Ethiopian facts & cultural differences

Walking back from mall, landscape view

Another landscape pic

Ethiopian people on the streets

statue at museum

Another statue

statue

Posing in front of stairs w/ some meaning I totally forgot

Kenya, me, Andrew, & Bre

Landscape view from inside museum

Addis Ababa from a distance

Museum painting

English version

Amharic version

Cool monument

I’m a little tired at the moment, but I wanted to post tonight b/c I don’t think I’ll have internet access next week.  We’re going to meet out host families tomorrow, who we’ll be staying w/ for the next 3 months.  The areas we’ll be in are more remote.  We started language training today, which I’ve been looking forward too.  Ethiopians speak Amharic, which is a difficult language to speak.  It has similarities to Arabic when pronouncing the words, while the characters look like Hebrew, almost like hieroglyphics.  We just learned some basic survival phrases.  You greet someone by saying “teng yistiling” pronounced “teng eastiling” which means “how do you do?”  That’s only for the 1st time you meet someone.  There is another greeting for when you meet someone you already know, and it differs for males & females.  This can cause problems if you’re not sure is a person is a male or female.  Starting next week language training is going to get very intense, 8 hrs a day, 6 days a week.  We also took a tour through Addis Ababa today, which was really cool.  We visited a few museums, one of which was one of Haile Selassie’s old homes.  Ethiopia has a lot of history.  It’s the only African country to never be successfully colonized.  The other museum has some of the ancient evolutionary man fossils found in archeological digs done in Ethiopia.  One of the staff in the museum asked me if I was our groups tour leader.  Evidently I look like a native.  It’s quite different being part of a majority w/ other people of color.

I said in my last post I’d share some Ethiopian facts we’ve picked up.  First there is a 7hr time difference from the eastern US.  They don’t use the normal 12 month Gregorian calendar.  Their calendar year has 13 months so they are behind in years.  It’s actually 2004 here, so I’ve successfully traveled back in time.  What’s REALLY messed up is I got my host family a couple of U.S. calendars as gifts, I had no idea.  They have 2 seasons here, wet & dry.  Right now the high gets in the high 60’s - low 70’s, while the low gets in the mid 40’s.  People here where coats regardless.  It was about 70 today & I saw people wearing darn near bubble gooses.  Coffee is huge here.  Buna is  coffee in Amharic.  It’s one of the largest & most lucrative exports.  I don’t drink coffee, & have been able to avoid it so far, but there’s no way I hold out the entire time I’m here.  Ethiopian also has the largest number of traffic fatalities in the world, mostly pedestrians.  Needless to say I walk waaaaay in on the sidewalk, like shoulder to shoulder w/ buildings.  Also, men are VERY affectionate towards each other here.  It’s normal in their custom to see 2 men walking holding hands, stroking each others face, or with their hand on each other’s thigh.  What makes this even more unique is homosexuality is illegal here.  They just don’t have the same concepts of masculinity  or personal space.  I know I’m supposed to conform to customs, but I aint touching some dude’s thigh.  There is tons of other stuff I’ll talk about in later post.  So far it’s been great.  I’m looking forward to moving in w/ the host family tomorrow, to be thrown into Ethiopian culture 100%.