Packing and Planning

I am packing...again... Let's face it I am an expert at it but it seems that every single time there is a reason for me to take more than the basic necessities. This time it is Xmas, last time what was it? I can't remember.
I am flying tomorrow morning. I don't like this morning flight, first it means that when I wake up I have to get ready, second it means that I will have to spend 11 hours in Frankfurt...in winter it is just not that much fun. Also I have spent 11 hours in Frankfurt quite a few times, and immigration is not very good at squeezing their stamp on a partially used page...seems trivial but I use in average a page of my passport per month and even with the extra-thick passport I only have 48 pages, 5 of which are taken by the essentials at the front (things like m y name etc).

Anyway I checked the weather forecast in for Johannesburg so that I resist the temptation to pack for winter. Here it is: (thanks to Wunderground)

I am going back to Summer !!! Hurray!!
I an going back to work !!! Yikes!!!!

"The Neuromancer" and other "classics"

One of my favourite books is "the Neuromancer" by William Gibson. It is meant to have been the first science fiction book dealing with cyberspace and the first cyberpunk novel. It won the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the Hugo Award and made it to one version (and I don't know which one. I don't even know if there are several versions) of the Times 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.
I like the book overall but one of my favourite part about it is its first line: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." which in winter, and particularly today, I can really relate to.

Today I went second-hand-book shopping and I saw a copy of it. I must have bought at least four copies of it over the years. I did not buy another copy today. I cannot find it on my shelves and I am nearly sorry that I didn't buy another copy. But I bought a few other "classics":
I decided to forgive Joseph Conrad for having written the book that haunts me but that I cannot read and bought "Almayer's folly".
I bought two Graham Greene (always a mild source of surprise and embarrassment to me that I should be a fan of Graham Greene) "The Human Factor" and "Monsignor Quixote".
"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen...and I am no Jane Austen fan, but I thought I should give it a try.
Rudyard Kipling, "The Light that Failed" just because one cannot read "The Just so Stories" again and again, and I had never heard of this book before.
"Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman just because the cover says "Heaven to read, and you'll laugh like hell" and I wouldn't mind having a good laugh.

Now I just have to decide which of these I will take with me to work this Sunday.

Company for dinner

Last night P. ( the girl in the picture above) and I went out for pizza... She brought her parents so there was 4 of us.
She had changed a lot since I had last seen her, which was really only a couple of months ago. She sits up really well and is still a really good, easy going baby with huge big eyes and round little cheeks.
...and she does this funny thing: I was holding her when she started sucking on my hand ... she did it for quite a while and she was dead serious about it.

The Governor General of Canada has prorogued the parliament

Through everything which is going on in the world I would imagine that our situation in Canada is not widely reported but today the governor general (a representative of the Queen of England) has prorogued (suspended) our parliament until January 26th.
It is usually understood that the role of governor general is really one of show and even though it is obviously a position of power, this power is not typically used. This being said I have to say that Michaelle Jean (our governor general) had to get involved.
The opposition has formed a coalition against our minority government and is trying to take power without any elections. If you get into the nitty gritty of the thing it is possible and may even in some way appear alright but from my point of view just the way the opposition is handling the situation suggests to me that they should not be allowed to take power.
I am not going to rant and rave about it, just go an check it out if you are interested.

I wonder if Crazy Bob (also known as Robert Mugabe) is laughing at us.

Warning and recommendations about Ethiopia from the Canadian government

This is what the government of Canada has to say about Ethiopia and the risk for travelers in Ethiopia... I am just reading it now, I never read it before going somewhere because I don't want to behave like a paranoid victim...there is nothing more dangerous than behaving like a paranoid victims, it attracts crooks. Anyway, here it is, from this site:
"You are advised to exercise a high degree of caution in the country. On September 3, 2008, an explosion occurred in the Merkato section of the capital, Addis Ababa. Bombings also occured in the capital in April and May 2008. Travellers should maintain a very high level of security awareness at all times and avoid public gatherings and street demonstrations.

The risk of terrorist attacks remains high in Addis Ababa and other areas of the country. Although foreigners are not ordinarily the target of such attacks, some local hotels including the Hilton and the Ghion have received bomb threats. Canadians should monitor local developments, avoid demonstrations, and register and remain in regular contact with the Embassy of Canada in Addis."

And of course if you go and check it out it goes on and on about areas to avoid entirely.
I would like to say that the sum of all the troubles I had in Ethiopia goes as followed: I was seriously bitten by fleas (over 60 bites over the area of my body which would just fit under a regular sized T-shirt) after going to a market in a small village off a dirt road and crossing (just like the rest of the crowd, I would like to point out) trough a packed mass of donkeys. OK, the thing is fleas and mosquitoes love me.
Here is an advice for you: if you want to go to a place where nothing at all will happen, ask me where I am going, nothing ever happens where I am. People in Thailand were stranded in the Bangkok airport. People in Mumbai went through hell, and some died. Just stick with me and we can go any place on the planet and nothing, absolutely nothing -being bitten by fleas does not count- will happen. Though I will say that in the Merkato (reputed to be the largest open air market in Africa) you should be wary of pickpockets. I had no problems but it is an area which by the density of the population and all that would lend itself to pick pocketing very easily anywhere in the world.

And let me just add as passing sarcasm one question regarding these recommendations from the Canadian government.....What government would that be???? We are going through a political situation right now which honestly remind me of political coups in crazy unstable countries.

Addis Ababa's Hilton

I'm embarrassed to say, but I stayed at the Hilton in Addis..... I'm not sure why. It came recommended by somebody ... I guess this is my excuse. But there are lots of other decent hotels in Addis, none luxurious though...and that includes the Hilton by the way!.. I mean the "non-luxurious" part.
Another relatively fancy hotel which I went to see for next time is the Ghion. A very Ethiopian hotel but still quite nice (remember photos can lie it is not quite as nice as the photos show. It has the look and feel of a old beauty well pass its prime). To be truthful Ethiopia is not one of those places where you can expect to find something decent for cheap. This is not South East Asia!!

Here are a few interesting things I saw at the Hilton which is now the place where expats and diplomats hang out:
- Their menu had four Ethiopian dishes in grand total. I ate in small local restaurants and ate Ethiopian food everyday every meals and never had the same dish twice. Ethiopian food is very good. Thank goodness I have already somewhat mastered the art of eating with my hands...actually with my HAND (no "s") you only eat with your right hand.
- People who have adopted Ethiopian kids apparently bring them back for brief and relatively luxurious holidays...and by the way the locals hate it.
- A big wig general or something like this (I am not up on my military ranks) from North Korea was in Ethiopia while I was there, I was told on a weapon selling mission.
- Apparently all over the world investors have noticed Ethiopia (I am not sure what about) but there was investors from places like the UAE (United Arab Emirate) in the hotel (I know I talked to one of them...the mehndi on my hands....that's why he talked to me).
- Security is so tight that each time you come into the Hilton you have to go through a metal detector and your bag has to be X-ray-ed. Each car which enter the grounds has mildly searched. Now imagine getting back into the hotel with clearly re-used plastic bags filled with green grass as packing material (see blog below). They weren't impressed.
- The expats and diplomats have on going parties and fancy affairs. There was a big to-do about something rather every day I was there.
- Addis has hot springs and apart from being able to get to them in the pools and spas of the hotels there is also a public bath/shower down the hill form the Hilton.

One good thing about the Hilton is that, by pure chance, it is across the street from the mapping agency of Ethiopia and I was the second person in the all of Ethiopia (and the world for that matter) to buy the new 2008 map of Addis Ababa. It came out while I was waiting in their office. It is a great map with the satellite photo of Addis on the back and most landmarks are marked on it.
This brings to mind an interesting fact about Addis and Ethiopia in general: streets do not have names. They've started giving them names so now big avenues have names, but typically roads and streets have neither names nor numbers!

Ethiopia, part II : Coffee

Ethiopia is the birth place of coffee and they make a fabulous cup of coffee. They have a coffee ceremony...or at least that what it is referred to as, but really it does not come across as a ceremony and maybe more as a "complex and peaceful procedure".
If you are going to order coffee at one of the little stands (and you'll recognize them because they have a little charcoal fire going, a woman sitting in front of it and a circle of wooden stools in front of her - sorry no photos) you need to know that getting coffee is going to take a long time. Of course if you go to one of those stands at a tourist hotel or at the airport it will not take that long. But if you do the right thing this is how it goes:
The woman takes green coffee beans and roast them on a metal plate on the charcoals (fabulous smell!) then while she pounds the beans with a wooden pestle she boils water in the coffee pot (a traditional pottery pot) on the same charcoals. At this stage she often puts some frankincense on the charcoals. All this is a slow process. Once the coffee is a fine powder she puts the powder into the water and you wait some more until the coffee is done. Whenever the pot shows steam (and so must be just about to boil) the woman making the coffee just take the pot off the charcoals for a while, then puts it back on. Typically about half an hour later you can drink a small cup of very strong (typically sweetened) coffee. Delicious!
One day I hired a local cab and went for a drive to the outskirts of Addis and found a local potter.

This is the coffee pots, and coffee cups I bought. (a detail of the photo above) and the grass you see in the photo above is what we used to pack around the pottery so it would break during transport.
One trivial but interesting thing about coffee in Ethiopia is that since Ethiopia was briefly colonized by the italians. Italy's relationship to coffee (strong small cups of espresso) is really an Ethiopian thing. The coffee you drink in the process I described above is very strong and drank in small cups not unlike little espresso cups.

Heart of Darkness is following me

I have mentioned before how I have tried several times to read "heart of darkness", without any success. And I mentioned that I am pursued by that book.
Just to show that I am not exaggerating and that mentions of this books come up all the time:

Yesterday in the plane I started "The Last Elephant" by Jeremy Gavron and at p. 17 I read: "The ivory trade was the subject of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness......"

Today as I am "catching up" with the blogs I follow I found a mention of it in this blog: "Of course, there is a long history of tropes of darkness in connection with Africa – the “dark continent”, “heart of darkness” and so on".

See, I am not imagining it. I am pursued by this book!

Makeda, the Queen of Sheba and mother of Solomon's son

After Dubai I went to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).
I will say more about this later, post pictures and the all thing.
I really enjoyed Ethiopia, thought I was only there for six days and it is not enough, not even close to being enough in fact, there is so much in Ethiopia. Instead of rushing about and seeing a little bit of everything and not really having the time to enjoy what was in front of me I took the time to explore Addis Ababa and just did three small trips outside Addis. But this is not what this post is about. I want to talk about Makeda, the Queen of Sheba. She was one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Ethiopia (other reasons being Lucy, the coffee, the jewelery, the art, the churches etc etc etc)

I bought myself a little book about the culture of Ethiopia ("Ethiopian Civilization" by Belai Giday). It is a good little book and I learnt a lot, but here I want to talk about Solomon and his behaviour towards the Queen of Sheba (note that in the book she is referred to as "the queen of Saba". She ruled over Ethiopia and Yemen, and Saba was her capital city). I found the story, that maybe you all already know, in this little book.

This is a picture of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon of Israel (I found it at this website but there are many other sites).
The part of the story I want to repeat here concerns the Queen of Sheba and how she ended up bearing Menelik, the son of Solomon (believed to have originally been "Ibn-al Malik" which means "son of the king").

Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomons wisdom and being a farsighted queen always in pursuit of greater knowledge decided to go and visit him in Jerusalem. While she was visiting Solomon one evening Solomon with a particular design in mind had a great feast for her with a lot of spicy food and wine. At the end of the meal when it was time for the Queen of Sheba to go back to the palace she was using during her visit Solomon asked her to stay. She explained that she would only stay if he was to promise not to force himself upon her. Solomon agreed but on one condition. He told her that he would not force himself upon her BUT in exchange she would not take anything of his without first asking for it. And the Queen of Sheba agreed to it. So she stayed at his palace. They slept in separate beds but in the same room.
During the night, after a heavy meal of spicy and salty food, the queen woke up thirsty and helped herself of some water from a jar Solomon had had put at his bedside. Solomon who was not sleeping caught her arm and then reminded her of their agrement. He pointed out that since she had broken her part of the deal he was now free to break his part of it.

Menelik was born during her return home to Ethiopia, so obviously she did not leave the palace the following morning, this suggest to me that she was alright with the arrangement but I cannot help but think that Solomon who is reputed to be so wise and fair tricked her and behaved in a very bad way. So is this the kind of behaviour you would expect from a wise and fair king?

In his defense I will say that Ethiopian women are absolutely beautiful...but still....

Mehndi

Today I went to the library. I usually go to the library the very first day I arrive in town but since I landed on a Sunday I could not go and get my truck out of storage.
As usual I borrowed many more books than what I could possibly read just because I enjoy having the choice.
I also bought a few books from the discard: a few mysteries to read on the plane cheap enough to leave behind once I am done with them and a book on mehndi (you have to admit that the timing on that one is amazing). I was reading parts of it when I realized that I never did say anything about the process of having henna drawings on my hands (this is mehndi for those who do not know).

In the book they go over recipes for the paste, this I cannot say anything about. The paste was mixed already. But I did notice that while I was having my hands done some local women came and bought the paste from the place where I was.
In the book they also say that the henna should stay on overnight. I had mine on for an hour.
They say that once the henna is dry you have to apply a mixture of lemon and sugar and leave it on for a long time. We did no such thing.
But they do say that warmth applied while the henna is drying makes the colour more intense. I do not know if this is true but they did have little electric heaters at the beauty salon where I was. Also, as described in the book, the women did scrape the paste off my hands with a dull knife and did tell me not to wash my hand until the next morning.
Another interesting thing that the book mention and which is true is that the colour gets darker in the following 24 hours...after you remove the henna. This is really weird if you think about it. Also the henna, in my case, lasted a lot longer in my palms than on the back of my hands even though it is counter intuitive since the inside of my hands is exposed to much more, but I had also noticed that the henna inside my hands was darker even though I couldn't understand why.

Overall I was really surprised at the amount of comments I got over the designs on my hands. I move my hands a lot when I talk and I know that I touch my face a lot, so my hands are quite visible, but still I was surprised. One woman who commented noticed my hands when I was washing them after using the bathroom at the mall. Lots of people commented.

Anyway this is just my two cents worth on the subject.

An hour in Oman

Oman is so beautiful.



The only problem was that since I did not know that we were crossing into Oman (in fact I had not realized that there was a small part of Oman in this part of the world) I didn't have my passport. Going in Oman was easy, the young man at the border ( a military of some sort) just asked to confirm that R. and I were relatives (it is illegal for an unmarried woman to be alone with a bachelor...simply put it is illegal for an unmarried woman to be alone with a man whom by law she could marry), he told us that we could not stay long and had to come back the same day which was fine. However when we came back at the same border crossing the guards were different and they were completely amazed when we told them that we had crossed an hour ago with no passport (neither one of us) and really just with R.'s driver's license. Thank goodness the guy who let us go in was in the office and when he saw us he told them to let us go by otherwise since they did not speak english this all thing could have gotten complicated. I normally always use to have my passport with me, but South Africa has taught me to leave it in the safe of the hotel because the chances of getting mugged are so high.
In the end all was fine and it didn't not take very long at all to sort out. I thought that Omanis came across as quite friendly. The little bit that I saw came across as much more genuine than Dubai.


I am always amazed at the prevalence of english just about everywhere. Even in places like Oman you get little store with english signs. Sometimes there are just so cute.

On our way to Oman

One day R. and I drove across the skinny peninsula and went to the upper part of Oman.


Oman is mostly South and East of Dubai but there is a little part of it isolated at the tip of the Arabia "boot" (Yes I know, "the Boot" is usually Italy, but you have to admit that the Arabian peninsula also looks like a boot). on the satellite photo (from Google maps) the part North of the white line is the small isolated part of Oman.
We went across the border at the seaside in a little town called Dibba. It is a beautiful place. The Omani side is not as developed as the UAE side and as a result much nicer.

This is the road to Oman with some views on our way.

More about Dubai

Dubai is mostly about the new and the expensive but it also has the "old" part. The centre of it all is the Dubai Creek, which is, as far a I gathered, a human made, or at least human enhanced, salt water canal used as a harbor. You can cross it for one dirham (a third of a dollar right now) on one of those little boats. Once crossing it on this visit I saw a ray (the big flat fish) breaching, it looked as if it was trying to fly. Maybe it was trying to get out of the water which must be disgusting.

My favourite part of Dubai is the creek and my favourite part about it are the dhows which are still working vessels and carry huge loads.