Ethiopia by Picture

To give you a better idea about my experiences in Addis and my stay at Running Across Borders, here are some photos, with a brief description, from my two weeks in the Ethiopian capital. More can be viewed on my flickR account.

7am in Meskel square.   There are lots of guys playing football on what used to form the old stadium.  And lots of smog in the background.

The old steps of the stadium are used as a training ground for emerging athletes and keep-fit enthusiasts.  Doing a 40 minute run over and back the tiers in that pollution felt a lot harder than it should have.

The new stadium is just down the road and currently undergoing some renovations.

And it's not just in Meskel that they play football.  Like all Africans, they're football crazy and play just about anywhere, and not always with a proper ball.  Premier League games are regularly shown on Ethiopian TV (even though they only have 2 stations), and live viewing of the New York marathon was interrupted to show Liverpool v Chelsea.  That would never have happened in Kenya!

As the Running Across Borders camp is right on the edge of the city, beautiful views of the countryside such as these are only minutes away.

But life in the countryside is hard work.  This guy is harvesting his crops by hand. Or at least he was until he spotted us with the camera.

The crops then need to be carried home, by hand or by donkey.

And then there's the water to collect.

Even quarrying, to meet the huge demand for stone for the new roads being built right through this area, is done by hand.

The children are incredibly photogenic and don't mind posing to have their picture taken...

...though that's not to say they won't ask for money.  When this group started begging, we gave them a doughnut to share between them.  They seemed happy enough.

This is Arsama.  She fell in love with my sunglasses...

...

...but they do look better on her than they do on me!

That's me with some of the lads at Running Across Borders, though some of them are more interested in watching the football than looking at the camera.

At the camp time between training is spent playing cards, scrabble and draughts...

...and some more draughts.  I thought the guys how to play pairs - that card game where you turn over two cards and if you get a matching pair you get to keep them and take another turn - something which I later regretted.  These guys have photographic memory, and are really competitive.  I still won my fair share of games though.  What can I say?  I'm a little bit competitive myself.

As in Kenya, Toyato Hiace vans are the main form of public transport (only they're blue and white rather than white and yellow), and the private taxis are almost all Lada cars...

... and for the areas where the taxis don't run there are bajaj...

...and horse-drawn 'carriage'.

It's not unusual to see somebody climbing into a taxi with some chickens, a sack of corn, or, in this case, a live sheep being brought home to slaughter.

Addis even has its own Unicorn! Well white horse at least.

The city of Addis from Mount Entoto.

And another beautiful sunset.

The Carb Queen is Dead and Gone

Enjoying massive portions of pasta at least twice a day; not thinking twice about devouring a full loaf of bread in one sitting; and happy to eat bowls of cereal between meals, I have long considered myself to be the carb queen. Having spent a week in Ethiopia without seeing anything resembling a cake, a sweet or a biscuit, those illusions are now shattered. In fact, I'm not sure I could cope with this much pure carbohydrate in my diet. 'I just want a big juicy stake' I sometimes hear myself cry, but all we get is bread, pasta, potatoes and rice.

My first day at the camp I was greeted with a breakfast of bread (not of the sliced variety, just a big massive chunk of it) and a bowl of porridge. As my mother well knows, I hate porridge, but given that it was made with water rather than milk, I managed to force down half of it, just so that I didn't seem rude.

Lunch consisted of a massive bowl of spaghetti, which even I struggled with, and a small portion of tomato and onion sauce.

But the best bit was dinner - rice with potato. Yes just rice and potato! I'm by no means against double carbs. In fact I applaud it. But when all you have to add some taste to it is a small bit of butter that the potatoes have been cooked in and a tiny bit of carrot to give it some colour, even I'm going to struggle.

No wonder these people run so fast. Their muscles must be so loaded with glycogen that I'm surprised that they can sit still for two minutes.

 

Addis

Despite flying just two hours north from Nairobi, to the Ethiopian Capital Addis Ababa, it feels like I've landed in a very different country. Though it still feels very African, Addis is different from Kenya is so many ways. Right from stepping off the plane I realise that the differences between the two Eastern African countries stretches far beyond the subtle difference in skin tone (Ethiopians are very proud of the fact that they are brown and Kenyans are black!). When you arrive in Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi you know that you are in Africa. The airport is old fashioned and packed with souvenir shops selling an array of Kenyan craftwork. Once passed security and customs you are accosted by a multitude of taxi drivers wanting to take you wherever you're willing to pay for (despite the 'no soliciting for passangers' signs everywhere), even though you are just trying to find the internal departures terminal. Bole airport in Addis is just like any other airport in the world. Modern, glass-fronted, efficient, and devoid of obvious transport out of there. And that's just the beginning!

For 4 weeks I've had a certain level of apprehension about travelling to Ethiopia. Through my limited knowledge of the country, I know that, not having been colonised at all, let alone by the British, English is not as widely spoken here as it is in Kenya. In fact they don't even have the same alphabet, so the chances of blagging my way are slim. Having grown up in a time when the main word associated with Ethiopia was famine, it's difficult to expect anything more than an underdeveloped country drowning in poverty, despite the passing years. I have heard that Addis is crowded, polluted and manic, and having a limited but not necessarily positive experience of Nairobi, I am apprehensive about spending the next two weeks in an African capital city. Most of all, I'm scarred that I'll find something a bit like Kenya, but be left feeling short-changed.

After a short wait at the airport, where it seemed entire families had turned out to greet returning travellers, I was meet by Gudisa, one of the young Ethiopians training at the Running Across Borders camp where I will be spending my time in Ethiopia. Gudisa is a happy, friendly and funny 18 year old, who speaks good English, and immediately all my apprehensions disappear. When I climb aboard a minibus full of excited athletes just returning from training, I know that this is going to be an experience to savour. And during the short trip from the airport to the camp I realise that Ethiopia has it's own very unique identity despite all the similarities with it's closest East African neighbours.

Luckily, the camp is on the edge of the city, and within minutes the hustle and bustle of Addis is left behind. In fact, sometimes it's easy to forget that I'm in a city at all. Less than five minutes from the camp, are fields, forests and dirt roads where we have been running most mornings and evenings. The dirt here is gray rather than red like in Africa, and the fields are full of wheat and teff, unlike the maize dominated landscape of Kenya. While everything is transported by bicycle in Kenya, here the donkey makes transportation of goods possible. While the kids cry 'muzungu' in Kenya, here 'farangie' is what you can expect to be called. The people though are still friendly, the skies are still blue and the roads are still dusty!

Addis is a fast developing city, and I have no doubt but that the land on which I have been running will be covered with houses in 5 years time. Already, a network of unfinished roads transverse the farmland, and some new blocks of apartments are springing up in what is now open countryside. While Kenya seems to have stagnated somewhat during the 5 years that I have been travelling there, Addis is changing by the day, and a few times we have had to reroute our runs, because where there was a path yesterday, there is a building site today.

I'm surprised by how progressive the city is, and in some ways by how rich it seems. Obviously I'm not fooled by this, and can see the obvious gap between the rich and the poor, and know that the fancy houses around where I'm staying are not the accommodation of the masses. But I can see a country of hope and opportunity, worlds apart from the horrific images I remember as a child. As I quickly learned, running water, hot showers and flushing toilets are not yet commonplace, but everyone has a mobile phone and supports an English Premier League football team. There's nothing like getting your priorities right!