The morning started off with what seems to have become the routine, at least for now – the kids wake up and head off to Laolao and Laoye's bed for some morning playtime. I join them after a few minutes and we have a family snuggle. Then it's dressed and they kick the ball around outside for a few minutes until breakfast.
After breakfast today, I got Giggles started on her schoolwork with one of the "fun" things she had to do – a lesson in symmetry that involved some drawing, cutting and pasting. (Anything with drawing is a sure winner.) I think because of that, and perhaps also because she was getting used to it, she was happy enough to do the work.
At 9:30 I left Laolao in charge of ensuring the work got done while Solomon and Germatchew, two of the adoption agency's local staff, took Laoye, Poppet and I to the Dutch embassy to get a transit visa for Poppet. We are flying via KLM, and since we have about a seven-hour layover in Amsterdam, we hope to leave the airport to go into the city for a few hours. While Ethiopian nationals are supposed to have a transit visa to fly via Amsterdam even if they stay within the airport, many people have reported bringing their kids home without one and never being asked to show a visa. But since we hope to leave the airport, I expect it will be necessary to show the visa as we exit and re-enter the airport. (Though given that Poppet is just a child and we are Canadian citizens and can produce adoption papers, they might not object, but I am not going to take the chance.)
We arrived at the embassy and found a line-up waiting at the gate. Solomon procured an application form right away and we discovered we needed two passport-sized photos. I'd wondered about that the day before, but not more than fleetingly, so we were unprepared. But we all hopped back in the van, drove down the road a minute or two, and found a shop that could do the job in 25 minutes. Back at the gate, they told us we needed a photocopy of Poppet's passport main page and Canadian visa page. (Why didn't they say so before?!?) This time Solomon sent Germatchew off with instructions while the rest of us waiting; it was 11:05 and the consulate was to close at 11:30.
Germatchew returned with ten minutes to spare. But now, a group of Ethiopians was being admitted just ahead of us, so we had to wait for them to be "processed." Everyone had to show photo ID and then they were patted down and scanned with a hand-held metal detector. I saw this happening and told Laoye he had better leave his jackknife, that he always carries around, in the van. But when it came our turn, after obtaining our ID they gave us our visitor's badges and let us in with no other security procedures whatsoever. Strike one for discrimination. (Yes, these were local Ethiopian employees of the Embassy handling things at the gate, but they would have been following the Embassy's rules.)
Inside the fortress (for such it felt – surrounded by a brick wall two metres high, topped with a metal grille another 60 cm high and barbed wire above that), we walked down a curving roadway towards a small building, inside which we waited for several minutes until our turn came to talk to the visa processing officer. Again this was an Ethiopian local employee, who spoke very good English. She took the completed application and copies of Poppet's passport pages, then said she needed copies of the adoption documents. I had the originals along but no copies, so I pulled them out of the envelope and asked if there was somewhere to make copies. She said she could photocopy them for me and did so immediately. (So why couldn't she make copies of Poppet's passport pages, too?!?) Then she also wanted to see flight information. Thankfully, I'd anticipated that they might want to see this, so I had those along too. Again she made copies. Finally I paid the fee – a whopping 800 birr ($88). The high price might be because I'd asked for a "transit" visa rather than an "airport transit" visa, because we hope to go into the city. But maybe not. And we were told to come back in 24 hours to pick up the visa. (We'll actually go next week, as we have plans for tomorrow.)
We got back home around 12:30, just as Giggles was completing her final page of schoolwork. She'd actually had a good break already; she and Laolao had walked down to the icecream shop and each had a cone.
In the afternoon, we played ball for a while, then went out to Bole Road. I wanted to find a place to get my films developed. After a bit of asking around, and finding someone who led us to the shop (and whom we tipped, of course – every small service here seems to demand a tip – but at 5 or 10 birr a time, it's not that onerous), I handed over my films and was told they'd be ready in an hour. I also asked to get the pictures on CD; that was going to take 24 hours. Then we enjoyed a family icecream cone (Giggles' second one of the day!) and walked down to the Friendship Centre to get some more groceries. On the return journey, my pictures were ready!
I haven't told you much about the area we're staying. It's on a road that cuts across from Bole Road to the Ring Road, providing a short-cut for access to the Ring Road. There are several embassies along the street, though none of them belonging to big and important or wealthy countries, so nothing like the Dutch Embassy we visited this morning. We are, rather, in the vicinity of the Embassy of Congo Brazzaville, the Embassy of Brazil (right next door), the Embassy of Senegal, and the residence of the Ambassador of Guinea Bissau.
The Embassy of Japan is apparently near the corner of this street and Bole Road (because some of the taxi drivers seem to know it as the Japan Embassy Road), but I have yet to take note of it. The house is near the top of a hill, so as we walk towards Bole Road we have good view over the city to the northwest. (I have been turned around for the longest time, but have finally gotten straightened out – what I thought were north and south on Bole Road are actually southeast and northwest, respectively.)
As most everything is behind gated enclosures, it is hard to tell what is what, but there does seem to be a mix of relatively wealthy (by Ethiopian standards) and poor. Down the hill some 50m from our house, in between two walled and gated compounds, is a row of about six or eight dwellings that would be best described as hovels.
These are more the tin shack variety – narrow and rough, with a wee garden of sorts in front of the house, a pile of tires, and other sundry items. When we walk by we see the women out washing their clothes or doing other work, and recently several large baskets of chili peppers and other spices have been laid out to dry in the sun. It is here that Giggles has spied several cats, including a couple of kittens. She has gone down to visit the cats several times with one of us grown-ups, each time attracting a small crowd of interested people, and by now the ladies know her and greet her as we pass.
Across a side-street from the hovels is what appears to be a metal-working place. Outside the compound walls we see several large metal contraptions in various stages of construction. In this vicinity is situated the "School for the Deaf." Laolao and Laoye peeked in through its open gate one time and saw several students coming out who signed to them, but they could not understand.
Last Tuesday, as we returned from the internet café, Laoye and I saw a small herd of sheep being driven into one of the compounds not far from our house. We wondered if they lived there, and if so where had they come from or where did they spend their days? Or if they had just been purchased for a Christmas feast. Ethiopian Christmas is next Monday, and a primary reason, we have been told, for the flocks upon flocks of sheet and goats we have seen in the city this past week. Tradition has it that a family will buy their mutton or goat on the hoof and slaughter it at home for Christmas dinner. I think we'll settle for store-bought meat.
Near the bottom of our hill, just before Bole Road, is Aladdin's restaurant, which we have been told is a very good restaurant and one of these days we will check it out. Opposite is a sign pointing to a Korean restaurant down a side street. Next these is a fruit and vegetable stand, a bakery where we have been buying our buns, and then as one rounds the corner onto Bole Road, shops of all sorts and descriptions. The internet café I've used is on the other side of Bole Road, down a couple of buildings.
All in all it is a very interesting section of town and we have enjoyed getting out these past few days and exploring the neighbourhood.
The evening was uneventful – supper, stories, and bedtime. The one note out of the ordinary was that Germatchew showed up around 6:30, saying tomorrow they were taking the other family that's in town at the moment, D&C, up Mount Entoto and then to the National Museum. He asked if we wanted to go too. Unfortunately we had to decline; we already had plans with our friend JN, who wanted to show us some of the projects she works with and knows of around the city. Otherwise we would have loved to; we had just been commenting that we really should go visit the museum one day.
(Continue to 4 January: Around and about Addis)
No comments:
Post a Comment