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)