Sika | June 11, 2010
The first thing I noticed on landing in Axum was the airport. All of the airports on the historical circuit are very fancy; they look like architectural representations of Ethiopian culture. The airports not on the historical circuit, like Dire Dawa/Harar, look like boxes. We were traveling relatively lightly because Desalegn let us store a [...]
Sika | June 10, 2010
Since we couldn’t get anywhere on the historical circuit until Wednesday, and I had thought Harar sounded interesting,* that’s where we decided to start our journey. The flight lands in Dire Dawa, about an hour from Harar, and we got in late enough that we felt we needed to stay in Dire Dawa for a [...]
Sika | June 9, 2010
Monday, we made it to the museums, the ethnographic museum first, as god (and by god, I mean our random plans) intended. The ethnographic museum has many things to recommend it: the displays about Ethiopian life throughout history; the upper floor with an entire room of traditional instruments* and a larger one full of religious [...]
Sika | June 9, 2010
It was Sunday and Eid, and so the streets of Addis were thrumming with people who didn’t have to be at work. Semien hotel, where we were staying, was just off the piazza (ah, Italian attempts at colonization) and we needed to head from there further into town to find one of the few ATMs [...]
Sika | June 9, 2010
In the afternoon, we visited my school. It was anticlimactic, as most everybody was on holiday. I felt sorry for the incoming class of first years, meant to be a class of 90 and, since they wouldn’t fit in any of the existing classrooms, they were meant to be taught in the burned out and [...]
Sika | June 8, 2010
The next day, a Wednesday, we met Kris and Marla and Kristen from Nsanje for lunch at the evil christian coffee shop, a place that is owned by Irish missionary types who have books for sale that talk about how to convert Muslim women and about having a biblical marriage, and all that annoying crap. [...]
Sika | June 8, 2010
Kris pointed out, on our way down from Nyika, that we weren’t going to be able to push through to Lilongwe in any kind of time to make it worthwhile. I was supposed to have dinner with Agatha, and Kris wanted to see Gloria, but we wouldn’t get there until late, late. Also, my mom [...]
Sika | June 8, 2010
At about this time, my journal writing became even more sporadic than usual. And, no, all these nine-month late posts did not come straight out of my pristine memory, but out of my journal, so you can see the problem. Or, the wonderful freedom of it all. Or, something. Nyika was beautiful. It was a [...]
Sika | June 8, 2010
In mom’s and my whirlwind tour of Malawi, I tried to balance seeing things that I hadn’t been able to see, and showing mom what my life was like in Malawi—well, at least as close as I could given that I my life in was functionally over. We went up to Nyika Plateau, which was [...]
Sika | June 7, 2010
When I got back, we finally had my leaving party from work. There’s a whole ritual that happens when someone gets a gift. The gift-giver or representative of the group who is giving the gift holds the gift up high and dances over to give it to the recipient, where both people observe respect. When [...]
Sika | June 7, 2010
Back in Zomba. Yay! The day was longer than expected. First of all, in Tete, Mercado de UAO was nowhere near Rua de UAO, which took me forever to figure out. And, when giving directions, multiple people in Tete did this annoyingly vague hand gesture—generally in a diagonal direction from where I was at any [...]
Sika | June 7, 2010
At the airport, waiting for the flight to Tete, my ticket said the flight’s at 11. The electronic sign when I came in said the flight was at 11 and on time. But when I got to check-in there’s no sign for Tete check in. I ask and am told check in starts at 10:45. [...]
Sika | June 7, 2010
I had to get more pages put in my passport. After over two years of traveling all over the freaking place, my passport only had a couple blank pages left. It was sort of frustrating: I liked the symmetry of filling my passport at the end of my service*, but I knew I was, at [...]
