Monday, November 2nd - Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This morning I was up early because I fell asleep so early last night.  I was showered and dressed and downstairs blogging by 7 a.m.   That is pretty early for me but here in Ethiopia, everything is pretty tied to the sun and daylight.  The sun rises at 6 a.m. and sets at 6 p.m. every day of the year.  And when it rises, everything is just instantly bright - not like in the mountains where you might be in shadow for a while.  And, because they are at the equator, it seems to be hot right away and at 6 p.m. it gets cool right away.  Addis is very high - around 8,000 feet - so the weather is very nice always with a cool breeze blowing.  It's a lot hotter in some of the other areas we visited that are lower in elevation but still breezy.  This is of course is nice for the "cooling" factor but it certainly doesn't help with the dust factor.   Even on the paved highway there is always dust blowing.  The land is just so dry that everything turns to dust.  And the rainy season just ended so it will be even more dusty as the dry season progresses.

Their time is also tied to the sun.  If someone tells you they will meet you at 4, that means they will meet you at 10 a.m. our time or 4 hours after sunrise.  A meeting at 10 would be 10 hours after sunrise or 2 hours before sunset so 4 p.m. our time.   When the sun always rises and sets at the same time and you always have 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness, it's actually a very simple system.  They also work on a very different calendar and that is not so easy to explain.  Right now they are about 7 years behind us so it's only 2008 to them.  That part is very confusing when it comes to ages and calendar related details.  

Anyway, I was up with the sun this morning and did a bit of blogging before we (Lynn and I) headed off to Kaldi's Coffee for breakfast.  It's probably only a 15 minute walk but keeping up with Lynn always keeps me hurrying and at this altitude it's even harder than normal.  However, the walk is always worth it.  Lynn ordered pancakes and she got three really big fluffy pancakes and syrup.  I ordered scrambled eggs and toast and got  whole plate full of scrambled eggs.  Lynn had a couple of coffees and I had a hot chocolate.  With tip we paid 150 birr or $7.50 in total so less than $4 for each of us so definitely a great deal.  Kaldi's is something like Starbucks as they are all over the city.  They don't have a drive through though so, as we sat eating, people would drive into the parking lot and the waiters would go out and take their order and then deliver it to the cars.  Most of the time it was delivered in china dishes and the person ate right there, returned their dishes, paid and went on their way.  At other times they got their food and drink to go and it was delivered in disposable containers and they paid and went on their way right away.  It was interesting watching the parking lot attendant try to shuffle cars around according to their needs.

After we walked back to the house we spent some time working on our presentation materials for the last few days here in Ethiopia and then for Malawi.  We have no sessions today but we have some tomorrow and on Wednesday, and then I fly out Thursday morning while Lynn does another session before she flies out on Friday.  We spent most of the day on computers and had lunch and dinner at the house.  The office staff was around all day so there were different meetings and discussions taking place.  Lynn and Bisrat spent some time reviewing the items yet to be completed on Lynn's agenda - most of which she will now have to do outside of Ethiopia instead of while she is here.  Then there was some reading and relaxing at the end of the day and another day was complete.