At it Again in Addis Ababa
Tenastellegn! Time to commence Ethiopian Adventure #5! Like the Fast and the Furious franchise, this one gets better each time around (even if we're now straight-to-DVD). For a guy who loves to travel and explore new places, I just can't seem to get enough of this place (either that or I'm a sucker for 1970 Russian Lada taxis, copious dust, and endless coffee). This month, I'm tagging along as the +1 on my awesome wife's adventure here. Liz is an Oral & Maxillofacial surgery resident at Emory and this year she's participating in Emory's Global Health Service Partnership with Addis Ababa University. That's a fancy way of saying that she's spending the month in Addis working alongside the oral surgery residents at Addis Ababa University, learning from them, providing extra hands for retracting, and hopefully giving a few lectures. This is her first international surgery trip and I can't wait to see what type of shenanigans/surgery she gets up to!
As for me, I am here in an unofficial volunteer capacity. I did the same Emory program last year and so I know many of the Emergency Medicine residents and faculty. Knowing that Liz was coming this month, I sent an email asking if I could volunteer to come give lectures and help with afternoon rounds in the Emergency Department. Enticed with the prospect of free labor, the residency leadership here said "sure, come on over," probably thought I'd flake out, but surprise, I'm here!
The first morning was a perfect re-introduction to Addis. I love spending my first morning anywhere walking around, surveying the cafe scene, watching the ever-intricate pedestrian-automobile-donkey dance, and updating my mental map from my last visit. This morning's adventure took me to the Ethio Telecom office to buy a new cell phone and Ethiopian SIM card. The office was clean and shockingly orderly. There were 24 desks for workers of which 4 were actually in use. I walked in, saw a bunch of people waiting and figured I'd better get comfortable. But as soon as I sat down, a worker came and ushered me to the fancy new kiosk at the front door that prints out your number in line and then had me sit in line. What could have been a tedious wait become a delightful experience watching the next fifteen people walk in and use a number-giving kiosk for the first time. For Americans, pulling a tab from the red cylinder at the butcher counter is a time-honored tradition, but this was clearly a new phenomenon in Ethiopia. And yet, it was awesomely intuitive, people were pretty respectful of the line/order (a few small verbal kerfuffles), and I was in-out and cellphone in hand within 30 minutes. Whoa. It's a far cry from the Ethiopia I first visited in 2007.
The Prime Minister has ambitious plans to privatize the telecom industry (and many other industries), and I can only imagine how awesome the process will become if Ethiopia's telecom industry starts to look anything like Kenya or Tanzania. In addition, the obvious next step for the telecom industry will be the Ethiopian iteration of M-PESA or a similarly fashioned mobile banking boom. If you're not familiar with M-PESA, it is essentially a money transfer service created by Vodafone in Kenya and Tanzania where people can use their cell phone #s as bank accounts from which they can pay bills, buy groceries, send money to friends and family, and store wealth. It makes the US system of consumer banking with cash, personal checks, and credit cards look hopelessly antiquated. Speaking last night with an Ethiopian friend who's a small business owner, he said the players/banks/future cell phone companies are already lining up and chomping at the bit to get a piece of this pie once the government opens up the market.
One final sign of the country's rapid modernization is the interior design of new spaces. Tamoka coffee, one of the city's original coffee roasters and a prized brand, has opened a few new coffee shop outposts in Bole (the wealthy, fancy area of town). After buying my cell phone, I crossed the street to a new Tamoka shop, ordered from a woman standing at an iPad, and then posted up at one of the ten standing tables. High ceilings, big windows, an industrial-chic design theme with lots of metal and wood, and clean. The clientele consisted of well-dressed businessmen, young friends meeting for coffee, cute couples on dates, and a bus of Chinese tourists. It was a totally different vibe from 2007. I spent hours in coffee and pastry shops during my first two summers. There was no urgency in those days. People would sit in the cafes for hours, reading the paper, ordering a coffee, then a tea, then another coffee because there wasn't anything else to do. Now? Everyone in the coffee shop was checking their watch, sending text messages, clearly getting their caffeine fill before attacking the day rather than sipping coffee while being oppressed by the interminably slow passage of time for those who want but don't have other places to be. Not to oversell this but there is a palpable optimism and forward momentum in Addis. Looking out from my hotel balcony, there are nearly twenty high-rises under construction with cranes(!) and countless more that are going up brick by brick, supported by crazy eucalyptus scaffolding and the promise of an exciting tomorrow.
As for me, I am here in an unofficial volunteer capacity. I did the same Emory program last year and so I know many of the Emergency Medicine residents and faculty. Knowing that Liz was coming this month, I sent an email asking if I could volunteer to come give lectures and help with afternoon rounds in the Emergency Department. Enticed with the prospect of free labor, the residency leadership here said "sure, come on over," probably thought I'd flake out, but surprise, I'm here!
The first morning was a perfect re-introduction to Addis. I love spending my first morning anywhere walking around, surveying the cafe scene, watching the ever-intricate pedestrian-automobile-donkey dance, and updating my mental map from my last visit. This morning's adventure took me to the Ethio Telecom office to buy a new cell phone and Ethiopian SIM card. The office was clean and shockingly orderly. There were 24 desks for workers of which 4 were actually in use. I walked in, saw a bunch of people waiting and figured I'd better get comfortable. But as soon as I sat down, a worker came and ushered me to the fancy new kiosk at the front door that prints out your number in line and then had me sit in line. What could have been a tedious wait become a delightful experience watching the next fifteen people walk in and use a number-giving kiosk for the first time. For Americans, pulling a tab from the red cylinder at the butcher counter is a time-honored tradition, but this was clearly a new phenomenon in Ethiopia. And yet, it was awesomely intuitive, people were pretty respectful of the line/order (a few small verbal kerfuffles), and I was in-out and cellphone in hand within 30 minutes. Whoa. It's a far cry from the Ethiopia I first visited in 2007.
The Prime Minister has ambitious plans to privatize the telecom industry (and many other industries), and I can only imagine how awesome the process will become if Ethiopia's telecom industry starts to look anything like Kenya or Tanzania. In addition, the obvious next step for the telecom industry will be the Ethiopian iteration of M-PESA or a similarly fashioned mobile banking boom. If you're not familiar with M-PESA, it is essentially a money transfer service created by Vodafone in Kenya and Tanzania where people can use their cell phone #s as bank accounts from which they can pay bills, buy groceries, send money to friends and family, and store wealth. It makes the US system of consumer banking with cash, personal checks, and credit cards look hopelessly antiquated. Speaking last night with an Ethiopian friend who's a small business owner, he said the players/banks/future cell phone companies are already lining up and chomping at the bit to get a piece of this pie once the government opens up the market.
One final sign of the country's rapid modernization is the interior design of new spaces. Tamoka coffee, one of the city's original coffee roasters and a prized brand, has opened a few new coffee shop outposts in Bole (the wealthy, fancy area of town). After buying my cell phone, I crossed the street to a new Tamoka shop, ordered from a woman standing at an iPad, and then posted up at one of the ten standing tables. High ceilings, big windows, an industrial-chic design theme with lots of metal and wood, and clean. The clientele consisted of well-dressed businessmen, young friends meeting for coffee, cute couples on dates, and a bus of Chinese tourists. It was a totally different vibe from 2007. I spent hours in coffee and pastry shops during my first two summers. There was no urgency in those days. People would sit in the cafes for hours, reading the paper, ordering a coffee, then a tea, then another coffee because there wasn't anything else to do. Now? Everyone in the coffee shop was checking their watch, sending text messages, clearly getting their caffeine fill before attacking the day rather than sipping coffee while being oppressed by the interminably slow passage of time for those who want but don't have other places to be. Not to oversell this but there is a palpable optimism and forward momentum in Addis. Looking out from my hotel balcony, there are nearly twenty high-rises under construction with cranes(!) and countless more that are going up brick by brick, supported by crazy eucalyptus scaffolding and the promise of an exciting tomorrow.
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