May 26, 2009 -- posted by Karen

We left for Addis this afternoon on the College Service bus. We were planning to stay at a Catholic Guest House for the night in order to be at the airport by 4 am the next morning. The College President, Negash, who lives in Addis, had picked up the key to the guest house for us since we would arrive after the guesthouse office closed. The bus dropped us off at his house and then he took us in his old, beater car to the guest house. The car stalled several times on the way there and there were several delays so that only arrived at the guest house about 7 pm, just as the sun was setting.

Upon arriving at the guest house, we quickly realized that this was a “no power” evening for the section of the city where the guest house was located. We had neither candles nor a flashlight so we had to go out and buy some. By the time we got back, it was entirely dark and so we were stumbling through a labyrinth of hallways and courtyards searching out our rooms. It was kind of creepy since there really didn’t seem to be anyone else in the entire complex.

After finding our rooms, we embarked on a trek down the dark streets of Addis looking for a place to grab a bite to eat. We finally found a hotel that had a generator and ended up having our dinner there. We returned to our dark rooms and tried to get ready for bed by the light of a single flickering candle. While doing this, we discovered that there was no hot water except for brown sludge coming out of the taps, and that the toilet was basically not working. Just past 10 p.m., the lights came back on, just in time for us to go to sleep.

By midnight, Richard and I were wide awake again since our room was infested by mosquitoes. Richard attempted to hunt them down. Every time he thought he was victorious and would crawl back into bed, several more would appear, buzzing by our ears, to take the place of their fallen companions. We were up for the next several hours and were relieved when we could finally get out of bed at 3:30 am. We probably slept a total of two hours that entire night.