Mengistu's Revenge

Sadly, I became a victim of Mengistu's revenge on Monday afternoon. I'll spare you all the gruesome details of my upset GI tract, but I spent most of Tuesday in bed. At least I was awake to catch the wild fourth quarter of the Chicago-Arizona Monday Night game, which started at about 4:00 AM our time. Most mornings when I wake up I can catch the last few innings of the NLCS if the game's not rained out.

In any case I was back in action today, Wednesday.

Fortunately I had already swapped videos at the fairly well-stocked Mini-Merkato (the embassy commissary - named after Africa's largest open-air market, located here in Addis, the Merkato) and picked up a great one, What's Eating Gilbert Grape. I had always heard many good things about it, and I liked several of Lasse Hallström's other films, such as My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules, Chocolat, but Gilbert Grape is utterly fantastic. The lighting and music set the mood and make the silent and uncomfortable scenes pass quickly; the cast is well put-together and acts phenomenally; I identified with the story line (I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere); and I thought the emotions were well communicated.

Don't think that we spend all our time watching TV. I tried several times to get my dial-up connection to remain connected for longer than five minutes. I managed 10 minutes once, at 33.6 Kbps. Yeah, the infrastructure here sucks.

One thing I've neglected to mention is the wonderful melange of old and new vehicles that roam the streets here. Patricia was happy to see a few Renault 4Ls and 5s, as well as a whole bunch of Peugeots - 405s and 30somethings, old stock. Every day I see VW Beetles (I miss mine!), but the most common sight here are tiny blue-and-white Lada taxis. There are a few Fiats and Opels around too.

The Europeans and Americans are missing the market here, though - the Asians are selling both small sedans and the SUVs all Westerners seem to drive. Gasoline costs about 8.50 birr (~ $0.93 US) per liter, diesel's cheaper at 5 birr (~ $0.57 US), and everyone here complains about the high price, which is fixed by the government. Perhaps that's why efficient, reliable Asian models are selling well.

Of course, we can't wait for our Nissan Patrol to arrive - it's a bother being tied to the Embassy motor pool. Patience...