Sylvia's Journal

The receptionist at the hotel told me that Michael Jackson was dead. If you were to believe the TV, nothing else happened yesterday, not even in Iran. An email from an African colleague offered condoleances. Michael was one of our tribe, believe it or not.

Here in Addis, I heard his songs on car radios, in restaurants and shopping centers. Watching CNN I learned that even the US House or Representatives had a moment of silence. I think he would have liked knowing. May he does know. All channels on my two fancy flatscreen TVs were covering Michael, ad nauseam.

I spent a good part of the day chasing the elusive Ethiopian telcom simcard. Such cards are now the monopoly of the state. It controls who gets one and who does not. This stands in sharp contrast to the sale of such cards in other African countries.

I stopped at 4 different state-run telecom offices. I was asked to show my ID and then told they had run out of simcards. I saw long lines and people filling in multiple forms but I never saw a simcard changing hands. We went on a wild goose chase all over Addis. The suggestion that maybe we should call ahead before going through thick traffic to another branch office was met with indifference. No, we don’t have the number, and you should just go. I don’t know whether it was a case of foot dragging, not being able to say no to a foreigner, a supply problem or an intentional creation of scarcity. We finally gave up. I felt rather handicapped without a cellphone as landlines are very unreliable. How did we live without cell phones before?

Interrupting the chase from time to time I joined my colleagues who had flown in from the US ahead of me and were busy orienting our new project director. We are getting ready for an intense two weeks in which we have to bring many new people on board and hand over the running of the leadership program and put in into local hands.

Slowly the sky darkened and a thunderstorm produced some significant rain. In the office I was congratulated for having brought the rain, a sign of good luck. The big rains have been slow in coming and people are worried that another drought is in the making.

In the absence of a simcard I made my phone calls from the receptionist desk. It’s a busy place with people coming and going. One person came in and pulled a large wooden model that is used to demonstrate condom use, out of a plastic bag. Nobody flinched; it was as if he was showing the proofs of a brochure. I started to laugh because it was something both ordinary and extraordinary. This is part of the business we are in.

At the end of the day I returned to my large apartment via a local supermarket where I bought fresh roses for next to nothing. I continued unpacking while watching interminable re-runs of Michael Jackson, grieving fans and celebrations of his life. I asked the Italian restaurant to bring my meal to my room, accompanied by a large glass of south African (not Italian) wine and celebrated my safe arirval in Addis, great colleagues and an exciting new venture.