Ethiopia 2008, Part 2

The drive back from Awassa to Addis Ababa took four hours. The most interesting things we saw were two truck loads of beautiful camels being driven to Djibouti. According to our driver, they were being sent by ship at Djibouti to one of the Middle East countries to be used for work or as food. We also passed a number of huge greenhouse operations, owned by the Israelis who have an extensive flower industry for the European market.

We are in the middle of the Ethiopian winter or the rainy season; summer is the dry season. In Addis, where the altitude is over 8,000 feet, most of the day is cloudy with intermittent rain. Many of the streets don’t have any pavement, and we are constantly maneuvering rocks and big stones, or trying to avoid huge pot holes every few yards. Traffic just zooms down the street with goats, sheep and occasionally cattle running into the road.

As soon as we drove into Addis, I began to cough again due to the diesel fumes bellowing from the cars and trucks. Addis has to be one of the most hectic, intense and interesting cities I have ever seen. In this country of 80 million people (the second largest in Africa) almost 90 percent of the population lives in the small towns and rural areas. Addis is alive with its more than five million people. One thing I noticed is that the rich and poor live in the same neighborhoods. This is different from most major cities in the world, where the population is segregated by wealth and class. This probably creates interesting phenomena because the tension between the Muslims and Christians (about evenly divided) is minimal. With both rich and poor living in the same space, both groups are dependent and interdependent upon each other.

Ethiopia 2008

After spending 24 hours on the plane I finally arrived at Addis Ababa in the Horn of Africa. Getting off the plane and clearing customs, we walked into the craziness of this airport waiting for Yohannes to pick us up. People were running around like mad and there were security lines everywhere just to get into the airport (there have been some terrorist incidents in this Ethiopian capital city during the past year so security is very tight). The smell of smoke from diesel engines on cars and the burning of wood and charcoal permeated everything. I started to cough.

This is wintertime in Ethiopia, even though there are really only two seasons: wet and dry. The temperature is in the 60’s with periodic rains. It felt cold the first two days primarily because most of the houses are concrete and have no heat. It took me a couple of days to begin to get adjusted to the dampness. However everything was green unlike when I was here 18 months ago when everything was hot and dry and BROWN.

The rains came late this year and this has made a situation that is already tough for millions of people, especially children, even tougher. A lot of this country depends on the rains in the early spring to successfully plant the crops. In some parts of Eastern and Northern Ethiopia the rains were scarce, and coupled with the tremendous increase in the price of gasoline, hardships were even more evident now than when I was here last year. The international media, including a recent article by the Los Angeles Times, have been reporting famine conditions.