Saturday, May 2, 2009

Saturday, 2 May 2009
After about a 3 hour lay-over in Frankfurt, we arrived in Addis Ababa at 6:15 p.m. (8:15 a.m. Pacific time). It had been 24 hours since we took off from Vancouver and we were finally in Ethiopia! We were all able to catch some sleep on the flight to Addis. Going through customs was relatively brief, having purchased visas already in Canada. After we picked up our luggage we were met by Fanosie, one of the New Testament instructors whose wife Dianne is originally from Ontario. She is the host of the guest house on the college campus and so we had been emailing her all sorts of questions. Fanosie was accompanied by Daniel, the driver of the taxi van, who we have been told is a trustworthy taxi driver that we can trust if we ever need one.

It took us about an hour to drive to the college. As we landed, the sun was still shining, but by the time we got on to the highway at around 7:00 a.m. it was dusk. Driving down the four lane highway was interesting. They have pedestrian overpasses but at a number of places people just chose to dash across the highway, at night, with dark clothing, even when the overpass is only 100 metres ahead! We passed through several towns before arriving in Debre Zeit. Along the way there were all sorts of little fruit and meat shops. All the fruit comes from farmers throughout Ethiopia, and includes oranges, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, and apples. Apples are the most expensive fruit, which is opposite of what we are used to. Once we got off the highway we had another 5-10 minute on a side road to the college. The highway was nice and smooth, but the side roads are a different matter altogether. They are dirt roads with no gravel, so they are not smooth at all. As we were driving I was thinking that anyone with a grader could make a lot of money here.

We arrived at the college at 8:15 and were met by Dianne, Mike Miller, with whom we will be sharing our apartment for a month, Carl and Vera Hansen, staff at the college, and Ernie and Lois Hess, MCC workers teaching ESL at the college. Then it was time to unpack and go to sleep.