Final Thougths

It's 5am in New York, 1pm in Nairobi, and I have no idea what time my body thinks it is. Anyway, I'm up, everyone else is asleep, so I figured it would be a good time for reflection.

A bit more about Ethiopia. It's really an extraordinary place. Besides the fact that their calendar is a bit wacky, and they tell time differently, they're all very interested in education and learning. As we drove around Addis, I saw many many schools, both technical and non-technical. The local IT guy had to leave early one day because he had an exam in his web design class, and I'm told this is very typical. This may not seem so unusual to us, but given what the country looks like, and it's reputation, it was surprising to me. Addis is a booming city, with significant country influences. There is building everywhere - mostly small commercial buildings from what I can tell, but in a perfect example 0f the contradictions of Ethiopia, the scaffolding used to build these buildings is all hand-made! They use long thin wooden poles which don't look particularly sturdy, but they clearly do the trick. Among all this building there are people walking around with small herds of goats, or selling thing they grew in their fields. It's a very safe place, unlike Nairobi, and the people are very gentle and kind. It really makes me wonder why the country is struggling so much overall. They're ranked 144th out of 151 countries on the UN sponsored Human Development Index. From a business standpoint, they make it quite challenging to work there. There is only one Internet provider, for instance, and it's run by the government which means without competition, there's no incentive for them to provide quality service. The "broadband" they recently introduced is low quality consumer-level service, which means that when you ask for a 256K line, you might get half of that, at best. It's not unworkable for businesses, but it certainly doesn't make it easy. I wonder why the government doesn't embrace things like technology that could bring even more industry into their country, and hopefully raise the standard of living for everyone. Clearly this is a very complex issue, and I don't claim to understand it fully, but it was one of the more interesting aspects of Ethiopia, and I'm very interested to see how things develop over the next few years.

I should talk a little about the food. For those of you who know me, I don't think you'd be surprised to hear that I was a little nervous about what I would eat. I managed to find some energy bars to bring with me, along with a small jar of peanut butter. It turns out, much to my surprise, that the food everywhere was excellent (although I don't think I'm going to eat more goat anytime soon). Our last night in Addis, there was a goodbye dinner for two of the staff who were leaving, and we went to an Ethiopian restaurant which had a nice floor show. There was a buffet with all sorts of unidentifiable dishes, but I just jumped in an it was tremendous! Excellent sauces, rice, chicken, beef, and tasty bread. I was in heaven. The peanut butter didn't go uneaten, by the way. I should also add that my travel companion, who eats anything and everything, brought two large bags of treats, including mini Krackels, which I ate with abandon. We both agreed that next time, it probably won't be necessary, although it's good to know that the little mini Hersheys don't melt as quickly as a Peppermint Patty, for instance.

I'm going to upload more pictures now. More later...