Ferenge Addis Blog

Ferenge no more

I started the Ferenge Addis Blog with the same motivation that rules most of my life: laziness. I was too lazy to type the same e-mails to both Mom and Dad and a couple other people I correspond with. I never guessed that 100 people a day would find some reason to visit my blog, or that I would be linked from places like Ethiopian Adoption blogs, or the blog of a real journalist, Andrew Havens of the Meskel Square blog (now in Sudan).

Having moved back to the US a couple of weeks ago, I'm sad to now say goodbye to the FAB. I've made some friends through contacts made here. And the comments sections has provided no end of entertainment.

I've started a new blog, the "Oh, Sorry, I'm new in DC" blog, which will serve the original intention of the FAB (Hi Mom, Hi Dad). Thanks to everyone who stopped here and especially those who commented. I'll be back in Addis from time to time. Best wishes and best of luck.

Marc

Repatriation Culture Shock #1: prices

• Haircut: Addis $3.25 ($4.35 with tip), US $45 ($55 with tip)
• Sandwich (cheese with lettuce): Addis $0.55, US $5
• Coffee (Ethiopian), 1/2 kilo (one pound): Addis $3.50, US $13.00
• Housekeeper: Addis $76/month (full time), US $100 per visit (approx 4 hours)
• Cup of coffee: Addis $0.55 (most expensive place), US $3 (Starbucks)
• Movie: Addis $4.35, US $10
• Tiny 3-br house: Addis $1100/month, US (DC) $2000/month
• Taxi ride across town: Addis $4.35, US $20

BUT:
• Beat up 10-year-old Toyota Corolla: Addis $20k, US $10k

Repatriation culture quirk #245: too-cool baristas

Addis Ababa has a thriving restaurant and cafe society. It employs lots and lots of wait staff. All of the waiters and waitresses I met seemed very attentive and helpful. They actually wanted to have the job and were trying to be good at it.

Contrast this with what I (re)discovered about Americans in the service-sector: none of them are really in the service sector. They're really in college (University) and trying to make spending money, or they're aspiring actors, writers, painters, blah blah blah and only in the service sector until they make it big. This results in Attitude. Lots of Attitude. This is nowhere more evident than the local coffee shop, CD being the best example in Chapel Hill. (The national chains seems to have somehow trained this out of their servers.) The coffee-makers, aka baristas, at all local coffee shops are too cool to wait on you. Really. Because they are really artistic geniuses who are going to break out into the fame they truly deserve at any minute, actually waiting on you is beneath them, and they suffer it only because life has so far been unfair and has put them in this lowly position. So they imagine it isn't a lowly position, and suffer ungladly your sniveling requests for service. While merely rolling their eyes at a normal request, at any additional request for, you know, service, the sighing and head-shaking start. I always want to grab them by one of their multiple piercings and yell "dude! you work in a coffee shop for minimum wage! You are not too cool to put soy milk in my latte!"

I long for Addis where people take service jobs they actually want and care about being good at.

(And don't even get me started about independent music stores.)

Habesha welcome to Washington/Maryland

Yesterday I arrived for the first time in my new home state as a resident (according to my attorney father anyway). So I felt some import and pomp about stepping out of the rental car and into my first residence in the Great State of Maryland. The first person I met at the door was Isaac, a Habesha-looking fellow, who was affable if slightly bored about greeting yet another pasty-faced white guy checking into the Residence Inn. Without thinking too much I said "endemena walk, denana?" You should have seen the look on his face.

We talked non-stop for the entire time he helped me unload the car, through check-in, and the time it took to check in and get me to my room. He's been in the US for three years, formerly a resident of Bole, my old 'hood in Addis. We talked about restaurants in Bole, the disagreeable weather in the US, and about the best Ethiopian food in Bethesda.

Somehow it's perfect that the first person to welcome me to my new home is from my old neighborhood in the home I've left behind. How do you say "welcome" in Amharic? I'm sure Isaac said it five times yesterday and I just couldn't understand him.

Repatriation Culture Shock #752: too much choice

When Minakshi, my Indian colleague, first came to the US, Air France lost her and her husband's luggage. So the airline gave them some money to buy clothes. A friend took them to the Kohl's in the mall for her husband to buy some pants. He saw hundreds of pairs of pants, at only one store of many. Overwealmed, he had to just leave.

At Novis in Bole I was very happy with the selection of breakfast cereal. On good days there were both corn flakes and bran flakes. This is a manageable choice. My first full day back in the US I went grocery shopping. My list included some breakfast cereal. Looking at an isle 50 meters long, four shelves high, with every kind of breakfast cereal imaginable, I was paralyzed with choice, and I'm not alone. I almost left without any cereal but kind of grabbed something at random and threw it in the cart.

Repatriation: What's your address?

When you repatriate from one country to another, leave one company and join another, move to a new residence, and start the process to take out a loan for a new house, you have to fill out lots of forms. All of them ask for your address. This is a problem.

My last physical address is in Addis, so I use that for history. The address on my driver's license says North Carolina, because that's the last place I lived in the US. I'm currently residing at a friend's house, so really that's my physical address at this moment. My past employer's address is my address of record and where my mail was going, hence the address for my credit cards, magazine subscriptions, etc.

I'm going from NC to MD, in a suites-type hotel supplied by my new employer for two weeks. Then to a sublet apartment for six weeks. Then hopefully to my own home in MD. So where should they send mail?

Until I have a new home, my address of record will stay my old employer. My Netflix subscription will change to the Suites hotel for a couple of weeks. My mail will go to the sublet address, and will be collected for me by the current residents until they leave. My "permanent address" used for loan applications etc is my new employer's address.

Because I'm driving up to MD today, I guess the only entirely-accurate address is the license plate number of my rental car.

Things I miss/don't miss about Ethiopia

While only a week away from my former home in Bole can't give me proper perspepctive, here are some things I notice that I miss and don't miss about being away from Ethiopia:

MISS:
• my Habesha and Fefenge Ethiopian friends
• the weather (well, nine months of the year anyway)
• ubiquitous hawazi
• household help
• home-made dog food [item added by Toby]
• the best meal in town, washed down with the best wine in the house, for $30.
• The best coffee in the world, everywhere, so cheap it's almost free.
• Home-cooked gomen, misera wot, red-tef injera, and shiro

NOT MISS:
• ETC
• The bellowing
• The internet, 1998 style, and censored
• 100% import extortion/duty
• Thinking about journalists still in prison before I post something on my blog
• dust in the dry season and mud in the rainy season
• Ferenge! Ferenge! Ferenge! Gimme one birr!
• ETC (repeated for emphasis)

Repatriating--Washington to Raleigh

When I finally got through passport control in Washington Dulles airport, I found my bags sitting on the floor in front of the belt. I sought the help of a bored-looking Skycap (baggage helper) named Duane about finding the pets. I told him I needed his help getting all my luggage and pets out of the airport (it's normal to tip these guys well, so he was motivated to help). So he threw my bags on his big cart, then went looking for Toby (dog) and Janet (cat). The KLM lady pointed to the other end of the luggage hall, and there they were, Janet's crate sitting on top of Toby's. As we got closer I couldn't see either pet, but when I said "Toby" his head popped up and he looked right at me. A quick look in Janet's cage confirmed she was okay.

We got in a Customs line and I got the pet travel documents ready; Duane and I were both sure we would be funneled into the longer-inspection line. None of it: the customs agent gave a cursory glance at the pets' health certificates and rabies vaccination records. I'm not sure he even looked in the crates. I might have had a Gelada Baboon in the big one and I don't think he would have noticed. I bribed Duane with a promise of a big tip and asked him to keep the pets while I went to get the rental car. A quick ride in the Thrifty shuttle and I was livin' large in my Dodge Magnum station wagon. I found my way back to the arrivals doors and we slid the crates right in the back of the car. I overtipped the Duane and after a brief stop to let Toby relieve himself we headed down the parkway towards the beltway and Friday rush hour traffic.

I stopped at a Safeway store neat Woodbridge Va and got the pets some food, water, and got Janet a temporary litter pan. I let them loose in the car, and kept heading south. Somewhere south of Richmond my eyes started to droop, and I had to stop at a rest area for a quick nap. So, at about 1:30 a.m. we arrived and M&M's house, promptly woke up the neighborhood with their dogs and Toby's barking, and by 2:00 we were all back sound asleep, safe, for our first night back in this strange country.

all three safe and sound

Toby (dog), Janet (cat), and I are all safe and sound, living for a week with my friends M and M in Raleigh. (Thanks everyone for the well-wishing e-mails.) Yesterday we cruised from DC in the left-pictured fat American uber-wagon. Hah!

More soon as the jetlag dissipates...

ADD-AMS culture shock

The pets and I made it onto our KLM flight to Amsterdam with no problem. Mesfin has a friend at the airport, so he helped smooth the pet loading. I'm writing from a coffee shop in the Amsterdam airport, and the pets are resting at the animal hotel.

Schipol airport is a real culture shock: everything is modern, clean, sparkling, and efficient. Shops hold every very-latest gadget and sparkly thing. Clothing shops are full of designer names: Izod, Ferragamo, Hugo Boss ($200 blue jeans), Chanel, etc. At the restaurants, there is about 1/3 the staff of a typical Addis restaurant. The help seems highly efficient, and not very happy or friendly. And the prices are damned expensive: $9 latte, $23 toast-eggs-and-juice breakfast. In Addis the whole thing would have cost $3. In the boonies it would have cost $0.95. Of course, spending dollars here only makes things worse. It seems the only currency as weak as the dollar is the Birr. The last I knew it was holding steady at 9.2/$. It now costs $1.47 to buy one Euro.

Oh, and of course it was lovely surfing the 'net on blazingly-fast, uncensored wifi.