Ethiopian culture and tradition - Bekele explained that he doesn't have a servant because he has a wife that stays home and does all of the housework, cooks all of his meals and that he goes home at night and sits on the couch watching DVDs. He explained that men could potentially do some work in the house "out of love" if they really wanted to….. It is certainly going to be interesting working in this culture for a few months.

We then went to a supermarket near the hotel and stocked up on bottled water and shavers - all the essentials.

The city is heavily under construction. It is unclear how much of it is in progress and how much is abandoned. There is the smell of damp concrete everywhere. The feel of the city is surreal -

We had dinner in our hotel on the 11th floor overseeing the city at night and I went to bed around 10:30 pm totally tired / jet laged

Day 2 – 26th June

Hard to believe this is already the Day 10 out of home, it feels so much longer on one hand, and like the end is near of the other hand. I checked the gym this morning but was informed that all the machines were broken….

This morning we met with Yigazu Sedi (who is one of the two Deputy National Directors of World Vision Ethiopia) and his team. We were introduced to the World Vision theme which is valid for the whole organisation all over the world:
---- “Our vision for every child
---- Life in all its fullness
---- Our prayer for every heart
---- The wish to make it so”
What a powerful vision !!

In German it reads:
---- „Unsere Vision für jedes Kind:
---- Leben in Fülle
---- Unser Gebet für jedes Herz:
---- Tatkraft und Wille“

Yigazu and his team spent several hours with us in their office and provided some valuable insights into the workings of WVE and the immense difficulties faced by the Ethiopian people in their day to day existence. We have a lot of work to do, even recognizing we have a limited time here. As Katherine is the only native English speaker in our team and in the WVE group here she has become the interpreter and English teacher. We are certainly using our "listening skills" and we try to understand each other using effectively different languages and coming from different perspectives. The challenge is to be patient.

At our way to the hotel we got more impressions about the traffic in Addis and the way how people quite often move – with so called ordinary taxis- -blue/white mini vans which are very effective. We stopped for some other small purchases and were approached our car by two Ethiopians who sold books - some of them were English on the street – we did not really know what to do in this case but in the end bought nothing.

At Tuesday night we had dinner with some friends of close friends (Peter and Robyn) of Katherine’s parents. Peter is engaged in an oil exploration company here - PexCo and he and his wife Robyn split there time between Addis and Perth. We had dinner at a restaurant called the Phoenix. It was run by an interesting Libanese/Greek man who is clearly living a challenging life running a restaurant in Addis Ababa. Anne Sophie almost fainted at one point - an effect of the altitude, but I think is feeling better now. It was a reminder to the rest of us to be careful.

Day 3 – 27th June

This morning we met with the National Director of WVE. She gave us a comprehensive presentation on the structure and environment of WVE. Belaye, our project partner, then gave us a presentation on his proposal of our project. He has refined it significantly since our original discussions and we are feeling much more comfortable with it. The project is, broadly, to assist WVE in its Business and Market Development program. This is a new program for them under their Quality and Development Division.

WVE has 7 Program Offices throughout the country and a total of 64 Area Development Programs ("ADP's) run by those Program Offices. We will be assisting them in linking the farmers and non-farmer producers with the markets in a more efficient manner; basically local market development. We have refined the scope such that we are focused on developing processes and procedures for the ADP's to start now and also to use in the future on a more sustainable basis.

This afternoon we developed the schedule for the next 8 weeks. We will be travelling every week except the last 10 days. On Sunday (1 July) we will head south Awassa and visit a couple of different ADP offices in this region. We will be staying in WV camps and meeting with the local ADP representatives and potentially some of the community service people and farmers.

I am already trying to pick up some Amharic! Very difficult I can tell you – ‘thank you’ is in Amharic the unpronounceable word of ‘amasygenello’…. and coffee with milk something which reads like 'wat ek buna'

The dinner we went to a restaurant called Serenade which we found in the Lonely Planet Guide. It was very difficult to find, tucked into an alleyway off a one way street which wound between two major streets. The roads were really rough (a combination of dirt and rocks), narrow, with store fronts lining either side and people and animals all over the road. It is amazing we haven't seen more pedestrians being run over; there are very few street lights at night, there are no sidewalks and thus the people walk in the streets. Serenade had a beautiful ambiance - an odd combination of Greek, French and Ethiopian. Beautiful decor, soft exotic music and lovely lighting. We enjoyed a bottle of Ethiopian red wine - (I believe it was called somthing like: 'Goida'), which was quite drinkable. The food at Serenade was just ok, but the company and the ambience more than made up for it.


Day 4 – 28th June

Today we spent more time working on the draft business plan for the Business and Marketing Department and brainstorming the issues and our questions for the people in the field. Belay surprised us again with another change in plan, in that instead of having the day today to prepare for our 6 weeks in the field, we had this morning only and would be visiting the Wisdom Microfinance organization this afternoon and going straight to the field tomorrow! Yikes, nothing like having deadlines moved up :-)

We met with the General Manager of the Wisdom Microfinance Institution today - a man by the name of Worku. Worku was very helpful in explaining Wisdom's role, their plans for expansion and how we can assist the local people in improving their market access and knowledge. Most of these people live on less than $1 per day. A milk farmer for instance typically has no means transport and thus can only sell as much as he or a member of his family can personally carry to a buyer, sometimes 7 miles each way. In addition, they usually do not have any means to store the milk and thus even if they had transport, they could not store anything. If they had transport, to buy a machine that converts the milk into cream is about $300 - clearly out of the realm of possibility of most people.

We are visiting an ADP called Guraghe tomorrow which is 200km west of Addis. It will be a six hour round trip over interesting roads with our team of 4 plus 2 WVE people piled into a Land Rover. Even more interesting will be Sunday when we leave for the south with 7 people and luggage in the same car - I think it will be a good exercise in teaming up ....!

I am not sure when I will have access to the internet again as we will not be back in the WVE offices for almost 6 weeks. So, if I don't post for a while, please do not worry. It is then due to the ethiopian I also try to upload some Ethiopian photos as soon as I can!

Day 5– 29th June

Today, Friday, we spent 4 and half hours each way travelling to Guraghe. It was an eye-opening trip. The road was busy with car traffic heading out of Addis Ababa, but reasonably quickly we were in the country side. It is very green at the moment with the rainy season and was surprisingly beautiful. The main highway wound through flatlands with mountains far to the North and South.

The number of people walking on the road was incredible. Many young boys (some that looked barely old enough to walk, i.e. around 5 years old….) were herding their oxen, cows, goats and sheep to who knows where. Many men were herding their donkeys, burdened with hay. The women do the labour here and were carrying what appeared to be very heavy burdens of inset (a forced banana plant that does not bear fruit), the stems of which are eaten and the by-products of leaves and roots used for building housing and making things.

We soon saw the traditional Ethiopian housing which covers the country side. Gojo are basic round huts with clay sides and hay and enset roofs. They have no electricity or running water. Often the Gojo is one room for the whole family and their livestock. Some wealthier people have a wall running around the inside of the house which separates the livestock and the people. As many as 18 people can live in one of these. Other very wealthy people have a small rectangular building made out of mud but with a corrugated iron roof.

After about 3 hours we stopped at lodge (Belay's choice in order to provide us with a clean toilet…) and sat outside and drank coffee. The lodge was previously owned by the government but is now in the hands of an Ethiopian individual who is renovating it. Apparently it attracts both wealthy Ethiopians on vacation as well as farenji (the Ethiopian word for ‘foreigner/stranger’), like us. The grounds were very pleasant and we had our first meeting with an Ethiopian monkey…

We hit the road again and passed through two small towns, again with the streets lined with small shop fronts selling everything imaginable (and some things not imaginable) and people, dogs, goats, sheep, cows and donkeys all over the place. Ethiopian drivers have to be extremely vigilant in order not to hit someone and are constantly communicating by horn (can I pass you? - yes, get out of the way, etc.). Our driver today Tesfeye, did a fine job. That we are travelling within the rainy season we could easily see as we passed a few rivers which we normally would probably not have noticed but now they were full with red/brown troubled water.

We soon entered a rough road and climbed higher towards the ADP. Here the land was even lasher and the gojo were more dense. Many, many children were playing along the side of the road. We first visited a centre built by World Vision to house an association of women who make handbags out of inset. The association started about 2 years ago and now has about 20 women involved. They come for several (unclear how many) hours per day, drink vast quantities of coffee, socialize and make the handbags. Each bag takes about 15 days to make and sells for about 45 Birr (roughly $5). They currently sell the bags to some individuals who act as traders and on-sell them in the market. The supply however is uneven and the demand is unknown. (Hence the reason we are here).
Belay explained that one of Ethiopia's great challenges is that people do not work very hard. This is partly due to their religious devotion and the many days that they can not work for religious reasons, but also because they do not value hard work. This indeed adds another element to the business and marketing development program, if people are not greatly motivated by hard work, money or production beyond sustenance. We all left with one of the handicraft products, mine is a lovely set for tea cups

We then visited the ADP itself and were welcomed most impressively with welcome signs, fresh flowers and a feast that I am very sure they do not eat every day. At the ADP they grow apples, mangos, inset and coffee. The also use the inset to make the handcrafts as well as carpets.

On the way home, we stopped in Woklite at one of the markets. It was shocking to see dead dogs on the side of the road and these very poor people literally crouched in mud and animal waste with their seeds, potatoes and onions etc, spread out before them in the dirt. We caused quite a stir and did not stay long.
On our way home we passed an area where a slaughterhouse is present – it smelled like I have never smelled before and neither have my mates obviously (see pictures below…)

Before we came back to our hotel we went through a traffic which I can not describe to you, you have to experience it – I tried to capture it with the camera and I can tell you this is not a parking space…

Day 6– 1st July

Today Belay graciously invited us to his home for lunch. He walked an hour and a half to the hotel to pick us up and then we caught an "ordinary" taxi. We brought flowers and some sweet for him and his wife.
We then went with what was a little 6 seater bus (which usually has 10 to 12 people inside). It was an experience beyond explanation….
Belay owns his own house, something to be very proud of (even more of an accomplishment than it is in Munich I think). It was a couple of rooms, with the kitchen and toilet outside and a small paved courtyard.

All up there were 3 adults and 3 children living there. Belay is married, with two beautiful daughters aged 5 and 7 and a son aged 4 months. They were all dressed up in their best traditional Ethiopian clothes for us! His wife did not speak English, but the little girls did, as did Belay's sister in law (who lives with them). They had gone to far too much trouble to create an amazing lunch (injera - of course, as well as salad, spaghetti lasagne and even coleslaw!). The table was set for four and it became quickly apparent that we were the honoured guests and the family would not eat with us.
It was quite embarrassing but we had to respect their wishes. Belaye did eat too but would not sit at the table with us.

After lunch we took part in the coffee ceremony which his sister in law spent several hours preparing and serving. Here in Ethiopia it is impolite to take anything less than three cups... My head is still rushing with caffeine! It was a fascinating afternoon and I very grateful to Belay for sharing his home with us.
At this day I also learned more about the first names in Ethiopia – they typically have a very special meaning and are somehow related to the bible. Belay’s children are called - and I translate now from Amharic - ‘From Heaven’; ‘From God’ and the youngest child, the son is called ‘Blessing’. I find this such a good way to express the joy and it looked like that to me! I am sure I will tell some more name-stories later throughout the journey

Day 7– 2nd July

Today, Sunday, we left at 7am for the field visits. We will be travelling for two weeks in the villages in the south of Ethiopia. We had warned Belay that we would each have a large suitcase but even so, when it came time to pack up the Toyota Landcruiser, it quickly became apparent that we were about to spend two weeks at very close quarters… We have seven people (Tesfeye, our driver for this trip and Belaye and Samson from WVE and the four of us), plus luggage for all seven. We have a roof rack but no means to tie anything on or protect it from the rain. The PwC team is sitting four to the back and we well advised to becoming close friends…. :-) The seating is the ladies inside and Ronaldo and myself outside

After 4 hours we stopped at a lodge in the Rift Valley called Langano. It is based on a lake and is apparently a popular place to spend a weekend. There were many Ethiopian families lunching and picnicking there. The sands were white and inviting, but the water was a murky brown colour. All of us including myself! were a little bit suffering from upset stomachs and so at lunch opted for spaghetti and sauce. It is indeed a sad state of affairs when we are all eating farenji food (food for strangers) while our Ethiopian team mates are enjoying enjera. Before we headed off I visited the bathroom …. - As Anne-Sophie and Katherine also followed the call of the nature the rest of us waited a good 20 minutes - they then claimed, that there were two Ethiopian girls to extricate themselves from the bathroom where they were discussing make up, hair and boys. I did not tell them but I am not sure if this was not Anne-Sophie and Katherine, who had these discussions…. We rated the bathrooms 1 star out of 5, but it is all relative and I think we will need to re-establish the scale. Filthy floors, no paper, no ventilation and no flushing are not a happy experience, but not the end… .

We arrived in Awasa at about 4pm. Awasa is a very different city to Addis. It is quite green but not muddy and almost has sidewalks. We checked into the Lewi hotel and spent an hour resting. Late afternoon we headed to a lodge run by the government overlooking Lake Awasa. It was a gorgeous spot. The Awasan young crowd was gathered there for Sunday afternoon drinks and there was quite a festive atmosphere. The local monkeys and ducks provided entertainment – some of the entertainment was rated only for adults…. We enjoyed sodas and cokes and took a short (approx 10 min - at a cost of approx 2USD) row boat ride on the lake at sunset time, which was beautiful; I enjoyed it immensely.

When it was time for the mosquitoes to come out we said good-bye to this lovely place and went to dinner at the Lewi Café (owned by the same man that runs our hotel). The café garden restaurant area was also very happening for a Sunday night, although we had to sit inside (to avoid the potentially malaria ridden mosquitoes). We spent some time with Belay talking about the beggars and how to handle it here. Belaye has a very tough view of the world and told us several stories about the style and habits of beggars of Ethiopia. The worst of these was that bad people sometimes steal children from the villages, gouge out their eyes and then put them on the streets of Addis to beg for them. As a group we were very quiet for a while thinking about this. Belay strongly counselled against ever giving money but suggested that bread and fruit were better gifts.

I am learning that being in Ethiopia is in itself a lesson in patient. Nothing happens quickly. Our restaurant bill took 50!! minutes to arrive. We did however, collect a whole grocery bag of bread to give out tomorrow. The hotel was interesting. It had glass doors to the rooms which were slightly frosted but enabled anyone standing outside to look directly in...

more photos are available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/Guenter.Blog/ETHIOPIAWEEK1ADDISABABAGURAGHEAWASSA