Jim's Journal

This is what I've been waiting for! When I started this blog I thought it would consist entirely of my Dad's journal entries. It's been easier for him to hand write his journal - which I understand - so I was surprised and thrilled to receive this entry this a.m.:


To and from school.

The car picks us up at 7:30 and winds across town through the smog and traffic avoiding people, donkeys, goats and hundreds of mini-buses. A young woman trying to cross the street flips the bird to our driver who is busy trying to avoid being squeezed by an aggressive mini-bus. We take an alternate route to avoid what appears to be a mile long traffic jam. There are few working traffic lights and those that work only work when there is electricity which is somewhat short of always. There are very few traffic control cops but armed soldiers are at every major intersection and as I look up I see soldiers on the rooftops with AK 47s at the ready. To be fair the African Union Reps are in town and the government is concerned about terrorists.

The alternate route is a rocky dusty road, beautiful women in 5 inch heels walking, running dodging rocks and crazy drivers hurry their way to work. We swerve left to avoid a crater and a car coming the other way passes us on the right and nobody reacts except the 3 Forengis (foreigners) in the car. Back on the main road, we pass street sweepers in robes and masks with long straw brooms and shovels. To the right an aerial crane lifts blocks to workers on wood scaffolding, I think this is strange until in the next block near an abandoned apartment building, I see a large ferris wheel. The driver dodges left to avoid a herd of goats on their way to market. This is pretty much a daily occurrence on the 45 minute way to work.

Coming home is more exciting if less describable. We take three different mini-buses that cost a total of 5 birr (about 50 cents). We are now in the mini-buses that were trying to kill us on the ride to school. We are the aggressor now and it is a thrill ride that rivals anything on the state fair midway. They cram 15 passengers into a 9 passenger van and charge the unsignaled intersections as though they were, say some mechanized Adrian Peterson running on 3rd and short. We pass a guy making a left turn who flips off a car coming at him and then drives directly into him. As I said earlier the AU Reps are in town, many roads are closed and rifled soldiers check the barely flowing traffic from the tops of buildings. I feel good when I arrive home with unbrowned drawers.

We walk the last six blocks home and as we turn up the hill here comes a guy in full cross country ski garb - roller skiing with a camera crew behind him. He stops in front of us and before he can start back up the hill I ask where he got the roller skis. Turns out he is training for the Olympics - and he is the Ethiopian Ski Team! He attended the U of New Hampshire and was an All-American. He is an Ethiopian and lives near us. This is stranger even than the ferris wheel and makes me keep my eye out for Don Quixote who may be around the corner jousting with a water tower.



This is what an Ethiopian cross country skier looks like while training on the streets of Addis Ababa with roller skis. I lifted this photo from his blog - illegal, I think.


I don't know why I feel the need to make comments after the posts from my parents - I suppose that is kind of irritating to the readers, but hey - I'm the keeper of the blog and I get to do what I want! So, let me just say that I CANNOT BELIEVE HE MET THE ETHIOPIAN CROSS COUNTRY SKIIER!!! We watched this guy in awe 4 years ago and were just talking about him yesterday as we prepare to watch the Olympics next week. Amazing!

Also, on my trips to Ethiopia I've never seen anyone give anyone else the finger! Leave it to my Dad to notice that twice in one day :)

Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did. I'll try to get him to type out and send more entries. There are 3 different posts with pics below - enjoy!