Business as usual

14th-20th - Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Addis Ababa - African diplomatic capital, biggest city in Ethiopia, another dustbowl. In all fairness, "Addis" is a city that isn't too hard to like. It's reasonably simple to get around, has its fair share of communist-inspired landmarks (the concrete, red-star-topped Derg monument and the enormous concrete sea of Meskal Square. It also has an array of restaurants serving injera with everything one could possibly wish for. Ethiopia being the first country I've ever visited where I actually care about the food, this is a good thing.

Addis was also the city where we took care of business - visas were needed, as were US dollars for Somaliland and Djibouti Francs, and I had to extend my visa. We checked into a hotel in the nicely named Haile Gebreselassie Street before moving to another cheaper option in the even more wonderfully named Democratic Republic of Congo Street, and spent most of the days sorting out business before taking care of pleasure (injera and beer) in the evenings, meeting up with Cole and Amanda again during the second half of our moderately productive stay in Addis. Our first experience was positive - we had no money and couldn't find an ATM and so we went to a restaurant to ask if we could pay with Visa. No, was the answer, but we could eat there and come back to pay another day if we wanted! Strange in a country where most people seem to be after money by hook or by crook but we didn't complain! Our second experience was more typically Ethiopian - the visa extension. After being shunted from office to office, we eventually got hold of the form I needed and filled it in, before being approached by someone in some sort of uniform whose exact purpose of being there I wasn't too sure of.

"Hi, what do you need?"
"I need a visa extension, where can I take this form?"
"We are very busy today, can you come back to hand it in tomorrow morning?"
"No."
"OK, well just give it in to that office. But we are closing for lunch, so come back in 2 hours."

After another delightful injera, we headed back and sat around waiting for a long time before I had my form taken in, and was pointed to another room where I was to wait for ages again, M was informed that she couldn't wait with me and ignored the guy telling her with considerable ability, and finally I paid my 20 dollars and was barked at to come back at 3 the next day to pick up my extension. Taking previous experience into account, we rocked up at 4.30pm and avoided the queues. I was free for another month!

Generic Addis street scene

The visa run was rather more eventful as we had by this point run out of dollars, and Ethiopia has a curious rule whereby you can't change Birr to any other currency unless you have a flight ticket out of the country. Djibouti was first up.

"Fill in this form, bring one photo, and 40 dollars."
"Can we pay in Birr?"
"No."
"But we can't find dollars anywhere and we have none left"
"Well..." And he shrugged and went back to his business. This would obviously be a tough one.

We decided to try our luck at the Somaliland office instead.

"Fill in this form, bring one photo, and 40 dollars."
"Can we pay in Birr?"
"No."

The deja vu was considerable. However on our explaining our predicament, the delightful ladies in the Somaliland office put in a couple of phone calls and told us with a smile that we could pay in Birr if we wanted. Within 15 minutes the visas were ready and we were sent off to the head of the mission who signed it and gave us some nice info about the country with the exception of the Somaliland Shilling exchange rate, which he told us he had no idea about having not been to Somaliland for two years.

Hurrah!

Our hunt for dollars continued until later that day when, having tried every bank in Addis, we wandered into a travel agent looking for a flight ticket from Djibouti to Nairobi to try and find our way around this impasse. When the woman behind the desk asked if we wanted the price in dollars or birr, a metaphorical lightbulb flickered into life over my head and I asked her if, by any chance, she might know where we could get hold of some US dollars because it's so hard to find here and we've tried everything and if she had any idea could she please tell us because otherwise we can't get any of our visas and can't leave Ethiopia at all please please please. The pleading had the desired effect and she closed the door, went off into a backroom and came back with 80 dollars and a calculator. We shoved our ill-gotted gains deep into our pockets and disappeared into the sunset, celebrating with more injera and Dashen beer.

Next morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed bright and early with a steely determination, and charged down to the Djibouti embassy.

"What do you want?"
"We've come to get visas."
"We are closed today."
"But...ehh... we were told to come back today!"

We were shown a notice board where it was announced that the embassy would be closed on that day due to the Muslim New Year. Next morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed bright and early with a steely determination, and charged down to the Djibouti embassy. This time, everything worked out, we were told with a smile to come back at 3 in the afternoon to pick up our passports. And we were ready to go! We'd got a surprise email from Cole and Amanda that they had been inspired by our Somaliland advertising campaign in Bahir Dar and that they'd got their visas too, so we were to have a little gang there for New Year! A similar advertising drive on behalf of Djibouti failed, so we agreed to meet up in Hargeisa in a week or so.

Aside from embassies and monolithic communist monuments, Addis doesn't have much in particular to see. Having spent many evenings wandering around the different suburbs and taking in the atmosphere, and instead of sitting around for another week eating injera and drinking Awash wine and Dashen beer, we got ourselves a minibus heading to Dire Dawa, from where we would try to get to Djibouti City and find somewhere sunny to spend Christmas holidays while thinking of everyone back home huddling up for warmth...

A reminder of the glorious past!