A little bit ADDIS, a little bit a dat.

We arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the crack of January dawn, bloated after 3 weeks of Greek food, hung-over after drinking a little too much at the Cairo airport with a Californian on his way to Saudi Arabia and a Hungarian on his way to Thailand, and confused as to why we were greeted once we got off the plane with "Merry Christmas!" We specifically escaped to Africa to avoid the American winter and somehow found ourselves in a perpetual state of the holiday: the decorative lead-up in Accra, the children ringing triangles on Santorini on December 24th, the celebration of Greek Orthodox Epiphany in Athens on January 6th, and landing in Addis for Ethiopian Christmas, celebrated on January 7th (naturally).

Tiniest hotel room ever

Although we needed a minute to adjust to a new time zone, currency, language, smell, and altitude (Addis sits at 7700 ft), it felt good to be back on the continent. All we needed was a good night sleep, and we'd be ready to fall in love with the country that had been raved about by so many the world over.

It's been nearly three weeks. We're not smitten. We haven't hired movers to pack up our stuff and ship it over here. We haven't joined hoards of Westerners at adoption agencies. In fact, we've said, "I miss Dakar" more times than we ever thought we would.

But, Ethiopia is important on the African continent economically, politically, and culturally. The IMF forecasts Ethiopia's economic growth rate (8.5%) between 2011-2015 to be the 3rd highest in the world, only behind China and India. Ethiopians proudly boast that their country is the only one on the continent that was never colonized (notwithstanding a brief Italian occupation from 1935-41). 

That uniqueness and a rich history of strong empires, combined with a 17-year repressive communist state, make for an interesting political climate with a mix of local and foreign influences. With the discovery of Lucy, a 3.2 million year old skeleton believed to be the oldest and most complete hominid, Ethiopia claims to be the cradle of humankind (though recently even older skulls have been found in Chad and Kenya...whatever), and with more than 80 different languages spoken, it is one of the most diverse countries on the continent.

And, you can't know Ethiopia without knowing its capital, Addis Ababa. Meaning 'new flower', Addis is the 4th largest city in Africa, and as home to the Organization of African Unity, is seen as the continent's diplomatic hub. Made up of rural farmers coming to the city for a better life, slum dwellers, a moneyed-elite, foreign investors and aid workers, and pan-African cosmopolitans, Addis is a swanky, smelly, spicy, mess of a metropolis.

It's impossible to typify the city in one anecdote or encounter, so we give you a little bit Addis, a little bit a dat.*

Raw meat on almost every menu.

The Food

After a gluttonous feta and moussaka-filled Greek Christmas, Julienne gave up cheese for 2012. For the whole entire year (?!?!?!). (JO note: It's called a New Year's resolution, people!) Fortunately, there is enough deliciousness in Ethiopian food that even Sara could handle a meal without dairy. In fact, every Wednesday and Friday, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians "fast". But let’s not be silly, fasting doesn't mean not eating. It means that you can eat anything you want as long as it doesn't come from an animal (like cheese), unless it's fish...or jello...those are Biblically sanctioned exceptions. It's like being sorta vegan two days per week. We're not complaining, the cheese-less "fasting pizza" is pretty awesome, though we haven't tried the variety with tuna.

Extra berbere, just in case.

On most days though, we’re eating piles and piles of lentils (kikalecha), chickpeas with berbere (shiro), spicy chicken and egg stew (dorowat), and minced spinach (gomen).  And we’re doing it all with our fingers.  Food here is served communal style, with a big metal plate centered on a squat, knee-high table. We could go on and on, but since 90% of the people reading the blog have either been to Meskerem or recently bought the DC area Groupon, you get our drift.

Pickpockets in the Piazza

In 3 months in West Africa, neither of us had ever been (or attempted to be) pick pocketed. We didn't take any specific precautions, like wear a money belt, stylish (reads obvious) as they are. So it was a bit of a surprise to have not one, not two, but three pickpocket attempts in our first 72 hours here. But, since we're now seasoned travelers, all 3 attempts (and the 7 since) were thwarted. Here's how they went down:

1. Dude man standing on a crowded street corner decides to hawk a big loogie. He "doesn't see" Julienne as he spits while turning around. "Surprised" that he "accidentally" spit down her pants, dude man grabs a convenient tissue out of his pocket and starts wiping it off. While he's distracting her by wiping the spit off with one hand, he reaches into her front pocket with the other hand. Wise to this maneuver, Julienne grabs his wrist with every "hustler-hating, get your tour offering, no I don't want to go to a traditional coffee ceremony or buy a bogus DVD" bone in her body and twists like there's no tomorrow. We wished he had successfully picked her pocket, though, only to walk away with the super tampon she had in there.

2. Some high on glue street kid walked straight up to Sara, put his hand in the front pocket of her jeans (twice), and on the second try she smacked his forearm so hard that the donkey across the road started jogging away.

3. Oh yeah, you're going to try to unzip my backpack. Sure, that might work if you didn't smell like you fell head first into a keg of moonshine and said, 'hey my seesta', as you grabbed the pack. Idiot.

Better students -- at school in the Merkato.

Amharic Lessons

We had such an easy time with French, why not tackle Amharic?  After Greek, we figured we could up our game with the fourth alphabet system we’ve encountered on this trip.  First word: coffee.  Second word:  beer.  Third word: another please.  We found a local tutor on the Addis ex-pat Craigslist, plopped down in a café with him, and then proceeded to pepper him with “how do you say…” questions.  Three weeks later, with only a few more words in our vocab, we are still absolutely unable to read a thing.  Similar to French, most is gendered, and while we don’t always remember to “-nesh” our “salaams” to women, we’re getting quite a few smiles at the effort. 

Timkat and the Orthodox Warblers

After much searching for a guesthouse that had hot water, was no more than twice our original budget, didn't have a box of condoms in the ash tray, and had "internet access" (we use the quotations very liberally), we found a new place tucked behind the Bole Mendel Alem Orthodox Cathedral.  To our good fortune, or so we thought, this meant that we would be close by to participate in Timkat, the Ethiopian Epiphany. Considering we had just celebrated Epiphany in Greece two weeks earlier we thought we would have a leg up on the celebration. Not so.

In Ethiopia, Epiphany is not only the celebration of Jesus' baptism, it's also inextricably entwined with national pride at being the host of Moses' tablets, encased in the Arc of the Covenant.  Each local church has a replica of the Arc, and on Timkat, the parishioners dress in their most baptismal white clothes, and solemnly carry the Arc to the town center, escorted by full on throngs of singing children and supplicating grandmas. The whole city shuts down, everyone is dressed beautifully and covered with an umbrella parasol for the mid-day walk, and the Arc is carried along a moving walkway of red carpet, carried on the shoulders of teenage boys. It's awesome.

Here's the catch: we thought we were had faced the worst 4 am call to prayer in Muslim West Africa, but nothing could prepare us for the agony of Ethiopian Orthodox Amharic hymns blaring from the neighboring church loud speakers from 3 am - 8 am each night for the past five nights. Straight. Five straight hours. Five. Straight. Hours. And like the Australians who play continuous notes on the didgeridoo by inhaling and exhaling simultaneously, so do the warbling Orthodox priests. You'd think they'd at least need a bathroom break.

Ethiopian Calendar

"Welcome to Ethiopia. Welcome to 13 months of sunshine." Excuse me, 13 months of sunshine? Keep talking.

Ethiopians, we quickly discovered, operate on two calendar systems. First, the Ethiopian calendar, invented by god knows who (actually Wikipedia probably knows, but it was shut down in protest the day of research), runs on a 12 hour clock each day and 13 months per year. Therefore, January 1, 2012 by the Roman calendar is actually the 1st day of the 5th month in the year 2004 per the Ethiopian calendar. "So you are 7 years younger when you visit Ethiopia, hahahahahahah."

Not quite following yet? Here's the explanation we got:

Time: Because Ethiopia is "close to the equator or something like that", the 12 hour clock starts at sunrise and then again at sunset, it and reflects the amount of daylight and darkness. For instance, 7am by non-Ethiopian time is 1 o'clock in Ethiopia, or 1 hour after the sunrise. 7pm is also 1 o'clock because it is 1 hour after the sun sets. Ethiopians don't use am or pm to separate the 1s o'clock, but substitute them with "in the day" or "in the night." Okay, fine. Seems logical-ish enough.

Billboard for the new light rail.

Months: "Your Western calendar is very strange because some months have 30 days, some have 31, and your February has 28 or 29 depending on the year." We conceded the point.

"In Ethiopia it is very easy. Here we have 12 months of 30 days. And the 13th month has 5 days, unless it's leap year, in which case it has 6 days." OB-VI-OUS-LY. "The 13th month is a holiday. It starts on Sept 7th and ends Sept 11th...I'm sorry for your loss." Also, to keep accounting even, nobody pays rent for the 5/6 day month.

Ethiopia maintains a different calendar because, "you know we are the only country in Africa that wasn't colonized." The second calendar Ethiopians use is the Roman calendar so that they can meet for coffee with EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD.

Riding the public mini-bus all around town

So here we are, almost three weeks into our time in Ethiopia, and as we write this snippy blog, we’re realizing that Addis is starting to grow on us. We got on the right public bus this morning, to arrive at a café we really like for Julienne to order a Pepsi in Amharic and for Sara to down a steaming latte.  We crossed the street to meet an NGO that is doing incredible agro-business development in rural Ethiopia, and this afternoon we’ll pile into a local bar to watch the African Cup of Nations football tournament.   We have a better appreciation of the history and culture of this complicated and proud people, and if they had a team in the tournament, we might actually root for them. 

*Big props to Lara B for the punny title. She gets us.