24 Hours in Ethiopia

Due to Kenya's rather imaginative immigration laws, I found myself either having to leave the country at very short notice, or, in the words of the giggling Immigration Official I spoke to, "we will have to arrest you". It wasn't a very difficult decision to make. In fact, I found out, because of the regional integration process - the same one I've spent the last 9 months working on - it wasn't sufficient just to leave Kenya, but I actually had to leave East Africa. The irony was not lost on me.

So, a couple of days later I boarded an Ethiopian Airlines flight to Addis Ababa, added another stamp to my passport, and checked into a hotel, recommended by a friend as "nice, cheap, couple of 'roaches but small ones".

At first glance, Addis is much like any other major African city: big and sprawling, dirty and polluted, but with plenty of activity - minibus taxis, streetkids, hawkers (although the Ethiopian hawkers didn't quite seem to share the entrepreneurial sensibilities of their Kenyan counterparts, generally offering to shine my hiking boots, sell me books written in Amharic, or fake DVDs of Twilight. Neither strategy really working).

At second glance, however, well, I was only there for a day so I don't know. There's more noticeable poverty than in Nairobi, but it feels safer. I asked the receptionist at the hotel if it was safe to walk around at night, and she replied in bewilderment "Yes... we are a very peaceful people". There are also more diverse influences than in Nairobi, with clear aspects of Arabic, Asian and American culture:

This coffeeshop resembled a certain other multinational chain, down to every last detail - the logo, the staff uniforms and decor. The only difference being that Kaldi's serve really excellent coffee.

In fact, I think I had better coffee in these 24 hours than I can remember. There are a couple of places in Nairobi that  do an acceptable macchiato, but they're a little thin on the ground. The difference, I think, is that Kenyans don't really drink coffee. (What they do drink is 'Kenyan tea' - boiled milk which at some point in the distant past had a fleeting encounter with a tea-bag, It's an acquired taste). If you're offered coffee at a meeting, you'll get Nescafé, which seems a bit perverse for a country that grows great coffee beans. In Addis, on the other hand, you can't walk 100 metres without passing a coffeeshop with a bunch of old Ethiopian guys sitting, smoking and chatting outside. They also serve this great juice:

Layers of fruit juice and pulp - avocado, orange, mango, berries... which you have to eat with a spoon. Yum.

The highlight was probably dinner on Saturday evening - I wandered down to Habesha, the 'cultural Ethiopian' restaurant. We eat Ethiopian food quite regularly in Nairobi, but this time dinner came with added bonus of t'entertainment. It started with 4 very bored-looking musicians sitting on a stage, the main diversion being differentiating between when they were tuning up and when they were actually playing. But the next couple of hours saw a stream of singers, drummers and dancers who appeared to be suffering from some kind of synchronised epileptic fit. It was all very impressive, although you couldn't help but worry about someone breaking their neck.

24 hours later, I'm back in Nairobi, with an updated stamp in my passport, so hopefully this time they'll let me stay!