Settling into Addis

We arrived in Addis about 10 days ago, and I’ve been using internet only at internet cafes, when I mainly check email and reply to them so haven’t been updating here.

The journey was good, uneventful in that nothing bad happened, but not boring either. Will post a few photos when I have better internet access.

 

During the first week, we were looking for a house. Or rather, D was doing most of the footwork, to save me the hassle but also to avoid as much as possible the chance that landlords would increase the price on seeing a ferenji was involved. He contacted various ‘brokers’ – usually an individual guy, who has contacts. They tend to be people who deal in different things – car hire, finding houses or rooms to rent, finding house maids, all for a fee of course. They act as a go-between for landlords and prospective tenants. It was maybe a problem that they were looking for houses around a certain monthly rental amount (B3000) rather than asking for the criteria we had (kitchen, hot shower, fridge, furnished – all these things are not standard here). And we also have the ‘millennium effect’ – it seems that many landlords are raising rents in anticipation of the diaspora who will come for the Ethiopian millennium in a couple of weeks’ time. Of course they denied this but it’s not just me, it’s being written about in local newspapers too.

 

Anyway, all of this meant we couldn’t get a nice house at our budget around the area we initially wanted (Haya Hulet, literally ‘22’, which I know well because it’s around the VSO office and it’s not too far from where D’s family live). But we’ve found a nice house in Shiro Meda, which is a bit far out from town, but the garden and relatively spacious house are worth it. We have not one but two spare rooms (take note anyone who’s thinking of visiting – though I should add that for now only one of them has a bed in it, though we have lots of sofa space), a large dining/living room, kitchen with running water (only cold but that’s enough), a new fridge and a 3 ring gas stove, bathroom with hot shower (essential for me) and a fairly spacious hallway. It’s nicely furnished and I’m liking it all so far. Shiro Meda is on the way towards the Entoto mountain, so it’s cold (that’s what anyone local said when I mentioned where the house was). And there’s no such thing as central heating here, but a gabbi (very warm wrap/blanket made from layers of locally produced cotton) does the job just as well when sitting curled up on an armchair of an evening. We even have a tv provided but so far only ETV on it. Might go mad and get a satellite dish when I’m earning money, while a VCD/DVD player will be a must, especially as there’s a VCD rental shop right next door, run by the landlady’s family. New release movies often come out quite quickly on VCD here, albeit as pirated ‘screen copies’. I can play them on my laptop but they’re usually a bit scratched and the laptop DVD drive doesn’t cope very well with that, leading to frustrating viewing experiences.

 

One thing I didn’t know about the rental market here before was that it’s standard to pay 6 months rent in advance. That may be because the renters are often NGOs or businesses who have lots of cash available. We were lucky that our landlady agreed to accept only 3 months in advance.

 

And, best of all for me, there’s a landline in the house, already connected so here I am using internet at home at last! But for now I’m using a friend’s account so I’m not going to use it too much. Will get my own account soon. Or rather, someone in D’s family will get an account and I’ll use it and pay for it. That’s because, I believe, a Kebele ID is necessary to get an account (Kebele is an administrative area within the city). And as a tourist I don’t have one of those. It’s really nice having his family around, they are looking after me, making sure I’m ok and not lonely since D has had to go back to Mekelle for a week or two. He needs to finish his work there and get his ‘clearance’ before finally leaving.

 

I will be trying to use Skype soon but it doesn’t always logon on this dial up connection – so if you see me online, go for it!