I'm not French

Never has not being French been such an advantage to me. While yes it means that there are idioms I don’t understand here and makes my professional life a little harder, it makes my social life (by the most generous definition- as in people I talk to, ever) much easier. All the Obama lovers instantly like me. Once they know I’m not French, the instant topic of conversation turns to what people don't like about French people. Amazing.

Every day I ask a cab driver to teach me how to say something in Bamabara or Peuhl. Today I learned "Neh-tay-too-ba-boo-yay". Guess what that means?

Who Needs Electricity Anyway

For the second night in a row there is a 'coupure generale'. Basically most of Bamako is without power. Certainly everyone within eyesight of my hotel. It was sorta exciting yesterday but tonight I'm over it.

Yesterday the power went out at like 8pm (conveniently just after the sun went all the way down) and stayed out until 1am. So the major problems with this are:

a) Every device that makes my room inhabitable requires power (fan, air con...). I basically sat in a pool of my own sweat for hours (and taking a shower in the dark is really really scary).

b) The mosquitoes have the upper hand because they find you by smell, you can only kill them with the help of light.

c) I had just fallen asleep when suddenly every single electrical thing in my room turned on at once which put me in a little bit of a foggy panic.

So today I was mid- bite into my dinner when the electricity went out and it was absolutely pitch dark. I mean it's better than me being in the pool when the power goes out or being out in the street, but mid bite is just really annoying. It took me a while to find my phone which I used as a light to find my mini-flashlight (which requires that I hold down the button for it to stay on). I realized my best bet was to turn my computer on and eat my dinner by the light of my screen. For those who this happens to in the future, make sure you know a good site with a mostly white background... Now I have 45 minutes of battery left on my computer so I have to be a little strategic (AKA no more blogging).

The Fear Shame Shift

Fear is so annoying. I don't travel in the safest parts of the world but I also hate when people assume that these places are automatically frightening. However, once in a while during trips it occurs to me that maybe I AM in an unsafe situation... maybe something COULD happen to me. Which is then immediately followed by self-loathing for not trusting people just because I'm in a different cultural context... but then the fear comes back a little and I start planning what I would do just in case...

I really hate this but it is a distinct part of my travel. Perhaps it needs a good name, one more eloquent than those "shit, I guess I really AM in Africa" or "worst case scenario is looking pretty bad right now".

So I've had this twice in the last two days and both times involved being alone in a taxi with a driver in a city I didn't know at all. The first time, the driver was just really shifty. He was doing what I imagine was driving in circles which makes no sense here because the fare is flat. It doesn't help that I have no sense of the Bamako geography. Usually in these situations I take comfort in my phone where I always have the embassy programmed in, except this time my phone was out of credit. I went through how long it would take someone to know I was missing (a really long time). Eventually he let an old lady in the cab too and then I exhaled and felt totally safe... and then cursed myself for being scared.

But on my way home tonight the driver went in what I am sure is the opposite direction from my hotel and then turned down a dirt road. Alarm bells started going off. This time I had my phone but also had a fresh layer of shame for having overreacted (even if just in my mind) during the last taxi ride. I spent the whole ride home (where I got eventually) alternating between fear and shame.

I wish I truly was a fearless traveler... instead I have all the fears but just feel to ashamed to let them dictate my behavior... sounds healthy, huh?

Flying/shoving/intellectualizing etc.

Well I'm back on the road (in the air) . After a crazy November with a four-stop trip I relaxed in New York for a couple months but the business trip has been calling my name so Mali it is.

I was sitting on the Paris-->Bamako flight (decidedly NOT in business class) and realized just how incredibly steeped in culture things like airplane behavior really are. I was truly amazed at how the man next to me acted, and mostly in an 'anthropologically curious' sort of way but definitely there was a bit of 'super annoyed person in uncomfortably close proximity' layered on top.

I took the overnight NYC to Paris flight which is just full of business people who travel all the time. Everyone had their routines. Everyone knew whether they wanted the express dinner or to be woken up for breakfast. On auto-pilot everyone immediately reclined their chairs the moment the plane leveled off after take off. It was a well-oiled machine of professional travelers.

The aforementioned Paris-->Bamako flight was another story. Now the thing about flights to and from Africa is that a lot of the people on the plane are first-time plane travelers. They also tend to be people coming from places where public transportation accords you much less personal space than I am used to.

If anyone who abides by 'see something say something' was on my plane, they would have called the police 10 times minimum. There was so much seemingly sketchy stuff going on. The guy next to me had a metal suitcase that was wider than his seat that he insisted on keeping on his lap. For the first hour he got up to talk to other people in various locations throughout the plane every 10 minutes or so (which necessitated me getting out of my aisle seat to let him pass). There were a lot of exchanges of small brown packages. What's inside? Who knows? Then the guy next to me just stared in front of him for the rest of the trip. There were personal screens with all sorts of entertainment. There were free headphones with a wide selection of music. There was a pillow and a blanket if one wanted to sleep. But this guy just wanted to stare. So creepy.

But that's the thing- creepy is culturally bound. He didn't make sense on the NY--> Paris flight I just took, but he made perfect sense here. Everyone else was doing the same set of bizarre activities. So I'm the bizarre one in this case.

I'm pretty good at intellectualizing things that annoy me and putting them in my "oh, how interesting" category other than my "grrrr" category. However, disembarking the plane was a bit of a test. I had to tell myself things like "maybe that guy comes from a village where the bus only stops for a few moments at every stop so if you aren't the first person out you can't go home" or "maybe that man is on a plane for the first time and is rushing home to see his dying grandmother" or "maybe he's used to being around people who don't bruise easily". But there is really only so much I can tell myself and I got to the end after the two men on the inside seats actually stepped over me before the plane had finished taxiing, worried that i wasn't going to get out quickly and then proceeded to hit me on the head with both pieces of overhead luggage.

But you know what? I got through customs first bc my inner traveler knew to have a pen, my boarding pass, and my passport handy to quickly fill out the customs card :) So take that iron-elbows! (and I leave the option open that your iron elbows are an adaptation born of necessity).

My 80 year old Malian Boyfriend

During business travel in foreign lands it can be really hard to make friends. There are a lot of dinners by yourself and a lot of evenings spent alone in your hotel room with your lap top. That's why I'm so friendly to cab drivers and hotel staff- they are the people I have access to and can talk to. However, one mustn't be too nice when female and traveling alone...

So the porter at my hotel was a really sweet old man. And I mean OLD. I asked his name and thanked him when he brought my things to my room. I said goodmorning to him in the morning and good night in the evening. Pretty standard stuff. And then the gifts came...

First he handed me a package with a necklace in it. Upon further inspection it had his email address inside (I cannot imagine where he gets email access...). I tried to refuse it but no luck, and decided to curtail my greetings for the time being.

Then came the flowers. At first I convinced myself that it could have been a coincidence. Maybe someone stepped on a flower and walked around and it came off their shoe outside my door? Totally plausible... one time. Second time, not so much.

At this point I resorted to the phrase "My husband wouldn't like that". I hate it a little. It makes it seem like there is some possessive man who tells me what to do all the time. It sounds like I'm scared of my husband and that he is some Neanderthal who protects my honor. It also sounds like having a normal interaction with a member of the opposite sex is not allowed within marriage. However, it also works. So dropped that bomb like mad. Gifts "husband wouldn't like that". Ask for email address "husband wouldn't like that". Maybe it's a cop out and I should say "the way you are treating me makes me uncomfortable and I"m sorry if it's a cultural misunderstanding or I am in any way misinterpreting your attention but I'd appreciate if you would stop doing that". But I'm going to stick with the phrase. Easy and effective.

I made a total error at the Western Union where I went with my coworker and told the guy which hotel we were in (which honestly, there are only two in the town so he could have figured it out) but then the BOLD man called our hotel and asked for my coworker to 'chat'. She's better than me and didn't worry about hurting feelings and just hung up on him. Maybe I'll learn that one too.

Niger Adventure

The purpose of my trip was to find a partner for a project we are planning to undertake and after meeting with everyone on my list, a random organization came to light and we went to meet them. They seemed perfect but we needed to see their project in person and my coworker's flight was leaving that night. So that left me and the project coordinator insisted that we had to leave immediately to get out to the site in time. So without much thought I grabbed a change of clothes and then headed off in a 4x4 with two strangers from an organization I had just learned about that morning.

It didn't occur to me that this might not be the safest situation in the world until I was still in the car with them 9 hours later, driving in the dark, with no cell phone reception thinking "hmm, could I get out of this situation if I needed to?" Answer "probably not". I got a little paranoid and tried to start remembering the occasional city signs we passed which was no easy feat since they were usually covered in dust and illegible. Looking for landmarks in the desert was a no go either. Were we getting closer or farther away from that part of the country that is absolutely off-limits to foreigners?

Thankfully we made it to the destination which was the coordinators home and I started to feel safe again. Aren't homes nice? That lasted about an hour until we went to sleep outside on the porch and every car that went by scared the crap out of me. I literally slept with my flashlight and knife. I'm a little embarassed of this, but still.

The next morning was brilliant. My hostess made us breakfast and we chatted about families and life and all sorts of warm and friendly things. I felt so enveloped in protection- like a warm coat of comfort and safety had been wrapped around me in the night and I awoke totally sheltered from my earlier fear. We proceeded to have a lovely day visiting the nicest people throughout the desert. People who were warm, genuine, and curious. I realized that I always feel most at home in villages. It's the cities and the hotels that make my mind imagine crazy things. Sitting with an old lady on the ground in a village feels like about the safest place on earth. I felt like if someone so much as looked at me wrong the village would rise up and defend me. I felt absolutely ridiculous and a bit ashamed for having been scared the night before.

The trip went smashingly. Objectives achieved. I felt really good about starting up a project which would entail me visiting every three months. Subsequently the project fell through and I was truly disappointed. However subsequent to that two young French men were abducted in the capital city by Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, brought north to the border and killed during the rescue mission. At first this was just shocking- the capital? That's the one place that's supposed to be safe! Pulled out of a bar? I know that bar! But then I just got really sad. What this means for foreign aid is basically that no one is going to touch Niger with a 10 foot pole. It means those lovely ladies in the village I visited are not going to be the recipients of any new health programs any time soon. It also means that I'm not going back to Niger.

Airports aren't always open

Heading off on a business trip is always so exciting. Guidebooks to read, objectives to review, meetings to prep (ok, I really just sleep and watch movies on the flight over).

Going home is the most miserable experience ever. You start totally exhausted because you are basically working 24 hour days while traveling. It also seems to work out that I have the craziest return itineraries.

On my way back from Niger the first time the flight was cancelled. Except at first we just got weird reports from Air France like "it's a bit windy, so the plane is going back to Ouagadougou for a little while, hold tight" and then eventually "okay, the plane isn't coming back, get in a van and we'll take you to a hotel". See, it's not like there are that many flights leaving Niamey every day, so we couldn't exactly get rerouted. So we had to wait until the next night for a flight. Problem there is that the flight the next night was also totally booked and now had twice as many people who wanted to be on it. We were offered so many bribes to stay an extra 3 days but seriously, three extra days in Niamey? There is nothing there! Plus I WANNA GO HOME. Made it on the flight and thanked my stars.

On my way back from Niger the second time, I was routed Niamey-->Bamako-->Dakar-->NYC. Now this didn't seem like a bad deal. 3 hour layover in Bamako, 6 hour layover in Dakar. The problem is that layovers only work if the airport is open. It totally makes sense that if there are only 2 flights a day that come into a particular airport, that it wouldn't stay open all day. However, the problem arises when there is a passenger with a layover between those two flights. Where does one go? I cannot be the first person this has happened to.

Both the Bamako and Dakar airports are only open right before a flight (and you might imagine the number of flights leaving these hot locales). So when I disembarked in Bamako, there was literally no where for me to go. I didn't have time to go into the city at all and the ticket counters were closed so I couldn't get a boarding pass to go to the gate. I had this conversation with a security guard that descended to "this MUST happen to people, what do THEY do?" which made him think for a while. Then he just lead me past all the security and told me I could sit at the gate until the airport opened at which time I'd have to go back down to the counter to get my ticket. So I sat at the empty gate for 2 hours, but at least I had a chair.

I figured I was in for the same trouble in Dakar. I was supposed to arrive in Dakar at 1am and at first I had this grand idea that I was going to use the last of my currency to hire a taxi driver to take me around the city and show me the sites for a couple hours and then go back to the airport. However, when 1am came I was done-zo. I met a South African man who had a car waiting to take him to a hotel and I hitched a ride and hired a room to sleep in for 4 hours before going back to the airport. Best money I ever spent.

So, lesson learned is that layovers in West Africa are terrible and I should keep them as short as possible.

Business Trippin'

So when I started my job, I had never been on a business trip to West Africa so (because I’m me) I over-prepared. The dress code was 'long and loose' which basically necessitated me buying a new wardrobe. I literally looked at mormon clothing websites before I realized I could steal clothes from Sup. I still don't understand why the hottest places on earth are also the most conservatively dressed...

I bought a special purse that was not flashy but also really sturdy with lots of pockets for different things (or more accurately lots of places to misplace my documents). I’m pretty sure if I took my travel purse on “Let’s Make A Deal” I would win. Some of the contents include: toilet paper, hand sanitizer, bug spray, sun block, tissues, chap stick, pens, a notebook, a novel, photocopies of pretty much every page in my passport, my husband’s passport (not sure why), 4 frequent flyer cards including Air Mali, SIM cards from countries all over the world, a list of embassy phone numbers, a flashlight, a Cliff bar, a water bottle, pepper spray, a knife, and a photo album. Now I maintain that each of these items is essential, though some have yet to demonstrate their utility.

The exciting part of business travel is flying business class for the first time, and not just crappy-tiny-plane business class but international-carrier-giant-plane-fancy-pants business class. I will admit at first to being somewhat confused when the crew came around to physically tuck a napkin on my lap and spread a table cloth across my tray. And honestly, how much silverware does one need on a plane? Four forks? I, of course, neglected to return my seat to the upright position prior to eating which made things interesting but once I had my table cloth and fifteen utensils set up it was too late to adjust. All in all it was a pretty pleasant situation but paled in comparison to the awesomeness that is the business class lounge. Wow, they feed you! And if for some reason I wanted to drink some Black Label prior to my flight, I could have. Instead I mooched free internet and fell asleep on the beds.

An airline that shall remain nameless (in case they were serious about that confidentiality agreement) called me at work to see if I’d be willing to test their new business class seat- sure! At the time they didn’t ask “do you by any chance write surveys and collect data for a living?” and I bet they regret that now. During the course of my 9 hour flight I was given three different terribly written surveys (nothing worse than non-mutually-exclusive and non-exhaustive multiple choice responses! Right?). We started with my “first impressions” survey which asked such questions as “describe your satisfaction with the distance from your nose to the TV screen” then after the meal there was the survey that took me through every possible permutation of leg and head positions the seat was capable of and asked me to rate my comfort in each. The thing is, I was just happy to be in business class- every position of that seat was more comfortable than sitting in coach so I’m not sure they got any good info from me. I also wrote in answers on the side and extra info. Q: “Do you find the leg rest in the right position” A: “Yes- and just so you know I am 5’6’’ which you should have asked because responses to that question depend entirely on height”. And then there was artificial night time and the survey when we woke up detailing how restful we thought our sleep was in the seat. More questions about the height of the armrest and the ease of opening the tray table. And for my troubles I received an elegantly wrapped, totally useless gift- a silver luggage tag engraved with the flight number and a picture of the plane… so I can look back fondly on flight 921 for the rest of my life.

Niger, which is different than Nigeria

So in the spirit of completely non-chronological entries, here's my experience in Niger, baby's first business trip.

Despite what Dad and M. think, I neither saw any yellow cake nor did I met the sender of all those emails about funds trapped in a bank after a political upheaval.

During our final descent over Niamey I kept thinking "where is Niamey? All I see is dust". I was greeted at the airport by my coworker and then we proceeded to spend 2 hours attempting to get our box of materials extricated from the confines of customs. This entailed going to three different unlabeled offices and climbing around in a giant cage looking for our package. Given the condition of the other stuff in the cage, clearly Niamey is where parcels go to die. Noted to carry on anything I needed in the future.

What struck me first about Niger is that I am no big deal. Usually when a very obvious foreigner (read: white person) is walking around in a place they clearly don't belong, they get some attention. However in Niger, nobody even looks up. Everyone is too busy with their own stuff to care that I'm around. We all just mind our own business, which is sort of nice, if not particularly welcoming.

In my week there I got a good handle on all the basics: food, lodging, transpo, and money.

FOOD

Food was interesting. Let's preface by saying I live with a vegan and therefore eat a lot of vegetables. I can safely say that the only vegetable I ate during my entire week in Niger were tiny green peas that clearly came from a can. I don't blame the veggies- this is not a happy climate for cultivation. It was about 104 degrees every day and dry and dusty. Not exactly fertile grounds. I also have never eaten so much red meat. Large slab of meat and french fries was pretty standard (and no I am not counting french fries as a vegetable).

LODGING

The hotel where I made an electronic reservation AND called the day before to confirm apparently has a different definition of reservation than I do. They informed me that I do have a five day reservation with them but I'll have to leave and go to another hotel on Day 3 but am welcome back on Day 4. FT. Went to what I like to call "the people's hotel". In Niamey, there are two big fancy hotels where all the expats stay, surrounded by nice restaurants and taxis that charge 5 times what everyone else does. We did not stay at that type of hotel. I liked the place where we ended up though- what it lacked in cleanliness and modernity it made up for in the friendliness of staff. By Day 2 the receptionist was asking me for advice on getting pregnant. No luck trying to explain that I'm not a doctor but I think my pretty basic advice might have done the trick...

TRANSPO

Each country has their own way of doing taxis and Niger's involves standing on the road and yelling out where you want to go and eventually someone pulls over and lets you in with four other people. No matter where you go it costs 50 cents. I have no idea how taxi drivers fill their tanks with gas but I do sort of like the strategy involved in trying to keep you taxi full at all times with passengers going different places. You have to shrug off the brutal rebuffs when you want to go somewhere that is not in their plan. Only trick is figuring out which side of the street to shout your destination from. Thankfully the guard at the hotel was pretty nice about directing me to one side or the other every morning.

MONEY

I was carrying about 3k in cash with me because ATMs and credit cards aren't so popular in Niger. When I think about it I shudder... I don't even like having more that $50 on me in NYC. However, between my colleague and myself, hired cars and hotel bills, we burned through it pretty quickly. However, before burning through it, we had to change it. I hate banks. I really hate African banks. Lots of ambiguous lines and everyone around you can see what you're doing. So here we were changing $100 bills (and only brand new ones with the big heads, bc the other ones are suspected to be counterfeit) which is significantly more than the average monthly income here. And worse, the exchange rate was about 500 to 1 so $100 dollars ends up being A LOT of bills. Also not sure if the guy with the machine gun at the entrance to the bank makes me feel safer or not. Even worse was when money got wired to me because the Western Union man made me COUNT EVERY BILL before he'd let me sign for it. He also ran out of large bills so it was all in 5000 CFA notes. The stack was about 4 inches high. I felt like a total shmuck counting out that kind of money in the 9th poorest country in the world.

So yeah, Niger, the basics.

Ghana Pix

Ah, the beach...

Giant Club beer's got nothing on my Ice!

Smirnoff Ice and Cheeze Doodles... total class

Ghana: Allez danser danser!

What I love about Ghana is that there is no task that is too serious to be interrupted by a little dance move and everywhere you go there is a song playing in the background... and 70% of the time, it is this song ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOmaIOSccQQ). I heard this song no fewer than 100 times during this trip. A solid 30 of those times were at a bar when a group of four dudes had it on repeat while trying to modify the electric slide to fit the rhythm. We started to make bets on the exact time the song would play after we sat down in a different restaurant or cafe.

So another thing that makes Ghana and I get along are our mutual love for Smirnoff Ice. Now this delightful beverage has of late become quite a joke in the US with being "Iced" actually considered an affront... I welcome all the "icing" and so do my Ghanaian friends. Bring on the Smirnoff Ice at all formal occasions. I was greeted with my first Smirnoff Ice at the cocktail reception to kick off my conference. This is also the first of many times that I did the electric slide in Ghana. Could it get any better.... oh yeah, there were Cheeze Doodles!

My conference was a little bougie. I mean Smirnoff Ice and Cheese Doodles sort of says it all but we also had a police escort to get to the conference every morning. This was intended to get us through the notorious Accra traffic so I was all for it. Except then I sat in the front seat and saw what actually goes on in this escort. A man in a motorcycle rides in front and waves cars off the side of the road with his flailing hands and often directs the bus to ride against oncoming traffic. There were so many times I thought we were going to hit someone, it was terrifying. But we arrived to the conference venue in record time.

After my conference I had a couple extra days and did the requisite trip to the Slave Castle (so sad/creepy/disturbing) and the National Park. Then for the weekend I headed to the beach which was a lovely if not particularly culturally enriching experience. The setting could have been an island off of Thailand if you swapped out the little Black children playing in the surf for little Asian ones. Total relaxation. There was a monkey that tried to get into our room, and a whole lot of really high Rastas but there was also a live Reggae band and Smirnoff Ices galore.

My last Ghana experience before we left was an absolutely delightful barbecue with a fellow conference goer and all his boarding school buddies from back in the 50's. I got to hear stories about what Ghana was like 50 years ago from a group of spunky, powerful, and charming older men. Great way to end a trip.

Also, I will show anyone who wants to know the modified electric slide that goes to "ahayede".

Addis Pix

The fam

The meal

Yay public transpo!

I still heart Addis, but...

I have never been so sick in my life. My body simply refuses to keep anything inside of it and is using all means possible to dessicate me rapidly. I won't share any more details in this forum but a few of you know the more gruesome aspects of this illness- let's just leave it at 'I left a very large tip for the cleaning lady today'.

In retrospect, I know the exact moment I ingested the evil that wreaked such havoc on my system. It started as a delightful adventure, an afternoon without interviews and a thoughtful invitation from a receptionist to come to her home for lunch. I live for this kind of thing! Getting out of the hotels, meeting real people, being a part of a family. This is why I travel.

It took three different shared van rides to get to her house which was exciting- I get a thrill out of figuring out public transportation wherever I go. And the nice thing about Addis is that all transportation feels really safe because I have yet to see a vehicle that is capable of surpassing 30 miles per hour so I feel like high speed crashes are unlikely. People are a little shocked to see a foreigner on the shared vans and a lot of them smile at me and say "foreigner" in Amharic, in case I didn't know. But there really is no better way to see this city, each bus went to a major landmark and then we hopped off and on to another. It took about 2 hours to get to her home which was far outside the city.

I whipped out my trusty photo album to break the ice which worked like a charm and I saw all their family albums and could name every member of their extended family by photograph at the end. It was a ladies lunch with just her cousin and aunt. They prepared a 'fasting meal' for me meaning there was no meat (which is probably a good thing). It consisted of three different 'plops' for the injera (bread). One was red and made of beans, another was green and made of lentils, and the third was a kind of cottage cheese. Let's start by saying that there is no way this home had any means of refrigerating cheese. Let's also add that there is no way that this dairy product is familiar with the work of Louis Pasteur. My brain said, "steer clear of sketchy cheese" immediately. If only it were that simple...

I was clearly not an efficient consumer of Ethiopian food. While I am no stranger to eating with my hands, the bread was thin and my plops of deliciousness kept soaking through before I could get it in my mouth. So mama, in the most lovely intentioned manner, decides it's best if she makes me careful little bites- and then feeds them to me with her hand. It felt so intimate, like I was her daughter, as she fed me with her hands the choice bites... however these bites contained aforementioned cheese...

All was well until that night when I had all systems fail and we won't go back into that. After 8 hours of misery I called reception to find out what time pharmacies opened so I could buy some medicine. The news wasn't good and I couldn't stop vomiting long enough to google "when does food poisoning require medical attention" which I think was a pretty good sign that it was time. Reception called a driver to take me to the "foreigners clinic" which I was fine with after touring all the government hospitals. I waited until right after one vomit session to leave in hopes of holding off the next one until after I was out of the cab (success!) I got there before the doctor so the gardener gave me her cell phone number and when I called she told me to sit tight and she'd be there ASAP.

I have never been so well taken care of in my life. They took blood, set up an IV, dripped fluids into me, fed me, let me sleep, checked up on me every 15 minutes, gave me meds and soothing words... all for a total bill of $123. Yes, 8 hours of hospitalization complete with full doctor attention, an IV and meds totaled $123. To contrast that, I recently cut my finger (which involved a less than intelligent episode with a knife and a bag of chips) and got three stitches for a total of 8 minutes of medical attention in the US and it cost me $1064. The next day the Ethiopian doctor called me to see how I was feeling and had blood results back already. Amazing.

So I still love Addis, but... NO MORE SKETCHY CHEESE!

I heart Addis HARD

Ethiopia- what a delightful start to the business trip from hell. Addis Ababa is a fantastic city. It has pretty much everything a young foreign solo business traveller could want: fast internet, safe streets, friendly people, good weather, and not too oppressive a dress code.

The weather at 7000ft above sea level is cool in the morning and warm during the day. Basically delightful. The sun rises early, the days are long, not a cloud in the sky in November.

I spent my first day walking around the neighborhood where my guesthouse is situated. I wouldn't say there are "sidewalks", more like occasional flat elevated areas that cars don't drive on in between giant piles of rubble or gaping uncovered sewers. So strolling is not so much a passive sport as a very active one in which it is a little hard to look around because you are constantly looking at your feet. However, it was a lovely stroll.

An important aspect of enjoying business travel for me is how I am received by people. In Niger nobody acknowledges my existence (despite the fact that I'm fairly certain I stand out) and in Morocco I have three single men stalking me at all times. Ethiopia however, hits this perfect medium. About one in ten people I pass on the street says "Hello, how are you?" and when I say "Fine" they smile, and then keep walking. It's the perfect balance of friendliness without creepiness. I feel welcomed but not ogled. Appreciated but not preyed upon.

The other amazing thing about Ethiopia is that I knew exactly two people coming in- my good friend from grad school, and a friend of a friend who was referred to me after I posted a desperate facebook message to find out if anyone had contacts where I'd be traveling. So on different nights I went out with each of these people and met their friends and magically- they had a friend in common. This is amazing because as I meet this friend of a friend in a bar and explain I've been in Addis for 2 days, suddenly this other guy walks in and comes over to say "Laura, great to see you!" and now it looks like I have friends. Yay to false impressions.

The last thing that I love about Addis is my guest house. It is the warmest, most comfy place on earth. The manager himself picked me up from the airport. The receptionists leave each other little notes about what's been going on during their shifts so I may say "off to do some shopping" to one and when I return, the next one says "what did you buy?" (I swear it's endearing and not creepy). The only slightly creepy part was that I was exploring the building and went up to the roof and found a door with a key in it but decided not to trespass but when I went downstairs, the manager said "I noticed you were looking at the terrace, feel free to enjoy yourself out there". So there are cameras... but that's a safety thing, right?

My room is big and clean and came with a fresh pair of slippers and a little kitchen. The cleaning lady places everything I own at right angles when I leave. The cook calls my room before bringing my breakfast to ensure I'm dressed (now how is that an innovation that other hotels haven't picked up on?). I eat my breakfast looking out a giant window, bathed in light.

Communication can be a bit rough. I called reception to ask for a few extra hangers. Then someone called back to ask me to describe them and I said they were plastic and in the closet. The cleaning lady hiked all the way up 5 floors to bring me a giant plastic bucket. FAIL. Eventually I got my hangers though, about 30 of them.

My favorite receptionist helps me every morning to practice pronouncing the names of every person I have an interview with. I feel like a part of a lovely household, complete with crying babies from all the Americans adopting Ethiopian infants who also stay in the same hotel.

I gotta make sure my projects here pan out so I can come back to this city!

Mozambique adventure: the saga concludes

So it should be pretty clear that these posts are not properly dated since they all have the same date and happened days and sometimes months apart. I'm just lazy and it took a while for me to start this blog so I'm pasting in all the mass emails I sent out to my faithful readers (read: my mom).

A few hours after the conclusion of the last Mozambiquan tale, wherein I achieved a complete victory of obtaining a new passport and visa within 24 hours, a new twist arose.

My purse was located. I was driving around with the doctor who guided my site visits and he got a phone call from a doctor at the first hospital we visited. She proceeded to explain what happened:

I got up to inspect an ultrasound machine with my tote in hand and left my purse by the chair. The doctor came into the room, saw the purse and assumed it belonged to one of the nurses. To ensure it didn't get stolen (not even by one of the generous thieves) she subsequently locked the purse in the top of a cabinet in the back of a small room... and then went home for two days. She came back two days later and thought "I wonder if anyone ever picked up that purse I locked up without telling anyone?" and dangnabbit she saw that it was still in that cabinet in the back of that small room. Now she got curious and opened it to find a zillion documents with that foreign girl's photo and name on them. Little did she know that now the purse mostly contained an invalid passport and two cancelled credit cards...

So at least I got my phone back..

I am sorry for assuming my purse was stolen. I should have been more generous with my assumptions and thought "someone probably locked it in a small room to ensure it doesn't get stolen by someone else". I stand humbly and offer my sincere apologies.

So you'd think all my troubles were solved but alas, I had cancelled all of my credit cards and was thus left with a little cash and another country and 7 days to fund...

My office wired me some money (this was a Friday) and by the time it was 9am in New York to get the wire started it was already past business hours in Mozambique so no chance at getting it. However, I was informed that there were a few banks that are open on Saturday so I got up early, ready to chase down my cash.

For some reason in Mozambique all Western Unions are located inside of banks and only three banks are open on Saturday. Also apparently EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER does all their banking on Saturday. You would not believe the snaking line at the bank. I think half the people were just there for the AC. Thankfully, the driver who picked me up spoke some English because he is a Jehovah's Witness and is learning English at his church. His vocabulary was a bit biblical but I was thankful for his help. The two of us stood in line for 1 hour and 15 minutes at which time I noticed that there seemed to be some secret line to the left of all the tellers. Some people seemed to be able to bypass the giant snake and go straight up. I wanted to be in that line. What did they do over there. I asked JW to find out what that line was for and in the process of him doing this he found out something even more interesting- the Western Union teller doesn't work on Saturdays. Ugh.

Thankfully there was a bank next door but that one didn't use Western Union, only Moneygram. We proceeded to drive around town searching for open banks and Western Union tellers to no avail. Thankfully I had enough cash on me to cover my lodging.