Alex Little

The internet has been down at the university for the last few days (well actually nearly a week now) – apparently this was as a result of someone digging through the broadband cabling. The whole of the city lost internet connection for couple of days at the end of last week, those using dial-up connections are back on but broadband is still ‘off’.

Over the weekend Andy came over to visit from Abi Adi (a small town about 3 hours bus ride away), he’s doing IT training & advising at the teacher education college there. He’d been invited to a wedding on Sunday, which lots of his colleagues were also coming over for. We had a meal out on the Saturday evening, followed by a trip to a few of the local bars – during which I also got myself an invite to the wedding. The locals were very insistent that we didn’t pay for any drinks, which seems to be the norm here, but makes you feel a little uncomfortable that you can’t contribute in any way – even though it was a relatively expensive night out. The bar we finished up at played a mixture of local and western music so I learnt a few traditional Ethiopian dance moves – which generally involves moving your shoulders with hands on your hips, the best I can describe is that it makes you look like a chicken. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera, so you’ll have to make do with imagining what I looked like Though I do have a bit of video from Addis that shows some (professional) Ethiopian dancers which I’ll attempt to upload if the internet connection gets fixed.

The following day the wedding involved more dancing (but less beer!). At lunchtime we met at the grooms (Nega) house with all his family and friends, along with the local priest, who did a short blessing, then we all got into taxis and headed over to the brides house on the other side of town (horns blaring and lights flashing all the way). The ceremony (exchanging of rings and vows) were all done at the brides house, followed by a meal, dancing and tilla (the local homebrew). Any leftover food was given to the local children. Tilla is made from barley or maize, fermented for only a few days (3-7) so has a bit of an acquired taste – not so bad after the first glass! Late in the afternoon, after the meal and hand over of presents and money, it was back to the grooms house for more eating drinking and dancing.

Back at work things are slowly moving on. My contract has now been unearthed, it had been signed by the previous head of computing dept (who has now moved to Italy) and was required by the finance & admin team for them to put me on the payroll – but we had a little trouble finding it. Samson, the guy who had been project leader, and would be my line manager now isn’t coming back to the uni, but I have now met my counterpart (Wondwossen) and I think he’ll take over my line management.

I’m gradually managing to get settled in Mekelle now, having been here a week. Keeping myself fed and watered seems to be taking up most of the time outside work. Can now navigate my way around the city centre fairly well, many of the streets look very similar (well that’s my excuse anyway!).

Although there are 100′s of small shops and a few slightly larger ‘supermarkets’ (actually about the same size as a corner shop in the UK), they tend to stock a remarkably similar range of basic goods. Veg tends to mainly be tomatoes, onions and potatoes, then oranges and bananas for fruit. Other fruit and veg are available, but start to get a bit more expensive. Everything is sold by in half or whole kilos, so we have half a kilo of garlic, which may take a little while to get through! The main market is only a short walk from the house, so going there regularly to get eggs, lentils, rice etc. There are a few bakeries nearby too, but they all seem to keep irregular hours that we’ve not yet figured out, some will be open one day but not the next, and they’re not always open in the mornings.

Marcel and I are still experimenting with what we can cook on a single electric stove (no oven). We’ve actually got 2 electric rings, but the only one power socket in the kitchen, and we’re a bit wary about overloading the electrical circuit by putting both on at once. We now also have some kerosene (which our night guard kindly went and queued up to get for us), so can use our kerosene stove too, but makes the kitchen smell too much if we use it indoors, so we’re using that outside to boil up water before it goes into the water filter.

I’ve now (almost) perfected making toast in a dry frying pan, and even managed to make cheese on toast in the frying pan too – it may not seem like much, but little things and all that. Cheese isn’t always available, so we’ve been advised to ring the pizza restaurant first to check they have some, before heading down there.

Our Amharic isn’t quite what it could be, so we’re still have the odd communication difficulty, for example yesterday we bought some beers – which you may think would be a simple matter. The small shop only sold beer and wine, so after being able to say we wanted 8 bottles of beer (rather than 8 crates) we were quoted 7 birr a bottle (fairly standard price), but they seemed surprised that we wanted to take them away to drink. As we were taking the bottles away we had to pay a deposit of 6 birr (per bottle) – so almost doubling the cost. Then today, on returning our empties, it took a while to say that I wanted the deposit back, rather than another 8 beers. In hindsight, it may have been better to just get more beer!

Realised today that I’ve not posted up many photos, but it’s a little tricky with the internet connection being as slow as it is, so I’m having to compress the pics down quite small. Here are a few that I took on the first day I moved into the house. My road:

The house doesn’t have a name or number and the road doesn’t have a name (like most in Ethiopia) which is why I don’t have an address yet and need to get a post office box – and no address makes it awkward to give directions to!

Patio area:

It’s a grapevine providing a little shade, and has one very small bunch of grapes on it. We’ve also got banana, mango, avocado and papaya trees – though the papaya is the only one wth any fruit, then around the corner we have chilli peppers, tomatoes and even a coffee bush. The coffee beans shold be ripe in a few weeks, so I’ll have a go roasting my own coffee.

The final pic is just one of my room:

Although I’ve now unpacked it still looks quite bare. That’s a mosquito net hanging above the bed. Although we’re not in a malarial zone, with it being just after the rainy season, there are still mozzies around and I was bitten a few times the one night I didn’t use the net – so I’ve now learned my lesson! I’ve also learned to check there aren’t any mosquitos inside the net before going to bed!