Bid List

Lack of a fast Internet connection and busy times at work have meant no updates for a while. I do want to share more photos from our Northern Ethiopian trip later.

Our bid list for next summer came out, and we've been working on what and how we want to bid. There are 35 positions, of which two are in Beijing and one in Addis Ababa (my job), which I'm not allowed to bid. I have to list 20 jobs, in rank order, that I'd be willing to accept. Here's the list, in alpha order:

Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (No children allowed here)
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Algiers, Algeria (No children allowed here)
Bangkok, Thailand
Beijing, China (two jobs here)
Beirut, Lebanon (No children allowed here)
Berlin, Germany
Bogota, Colombia
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Chengdu, China
Doha, Qatar
Frankfurt, Germany
Geneva, Switzerland
Hong Kong
Islamabad, Pakistan (unaccompanied)
Jakarta, Indonesia
Katmandu, Nepal
Kyiv, Ukraine
Lima, Peru
Lusaka, Zambia
Managua, Nicaragua
Maputo, Mozambique
Mexico City, Mexico
Mumbai, India
Nairobi, Kenya
New Delhi, India
Port Louis, Mauritius
Santiago, Chile
Taipei, Taiwan
The Hague, The Netherlands
Tirana, Albania
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Vienna, Austria
Zagreb, Croatia

As you might suspect, it's easy to choose where we really would like to go, and where we really don't want to go; it's numbers 17-23 that are the difficult ones, because we can be assigned any of the posts we bid on. I'm confident that we'll receive a good assignment, though, as my predecessor here in Addis got his first choice, and his predecessor got his second choice.

I have until September 21 to bid, so if you have comments on any of these, get them to me soon!

In other news, the Ethiopian New Year starts on September 12, and this year will be year 2000 in their Coptic calendar. There are many events planned here for the end of the current Millennium, and because of the influx of so many people, the Embassy is closing Tuesday through Thursday. Short week this week!

Bahir Dar, Blue Nile Falls & Lake Tana

After a night at Debre Markos in the Shebel Hotel, we packed up and headed on to Bahir Dar, on the shores of Lake Tana, Ethiopia's largest lake and the source of the Blue Nile. After hanging out and resting in the Ghion Hotel - a garden paradise right on the lake - we drove the next morning to the Blue Nile falls...

That night we went out for Ethiopian food at Amanuel restaurant - veggies and fish since it was fasting time during Lent - and then to a traditional dance club right next door. Art & Mom especially liked the dancing and singing, but our girls were tired and we had to turn in early.
The following day we undertook an all-day boat-trip on Lake Tana, with an eye toward visiting some of the famous monasteries on the lake. Unfortunately, many of them refuse to admit women on their islands, let alone inside their churches, though some did...

Catching up

There's no way I'll be able to catch everything up at once - too much happens in a month.

I mentioned the bar-coded pouch system a few posts back... everything went great, and I even received a kudos telegram and a Franklin Award (with a monetary award as well) for my efforts with it. What made it especially nice was that the telegram and award news arrived during employee evaluation season.

Clara turned eight last month..

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She received (among other things) a makeup set

and, from Grandmama, a lovely blue bathrobe

When Mom and her gentleman-friend Art were here, we managed to get away to Lake Langano for a few days. Here we visited the hot spring across the lake:

A week later, we - all six of us, as the girls had spring break from school - embarked on a 2000 km road trip of the "northern historic route".

We left on Friday afternoon directly from the Embassy - I had to finish tipping a fiber connection before leaving - and drove north-west to Debre Markos, about 300 km from Addis Ababa. Along the way, we traversed rolling hills on perfect pavement until we approached the Blue Nile Gorge. It took about two hours to traverse the 40 km down to the "second Portuguese Bridge" - where Art almost had his camera confiscated for taking pictures - and back up the other side past a construction zone.

Mamie out, Grandmama in

Patricia's Mom left on Friday, after making an exhausting but rewarding trip to the north of Ethiopia with a Frenchie tour group. No, she wasn't abducted, she returned safe and sound and is back in France.

Speaking of which, the media attention on the kidnapping of the British diplomats in the Afar region is, in my opinion, completely overblown. It's an area that is known for banditry and is very close to the disputed border with Eritrea. The Ethiopian government prefers that groups going there be protected with armed guards. There are parts of the US or Europe I would not feel safe going to, and Afar has a reputation. If you don't want trouble, don't go there (of course I make no excuses for the perpetrators of these abductions).

Anyway, as with other unfortunate events, the media paints Ethiopia as a dangerous place, though only a very small number of people are effected personally by the original event; because of the press's lack of perspective, the entire country will suffer a huge financial loss when other tourists stay away. It's too bad, because on the whole the people are friendly, honest, easygoing, and nonviolent. As usual, a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

Anyway, my Mom and her gentleman-friend flew in Sunday (a day late due to an ice storm in Syberacuse), and are here for 3-1/2 weeks.

Clara celebrated her eighth birthday on Sunday as well - photos to come. She was very happy to receive her makeup kit, new PJ's, toy car, and magnetic tinker-type toys, among other presents. Gwendolyne is still young enough, at not-quite-six, to be jealous of her sister's birthday falling two months prior to hers.

Work is fine. I hosted three people from DC here on a project to computerize our Diplomatic Pouch system. It was a success all around, so that was a feather in my cap. Unfortunately I'm working late right now, but I take the good with the bad. We're still very happy here in Ethiopia and are all doing well. Drop a note and let us know what's new in your world!

Out & About and visit from Mamie

I'm still way behind on the blog and we've been away many a weekend, so I apologize for the lack of updates.

Some of our recent activities:
We had Ethiopian Christmas dinner at an Ethiopian friend's place on Jan. 7th;

Gwendolyne lost a tooth;

We went out to dinner at a traditional Ethiopian place, Fasika, and my girls got all dressed up for it;

We hiked to the top of an extinct volcano, Mt. Zuquala, and visited its crater lake and two churches;

We spent a weekend hiking and horseback riding in the Bale Mountains;

Patricia's mother arrived from France two Sundays ago, and we all visited Lake Langano again this past weekend.

Next week a group comes into town from Washington to help us implement the bar-coded pouch tracking system. I'm stressing a bit because I'm in charge of the whole project. I'll let you know how it goes!

Visit to the Vet's

Our vet insisted we bring Clementine by for a checkup, and I managed to snag this photo of our girls with Sheba the Cheetah:

Sheba's a male who was rescued from the National Palace here in Addis Ababa. He's been in rehab at our vet's for several months now. Since Sheba couldn't survive on his own in the wild now, he's to be an ambassador at one of Ethiopia's national parks, to encourage people not to kill the wildlife. It was cool to see such a big, fast, purring machine.

While we were at work...

Somebody stole the camera! Those little rascals! I guess they enjoyed playing in the tent, which is what camping parents like.

Festivus for the Rest of us

Hmm, Santa brought us a ball of white fur...

It's a puppy! She's a street dog, so we've spent the last two weeks pumping her full of steroids, antibiotics, worm medicine, flagellate medicine, vitamins, and activated charcoal. She's much healthier now, though she still has a fairly distended belly. Her name is Clementine.

Oh and if you look out the window, you can see sunshine - it was about 25 C / 77 F that day. No snow in Ethiopia, I'm afraid.

I just wasn't in the mood to get dressed up for xmas, but the champagne was good.

One highlight was opening Patricia's grandfather's favorite wine, which we'd been hoarding for years. This one was a 1986 Chateau Haut-Marbuzet.

Gwendolyne got makeup for xmas, and did Patricia up right!

This is the kind of housing you have to look forward to when you join the Foreign Service.

Actually, Santa brought Clara a tent, so she had to set it up right away.

Santa visits the Embassy

This was just before Christmas - you can see the two Tukuls (traditional Ethiopian houses) behind Santa and gang.

Next to Patricia, Clara, and Gwendolyne are our sponsor Vicky (who answered our questions before, met us at the airport during, and helped us settle in after our arrival) and her two children.

Clara doesn't look it, but she was pretty nervous to go talk to the man in red.

Happy Holidays!

Has it really been a month since I posted? I'm way behind and can't take the time today to give the full update I'd like to...

As we were preparing to leave Addis for a weekend at Lake Langano on Dec. 1, walking between our house and the property wall, I found a small (two week-old) kitten. I thought perhaps someone had thrown him over the wall, but when I looked up, I saw several falcons circling. I presumed they'd stolen him from his mother and dropped him in an attempt to kill him.






We ended up taking him to Langano where we spent a lovely, relaxing weekend. We fed the kitten, who by now had acquired a name ("Samay" - Amharic for "sky", since that is whence he came), milk through an eyedropper. Unfortunately, though he did well for a while, he died a few days later.

We worked on unpacking our household effects the following weekend and week, in preparation for a holiday party we hosted on December 16.

Gotta run - more later?

Turkey, Boxes, 10k, and Car

Our HHE (household effects - our stuff that was sent by ship) arrived Wednesday, so I took the afternoon off to watch eight men unload ten shipping crates full of our belongings. Needless to say, we spent much of the weekend unpacking. Clara & Gwendolyne were overjoyed to have their bicycles again finally.

Now that we've been living fine without all this stuff, we realize we have too much. For example, I sent sweaters that I'll never need in this fine weather, so will store most of them. We have more towels than we can ever use, and I have t-shirts out the wazoo. I'll be giving away a lot of stuff, I think, in addition to the bicycles and four boxes of baby clothes we already planned to give to a local orphanage.

Our sponsors invited us to their house for Thanksgiving but we had already started defrosting the (outrageously expensive) turkey, so I stuffed and roasted it anyway and we took it with us. The children all played together and we adults had a nice evening chatting.

Yesterday (Sunday) was the Great Ethiopian Run, and Patricia and I both ran all 10k, finishing in 64 minutes. We received a medal and (of course) another T-shirt. The group dynamic was great, and I felt fine even though I hadn't trained sufficiently. Patricia had been running quite a bit and so beat me by ten meters.

Our Nissan Patrol is finally in Addis. I paid for the registration last week and the insurance today, so we should have the car in the next few days. We have to have it by Friday, because we're getting away to Lake Langano for the weekend.

Sorry I don't have any photos but it's not always easy to connect my computer to the network.