Sylvia's Journal

We flew in an old Fokker 50 up north. It’s an old workhorse but it got us there safely. We descended straight in over Lake Tana. The lake looks muddy from above; brown-red from the runoff off the red earth around it(we are in the big rain season). The lake is dotted with bright white pelicans. Bahir Dar is a provincial town. It reminded me of Kisumu in Western Kenya, also situated on a lake, on the other extreme of the same volcanic rift.

The small airport is a throwback to the days when there was no such thing as airport security. People wander in and out of the building; no uniforms or metal detectors. A large billboard with a smiling Obama advertises for the Obama Café and restaurant in town. I would have liked to have lunch there but unfortunately it had closed.

We were greeted at the airport by a colleague who is in charge of regional operations. He had hired a driver and car for us which we can use as we please. After settling into our hotel, we asked driver Abraham to show us the town. It is small and consists of a rectangle of paved roads with dirt roads in between and hundreds of little shops. In the middle of town is the large church with hundreds of people dressed in white sitting and standing everywhere to follow the services which continued throughout the day.

The town is bisected by the Blue Nile; on one side of the bridge was a small café built on stilts over the river while on the other side of the bridge the Nile served as carwash. The bridge is guarded on both sides by two lone military men.

Everywhere in town we saw graduates with mortarboards and gowns with colorful sashes, accompanied by proud parents and siblings. They had their pictures taken at the church, at the lake and at the monument that memorialized those who had risen up against the Mengistu regime. The other happy crowd in town consisted of newly married couples in their noisy and gaily decorated motorcades that came by every few minutes into the evening. A happy but power-less place this town of Bahir Dar.

Over lunch of grilled fish from the lake and the traditional mounts of meat on injeera I grilled Pierre-Marie about his unusual life style: as my MSH colleague he is a program manager and public health physician but he is also a traditional chief in a small town in Cameroon. Technology makes it possible to be those two things at the same time: his advisors who rule on his behalf during his absences check with him on decisions via email and the town has a website so he can peek in via the internet.

Access to the internet here in Bahir Dar is a problem. After lunch we surveyed the local internet scene. Because the electricity in town is out today this means there is no internet access at any of the internet cafes, except one with its own generator. We check it out. We patiently wait for the pages to load and give up after about 15 minutes. We pay 70 cents for our combined half hour of access. I managed to get one message out to Axel that access will be problematic this week.

No electricity also means that the espresso machines don’t work, and thus no macchiato. But Abraham knows about a generator-powered machine and so we do have our one macchiato of the day, for 30 cents each.

When night falls the only two things lit are the huge bright blue sign of the Amhara Development Association Head Office that shines straight into my room and the hotel’s restaurant which is powered by a generator. I have two small stumps of candles in my room which won’t last long. Asking for more candles downstairs requires a drawing – English is definitely a weak second language here.

I have a feeling that this is going to be a long week.