Traditional Tibs from the Homeland

Recently Christy I had the opportunity to travel to Ethiopia; me for work and Christy for pleasure. I was attending my first international water and sanitation conference, which was great, so that I could present my first peer-reviewed paper, which I thought went very well. It definitely helped me in my advocacy efforts! This year’s Water and Engineering in Development Conference (WEDC) was held at the UN Conference center in Addis Ababa. This is a beautiful center, except for the sweat box of a room that I presented in on the first day. They of course moved that ‘group’ down to a larger, more formal room (which is nice with their long tables, each with a microphone and a earpiece for translations – no, we were not that fancy, but it did help for those close talkers that presented), but it made the room I presented in feel like it was packed with people. A bit intimidating, but you know me, I’m a talker! Afterward I got a few nice compliments about my ‘facilitators’ style of presenting, which believe you-me was not common the rest of the week.

Anyway, I met some interesting people throughout the week, including one guy that is currently implementing CHCs in Ethiopia and another that knows about the CHCs in Sierra Leone (he’s from Oxfam, which I think is pretty cool – particularly because he poached the woman from CARE who started the CHC project there!). I also made some important contacts, I hope, that could help get myself some more work. In between all of this, Christy and I managed to see most of Addis (she did a whole lot more of course), including a crash into Mercato, the largest market in Africa. This is the only place in Addis where everyone is warned to be careful, including Ethiopians. Dee and I actually got pick-pocketed twice within a 5 minute period in that area 6 years ago. Anyway, we ducked in with the driver we hired for the day before we left to pick up a few items and made it out unscathed. It definitely helped having someone to ask where we needed to go because Christy and I probably would have wandered around for hours or been pick-pocketed poor before we found what we wanted. The place is huge.

Oh yeah…the food. Yummy! We ate Ethiopian every night except for one (a story for another time, but rest assured it was a pretty miserable night for the water to stop). I think I was ready for a change by the time we left, but I already miss tibs and njeera. I’m told I can find some here in South Africa, so hopefully we’ll get our fix again soon.

So, we get to the airport with plenty of time and actually realize that we have money left over that we have not changed yet. So, we do a bit more shopping and by the time we finish, our flight is boarding.

Hey! Who? What…are you doing here Flat Stanely?

You want to tell this part of the story? Oh, ok. I guess you havn’t had your chance to tell it yet. Ok ladies and gentlemen, from this point forward, I’m going to let Flat Stanely take over. You’re in for a real treat!