Arrival and Addis

Erin and I have made it to our village—Chiri—in southwestern Ethiopia. (If you look on a google maps, we’re near Bonga which is near Jimma.) We left Chicago on Tues, Sept 1st and traveled 20 hours, via Frankfurt Germany, to Addis Ababa. Two of the other volunteers, Faith and Andrew and their daughter Alea (who’s 2 years old), picked us up at the airport with a red carnation. We went straight to bed… and lay awake… all night. Jetlag.

Then it was time to learn about Addis. Our introduction to the city would come in the form of a scavenger hunt for one of the city’s most elusive items—an Ethiopian driver’s license—necessary for driving our vintage Land Cruiser around the country to pick up meds and supplies (and hopefully some visitors!). The hunt began north of the city at the US embassy. For a fee (note a trend beginning) the embassy will produce a document verifying the validity of our US drivers licenses. Then, we traveled across town to the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that someone behind a window could stamp this document, further legitimizing it (for another fee…which needed to be paid at another window of course). Next, it was on to the Department of Transportation—an enormous two-story building with countless government employees sitting behind countless windows apparently intended for conducting business. At each window, a crowd was gathered. We paid for a form to apply for our driver’s licenses and then pushed our way through one of the window crowds to process the forms. Unfortunately, we were informed that this department of transportation no longer provided driver’s licenses (it is still unclear what they did do). We were instructed to go to the “Kaliti Training Center”. When we asked where Kaliti Training Center was, the woman behind the window directed us to “go to Meskel Square, make a right, and ask someone where it is… everyone knows where Kaliti Training Center is.” Never mind that when she said “right” she was actually pointing left. Shortly thereafter (and after numerous awkward conversations with passersby), we found out that very few people actually know where Kaliti Training Center is. We visited another similar DOT building in another part of town, pushed to the front of another window, and learned that by “right”, the woman actually meant left. Oh, and she forgot to mention that Kaliti Training Center is 15 kilometers down the road in an hidden unmarked building. Once in Kaliti, a kind gentleman (who apparently didn’t work for the DOT) walked us to numerous windows until we identified someone responsible for driver’s licenses. Within a few minutes we had our driver’s license cards. But wait, they weren’t laminated. Well that’s another window… and another fee… of course.

It is now legal for us to drive here – we’re still trying to decide if that’s a good thing. Driving can be hectic, to say the least, but take a look at this mountain we passed on our trip from Addis to Jimma!

We’d love to hear how everyone is doing (read: life is pretty slow here and emails or even letters would make our day, so keep ‘em coming!). Please use our gmail addresses – jpanzer@gmail.com and erinemccarville@gmail.com.
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