Funga mkanda wa kiti

It was bound to happen – after flying for 64 segments (that is, individual take offs and landings) in the past 10 months, I finally did the thing that I thought would have only taken me 20-30 segments to do: I totally forgot where I was. Now, this is not like when I wake up in a hotel room and it takes me a millisecond to remember where I am, this was full on forgot, like I claimed to be in one country and was in another. It wasn’t really all that embarrassing, but I’ll explain.

Last week, I flew from Addis Ababa to Dar es Salaam. This counts as 2 segments, because there’s a 45 minute stop in Kilimanjaro. I’ve taken this flight and its reverse flight like 14 times, and I have to say it never gets old. I don’t care who you are, flying right next to the snow capped top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, all the while knowing that your kids will probably never know that Kilimanjaro was capped with snow at some point in history, is just cool. Anyway, I spent about 2 days in Tanzania, then I flew to Rwanda for about 6 days there. I’m going to write more about Rwanda in the next couple of days, because I’ve been thinking about it nonstop and am still digesting how to accurately convey my feelings to others. Anyway, I spent the 6 days in Rwanda, but because I didn’t know I was going to Rwanda until I was in Tanzania, I had to fly back to Tanzania for 1 night in order to fly to Addis the next day to make round trip ticketing easier and cost lower.

SO. There I am in Kigali, Rwanda, waiting in this interminable line for check in, and I finally get on the plane only after waiting in line for the entire 1.5 hours between when I got to the airport and when we took off. So I never sat in the airport, didn’t have my traditional local beer while I wait in the airport, never really drank in the Kigali international boarding area. I got to Nairobi and had a 5+ hour layover there. Luckily, I had some movies to watch and the layover was a breeze. When I went to the gate when our boarding was called, it was the usual. I didn’t take off my belt or my watch, even though they both contain metal, because I know that neither one separately nor the two of them together will set off that stupid metal detector. Yet like 1 penny in my pocket does. I collect my belongings from the conveyer belt, and the nice airport worker man says to me something like, “Did you enjoy our country?” I very sincerely replied, “Yes, Rwanda is one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever seen.” I registered the looked of confusion on his face, looked up at the “Kenya Duty Free” sign right outside the gate, and realized my folly. There’s really no way to recover than that other than the obligatory 5 minute conversation that ensued, which was like “Oh, I was in Rwanda, just a layover in Nairobi, now to Dar, um, I want to come to Kenya, it seems really awesome” and stuff like that. It was a full throttle babble, but the nice guy eventually let me go.

More info on Rwanda to come soon...

Lalibela

After a month away from Ethiopia, the first thing I thought I would do is take a vacation. After all, didn't I deserve it? Well, a couple of friends who we work with in Tanzania had the week off for Easter and decided to come up to Ethiopia for a vacation, which gave me the perfect reason to take a couple of days off and go to a place I've wanted to go since I arrived: Lalibela. Lalibela's north of Addis, about a 1 hour flight away. It's a holy town that's well known for its 11 rock hewn churches, which, according to my guidebook (which is generally cynical about everything in the country), are described as "supernatural."

There's something I've learned in the past few months about famous and amazing sites, which is that every single one of them claims to be "the 8th wonder of the world!" As my family knows, I have a special interest in the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and I dare any one of you (if anyone is still reading this) to try and name more than 3 wonders.

Anyway, it turns out that Lalibela is as amazing as its described to be. The churches are all carved from rock into the ground, so that the roof of the church is at ground level and the base is a good 10 meters or so down below the surface. Some churches were still attached at various points to the rock (semi-monolithic) and others were completely free standing, with only the floor or base still attached to the rock (monolithic). The churches were absolutely breathtaking, amazing feats of architecture, artistic beauty, and holiness. I actually thought about believing in god for a second in there.

As usual, here are some photos:

St. George's church, us in the rain (we're holding out our hands because it's raining but you can't really tell), and an area between a few churches, which kind of gives you an idea of the underground like feel of the whole thing.

NI HAO

I've been kind of out of touch for a while - this is partially my fault, but I also blame it on the blockage of websites in China, which somehow deleted my whole post. So this is a good segue to say....I went to China!

I spent the first half of March in Tanzania and the second half in China. Since Tanzania is kind of old news by now (and I didn't do anything new and/or interesting there), I'm going to tell you about China. I should say that for some reason, I had kind of low expectations of China. I just wasn't all that excited about going, especially coming right off of another trip. But China proved me wrong; it was more amazing than I ever could have imagined.

I flew to China via Dubai. The trip was long, and to give you a sense I made this really helpful drawing on top of a map. The only map I could find was of the distribution of Sunni vs. Shia Muslims throughout the eastern hemisphere, so please feel free to educate yourself on that while you look at this map.

The work we did in China was kind of interesting, but probably not to most people. In case you're interested, the main thing I was trying to do was to help the CHAI/China office advise the government of China on how to finance the treatment of opportunistic infections of HIV. This involved making some models and meeting with a bunch of people, blah blah blah. The coolest parts were that (a) I spent a weekend doing China sightseeing, including going to the Great Wall, and (b) I spent 2 days in Western China.

Beijing is a completely amazing city. Despite the fact that therea re like 15 million people there, everything is really well organized and clean. Well, except the air which is ridiculously polluted. But they're doing tons of improvements on the city in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, so it was looking good. The thing that surprised me most (but shouldn't have) about China was that people spoke pretty much no English. I guess I figured that after I could easily find English speakers in rural Ethiopia, it would be no problem in the capital of the most populated country in the world. I also had the opportunity to sample some delicious Chinese dishes, like cow stomach and duck intestines. The various innards I ate ranged from just okay, this tastes like a piece of rubber (cow stomach) to wow, this is kind of delicious (duck blood).

Here's a photo of me on the Great Wall. I should explain that the photographer thought a good idea for a photo would be if I turned around and then spun when the photos was about to be taken, which is why I look like this in the photo. You have to admit, it is more exciting than me just standing there, right?

The Great Wall was really amazing - I just couldn't get over how cool it was just snaking through the landscape for thousands of miles. It's mostly all restored sections, but it was easy to imagine Chinese soldiers protecting their land atop the wall. I highly recommend visiting the Great Wall if the opportunity ever presents itself.



The second most awesome thing I saw in China was in Urumqi, in Xinjiang province. This province borders 6 other countries - Mongolia, Russia, Tajikstan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan. As a result of its location and history, the province has a culture that's completely different than what ever thought could exist in China. Here's another map!





Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to Urumqi, but I also spent the majority of my time there in a hotel in meetings, so it wasn't that interesting to see. We went to a cultural show one night that showcased a lot of song and dance from the Xinjiang province, which was cheesily touristy, but really interesting at the same time. I wish we'd had more time out there.

I was back in Addis for about a week before I went on another trip (this time for pleasure!) to Lalibela, in northern Ethiopia, and I'll post about that extremely soon.

RIP Puppy

At about 9:15am today, our beloved puppy, Puppy, passed away. She started showing signs of sickness yesterday, and we brought her to the vet immediately, who diagnosed her with Tick Fever. After she showed no signs of improvement today, I brought her to the vet again, who gave her some more medicine and said she would be okay. On the way home, she stopped breathing and died in my arms. She was 3 months old.

I'm back...

I always thought that, given the opportunity, I would make a tremendous blogger. I like writing emails, and I like staying in touch with people, and I'm usually more interesting and funnier in writing than in person, so this seemed like the ideal medium. As it turns out, although those thing are still probably true, I can't get it together to keep this thing updated. But since I've been back in Ethiopia after a lovely vacation back to the US, a lot of things have happened. I'll tell you what they are, and you can vote on which ones you want to hear about in more detail. See, this gives you an impetus for leaving a comment, which is the only way if I know anyone is reading...

1. This actually happened before I left, but I found and kept another dog
2. I went back to Tanzania, and this time visited Zanzibar
3. We got kicked out of our house (also before I left) but just found a new place (which happened recently)

My inclination is to write first about the puppy, but a colleague recently told me that I was too proud of my dogs and that when I have kids I'm going to be the annoying mother on the sidelines of my kids' soccer games. Everyone would tolerate listening to me talk endlessly about how wonderful my kids were, but then would secretly hate me. If this is true, I'll pass on writing too much about the puppies, but can tell you about the glories of Zanzibar or my new pink house.