Random stuff in Addis...again

Alright, I'm tired and two days late, so this'll be quick. It's time for another round of random stuff seen in Addis.

Security measures = broken up glass bottles embedded in the top of your concrete wall.

Holy crud; it's Target (well, not really).

This is what happens when you give a four-year-old a VHS cassette to play with.

McKinsey has gone through several iterations of secure USB sticks. I think they had at least two versions during my time there. No one was ever really sure how they were supposed to work. Sometimes the default passwords weren't set right, no one could ever remember their password, and since they worked differently on firm computers versus other computers (aka client computers), it led to some confusion in explaining to clients how to make it work in order to get files / data. I'm happy to report that based on the McKinsey consultants we had at ATA for June/July, the firm has now gone with something much more obvious...

...that's right, the keypad is literally on the USB stick. I laughed out loud when I saw this.


Some nice Toyota and Apple co-branding (I'm sure this is sanctioned by both companies). I may have shared this picture or one like it already; I see this quite a bit here.

That's right, the woman sitting next to me on the minibus is holding a live chicken.

This sign was in the supermarket (loose usage of the word) near my house for quite a while. The 8th annual "training to become a professional basketball player." Ah, to follow in the footsteps of all the professional basketball players to come out of Ethiopia in the last 7 years. You know, like...[awkward silence].

Let's end on a cheerful or "merry" note. If you don't have a Macy's near you, maybe, just maybe, you'll be lucky enough to have a Mery's close by.

Back to the field once more

Hey sports fans, last week I went back out to the field. I have fewer entertaining pictures to show this time because I spent most of my time in rooms like this...

doing interviews in four different woredas (think US county). In each woreda, we wanted to interview several different sets of stakeholders to get an idea of how the input credit system had worked for everyone this year. In general, let's just say...it could use some work. While I found this interesting, pictures of conference rooms and interviewees probably isn't going to do it for the reading audience.

Random thoughts from the field:

1. Guess what they yell out at white people in rural Ethiopia? "China, China." Seriously, they think all white people are Chinese. This is what happens when the Chinese build your roads and you don't see other white people very often.

2. In micro-finance branches, bank branches, and government offices, I saw a lot of random, generic trophies without any writing on them. I guess different organizations give these out fairly regularly for different things.

This brings me to my new slogan for Ethiopia - "Ethiopia: Everyone's a winner!"

3. Check out this crazy cool sign from a woreda agriculture bureau office.

Yes, He is!

4. People in Ethiopia love Meles (the late Prime Minister who died last August). He was part of the revolutionary movement that got rid of the Derg (the communists) in the early '90s. He served as the Prime Minister for a long time and was seen as a brilliant visionary. When I first got to Ethiopia in February, there were pictures of him all over the city. There are still quite a few. Turns out this is also true in offices around Ethiopia.

5. Not all the interviews were done inside. Not a bad spot, huh?

6. On the way to Gassera, you go through a Bale Mountains National Park. There you can usually (at least judging by the two times I've gone there) see Nyala (like antelope), some kind of warthog, and baboons.

Flood, Lake Langano, and farewell to Eric

It appears the rainy season here took my evaluation (for those who don't remember, the evaluation was essentially "overrated") personally. It actually has rained a little harder the last week or so. Not only that, but on the night of Thursday, August 22, it rained enough to flood and close the ATA office that Friday. When it rains even with medium intensity, the street in front of ATA becomes a lake.

Exhibits A and B:

Apparently, this got bad enough on Thursday night (no pictures, sorry), that the "street lake" flooded into the basement of the ATA building, causing the power to go out and the backup generator (which is probably used at least 2-3 times a day) to be unusable. Friday thus became a go-to-meetings-at-the-Ministry-of-Agriculture/work-from-home day. Monday, the elevators were still out, and I'm going to blame my heavy breathing by the time I reached the 7th floor (American 9th floor) on the elevation (this is the stereotypical excuse anytime a foreigner feels out of shape here). I missed the actually flooding because I chose to walk home in the middle of the storm. With my rain boots and umbrella, I figured I'd be fine. Turns out rain boots are actually detrimental when the water gets over the top of them because then it can't drain out.

This is where a normal person would apologize to the rainy season (maybe normal isn't the right description for someone who talks to weather phenomenons), but not me. I say, "Bring it on rainy season. Is that all you got?"

This past weekend, I escaped Addis once again (really very necessary for your sanity here) and went with some friends from work to Lake Langano. Where is that and what's there, you ask. Here you go: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Lake+Langano. Helpful, huh? It's supposed to be the only lake in Ethiopia that's safe to swim in.

Two notes on the car we took down.

1. The car was insured by the "National Insurance Co. of Ethiopia (S.C.)" or "NICE." How awesome is that?

2. The van had a sticker on the back that said "My Toyota is fantastic." I swear I got a picture of this, but it's not on my phone. One of us is defective phone! I'm not sure if it's you or me, but one of us has a problem here!

Clearly the 4ish hour drive down was thrilling.

The house we stayed in there was pretty cool (literally on the beach). We fit 7 of us and could have squeezed 2 more if necessary.

View from the house:

Some might say the water looks like a chocolaty drink. I say it looks like Galveston :)

 

Speaking of the picture above. The place had kayaks (though even with my limited kayaking experience I can tell you they were not high quality and the paddles were pretty awful), and I decided to kayak across the lake (to what you see in the picture above). Turns out that it's farther than it looks, and me and my wooden paddle were not best of friends by the end. Having said that, it was by far the highlight of the trip, and on the other side, there's a peninsula on which I saw some monkeys. The other side was less deforested and seemed more untouched than the side the resort was on. Apparently, the guy who oversees the kayaks was less than pleased with my 4 hour departure, he told my friends there was no way I could come back that same day, and they all thought I died by the time I reappeared. Standard weekend on a lake stuff.

Sushant and Ravi chatting on the deck:

Ravi, Vickram, Anna, and Alli hanging out.

Vickram chilling on the beach.

Including this picture again because I can't find a better one that includes Noah (the 7th member of our crew). He's in the middle (between Ravi and Sushant) in the Y tank top. Bonus points if you can tell me where that shirt comes from (hint: not BYU).

More Lake Langano photos (none from my kayaking adventure as I figured bringing my phone out on the lake with me was a bad idea).

Pictures from the trip back.

Last thing this week is that I must say a sad farewell to Eric Couper. Eric is the 8th SPA to leave during my time here. He had been here about 18 months, was working in Tanzania beforehand, and is a development ICT (information and communications technology) guru. Eric was living here with his fiancee Rachel until she went back to the US in June. They are getting married in two weeks and will be living in DC working in development. Eric and Rachel are two of the nicest people you ever met (even letting me crash with them for 3 weeks when I first got here), and here's wishing them lasting happiness and joy!