Sylvia's Journal

While Soros explains to his Aljazeera interviewer that any blog site is a media site rather than a technology site [I have the odd feeling that this is significant] I try to make sense of my very bizarre dreams about scientists and salami. Maybe the dreams were triggered by the wonderful Italian food that we had last night at Don Vito’s and watching the Discovery channel for too many hours.

It rained most of the day. It reminded me of those rained out Sundays that make you want to snuggle up with a book in a chair by the window. In my case that book is my Kindle with its collection of books to choose from. If I am not in the mood for one I can simply toggle to another.

My colleagues moved out of the fancy Sheraton and into my more reasonably priced hotel with its much larger rooms, big balconies, free internet and breakfast. It’s easier now; we were able to meet as a team without need for taxis, and divided the workload for the next three days.

Pierre-Marie got the top level apartment with its newly installment Jacuzzi tub and the 45 feet terrace; I am one floor below, with two balconies and a regular bathtub; the same kind of room as Liz, one floor further down. This represents exactly our places in the MSH hierarchy.

Through facebook I discovered that my longtime friend Anne was also on mission in Addis. We met for dinner and caught up on news about families and work. Later in the evening I noticed another friend coming this way. What’d I do without facebook?

I decided to forego the macchiato five floors down and instead had my cup of Nescafe and instant oatmeal. This allowed me to linger in my pajamas for a good part of the morning.

At about 11 AM Liz picked me up for an outing into town. First stop was a leather factory. Leather is a big thing here which I could have figured out since they eat so much beef. On the outskirts of town, in the factory’s shop, we found racks full of coats and bags of the softest leather. I am not much of a leather person but some coats were hard to resist, especially at the prices advertised. Liz emerged with a elegant jacket that appeared to have been made for her, such a perfect fit. We will return next week to make the final decision about some items we asked them to put away for us.

Next stop was the coffee place, Tomoca, where we had our first macchiato of the day, coming out of an enormous espresso machine. We sipped our coffee from the tiny cups while breathing in the wonderful smells of freshly roasted coffee beans. Liz will take back the coffee beans I ordered while the ground coffee will come along to Kabul as a treat to anyone who has been living on Nescafe too long.

The rains moved in and we skipped the Mercato, allegedly the biggest market in Africa. Instead we headed for the Boston Spa building to make our appointments for a hot stone massage, a manicure and a pedicure for next Saturday when we will have earned such treatment. Above the spa is the Lime Tree café, a bookstore/café/restaurant that has the feel of the universal university bookstore/cafe restaurant. Not surprisingly you can find many young expats sitting behind their computers checking email while drinking their lattes.

The afternoon was reserved for work – getting ready for the first event that starts on Monday when we will create the team that will run the leadership program after we leave, two weeks from now.

Liz and Pierre-Marie, our colleague from Cameroon, picked me up again at the end of the day and we headed for the Beer Garden Inn, a German brew pub with a menu in German and shiny copper kettles brewing the beer in full view. The place was packed and we got the last open table. Soon we found ourselves with a contraption on our table that delivered the beer from a tab, coming out of a meter long cylinder; imagine that, one meter of beer!

We did not order the full meter (5 liters). Ours was filled to the 3 liter line, about 65 cm, with foam filling up the remainder of the cylinder. Iit was plenty for us girls, although we suspect that Pierre-Marie could have handled the full meter.

A few men, sitting behind us, had started with beer up to the 75 cm line (about 4 liters) and seemed to have given up after drinking about 60 cm of that. They looked rather tired as they slouched on their seats. Twenty cm of beer can tire you out easily. Simple pub fare accompanied the drinks and made for a very pleasant evening.

Back at the hotel it looked like the Oscars were being handed out; the place was full of excited young men and women. A red carpet led me up the stairs, then abandoned me by the elevator. The red carpet continued to the basement nightclub with its loud music, dominated by the thump-thump of the base, which got louder by the hour.

At 2 AM in the morning the scene outside my hotel was buzzing with people, men mostly, and some women of ill-repute, drinking enormous amounts of alcohol and getting noisier by the minute. I stood on the balcony for awhile, not being able to sleep, and surveyed the animated scene 6 stories below, then retired to my bed to continue reading why Richard Dawkins thinks God is a terribly destructive delusion.