Scribbled thoughts

Tired after a long day and want to get up early enough to do some work before going to work because I am an animal, but wanted to scribble some thoughts after day 3.

Ethiopia is great, but it is definitely going to be a difficult place to live in many ways.  I've managed to track down 1 of my bags now, but I'm still missing 50% of my luggage.  The other one has been sitting in the airport in Addis for 3 days now, despite there being 3 flights a day from Addis to Bahir Dar.  Also, I wasn't smart enough to mix my packing, so I've now got 10 pairs of pants and shoes, 1 shirt and no deodorant.

Outside, there was just a huge flash of lightning followed by a deafening peal of thunder, it has rained every afternoon/evening since I arrived but the rainy season is slowly coming to an end.  This also means the temperature is deliciously cool at the moment, this evening I could see my breath in the air as I wolfed down injera with asa gulash and shira - ethiopian flatbread made from teff, fried pieces of spiced fish and a spiced thick chickpea paste.  Everyone eats from the same plate, which I love, and if you're with Ethiopians, people will feed each other sometimes.  North America, take notes. Secretly, everyone knows getting fed by someone else feels awesome.  During the day it's warm, during the night it's cool, the temperature is perfect.

The rainy season also appears to be a boon for the shoe-shiners that seem to line ever street here.  They range in age from about 5 to 85, and post up by the side of the road in droves, shining and cleaning shoes for a couple of cents each.  The red mud dirt roads around Bahir Dar become muddy quagmires after a good rain and don't dry out fully until the dry season is over.  This is the worst when it comes to keeping your brand new work shoes clean, but the BEST when it comes to making a living cleaning the mud off people's shoes.

I seem to have arrived at a really interesting time of year, as Ethiopian New Year is this week, according to the Orthodox calendar.  It's on Thursday, which is national holiday, although I currently have a 9am meeting that morning and a 2pm meeting that afternoon because I am a certified SCHEDULING GENIUS.

This week has basically seen me working hard to bring myself up to speed on what this organization does, the projects it is working on in different parts of the country (the field sites I work in are going to range from 2-11 hours drive away) and how they fit together.  Despite this being a small team relative to the operations in other East African countries, there is a ton of work going on. I will spend some time breaking things down in greater detail in a later post, suffice to say we're working to increase the availability of credit for farm inputs to small farmers, improving farmer savings practises, developing new more effective planting methods that improve on existing practises and improve the delivery and dissemination of these practises via existing but under-achieving government sponsored agricultural extension programs.  These last two are going to be what I'm mainly involved with as part of the teff team, but I am spending my first few weeks working my tail off to learn and observe as much as I can regarding all of the programming because I think it will all help to inform my work once I begin to assist with/take on projects of my own.

Bed time.