Rainy Season

[Finally the internets are cooperating. Oh yeah, that's because I'm back in the US. 4 flights, 3 continents, and 27 hours of travel - and most of that was in the air, literally sprinting around Heathrow and JFK to make connections. Working on unpacking my bag and my brain; here are some posts I had written but was unable to post from Addis. Just pretend I'm still there]

Ah Addis, the Paris of East of Africa. Serious crookednecks at work with people’s perceptions of Ethiopia: anyone who gave ‘the price of a cup of coffee’ to Suzanne Summers in the 80s for starving children would probably be appalled at the (literally) thousands of cafes that those children could have chosen from to redeem the donation. Seriously, Addis is apparently the exception to the 40% restaurant failure rule. All of my favorites have survived these three years and pretty much every other door on every street is still a café entrance. And the coffee is still amazing.

It’s rainy season as well and the clouds are guaranteed to roll in by noon with the downpour scheduled for approximately 3:15. Maybe the weather contributes to the success of the cafes, where no one is eager to leave their coffee and pastry for the muddy streets or jobs that I’m not sure many are attending to anyways. So, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, meeting with friends, and taking years off my life through caffeine and sugar overdoses.

For my first few days here I was staying with my friend Rick Hodes and his family of over a dozen (I’m really not sure how many) boys he has adopted in order to provide them with medical care in the US and a better life in general here in Addis. Many of these kids have survived incredible illnesses, malnutrition, and/or abandonment and there are a few currently undergoing treatments that Rick or other docs he works with are providing. A common affliction among them is spinal tuberculosis, for which Rick sends them to the US or Ghana for a surgery or a series of surgeries to straighten their spines, which are severely contorted by the virus. I taught a few of his kids when I was here in 2003 and it’s amazing to see how they’ve grown. This is a crew that really eat up life; they’re constantly reading and engaging everyone around them in conversation that’s more on the level of a US college student and not a pubescent kid speaking their second or third language.

I’ve also been catching up on other kids I taught; visiting the old school, Gibson Youth Academy, which has seriously expanded in my absence; and sharing café space with former colleagues and friends.

I’m now staying with a friend, Daniel, who use to live at Rick’s house and is now married to an American woman. I’m a block from the place I lived at in 2003, so it’s all very cathartic but great.

I’ll be attending the annual closing-day ceremony for the Gibson School and will have plenty of pictures of the kids. Uploading one at a time seems to be doable here, so it’ll be slow. There’s also plenty beyond the cafes and kids here that has changed, and I’m working on articulating the political evolutions I’m observing here.

Attended the annual Closing Day Ceremony for GYA, my old school. Lots of pictures of the kids up on the flickr site.