Articles tagged with: Ethiopia
020 – Giving and Accepting
I’d taken all the photographs assuming that I’d give them to the family, but now that it came down to it I didn’t know how to go about distributing them. There were pictures of two or three people together so to whom should I give it? There were pictures of adults with children. Should the picture be given to the adult or the mother of …
016 – Too Black
On Sunday, Sisay, the 17-year-old cousin of Zebachew, took me to Lion Park and the National Museum. The first was his idea, the second mine. To get there we took one of the truck taxis. Forty-five cents each. It wasn’t crowded and the streets were almost empty. Ethiopians take their days off seriously.
Running one of those taxis takes coordination not just between the driver and …
015 – Abiy and Dereje
Beside the hotel was another small building containing two billiard tables. When I discovered them by peering through the open window, the roomit was crowded with men playing a game I’d never seen before. Five small pins sat in the centre of each table, one red and four white. They did not use cues but threw their balls by hand. The object was to strike …
012 – Eggs and Ethiopian Coffee for Breakfast
I woke up the next morning more tired than when I went to bed, and set out to see if I could use a sit-down toilet I’d noticed the previous afternoon. I hadn’t seen any water hook-up to the toilet, but I assumed it could be flushed with a bucket of water. I hadn’t seen a bucket either, but I figured all this would become …
010 – Alfa
Fortified with my first Ethiopian meal I sat in the restaurant to see if Alfa was going to show up. I’d met Alfa the day before when I arrived at the Palm. He had been sitting at a nearby table with two attractive women. The three of them were dressed to kill as so many of the Palm’s customers seemed to be. I never could …
009 – Traveller as Baby Bird
My first full day in Ethiopia began with a savage hunger, and I timidly entered the roar of activity in the small room that served as the Palm’s restaurant. People poured in and out and none were strangers. They burst in with laughter and shouts, greeting everyone with a complicated series of handshakes, hugs and even kisses – three on each cheek. Shouts of “enebla!” …
006 – Arrival – Bole International Airport – Addis Ababa
It was 1:30 in the morning. My flight was the last of the day, perhaps the only flight of the day, and with my usual affinity for the tail end of any line-up I was the last one through customs and immigration. The airport was quiet enough to be spooky. It had a deserted, underused quality, like they’d opened it up and dusted it off …
003 – My Marmot Peapod Tent
My Marmot Peapod Tent
I was just as picky when it came to picking out a tent. When I cycled in Canada and the US, I literally lived inside my tent and assumed I’d do the same in Ethiopia. So I wanted to pick the right tent. It made sense that for Africa, I’d want a tent that would be very cool and have lots of …