Ethiopia Day 1

I’m back in my hotel in Addis Ababa after visiting the field yesterday. Before I get to some of my impressions, I have to mention two interesting facts about Ethiopia:

1. The current year in Ethiopia is 2000. Yes, you read that correctly. The Ethiopian calendar is 7 and a half years behind everyone else’s. Their year consists of 12 months of 30 days, and a 13th month with either 5 or 6 days. The explanation I read in my guide book is that it’s based in the Coptic calendar, which has it’s roots in ancient Egypt. Very strange, don’t ya think?
2. They keep time differently. Sunrise is 12:00 (6am our time). When the sun sets, it’s 12:00 again (6pm our time). I’m told that when you schedule meetings, you need to make sure you’re talking about the right time keeping style. Again, rather odd.

We arrived in Addis Ababa on Monday morning (on a nice, large plane, thankfully) and were met by David ?, the IRC’s country director for Ethiopia. The drive to the office was quick as it’s pretty much across the street. It’s a very nice office – lots of space, and very open. We met some of the staff, and then Marc and I sat down with David to get an overview of what he’s doing in Ethiopia. David’s been at the IRC for a while, so he has a good perspective on what we’re doing. He gave us a very succinct overview of how camps are established – very interesting. Then we had lunch with his current deputy director, and the new one who’s taking over in February. Pizza was good, and sprite was cold. After lunch, I met with the local IT guy, who was very shy, but seems very capable. He had good documentation of his environment, and seemed to run a tight ship. The challenge here (and many other places) is bandwidth. It’s miserable and expensive. They typically get about half of what they pay for. I got online with my laptop, and it’s barely usable. This is really throwing off some of my plans because without decent bandwidth, I can’t deliver any applications to them over the Internet. I’ve known this was going to be a challenge for a while, but it’s taken a visit to really understand the issue first hand. I put a call into my colleague at Save The Children, and apparently they do deliver applications over the Internet. I’m going to visit their local office on Thursday to see how they manage.

In the afternoon, the office organized a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. It turns out, not surprisingly, that coffee is a big deal here. It’s their largest export, and it’s really good. The women performing the ceremony had new, unroasted beans that they roasted right there, then made a fresh pot of coffee for everyone to drink. It was very good. I can’t imagine how someone could live here without drinking coffee. After some more discussions with staff, Marc and I were driven to our hotel where we discovered (with much joy) that there was free wireless in the rooms. Again, painfully slow, but it works. We had dinner and crashed in preparation for our trip to Asbe Teferi in the morning.