A wet and dreary Addis Ababa


Mesfin and family


A "line taxi": the Addis version of a city bus. They should seat 11 passengers but often carry 17 or more!


Mesfin being congratulated by Gobeize, another colleague.


Mesfin and guest ferenji


The John F Kennedy library in Addis Ababa University, gifted by JFK himself. The biggest and best equipped library in Ethiopia.

After spending the last few days in Addis Ababa I’m back home. Yes, our house in Awassa really does feel like home, much more so than our house in Hertfordshire which is currently somebody else’s home. It’s also nice to have sunshine again. The weather in Addis is grey, wet and generally dismal at the moment. At least one blanket is needed at night.

I travelled to Addis on Friday afternoon, which involves a six hour ordeal by bus. I’m feeling quite practiced at travelling by bus here, and I don’t think I’ll complain about public transport at home again. I eventually arrived at the Yonas Hotel at 8pm. I think I’ve written about the Yonas before. It’s a real institution for volunteers as VSOs stay there when in Addis, and if you hang about in the bar you’re bound to bump into another vol you haven’t seen for a while.

Mesfin, one of my HDP candidates, had invited me to attend his Masters Degree graduation at Addis Ababa University on Saturday. I felt very honoured as he could only get two tickets and I received one of them instead of several other members of his family. The University is the oldest in Ethiopia and certainly the biggest. Over 1000 people graduated with Master’s Degrees during the day and the place was filled with family members brandishing cameras. The afternoon was spent at his sister’s house where a huge spread of food was laid out in celebration.

On Saturday evening I bumped into Jerry, Mura and Emma at the Yonas, who were in the February intake with us, and spent the evening with them. They are in Asossa which is way out in the West close to the border with Sudan. On Sunday morning they were supposed to fly back to Asossa but soon returned from the airport after missing their flight due to a schedule change nobody told them about. As the next flight to Asossa is on Thursday this was a bit of a frustrating experience for them!

Gill travelled to Addis on Sunday and we attended an HIV & AIDS mainstreaming workshop together, with three of our Ethiopian colleagues, on Monday. Monday night was another social evening with other VSOs in the Yonas bar followed by a 5.30am wake-up call to get the bus back to Awassa. I’m knackered from the travelling but it has been a very good few days and very social. There’s a real bond between VSOs who arrive together in the same intake and seeing some of them, who we haven’t seen since Feb and have no idea when we will meet again, has been a rejuvenating experience and a lot of fun.

It’s not even 9pm yet but I’m off to bed.