“You are in Africa, use your saliva!”

Two nights ago I ventured out in a taxi with the world’s most insane taxi driver. This guy didn’t need an audience because he entertained himself! He couldn’t find the restaurant which my team decided to go to on the advice of an Ethiopian colleague and between his rambling monologue on everything from where New York City is located in America (“No, it is nearer to Los Angeles!”) to the fact that he preferred to take us to a local steakhouse (even though one of my colleagues is a vegetarian!) we ended up on a grand tour of Addis Ababa in tiny, rusty Lada strewn with beads, pictures of saints, and the vague smell of cheap incense. When my Indian colleague told us that she had a headache and needed to go back to the hotel he proceeded to hand her some aspirin and say to her “You are in Africa, use your saliva!” I almost died laughing at the look on her face.

Last night we managed to go to Yod Abyssinia (sounds like something out of a Star Wars movie) restaurant in need of good food and entertainment after dealing with the uber intelligent institutions of the US government and USAID. We were told that afternoon that we might not get funding for the outcomes evaluation here and that I might have to do it in South Africa instead of Ethiopia! I’m not complaining about having to work in South Africa, but it means that I just wasted a lot of time and effort here with our local partners! Okay….. back to the restaurant which was packed like a can of sardines with Ethiopian families chowing down over injera and different types of meat and vegetable wots, and imbibing honey wine, Bedele beer, and strong coffee by the gallon. At the front of the restaurant were a traditional band and some AMAZING dancers who were going through a variety of traditional dances from different ethnic groups across Ethiopia. Ethiopian dances should be featured in an aerobics class because those dancers were killing some calories! They put the Basotho and Ashanti to shame! Of course, guess who gets targeted to dance with them….oh, to have a video camera for that sad exhibition! The little boy who was in front of me put me to shame with his sense of rhythm and his shaking little booty!