Sylvia's Journal

When I arrived at the office yesterday morning I had expected to have ample time to prepare for a meeting later that day with the core team that is supposed to lead the leadership work here in Ethiopia. I thought we had agreed on a meeting at 3 PM but everyone showed up at 9 AM. This was the second time that something like this happened during my short stay here. I assumed that somehow I had not communicated the time clearly.

I am amazed that it took me an entire week to discover that there is such a thing as Ethiopian time which is 6 hours behind the time I took to be universal. It was a humbling experience of my Western (US/European)-centricity.

And so I learned yesterday that Ethiopian time starts with 1 o’clock at what I consider 7 AM. When 7 PM arrives it is back to 1 o’clock. Thus, when I convened the meeting at 3, it was assumed I meant 3 o’clock Ethiopian time, which is why people arrived at 9 AM. It took me most of the day to get my head around this.

There was more. I had been puzzled all week by the surprisingly clean and freshly painted signs celebrating the Millenium. In my calendar, this happened 8 years ago. Yesterday I learned that Ethiopians are currently in the year 2000, not 2008. The Ethiopian calendar is 8 years behind the one I know (‘we are 8 years younger,’ said my 60-ish counterpart Hailu with a grin). There were more suprises. Because here, all the months have 30 days there is a need for a 13th month (‘Ethiopia, 13 months of sunshine’ advertises a poster on the side of the road). The 13th month is a very short one, 5 or 6 days. And thus I found out that something I did not consider possible is possible after all: May 6 and April 29, 2008 and 2000, and 9 AM and 3 PM all happen at the same time. Talk about living with ambiguity! The lesson from all this is to remember to add an adjective to the word time, either ‘Ethiopian’ or ‘ferang’ (foreign) and not to make any assumptions, or at the very least, check them.

After the hastily improvised meeting I went to get the coffee beans I had promised to bring home. Tomoca is a place that is all about coffee: regional varieties, roasting techniques, taste and smell. I bought green and roasted Yirga Chaffe beans, and two other regional varieties of roasted beans. I was a bit overwhelmed by the number of choices, green, unwashed, washed, powder and several different kinds of roasts (Famiglia, Turco, USA, Bar and Swedish type). I also bought a children’s book about Kaldi and the dancing goats who discover coffee beans (explaining why the Starbucks wannabee is called Kaldi). I had heard the same story 30 years ago in (North) Yemen. Ethiopians and Yemenis are both claiming to be the birthplace of the coffee bean (from Kaffa or from Mocha) and the Queen of Sheba.

On the way I finally got to take a picture of a fashion boutique a few floors above the road where pale mannequins perch seductively on gallery railings.

Back at the hotel I had lunch with my friend Tom from New Hampshire who happened to be in town as well. We had not seen each other for several months and had much catching up to do. The rest of the day was spent writing my report, cleaning out my inbox and preparing for tomorrow’s planning meeting which, hopefully will start at the time I expect it to start