More from Addis

Yesterday (Tuesday) I spent the morning catching up on emails and then managed to get some writing done. In the afternoon we walked the four kilometers from our guest-house to Horizon house. Given that I was carrying Maia in a front-carrier it was a fairly long walk, but much more interesting than taking the car. We were able to notice things like boys beside the road, roasting corn on hot charcoals, and women selling candy by the roadside. My trouser cuffs were covered in mud by the time we got to HH, because of all the construction sites we passed. We tried to find out the names of the streets we passed, but many of them had no street signs. Maia slept almost all the way.

We spent more time playing with Malkias. Hopefully he’s becoming more familiar with us. Did I mention before that he’s babbling? He often says dadadadada and he also bursts into laughter when I say that to him. He’s a very sweet boy.

Maia had a great time with the staff. The day before she had been very tired and fractious, but yesterday she was very sweet, except for towards the end of our stay.

We took a taxi home (60 Birr) and I cooked a caulifower curry. We only have one pot in our apartment, so I had to cook everything in shifts.

I’m still suffering from jet-lag. I woke up last night after having crashed at about 8PM and looked at the time on my iPhone. It was 4:40, which I thought was reasonable — close to eight hours. I got up and got a couple of hours of writing in, and had a cup of tea. Then I realized that my iPhone is still on US time. I’d been up since 11:30PM. I watched a BBC documentary about time (with Brian Cox) on my iPhone and then went back to bed.

Pancakes for breakfast this morning. Lovely.

Connecting to the Internet on 44kbps using Windows XP with Internet Explorer is no fun.

Later: I spent the morning (the real morning) writing and then Alex, our host, gave us a ride to the Ghion Hotel, where Shrijnana and Maia went swimming. After an Ethiopian Pespi (totally different from the US kind), a coffee, and some fries (cold) we walked to HH. We spent some lovely time with Malkias. He seems to understand when I say “touch daddy’s nose). Almost every time I said that he’d reach up and touch me. I also made a start teaching him the sign for milk.

We walked back via Bole Road, where we had pizza on the roof of the Dembel mall (The Dembell Dome), which gave us all vertigo. Then another long walk back to the guest house, during which we met a friendly Ethiopian who we think was a scammer. At least he tried to drag us into a bar and then tried to convince us that we were going the wrong way to the guest house, and that we should follow him. Needless to say we didn’t, and we alerted the family that runs the guest house to be on the lookout for him, in case he decides to come calling as a “friend.”

Maia fell asleep in minutes, and then Shrijnana and I watched episode two of Star Trek Enterprise — first season. It took us four nights to watch two episodes, because we’re still conking out at 8 or 9PM.

I’ve now set my iPhone to Ethiopian time so that I don’t have any more late-night temporal confusion!

_____

Thursday: We may be going on our birth family visits tomorrow, so we’ll be even more out of touch for a couple of days. Getting online has been very hard. Sometimes no power. Sometimes no phone. Sometimes no time!

Comments are closed.