home

After 24 hours of travel I am home (the ride home was not too good -- from a naked 93 year old woman on the flight, cancelled flights in the US from Washington to Boston, and lost luggage). But now I get a shower with water that is not either boiling or freezing! It is nice to be home with my family.

The food

To purchase meat you go to the butchers. Yes that is just beef hanging in an open shop that they cut off what you want, weigh it and you are on your way.


Before eating washing is very important. At the larger traditional restaurants they come to the table with soap and water to let you wash.


Coffee is the number on export in Ethiopia (accounts for 85% of thier export). here a woman is roasting coffee beans, they are then ground with a mortar and pestal to make coffee for a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceromony.

Traditional Ethiopian food -- it is a community dish and served with injera (a bread that comes like a pancake). Injera is used as your utensils -- you use it to get your food and to eat it (no other cutlery is needed).

This is a stove someone would use in their home to cook with.

The Monuments

This is a staircase -- 13 stairs to symbolize the years Italy ruled Ethiopia. On the top is a Lion the symbol of Addis Ababa and Ethiopia


At the hotel swimming pool they had these huge platform diving boards. Anyone want to try?



The first cannon in Ethiopia


The famous obelisk. The band on the bottom depict scenes of suffering when Italy came into Ethiopia. At the fall of the Italians rule, they stole this statue and took it to Italy. They retuned several decades later (at a very high cost)

Trip to Sodere

To get out of the big city I took a day trip to Sodere. It was a 3 hour bus ride both ways, so I was able to see alot of the country side. Sodere, itself is only ok. It is a hotel and "resort" that is built around natural hot springs. They have a communal shower like place that is packed and a swimming pool (equally mobbed). I did not see any non-Ethiopian of any kind in the water so I chose not to get in (I decided getting ill from contaminated water has not a priority). The cool thing about the resort was the hundreds of monkeys running around and we walked about a bit and saw an interesting river crossing. Above are some pictures.

Trip to the churches at Entoto

Shigute and I decided it was a good day to go see Entoto. This is the mountain just north of the city (maybe 20 minutes). Shigute’s car cannot make it so we hired a taxi (cost $350 birr = $33). We saw the first palace of Ethiopia (the capital was Entoto until it was moved to Addis Ababa), and three churches. One was the oldest church in the country and where they hide all of the Christian artifacts when they feared they would be stolen or burned. It is 2 rooms carved into stones. The newer church that is at this site has beautiful murals inside. We had a personal guided tour (since we were the only ones there). You take your shoes off when you go in and the guide shows you all the murals and describes them. It was amazing (it was $30 birr to get in but another $20 for pictures – a bit strange how that works huh). I drank 2 cups of coffee before our trip to Entoto which was a mistake. The only restroom was a hole in the ground with other peoples’ waste everywhere, no toilet paper and no water to wash. On the return we stopped at a craft store that benefits the women firewood carriers. It was a small store but they allowed me to watch them weave and grind coffee. We saw tons of donkeys on the road. Our car made it but barely. The driver had to change tires when we were at the church and we had to stop to let it cool down because the low gear and use of breaks going down the mountain made it smoke.

After Entoto it was lunch and shopping then a museum on the AAU campus. This museum was great, it told about different parts of Ethiopia, different parts of their daily life and it had an art gallery. It was wonderful. We ended the day at the Lion Zoo. I had wanted to see what it was since we passed it every day going to campus. They have perhaps 10 cement cages with iron bars on them, each cage containing 0-2 lions. It was actually very depressing to see the lions living on cement – with the random pieces of bone and raw meat in the cage.

The people

The people here are wonderful. They seem very relaxed, not as stressed out as in the US. There is not so much of a hurry to get places and accomplish things. Above are a few pictures I have.

Internet problems

Well apparently the bandwidth in Addis Ababa makes it very difficult for me to connect to my blog an dmake posts. It has been 6 days since I was able to connect to the blog. I try a few times a day (when I happen to be in my room) and typically I cannot connect. So Iwill add a few things now while I can.

The street, the markets, the hotel entrance

The streets here are filled with people. But they never look as aggressive or self absorbed as when you see crowded streets in NYC, here they look more casual and happy. The public city transportation is done by blue and white VW buses. As the roll into a bus stop a person literally stands with their whole body out of the window and yells where the bus is going to so people know what bus to get on (there are no numbers or route names on the busses). It is also not uncommon to see goats and donkeys along the streets.

The markets are typically a mix of tin shacks that will close almost flat at night while others are in actually physical structures. So far I have seen perhaps 50-80 shops none bigger than half the size of a classroom at Upham Elementary school. They have lots of different items.

When we pull into our hotel (or the Sheraton or Hilton) there are guards at the entrance. Cars that carry locals have to stop, everyone gets out and is patted down. Since I do not look local (not many white faced people around here) they just wave use through. A bit odd since in the US we tend to do the reverse. All of these hotels also have you walk through a metal detection like the ones at the airports. Again there are guards at the front doors to the hotels.

Tuesday and Wed in Ethiopia

Yesterday I was not able to get on the blog. I am not sure if it is a bandwidth issue or that I was blocked, but I am on today. On Tuesday we went to see the Sheraton, the most expensive place to stay in Addis Ababa. The grounds are nice and I assume they use more water than the combined total of 4 cities in Ethiopia. It is really a shocking the difference between the Sheraton and right on the other side of the Sheraton walls (see the tin roofed shacks).



Their children's area was influenced by Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves but apparently they went a little too far and had too many dwarves.

I also went to the National Museum. Here is the sign to go in (I liked the way the broke apart the word Exhibition).

The most famous item in the museum is Lucy. The oldest human relative every found.

I also saw this little statue sort of stuck in a corner. Check out the date they think it was carved.

First day in Ethiopia

It was a 16 hour flight from Washington DC to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We had to stop in Rome to get more gas so we could make the trip. They did have those tvs on the back of every seat but the programs did not work for the last 8 hours. It was not a very crowded flight so I had an empty seat next to me. When I got to the airport I had no problem getting my visa (which is needed to enter the country) and a driver from the University I am teaching at meet me at the airport (lucky for me he held up a sign with my name on it!)

This is my driver. He is a very nice person that works for the University. He brought me to my hotel the night I arrived, took me ot the Unviersity this morning, and brought me to a place for lunch when I was done. He is coming at 5:30 tonight to show me around the town a bit.
His name is Mr. Shigute. This is the entrance to the Information Systems building at Addis Adaba University. It is a new building and I teach on the sixth floor. Today they had no power so we needed to go to another building to find a room that had a PC that worked. I found the tin shack outside the new building sort of funny. In Addis Ababa this is common (to have a nice building with shacks, piles of dirt and rocks, etc right next to it).

So far everything is great. Wonderful weather, nice people, no probems!

Getting Ready to go

I will be teaching a PhD seminar at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia from May 7-May 23rd. This is the first IS PhD in the country so they are flying in faculty to teach it and train their faculty. Before I go I have to get 8 shots (vaccines) to try to avoid getting some diseases. I am both excited and nervous about going.

Click on the map of Africa to make it bigger. Then you can see where Addis Ababa is in Ethiopia.