The Agrinautica

The current state of things:

Australia: we haven't had any cases in this state in 21 days now. They are very slowly easing up restrictions. Masks are still mandatory inside but while outdoors one merely needs to have one on them and wear it "if you can't social distance" (ie, most Aussies won't). Melbournians have been released from the "ring of steel" and flooded in the coastal areas down here in historical levels the first weekend they were free. We were a bit leery but they don't appear to have brought any cases with them. There's still a handful of cases in other states, including a recent outbreak of 17 cases in the neighboring state of South Australia (apparently, a cleaner at a quarantine hotel got it and then an employee at a pizza place got it and infected many people? I'm not very well plugged in to Australian news though).


United States:




   The coronavirus epidemic is completely out of control with President Trump not even pretending to be doing anything about it, recently golfing instead of attending the G20 summit meeting about the virus. Deaths are above the second wave levels and creeping up to surpass the heights of the first wave, with hospitals overwhelmed.

   It looks like they're expecting vaccines to become available in the US in mid December.


Ethiopia: you're probably not following the situation in Ethiopia but it seems to be having a small civil war. Let me see if I can briefly and simply explain it for you. Tigray is a northern province bordering Eritrea. At the end of the civil war that ended in 1990 with the defeat of the oppressive national communist regime (the Derg), Tigray was a preeminent power in Ethiopia and remained so until as recently as 2018 or 19 when they, for reasons that aren't quite clear to me, did not end up in the ruling coalition in parliament. The immediate cause of the current conflict seems to have been that the national prime minister (Abiy Ahmed, seemingly usually cited as Abiy), declared there would be no elections this year due to coronavirus. Tigray went ahead and held elections anyway, leading Abiy to declare the new Tigray government illegitimate, and that has what has escalated to airstrikes on the Tigrayan capital (Mekelle) and as of the present moment apparently national government tanks are surrounding the capital and Abiy is vowing "no mercy" 'for civilians in Mekelle.
   To be fair, Tigray was seen as having exercised overwhelming influence over Ethiopia for most of the past three decades, but I must say as to the immediate casus belli it seems to me Tigray was in the right to have elections and it doesn't seem worth pounding the civilian population of mekelle into the sand over.

   I'm following this very closely because I've spent time in Mekelle and Tigray, and have friends there, and it breaks my heart to imagine its peaceful cobblestone streets being shot up, and I'm very worried for my many friends and acquaintances there.


I think in some recent footage I saw the tall building on the right there has been damaged by an airstrike

Two entries in two days! A modern miracle! Also, I've been having a thought. I now have a huge 250gb memory card for my phone, I reckon that could hold a lot of video. Previous attempts to video anything at all on trips filled my phone memory up after about five minutes of footage tops. I'm thinking of trying to do a video diary (or perhaps a "vlog" as the cool kids call it) on my next trip. I wouldn't be able to upload it until I get back because even in the first world uploading video is a beast, and I have zero video editing experience, but it might be interesting, and then instead of it taking six months for me to update, the update would already "be written," and just need uploading. Whaddaya think?


(Previously on Emo-snal: several hours of mild discomfort followed by forty minutes of terrifying hell)


Friday, November 6th, Day 34, Kampala, Uganda - We had a meeting at the US Embassy at 2pm. Realistically one might hope to get there within an hour from where I was, but knowing the traffic and Ugandan attitudes towards timeliness, I told Alex to pick me up at 11:00, three hours before our appointment. Alex's organization does development work in Uganda, but they had no relationship with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a major source of funding for development projects, so I had arranged this meeting. The nice woman working on USAID at the US Embassy had had a pretty busy schedule but managed to fit us in to a narrow window at 2:00, so I tried to emphasize to Alex that this was very important that we get there on time. I told him the day before, I told him earlier that morning.
   Needless to say, 11:00 came and went with no sign of him. I basically texted him every ten minutes after that asking where he was, as my own stress (and I really don't stress much) reached new levels of hysteria. 11:30 came and went. 11:45. 12:00. He always assured me they were "on their way" (I've commented on this before, it seems to be normal in Africa to lie and tell someone you're on your way when you aren't even anywhere NEAR getting on your way) 12:30. 12:45. Hyperventilation sets in.
   At 1:20 he FINALLY FINALLY rolls in with his colleague Emmanuel (in Emmanuel's car, Alex's still being at the hotel, he'd have to return again some time to finally retrieve it).
   Before we leave the leafy green confines of the Forest Cottages Hotel behind let me note that it was alright, it was leafy and green and pleasantly didn't feel like it was in the middle of the city, as it was ... but I still would recommend you stay in the Malakai Eco Lodge next time you go to Kampala, which is also leafy and green and full of beautiful gardens and ponds and.. really more garden than lodgingspace.
   But anyway, we were on our way. Being the middle of the day it wasn't the awful barely-moving rush hour traffic I had encountered the night before, but there's always traffic in Kampala. I was of course stressing out the whole time and sent the woman from the embassy an extremely apologetic email saying we may be late. But then, to Emmanuel's navigation and journey-estimating credit, we did actually arrive at the embassy just minutes before 2:00. It was remarkable, really.


   Next we were off to the bus stop! I was to catch a bus back to Nairobi, but not only that, but recall I had only intended to stay in Uganda for two days, and then Grace had returned to Nairobi and intended to send me more of my stuff. Well she did that, and Emmanuel was supposed to pick it up when it arrived in Kampala ... which.. he didn't. So now I had to retrieve my stuff from the bus company office just in time to take it back with me to Nairobi. As it happens, my bag had somehow been fairly mauled in transit, developing some gaping holes. So hooray for that completely useless transfer of stuff. But I had also had her send the beesuits I was going to use in Zanzibar, which, I had ended up staying in Uganda instead of returning to Zanzibar. So I gave these suits to Alex for his organization to use. So there was that at least. (and apparently, these bee suits being brand new (donated by Pierce Manufacturing in Fullerton California! Shout out!), apparently the bus company had wanted to charge Grace an extra hefty fee on them because they thought she was selling a product or some such mischief. I swear, getting anything done in Africa...)

   Anyway, and then I returned by overnight bus once again to Nairobi. Arriving in Nairobi I shrugged off the taxi drivers who tried to solicit me as soon as I stepped off the bus and walked a few blocks to the Kahama Hotel, in which I had stayed in 2014. The hotel I'd stayed in earlier in the trip in Nairobi had been a dingy dismal place, and Grace, bless her heart, is a "has the TV going all the time" kind of person which made me feel like I was literally going to lose my mind when I stayed with her so I decided to go with what I knew. Going into fast forward mode now, I had two or three days in Nairobi before my departure, during which I met up with several friends I hadn't had time to see in my earlier frenzied passes through Nairobi. And then:


Monday, November 9th, Day 37, Nairobi, Kenya - Let's start with a little confession, the earlier reported Giraffe Kisses and Giant Spoons actually happened this day, but was rearranged chronologically to fit the LJ Idol topics of the week.
   Anyway, after the elephant and giraffe adventures, phone-camera full of priceless photos of baby elephants, Grace and I found ourselves downtown needing to get home. It was dark (9pm?) and slightly raining. I was going to call an uber with my phone (which, at first I had just assumed uber wouldn't work in Nairobi but after being tipped off by another traveler I found it was really the best way to get around), but we were right by the bus station and Grace was impatient with my posh cab-taking ways, and convinced me to just come grab a bus with her. it would have been less than $6 for the uber and really not more than a five minute ride.
   There was a big crowd of people around the bus stop, and when a bus arrived the crowd would surge at the bus. It should also be noted that I had my big luggage bag with me because we'd stopped by a tailor to have its damages repaired (also just a few dollars. Oh also speaking of cheap Nairobi tailors, I had a nice custom tailored business suit made for me while I was there. Three piece suit for less than $100, it's quite fine! I got measured the first time I passed through Nairobi, tried it on the second time and the tailor noted adjustments that he had to make, and then picked it up this final pass through). So my arms were full with this bag (and the glorious giant wooden spoon I'd picked up earlier in the day). As a bus pulled up bound for our destination Grace bounded on to it, so any trepidation I had about the whole situation now I had no choice but to follow her on. She would later say she had tooold me she'd grab me a seat and I could have just boarded after the crush stopped.. but I didn't catch that. Anyway so as I'm caught in the crush, with my arms full, I felt my wallet levitating out of my pocket. Other pickpocket stories I've heard usually involve pickpockets so crafty that one doesn't notice the theft until hours later, but I definitely felt it, and it was the creepiest feeling. It didn't even happen fast, but with my arms full and a crush of people all around me all I could do is say "hey! HEY! HEY!!!" and by the time people had backed away from me enough for me to turn around or even get a hand to my pocket my wallet was gone. And what's worse, my phone and the whole trip's worth of pictures.
   Another woulda-shoulda-coulda that occurred to me far too late is, I could have had someone dial my number at that moment and some guilty party would be caught with a ringing phone. Oh well.
   My wallet had about $5 in it. By far the biggest loss was the photos on my phone. I texted my number from Grace's phone saying I'd pay them for my photos but never got a response. I also immediately called Wells Fargo from Grace's phone and so my cards were cancelled not ten minutes after the theft, so I hope they had fun with their five dollars.
   As it happens the only home phone number I had memorized was my parents house line which was "finally" cancelled just earlier in the year, so I couldn't tell them what happened. In fact the _only_ number I had memorized was my boss's. So I texted my boss to ask him for my mom's number (which he has because sometimes he forwards requests for speakers about bees for kids to her), and then I was able to call my parents, vent to them about what happened, and they set about cancelling my phone and other assorted necessities for me.
   Back at Grace's (I had checked out of the hotel since I was catching the flight at 4am), after the necessary actions had been taken, I entered kind of a catatonic level of shock. I know I know, it's not like someone died, there's worse problems, but the violation factor of having things stolen from my pockets and the loss of all my pictures was a pretty big deal to me. Not merely because I happen to really like pictures but in a very real way it was a problem -- I'd been fundraising all year for this project in Tanzania and now.. poof, I had lost 90% of the proof that I actually did it!!
   Grace offered me alcohol but when I'm really depressed only caffiene makes me feel better, so I had two red bulls while she drank a good amount of whisky on my behalf.
   At 1am our cab showed up and we proceeded to the airport. Fortunately there's no traffic at night. Grace had consumed a decent amount of whisky I guess and was feeling a bit of the effects-- she wrote her phone number down for me at least three times, and when I tried to decline the fourth time, just as we were pulling up at the terminal, she got mad thinking I didn't want to have her number and was thus mad at me as I exited the car and didn't really say goodbye.
   But then just after I had gone through the terminal entrance metal detector she comes running in after me in tears like a scene from a movie. It was cute.


Tuesday, November 10th, Day 38, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Arrived in Addis fairly early in the morning (I don't know, maybe 8?), with not a penny to my name. Now, on my way to Nairobi 38 days earlier I had planned an eight hour layover in Addis, but they wouldn't let me out of the airport even if I was willing to pay for a visa. When I changed my flights around I made sure to make sure I'd be able to get out of the airport, so I had gotten one of the earliest flights in that day and latest flight out (they don't DO overnight layovers apparently), and the assurance by the ticket agent that I'd be able to leave the airport -- in fact they charged me $78 in advance for the transit visa (which apparently comes with transportation to and from a hotel I can hang out with in the mean time). So You might be able to imagine my frustration when once again the airline agents at the airport refused to give me a transit visa. They said it wasn't in their computer and it wasn't on my receipt (which was a thick page of gobble-de-gook). I was very frustrated!! Finally I found the number "$78" among the jibberish on my ticket and demanded "okay what is this charge for??" and after scrutinizing it they sullenly said it looked like a transit ticket but was coded wrong .. and issued me my transit visa. Welcome to Ethiopia! I must say I love the country but every one of my experiences with their airport staff has been this kind of obstinate bureaucratic unhelpfulness.
   Rode the shuttle to the hotel they had booked me into, which was "nice" but the staff were as cold and unhelpful as the airline staff (in wild contrast to the hotel I'd have stayed in if I had a choice, where every single staffmember was memorable and friendly). My first goal once I'd set my bags down there was to see if I could go get some money. Grace had given me 2000 Kenyan shillings, about $20, which constituted a significant portion of her monthly rent. This was the only thing I had by way of money. As it happens the hotel was just a short walk from several different international business banks .... not ONE of which would exchange Kenyan shillings, the currency of their neighboring country!! So I was left pennyless in Ethiopia. (When I got home I immediately wired Grace $100 to repay her $20)
   It was an interesting experience. I so very very badly wanted just one cup of the wonderful coffee they have in Ethiopia ... I couldn't afford even just one cup. Usually traveling in places like Addis one feels a bit like a millionaire, I can do absolutely whatever I please without the least fear it will dent my wallet. Take a taxi anywhere, take a dozen people out to dinner, whatever. I tried to look at it as a cultural experience. Being penniless in an African city.
   Next I returned to my room and posted this entry which I'd been slowly slowly working on during the trip.

   Next my plan was to meet up with my friend Addis. She came to see me at the hotel but I felt really bad being utterly pennyless. I had a meal voucher at the hotel but I couldn't even buy her coffee!!! I felt awful.
   For dinner I had a meal voucher at the hotel, so we ate there. Though I told her that she'd have to pay for her own meal somehow this didn't get across correctly, because she ate too but then couldn't afford to pay for her meal (which was only like $5!!!), and despite the miniscule amount of money involved, I couldn't help either!! I felt awful x10! And on top of that the hotel shuttle for the airport was leaving just then and I had to get on it. She called a friend or family member to come bail her out and I had to run. I felt so so terrible for leaving her in the situation, for the entire situation, but there was nothing I could do! I had to run!! ):
   ...so as soon as I got home I wired her $100 as well, which hopefully ameliorated her anger, she wasn't very happy with me in the immediate aftermath.


One last penniless misadventure:
Wednesday, November 11th, Day 39, Dublin, Ireland - This time we were actually permitted and required to disembark the aircraft, go through a metal detector, and reboard. after going through the screening area we were sitting in a little waiting area where there was a little airport cafe, which had a guinness tap. I hadn't set foot back in Ireland in 20 years so I would very very much have liked to have had a fresh Dublin guinness.... but... utterly penniless. ): So I could only gaze at it longingly.
   As it happens I got to talking to a young fella who was an Ethiopian who's been living in the United States, has a family there. After awhile I mentioned the Guinness tap and how I wished I had money, honestly without the least intention of soliciting a drink but he immediately thought having a guinness was a fantastic idea and volunteered to get us both a beer! ....... but then it turned out the tap was actually not hooked up at the moment. ): Almost!!!


   And then I returned to America. THE END!

Friday, December 5th 2014 - I woke up after the previous night's misadventure feeling fairly apprehensive about seeing the shady tour operator Dugu. I took comfort in the fact that at least there'd be another guy on this tour and that it was all paid already and I had no money at all in my wallet. Today I was to go on a tour of some of the further monasteries on islands on Lake Tana, for which I'd paid $45 (in the form of 900 birr) -- I'd been told it was normally twice as much but I was splitting the cost with someone else who had already signed up.



   Dugu met me in front of the hotel and fortunately made no mention of how I'd bailed on him and his prostitute friend the night before. We took a bujuj to a nice hotel on the water, where I'd taken a boat last time (2012) with Woinshet and Rahel, two girls who had worked at the hotel I was staying at. It has a nice peaceful garden area out by the water, and when I'd been there with the girls they'd been setting up for a wedding, which Rahel had commented on as "it must be a very expensive wedding, this set up must cost at least $300."
   We took our time drinking coffee while waiting for the other tourist. Dugu ordered a coffee with milk but then didn't touch it because he'd realized he was fasting and apparently milk was off the list. Once or twice Dugu took phone calls, after one of which he finally declared the other tourist couldn't make it, and then he really surprised me by mentioning that that guy would get his money back. Him getting his money back over his no show seemed much nicer than I had expected from this tour operation, though I also immediately had a strong suspicion the other tourist never existed, and had already been thinking "I'll believe it when I see it."



   So after that we got on our way. I found enough money in my pocket to pay for coffee (which after all was probably not even a dollar for the two of us), and we climbed into a little boat that was moored up on the lake side there, operated by a kid that looked about 16 and never said anything. Dugu kept referring to this kid as "the captain" which I found pretty amusing. After we had been on the water for just a few minutes Dugu handed me the other tourist's receipt casually saying "here, hang on to this, we can stop by an ATM when we get back so you can pay us his share of the expedition cost"
   "WHAT!! NO WAY! YOU TURN THIS BOAT RIGHT AROUND AND GIVE ME BACK MY 900 BIRR!!" I exclaimed with adamant gesticulations, whilst immediately evaluating the possibilities of swimming to shore if they refused. The kid stopped the engine and Dugu negotiated with me.
   "Okay okay, well how about 400 birr ($20)." I was extremely unhappy, and maybe I should have haggled with him even more but I knew he'd be arguing with me the whole way back if I didn't go for it, so I agreed to that price.

   As we motored across the brown waters of Lake Tana a single fighter jet flew by high overhead. Dugu remarked that it was a Mig, which the Ethiopian airforce operates since they had formerly been in the Soviet sphere of influence. This led to general discussion of Dugu's experience as a foot soldier in the 1998 war with Eritrea, which from what I've read was kind of like a return to the trench warfare of WWI. He received unspecified injuries during this war. Also he mentioned that there was some fear of an Egyptian aerial attack, since Egypt is upset about current Ethiopian plans to build a dam on the Nile.
   "But Sudan is between Ethiopia and Egypt!" I pointed out.
   "Yeah but they don't have the military to do anything about it, and we have good trade relations with them," he explained. So apparently Egypt might fly right over Sudan to bomb Ethiopia.

   We arrived at the first island, and Dugu informed me "there's a 100 birr ($5) entrance fee to see the monastery, and same with the other island"
   "What?!! I thought what I paid already included that!"
   He shrugged. "No it didn't"
   "I don't have any money"
   "You can borrow from the captain and pay him back when we get to land"
   "No I'm not going to pay it I already paid for the tours!"
   "Okay we'll sit here in the boat."
   Grumbling, feeling very cheated, I agreed to borrow the money and went ashore. The island consisted of a steep thickly forested hill with the monastery church on top (shaped like a giant hut, round with a conical tin roof), and some other monastery buildings nearer the water. In a sort of crude shack that served as a museum exhibit there was a snake skin on the wall labelled "paython," which Dugu informed me was "an anaconda." I doubt it was either. Shortly later I asked him what kind of monkeys I could see swinging about up in the canopy of the forest and he confidently informed me they were a kind of ape. As apes don't have tails and these clearly did, I concluded Dugu was just going to make up an answer for any question I asked him and didn't bother asking him anything else.

   One of the sheds full of museum items had some interesting looking stuff. Several manorahs, and several old looking crowned helmets that I was told had belonged to emperors of Ethiopia. By now I'm sure you understand though why I take everything around here with a large grain of salt. Still looked interesting though. I asked if they did any beekeeping but was told the island was too small to support beehives. It was a pretty small island but I'm pretty sure a beehive or two would do just fine.



   Second island was more of the same, but also had some nuns who had a big impressive weaving set up. Both monastery islands were very nice and peaceful. I pondered what it would be like to live with the monks for even a week. Probably a lot of getting up early to pray and fasting and other uncomfortable things. On the island without nuns women aren't even allowed to visit, it's a strictly men-only island. They told a story about how a western tourist woman disguised herself as a man to see the island and then some calamity happened, allegedly.

   Anyway we returned to the shore, and Dugu took me in the bujuj to an ATM in town, and informed me if I had a tip for the previous day's tour guide I should give it to him and he'd get it to him. I had actually liked the previous tour guide (Jime) a lot and would have tipped him at the time but I thought I was going to see him on this day, and I'd ended up back with Dugu the previous day before I knew it so it would have been awkward to top him. By now I as you can imagine had a thorough distrust for Dugu but I gave him 30 birr for Jime and later emailed Jime (who had given me an email address) telling him I hoped the 30 birr got to him, so if some went missing he'll know. Also paid Dugu the 600 additional birr ($30) I now owed him, and took out a little more, since I'd be in Ethiopia for just one more day.
   As we proceeded on to my hotel I contemplated how much to tip Dugu. By now I pretty much loathed and despised him but not tipping a tour guide in Africa is a huge huge slap in their face and I knew he'd flip out if I didn't. So as we pulled up to my hotel I tried to give him 50 birr ($2.50, more than a day's pay for an educated middle class Ethiopian), at which point he informed me I actually owed him 150 birr as a "guide fee."
   Now, I am known for almost never losing my temper and exploding at people, but at this point I just threw up my arms and exclaimed "YOU CAN'T JUST MAKE UP CHARGES!!!!" And stormed off into my hotel without giving him anything.
   I had to leave for the airport in about an hour so I fumed in my room for about half an hour and then packed my stuff and went down to the lobby. I was afraid he'd be there waiting but he wasn't so I remarked to the lobby staff about the awful adventure I had with him as I paid ... and then as I sat there waiting he came in, and started insisting that I had to pay him.
   "What did the 1300 birr I paid you already pay for??" I demanded "it apparently didn't pay for admission to the islands, and it didn't go to the boy who drove the boat, so what did I pay for??" He kind of shrugged and insisted that it was a standard fee I'd have to pay. After this didn't work he tried a different tack and said "well you should give me a tip"
   To which I said "I am thoroughly dissatisfied with you I think you have been extremely dishonest with me and I have zero desire to give you a tip."
   Finally I looked at the hotel staff, who was kind of staring at us agog, and said "can you have security escort this man out he is really bothering me!" at which point Dugu decided to save himself the embarrassment and leave, telling me as he left that he was going to call the police on me.
   After that I was able to board the hotel shuttle without further molestation (it loaded in the hotel courtyard), and as we pulled out of the hotel there was Dugu still standing by the side of the road, shooting daggers at me with his eyes. I'm really glad all this happened just as I was leaving town or else I'd be seriously afraid he'd have me jumped as I went about town or something.


Back in Addis
   Waiting in line at the boarding gate I thought this tallish blonde girl behind me sounded like she might have a specifically Californian accent so I asked her where she was from. She surprised me with "Sweden," so I responded with
   "Åh jag trodde att du lät American"
   "Oh, I've been living in the United States" she said, still in English. "Are you Swedish?"
   "Nej jag är amerikan"
   "Do you study languages?" she asked, still confused.
   "Nej, jag är en biodlare" I said smiling innocently, no I'm a beekeeper.
   Anyway we went a few more rounds before I admitted I'd been an exchange student in Sweden. It turns out she was there with some UN women's programme. This was the third time during this trip to Africa that I was able to use my Swedish, which I found very amusing.

   Back in Addis I was once again staying at the Dessie Hotel. I had as usual called ahead to arrange pick up at the airport, and this time when I started trying to explain to the lobby girl who I was and how to spell my name she interrupted me with "yes yes I know you." And at the airport the young man who I think is the assistant manager didn't even bother holding up a sign with my name on it. I was still looking for the sign but then he said "hey, Kris! over here!"

   That evening Rahel (the gorgeous girl you may recall from the previous few times I was in Addis) and I went to an Indian restaurant. I have been raving about this restaurant ever since then. Want some good Indian food? I know the BEST restaurant, you just need to go to Addis Ababa...
   Unfortunately I don't think Rahel was as stoked on it as I was, as she appeared to be kind of poking at her food and didn't eat terribly much. I've noticed repeatedly that when you try to expose people to food they've never encountered before they're often very skeptical and have trouble eating very much of it. I suppose I'm the same way, with Ethiopian injera based foods I probably eat a lot less than I would of other things because its just not hte kind of hearty soul food (in my palate's expectation) that I can shovel into my mouth.
   This lovely evening of delicious food with the gorgeous and delightful Rahel to some degree made up for the terrible beginning of the day.

   The End! ...until the next entry.


And here's a picture of one of the monks on the island monasteries, from my 2012 visit.

   I have just one more day in Addis to write about, followed by a day in Nairobi, and then this trip is finally over! Since I leave for Europe on Monday I'm really going to try to get those last two days posted before I begin a new trip!!

Wednesday, December 3rd 2014 - The evening before I had called the Dessie Hotel in Addis to book a room and arrange for them to pick me up from the airport, which is noteworthy because when I said "ten o clock" the receptionist asked "local time?" and I said "yes," assuming she meant timezone, but then, fprtunately, she thought to clarify by reiterating saying "so that's two hours after noon?" which confused me for a second. Then I realized, LOCAL time, is the local reckoning of time, which starts at 6am. All across Ethiopia you see clocks set this way, it really is a thing, "one o clock" is what we'd call 7am, "twelve o clock" is 6pm. Additionally the year has 13 months and it is currently 2007.

   Took the hotel shuttle to the airport in the morning, the most noteworthy thing about this was that the guy who had been sitting at a desk in the Ethiopian Airlines office in town the day before and had helped me change my ticket there was the very same guy who was now behind the check in kiosk. I guess it makes sense that with only a flight or two a day the same people who work in the office downtown would work at the airport but it kind of felt like seeing double.



   I had gotten an earlier flight in the day because I didn't know when Mulufird, the important government official I wanted to meet, would be available. So I arrived and looked at my phone and was utterly mortified to see the previously mentioned accidental "NO!" I had sent him. My terror was compounded by the fact that he didn't respond for a few hours on this morning, leaving me wanting to crawl into a hole for hours. When he did respond he said he was actually busy, leaving me unconvinced that he hadn't developed a loathing for me, but he gave me a contact for the University of Bahir Dar, which I was visiting the next day, and when I got there I found he had actually sent word to him that I was coming and it seemed to be he put in a good word for me.

   In the mean time I visited the National Museum, which was nice, but the Ethnological Museum which I visited a few days later was definitely much better. The National Museum had some stuff pertaining to the more recent emperors on the first floor, lots of more general cultural stuff in many different categories on the second floor, and art on the third floor. There was an exhibit about Lucy, the famous 3.2 million year old homonid -- the bones are in the museum, but only a plaster cast of them is available for viewing, which would have been good enough for me, but it was unfortunately closed. ):
   And then, amusingly, I accidentally crashed the grand opening of a new exhibition. I wandered into this exhibit on evolution in the basement that seemed to be open and after awhile a young caucasian in a suit jacket and bow tie came and politely informed me in a thick French accent that they were asking everyone to please leave the exhibition but we'd be allowed back in "after the speeches."
   "Speeches?" I asked, "why?"
   He laughed and said it was the grand opening of this exhibition, which apparently had been a collaboration between a French university and the National Museum.
   So I went outside and found many people with bow ties, many looking scholarly, milling about chatting with eachothe. There was a table being set up with glasses of wine on it, but I was already feeling enough like a party-crasher without poaching their wine. I would have liked to stay for the speeches but unfortunately I was getting really uncomfortably cold because evening was getting on and I hadn't taken my jacket (throughout this trip I was stuck carrying my jacket when I didn't need it and not having it when I did). Also, I had a date ;)


I already posted this picture of Rahel, but that was like two months ago, so here she is again!

   I had made plans with the gorgeous Rahel, who, along with her sister, had shown Doug and I around town our first day in Addis. Now getting around in a country where most people don't speak English can be interesting but it usually works out. In this case I walked out front to where several guards in blue-ish camo toting submachine guns were standing around. I asked one where I could catch a taxi and he enthusiastically led to one of the guards who spoke better English, who flagged down a taxi for me and translated between myself and the driver. As easy as that. Also sometimes one expects soldiers to be a bit gruff, in West Africa tehy always seemed to have a chip on their shoulder, but these guards all seemed downright enthusiastic about getting me sorted out.
   Rahel had suggested we meet at "the Beer Garden," which at first I was like "okay, what beer garden?" as one does ... but it turns out there's only one beer garden in Addis Ababa and it's called "Beer Garden." She doesn't actually even drink but it's a German Restaurant that occupies the first and second floor of a hotel building in the Bole district near the airport. Once again not having access to the ease of instant messaging we've come to depend on, my plans almost fell apart, since I couldn't communicate with her. Twenty minutes after the time we had set for meeting there was no sign of her so I once again risked a wild international roaming charge to call her, and found out she was waiting for me on the second floor I hadn't known existed!
   Anyway the food was delicious, I had some kind of gravy covered dumpling thing with pork, I think. And though Rahel abstained I tried their beer (they were a microbrewery too of course), which I found entirely satisfactory.
   And then once again she helped me sort out a taxi back to my hotel. If I recall correctly I actually had a very good conversation with the taxi driver. And the next morning I was off to Bahir Dar, which is definitely an entry of its own!

   Continueing the Ethiopia trip
   This is getting so long ago that it's getting seriously hard to recollect what happened. I better get the rest of this out quickly! This trip only lasted till Dec 7th so it's almost done.
igure
Sunday, November 30th (2014) - We hadn't really been happy with the Planet Hotel in Mek'ele (recall our earlier epic round of hotel indecisiveness) so on returning sunday night from Axum we chose to check in to the good ole Axum Hotel. We had been really unimpressed with the new building but this time we walked into the old building and it was much nicer! It had that old timey elegance they can't seem to recreate with hotels any more.

Monday, December 1st (2014) - Enjoyed waking up not being in a hurry, but was stressing out all morning about having to change my flights around. I was going to fly to Bahir Dar via Addis Ababa on Wednesday, spend all of Thursday in Bahir Dar visiting the university there, fly into Addis Friday, Addis-Nairobi Saturday, and home Sunday ... but our friend Daniel had put me in contact with a fellow who had been a high up in the ministry of agriculture (head of the apiculture section?) and I wanted to meet up with him in Addis if I could. As you can see, my schedule was tight, and unfortunately I was having a hard time getting ahold of the guy (Muleford), and I didn't want to change my flights until I could talk to him and figure out when we could meet.

   Doug and I walked down the street and found the Ethiopian Airlines office, which fortunately was just down the road from us, and then decided to have lunch while I tried to figure the plans out. The nice "beefman" restaurant with its comfortable airy courtyard was also in close proximity so we went there.

   Now Doug is a sly fellow -- if his wife reads this let me emphasize he behaved himself! ...but instead he pushed all his sly ideas on to me. In this case there were two cute Ethiopian girls at a nearby table, so Doug started egging me on to talk to them. "Ask them where the Ethiopian Airlines office is!" "we know where it is!" "yeah but they don't know we know! Go on they've totally been stealing glances at you!" ...
   Well they were cute, and I did think I'd noticed a giggly glance in our direction, and this Ethiopian airlines plot was fairly plausible, so I went and asked them. "oh hang on a few minutes and we'll take you there" was their response. So I ended up sitting with them for a bit, they were both students at Mek'ele University, Dagm and Merry, architecture and electrical engineering. Them and I and Doug presently walked down to the airlines office, and he gallantly volunteered to entertain them while I took care of my flights. I swear, no lady would be safe if he was still single (he married an Ethiopian after his first visit in 2012 thouh), he's the suave-ist 70 year old I've ever met.
   Since I still hadn't go ahold of Muluford I just booked the earliest flight in to Addis on Wednesday morning, giving myself the whole day there. That way whenever he was available I could fit it in. I was really worried that Ethiopian Airlines would levy a fee on me for every one of my flights that had to be moved but for one $50 they made all the changes, so I'd be in Addis all day Wednesday, fly in to Bahir Day on Thursday, back to Addis on Friday, to Nairobi on Saturday, and back home on Sunday. A flight a day!

   I came out of the airlines office... to find that Doug had volunteered me to take Dagm with me to Bahir Day O: I'm telling you, that guy. Anyway, at least he'd proposed the idea but it didn't end up happening.

   I forget who gave me the idea but I eventually was able to message Muleford via "Viber," a messenger app that seems to be popular in Etihopia (like Whatsapp). I even commented to someone that I thought that was weird to message him on that ("in America you never conduct business via text messages) aaand it would sadly be shown why. Well I can laugh at it now -- completely unbeknownst to me, when I thought the conversation was over, I accidentally hit a button that inserted a "sticker" that said "NO!" just after he said "that's great" --



And what's worse, I didn't even see it to correct it until I arrived in Addis and looked up the conversation to see where we'd left off the plans. At which point I was utterly mortified!!!



   That evening Doug and I toured the Comel honey processing plant. I'd been there before in 2012 but they'd gotten some more equipment since then. After that Daniel took us back to his house where he wad another sumptuous meal of Ethiopian food, prepared by his wife. Once again they filled me to bursting.
   After that Daniel took Doug and I to some local clubs, which was very interesting. Mek'ele, as I've mentioned before, has a rather medieval look, and this club/bar Daniel took us to was a small dark square room with rough-hewn walls, the bar tables were clearly planks, and a few plank-like shelves on the wall behind the bar held bottles of alcohol. This medieval room was lit with neon lights and most interesting of all, the music playing was kind of a synthesis of traditional and modern, and the dancing clearly resembled the traditional dancing I'd seen earlier. So that was actually really interesting. It's local experiences like that that are often the most interesting, and I'm not sure I'd have been brave enough to wander into a small dark local bar at night by myself (as it is I felt a little awkward because since I'd had it with me earlier I still had my big DSLR camera hanging from my shoulder)




   Does anyone know how I can make it so one can view my blog in an oldest-on-top format so going down through it one reads the entries in chronological order? Especially when one is viewing tags? Even if I have to migrate to a different site to do that, I'd really like it if people could read about my previous trips in the logical chronological order.

Sunday, November 30th - Woke up at 3am in a bare white-walled hotel room in the small town of Adwa, Ethiopia. I'd been vaguely aware of the sound of people awake outside "all night" (ie the three hours since I'd gone to bed). Which might imply I slept badly or didn't sleep, but I have the unique superpower to hear things at night and be momentarily awoken, without my sleep being disturbed.
   After about twenty minutes we were all up, Doug and I and the Gebremeskal family, and we piled into the family van to drive the short distance to Axum. Although it was the middle of the night there were indeed people milling about and on the road walking to Axum (twenty kilometers). Predictably the crowds got more numerous the closer we got to Axum, until we arrived in that town, where it appeared everyone was awake. We found parking surprisingly easily on a side street (see also, few automobiles in Ethiopia) and walked down the main road towards the church and giant stelae. As mentioned previously, Axum is the site of the chapel containing the Ark of the Covenant ... and I'd been falsely informed that they trot it out once a year at this festival, so I was eagerly looking forward to accomplishing one of my life goals (finding the Holy Grail is of course another).



   We managed to squeeze in with the crowd into the enclosure around the church. Since there was a thick current of people making a slow circumambulation of the church it was possible to get in the crowd and flow with it. Just about any person who could speak English took the opportunity to warn Doug and I against pick pockets in this crowd in which one was constantly getting pressed against by other people. I had my hands in my pockets but couldn't protect my jacket pockets, though they had nothing of value in them. Still I kind of expected the papers that were in them to be pickpocketed and when I finally escaped from the crush around this church containing the Ark of the Covenant completely unscathed I regarded it as clear proof I am the pure of heart ... notwithstanding what anyone may say to the contrary :D
   Doug caught someone trying to reach their hand right into his pocket. Grabbed the hand and looked the guy straight in the eye. Then let him go. We both wondered how is it that people can enter the church compound, presumably with the intention to take part in the holy ceremonies, and then try to commit such a crime right there within the church.
   Anyway keep it mind it was still about 4am when we were here in this crowd. Some priests at a table were selling traditional long beeswax candles, made by dipping a strand of wool over and over again in wax. Many people were holding these lit candles, creating a starry array of candle lights in the dark around the church.

Friday, November 28th, Mek'ele - We returned to the hotel just in time to meet Daniel and he took us to the courtyard of of his office building, where the company van was preparing for the trip. There we met his wife, two daughters, (17 & 14), his son Nod (aged 9?), his brother (a former banker who got tired of the corporate world of banking and opened a metal-working shop in Addis), his brother's wife, and his brother's young son (5?). The two daughters were mostly shy and didn't talk to us much, though when they finally did it was surprising what fluent English came out of them finally. I think the older one was named Hermone, and one of the things that came out when she finally started talking was that she had an unexpected fascination with specifically Korean culture of all things. On my flight to Mekelle I had sat next to the local head of the Korean aid agency, on her way to visit some Korean volunteers in Mekelle, so I kind of wished I could put her in contact with Hermone but alas it wasn't practical. Nod in contrast was extremely talkative and fascinated with Doug and I, we had great fun with him.



   The sun was setting as we trundled up the far side of the valley, past the concrete factory. I tried to snap some photos before the light ran out. Nod, who had come up from the back seat to hang out with Doug and I in the middle eagerly asked to borrow my big DSLR to try taking some shots myself. Hardly anyone seems to know how to operate a manual focus SLR style camera anymore, and this one was kind of finicky (among other things, the auto focus it should have had didn't work), but much to my surprise he actually figured it out relatively quickly and got some decent shots.
   Soon it was too dark for photos though, and we proceeded through the dark. A bluish glow emanated from the back seat where the girls were looking at their phones. We only encountered a vehicle going the other way once every ten minutes or less. There's two roads to Axum, it seems, and we'd opted for the new one, unaware that it wasn't yet completed. Several different construction companies had gotten contracts for different sections of the road and it seems each one was about 85% done, working from one end of their contracted section to the other, so there were long sections where the road was just a bumpy dirt road between the smooth asphalt sections. The landscape was rugged and the road wound around craggy hills. In one bumpy gully we were crossing in lieu of the bridge not yet being completed we started an entire pack of hyenas, who darted out of the headlights but didn't retreat any further than they had to and watched us go by with glowing eyes. We drove through one town where the power was apparently out, electrical light glowing in only a few windows that apparently had their own generators. In other windows the dim light of candles flickered, and as it was still early evening many people say about in the dark outside chatting or walked around going about whatever business they had at that hour. As is the custom in these lands without GPS, we flagged someone down at the central crossroads and asked about the way to our destination, was this the right road and was it entirely passable.
   Later on we came over a ridge and another town appeared before us, a starfield of gold and silver lights. Again we inquired of a passerby of directions.
   As we arrived in the town we'd be passing the night in (Adwa) the road forked. "That is the way to Eritrea" Daniel pointed to it. It was optimistically as well maintained as the one we were on, but "the border crossing hasn't been open in ten years." Can't get there from here.

   We finally pulled up next to a building in town that was reportedly the hotel we were staying at. Before we got all unpacked Daniel went up with me --one had to go up a short steep embankment from the road, and decent stair had not yet been cut into it-- and asked if it was acceptable after they showed me a room. The place was obviously still under construction, and Daniel seemed a little disappointed in the place (he had booked sight unseen based on someone else's recommendation I think) and the room was a bit rudimentary, but I found it entirely adequate. We all unpacked what we'd need for the night, and since Doug isn't a night owl and it was already 11, we went right to bed, but the rest of us got back in the van to head to another hotel for dinner.
   The other hotel was just a few minutes away across town. It was well lit and clean and spacious and elegant and Daniel was immediately wishing aloud we'd booked here. We all sat at a long table in sort of the hotel's living room and lingered over a traditional meal, followed by several beers. I think it was nearly 2 by the time we all (including the young kids!) returned to the hotel we'd be sleeping at.

Thursday, November 27th, Mek'ele - Approaching the airport, it looked like we were landing in the midst of a rugged and dry desert, but on exiting the small aircraft we were met with a refreshing cool breeze. The Sky was clear and blue, the air was dry. The plane had been unusually full of squalling babies.
   My friend Daniel picked us up in a landrover emblazoned with "Comel Enterprises." I had met him last time as he runs the Comel ("computers and electronics") honey processing plant.

   From the airport the road curves around a low hill, surrounded by dry plains filled with teff fields and then descends into a valley in which the city of Mek'ele suddenly appears before you. You descend down a road that curves down into the valley as if you're coming down the banked curve of a waterslide, deftly passing carts piled with goods and pulled by donkeys. At the bottom you find yourself in a city with broad clean streets and you notice that not only are the roads cobbled, but the buildings are also all made of roughly hewn stone. There's very little vehicle traffic on the streets, though during my first visit we had to wait for a camel caravan to pass on the way in. Altogether Mek'ele was a nice relief from the traffic and crowds of Nairobi and Addis, and the dreariness and mud of the latter.



   We had more shenanigans than usual trying to decide on a hotel.
   Daniel first took us to the Axum Hotel where I'd stayed before, we went straight to the "new building," which I'd stayed in before, but, despite recent renovations, it looked if anything dingier than I remembered. We weren't feeling terribly impressed so we asked Daniel to take us to this new hotel he'd recommended called "the Planet."
   The Planet turned out to be a a new ten story hotel tower, modern to the point of having no personality. It lost a lot of points with me for having a metal detector and x-ray machine at the entrance one has to go through every time one enters or leaves, god I hate those things. Also, despite being in an area I guess the city planners are trying to develop (its across from a huge empty lot where a stadium is to be built), it was about half a mile from the main downtown area, whereas at the Axum Hotel one could walk outside and be in the middle of it. I also noted that Axum had a nice garden one can sit in whereas this one just had concrete.
   Doug was itching for something less swanky, so he wanted to check out another hotel he had stayed in in one of his previous visits to town (his wife is from Mek'ele so he'd been in town several times). Daniel obligingly took us down to a hotel right downtown, in an ordinary looking building (that is to say, somewhat shabby). It was full of locals, no computers at the front desk but a big binder to sort out bookings. They showed us dingy room with small hard looking beds. While it wasn't terribly impressive in my opinion, I didn't care much, Doug seemed to like it, and it was $30/night vs the $75 of the Planet.
   "Okay," I said, "but they need to either put a seat on the toilet or give us a room that has a toilet seat"
   We explained this to the front desk and they seemed not to understand what the problem was but finally it seemed to get through and they gave us a different room's key and the porter showed us up to this other room ... which also had no seat on the toilet. We tried to explain the need to have something to sit on on the toilet to the porter and two maids that were there but they seemed to genuinely not understand. So we threw up our hands and thew in our lot with the Planet Hotel.



   Hotel finally sorted out we visited the Comel office downtown and then went for lunch at a nice little place called "Beefman" right downtown, run by a friend of Daniel's who had spent time in the US. it was a nice chic looking place with tables in am open air courtyard and modern art on the walls. it wouldn't be out of place in the cool part of town in the US, except our table had a wobble they couldn't fix. Felt like a break from Ethiopian food, so I had the curry pasta, because who's ever seen curry pasta on a menu before? I mean it makes perfect sense, why not, but I've never seen it before. Despite Italy's failure to colonize Ethiopia there is a noticeable availability of pasta in the country. And piazzas in the center of cities.

   Daniel informed us that this weekend he was driving with his family to Axum for some kind of holiday/festival and that we were welcome to come. I couldn't believe our luck! Do I want to go on a roadtrip across the Ethiopian countryside with a local family to a traditional local event?? Does the Pope shit in the woods?? Count me in!!!


   This day was Thanksgiving back home in the States, which I feel obligated to observe in some form or another. In the cane fields of Australia I had gone to the one "nice" restaurant in town and ordered chicken parmesano because it was the closet thing to turkey, and followed it with a tot of Wild Turkey whiskey. I'd forgotten to look for chicken on the menu at dinner, but I decided to at least continue the Wild Turkey tradition and went down to the hotel bar before bed. They didn't even have wild turkey so I really stretched the interpretation of Thanksgiving tradition and drank Jack Daniels alone in a hotel bar while contemplating on the significance of Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 25th, Nairobi - Nairobi is a city that at first glance looks modern, many glassy skyscrapers just towards the sky sporting creative modern designs. Billboards advertise cell phone plans and insurance companies. But as you pan downward to behold the street level then you see the throngs on the sidewalks, they're busy, and some are well dressed, and all seem to be hurrying somewhere, which is a plus, but many seem a bit rumpled and harried, in places the sidewalk is broken to the degree of just being dirt. But what really catches your eye at street level is the traffic. It's bumper-to-bumper throughout the daylight hours. To get anywhere in the city by vehicle seems to take an hour, even if it's just a mile away. You're better off walking (and downtown was actually walking distance)

   In particular, our hotel, this cute little place called the Kahama, seemed to have a permanent traffic snarl in front of it. It was an elegant looking building, that looked like it had seen better days, had been proudly built in a nice location just beside a river ... and then a freeway overpass had been built right in front of it, such that it's second floor windows stare blindly into the concrete sides of the overpass and the third floor looks out at the cars. The old front door was then permanently locked, the former more upscale owners no doubt sold it to this budget hotellier, a new front door was put in the back, and the Kahama was born -- "economy with style!"

   Due to the barrier of awful traffic I was content to stay inside and catch up on my travelogue and picture wrangling, but around 11:30 Doug talked me into going with him to the craft market. The driver for the hotel (a very nice mellow old man, old enough to be retired, but working to save enough to buy his own car for about $6,500) had a friend with a booth in the craft market, so we headed there.
   Took only 10-15 minutes to get there I think, once out of the snarl by the hotel we traveled by side streets and it wasn't bad off rush-hour. We packed all our stuff in the trunk and checked out of the hotel so we wouldn't have to get back through the traffic maelstrom there.

   The craft market consisted of little booths that were facing inward on either side of a narrow aisle. Each booth was stuffed with things, and manned by a proprietor who would tell you they made it all themself. Sometimes though they'd only lay claim to the beaded bracelets and such and not the carved ebony, which is more plausible. The proprietors were mainly women, and they could be quite insistent.
   "Please, please, just look! Just look at this! I'll give you a very special deal! I made this myself! Look! two for this price... No, don't go, look at this!" I jokingly covered my eyes and said "I don't want to see it, I have no money!"
   Despite my intention not to get anything, the lady our driver knew did have some very nice bracelets. I don't know who I'd give them to, but someone would appreciate them. One was made with porcupine quills, which I thought was novel, and another with camel bone. Or so they say. I'm entirely cynical. But it seemed entirely plausible (not like that "lion tooth" some fat man in maasai robes sold to Doug after claiming he killed the lion himself). I had to carefully budget my money though because I now had only enough to pay the driver (as well as two old $20 bills that no one would accept. I hadn't started out with them but I'd exchanged local currency with other tourists at various points to take these "useless" bills off their hands). The two bracelets still sit on my mantel two months later gathering dust. No one to give them to.



   After we had finished there, we continued on past a jewelers booth, which actually had a lot of really nice pieces. And I'm not by any means a connoiseur of jewelry, but these things looked nice. Doug was haggling with him for one or two necklaces for his wife, and the prices were around 1300-1500 shillings ($14-$17), which seemed like a deal to me. I was well and truly out of money and alas have no one to get such nice things for but I had half a mind to go back when I had money and buy several just because I reckon I could put them up for sale back in the states for easily $60 each.
   As we were trying to leave the stalls Doug pointed out some cow horns on a shelf. I have a thing for large cow horns. At first I was unimpressed, just seeing short normal horns, but then I saw a nice big three footer and made the mistake of showing much enthusiasm, and the shop owners was on me like some sort of mind-sucking alien. You know the kind that grabs you by the head with their face tentacles. I told him I really didn't have any money but was curious how much he would want for it. He said $100. I said I got one like that that was all decorated in Guinea for less than $20 (I think it was seriously like $12) and he shook his head and said he couldn't go lower than $60. He was practically physically blocking my escape but I managed to extricate myself and flee. Then we had to come back that way to get out of the narrow labyrinth of craft stalls, and he again accosted me and said he'd called his dad (keep in mind he himself looked 40) and could sell it for $30. I said I didn't have money and he said he'd go with me to the ATM. He followed me out of the craft market but we escaped into the car.


A necklace Doug got for his wife

   From there we went to a mall for a quick meal from the food court, which was about as unimpressive as mall food court food usually is, but hey I've had worse. Also you may be intrigued just to know that in Nairobi they have malls that look very much like our own, in all their teeming mundanity. Then onward to the airport, arriving in plenty of time around 2:30, three hours before the flight. Check in line moved like molasses and this shady guy behind us kept trying to weasel his way forward in line. Ultimately it doesn't matter if you're a few people ahead or behind checking in but the shadiness of his behaviour really pissed me off. I made a point to stand right next to the post every time the line zigged around so he couldn't scoot ahead of us as he was trying to. Since I'd bought some stingless bee honey in Tanzania I had to check a bag at the ticketing counter.
   A friend who had run the NGO that brought Doug and I to Ethiopia the first time was going to meet us on arrival and take us to find a hotel. That NGO no longer operates in Ethiopia but he was kind enough to volunteer to help us anyway .. except just before boarding, with the last gasp of battery power in my phone I saw I had a message from him saying he unfortunately couldn't make it. Great, so no one was meeting us, we had no hotel lined up, and my phone was dead so I couldn't use it to look for a hotel. We were dropping into Ethiopia with literally no idea what we were going to do when we got there.
   To board the plane at the gate we had to go through one more x-ray machine (Ethiopian Airlines are crazy about security), and they didn't like my rungu, a decorated wooden stick that I suppose is shaped like a small club, which Maasai men apparently carry "so they'll look busy" (kind of like a clipboard in our society), so I had to check my backpack at the gate. Took my laptop out since I'd never trust it out of my sight, and boarded the plane with just my laptop and camera as carry-on, anxious that I'd never see my backpack again.



   Food on the flight was remarkably bad. I mean airline food is infamously bad as it is, but they gave us some kind of clammy reconstituted block of chicken as our main entree. As the trash was being collected I looked around and nearly every passenger whose tray I could see had eaten the carrot salad and other sides but barely touched the clammy block of chicken-spam.
   As it had last time I flew to Ethiopia, Addis Ababa suddenly emerged through darkness of over a ridge as a vast expanse of twinkling blue lights, shining like stars down below.
   Arriving in the immigration / passport control hall we first had to run a gauntlet of people in white medical coats and breathing masks, who took our temperature with hand held laser thermometers and collected forms we'd filled out saying we didn't have ebola. Then, after winding through the visa-on-arrival line for about ten minutes we noticed the line jumper from the Nairobi airport. This time he was standing off to the side of the front of the line just beginning to unhitch the line guide-rope in front of him, but he saw me fix a fiery glare upon him (The "old salty" is an ancient sailor's secret, the saltiest of sailors can start fires merely by giving their glare on the wood) and he retreated. I swear some people are just pathologically criminal, it would be easier to stand in line like a normal person but he has to try to cheat.
   A visa on arrival is just $20. Next I had to go through passport control, where they always ask all these questions about where one is staying and what one is doing. I didn't know the answers to these questions so I was a little bit anxious. By pure chance just before I reached the front of that line I noticed the two guys in front of me were speaking Norwegian, so I started talking to them in Swedish. Turns out they were here as missionaries. Then they got called to the passport control kiosk, and then I did ... and the officer there, having seen us speaking Swedwegian together said to me "you're with them right?" and after I made a vaguely affirmative noise proceeded to stamp my passport without asking any further questions.

   Next challenge! After emerging into the controlled area: where to go to from here? While trying to find out what the birr-dollar exchange rate was (no one would tell us), we finally found a guy with strangely bulgy eyes at the hilton hotel booth who would deign to tell us (20 birr to the dollar). Since he was so helpful we asked if he knew any good cheap hotels (as opposed to the hilton, which is of course NOT cheap). He said he "knew just the place!" whipped out his cellphone and placed a call, and moments later informed us that the owner herself was coming to pick us up. About fifteen minutes later he got another call and told us to go outside to the black mercedes. Sure enough there was a shiney mercedes there waiting for us, being driven by a well dressed and dignified woman. It seemed suspiciously strange, but she drove us across town to a nice hotel that wasn't too expensive (about $75 a night for a double room). At the hotel we were greeted warmly by extremely friendly staff, including a porter named Addis and a front desk girl named Addis.

   Being as it was late and had been a long day, I then just wrote the first draft of the above, and went to bed.


This is not the receptionist named Addis.

   Having returned from Korem the previous day...



Thursday May 10th - Thursday morning I met up with the president of Comel Enterprises (Daniel). Comel began as an electronics retail company. But then one day Daniel was talking to someone from the Agriculture Department and heard they were distributing 50,000 modern frame hives per year. "So that's going significantly increase the honey production, what's going to happen with all that honey?" he asked. The Ag Department member just shrugged. So Daniel founded a honey processing plant.

   The processing plant was big and new. Had a lot of room for expansion already, and they're planning on building two more buildings. They also had microfilters and homogenizers and all the other fancy equipment you need for some serious honey processing.
   I had a great time touring their facility with them and talking to Daniel and their processing plant manager (who had been in my training class in Korem). I presented them with the refractometer I had brought, with which one measures the water content of honey. They already had one but they greatly appreciated having a second one so now they can send two people out at once to go buy honey from farmers.
   In return they gave me four jars of honey -- one each of four of the five types of honey produced in the region (the fifth wasn't available at the time).



   Later in the day the ACDI/VOCA driver showed up to take me to the airport. The guy in front of me at security had some honey confiscated from him. Foreseeing this kind of problem though I'd put my honey in my checked luggage.
   Security wanted to x-ray my carryon bag again though, and again. And look through it thoroughly, X-ray it again, and then take some things out and x-raw it again. There was a pen showing up on the x-raw, which they wanted to find. Which was a bit odd, since pens aren't usually a forbidden item.
   Kind of reminds me of how they found the hive tool in Addis Ababa but handed it back to me despite it being very weaponizable. Ethiopian security is thorough, and completely random.
   While they were going through my back an older lady also got sidelined to have her bag gone through. She had a hand-held GPS they informed her she couldn't take on the plane. "But I was able to take it on the plane from New York to here!!" she kept insisting, which grated on my ears because it's an entirely fallacious argument.
   Finally a compromise was reached -- she couldn't have it on the plane but security would let her have it on the condition she promise to hand it to a member of the cabin crew, and she'd get it back on arrival in Addis. This agreement was entirely on the honor system, they didn't watch her hand it to anyone. As it happens I did see her hand it to a member of the crew. Ethiopian security is weird.
   After they had emptied EVERYTHING out of my backpack there was still that ghost pen showing up in the x-ray. Finally they handed the empty backpack to me. I asked if they ever found the pen and the lady just smiled, I don't think she did but the backpack was now empty.
   As I was putting my things back in the backpack a hassled-looking American in a suit got sidelined to the inspection table. I welcomed him to the party. As I was leaving a group of australians was coming through (I swear the whole flight was ferringi), and one of them, a big loud fellow with a shaved head, was wearing skimpy running shorts. "Those your security pants?" I had to ask "discourages them from frisking me!" he said with a devilish grin.


Friday May 11th - Friday morning found me kind of in limbo. My original flight out had been a week later, and for some reason the Winrock travel agency was saying they couldn't change it from their end anymore. Furthermore the Winrock team in Addis wanted me to go immediately into another project teaching instrumental insemination to the people at the Holleta bee research facility near Addis. But I would much much much rather actually be able to PREPARE for something like that and review my notes on the finer points of amounts of things and stuff. And anyway I'd gotten it into my head that if I left now I'd be able to spend my birthday (the 14th) with Kori in Connecticut, so I was chomping at the bit to get out in the next 24 hours.
   But I was tearing my hair out for awhile trying to even talk to anyone at Delta. The nearest Delta office was in Kenya and wasn't answering its phones. I tried calling Delta in America but that used up all the minutes on my phone in the first 45 seconds, way before I'd gotten anywhere in the phone tree. Finally skype saved me. I "subscribed" to skype so I had some credit with them and was able to call Delta in America through my laptop and make the travel arrangements.
   To get any flight out in the next three days was looking to be like $1600 (the change fee alone, I don't even know what the underlying original flight was), because there were only flights out every two days and they were all booked up. I found this deeply alarming. But then I asked if she could finagle something creative, get me on a flight out to anywhere else that would then have a flight back to the States, and voila with a six hour layover in Istanbul it was on.

   Unfortunately I didn't have time to see any of the museums in Addis (I really wanted to see the Lucy museum), though I was able to do a little souvenir shopping. Normally I hate souvenir shopping but I was determined to find myself a sweet drinking horn after seeing the magnificent horns all the Ethiopian cows sport.
   It turns out making sweet drinking horns is apparently not something they DO though. We stopped in at more than a dozen and a half souvenir shops without any luck. In one the owner called someone who showed up ten minutes later with an old decrepid ugly looking excuse for a drinking horn.
   Finally we once again found a shop where someone knew someone who knew someone who ten minutes later showed up with a selection of three horns for me to choose from. They all looked ancient and uglier than I had hoped (they were all nearly black and covered with leather, which is not what sweet drinking horns look like say when you google the subject). Still though it was better than nothing, even if preposterously overpriced. I haggled him from $50 down to $40 (keep in mind $50 is the average monthly salary of an educated professional in Ethiopia. The farmers seem to make around $12 a month). So, preposterously overpriced, but I was determined to get a drinking horn.



Saturday May 12th - My flight out was at about 1am the night of May 11th. Because Ethiopia follows the much more logical practice of considering the new day not to begin until around sunrise, I can still call this first hour after midnight part of the previous day.
   I had just finished filling out the customs forms when a Russian fellow named Igor tapped me on the shoulder and explained in broken English "you need to help me -- I don't speak English!" (the forms are all in Amharic and English). Fortunately I took five quarters of Russian in college! Unfortunately I quickly discovered I barely remembered a god damn thing!
   Then we got separated going through the emigration but as I was looking for a seat at the gate he waved me over from across the way and we continued trying to have a conversation with our meager bits of eachother's language.

   During the night we flew over some islands in the Mediterranean, the outlines of which you could clearly make out by the twinkling lights, and I would have loved to know what islands specifically they were.

   I still kind of regret not spending at least a day to get into the city. If I'd never been there before I certainly would have but as it is I remembered how far the city was from the airport and like I said, I was chomping at the bit to be home for my birthday.
   As it is, I ended up spending much of my six hours there trying to chase down my luggage. I was bouncing between the "lost luggage" staff, who were telling me it would be automatically transferred to my next flight and to leave them alone, and the Delta airlines staff who were telling me there's no transfer agreement with Turkish and my luggage definitely did not transfer.
   Finally a week later it would be delivered to me back home, appearing to have been run over repeatedly. Of the four jars of honey I'd been given, three of them had been utterly pulverized. Even my deoderant stick, which is not a fragile object, was smashed.

   I did at least get to sit down and have some turkish coffee in the airport. The coffee and a croissant came out to $14. Being accustomed to a meal like that being less than $2 in Ethiopia it gave me a "welcome to Europe!" rude awakening.

   Sitting at the gate for my flight I sat next to a fellow who used the most amusing profanities to describe his disgust with airlines, when it was announced the flight was running an hour late. And then when I boarded my flight I was surprised to find that my assigned seat was in fact right beside him. That coincidence, however, is utterly dwarfed by the coincidental seating occurrence on the last leg of my journey, from Atlanta to OC, but you'll have to read about that one in my next entry ;)