His name is Jefta!!!

After two weeks of amazing news of friends getting together, finally getting engaged or even announcing they are pregnant, the best news was even to come. My sister called she had given birth to a healthy boy named Jefta Ruben. Although rather surprised by the news, as it was not expected yet, true joy filled me for the rest of the day. This is my first nephew and knowing who his parents are I can only say it must be a great kid. Congrats Jiska & Menno with becoming parents and congrats mom and dad with becoming grandma and grandpa.

See the beauty and his parents for yourself

Melkam Addis Amit (Happy New Year)

This weekend we had the pleasure of celebrating Ethiopian New Year. For those wondering we have now entered the year 1998. For a more detailed description of the Ethiopian calendar see Thea’s previous post: Whats the date? What's the time?

Anyway were invited for dinner at Sher and Anne (Sher is a colleague from UNECA) for some amazing Indian food and relaxing night with some of their other friends. On new years day Jens and I were invited at an Ethiopians diplomat’s house, whom Jens knew from his French class. Again another great meal of Injerra, local brewed beers, buna (coffee in Ethiopian) and interesting conversations made this weekend to be very satisfying but also very tiring. New Year is celebrated here mainly within the families and with the exception of the Sheraton (who put off some massive fireworks) and some other hotels it is not a real public event. What is typical is the large scale slaughtering of sheep, goats, chickens etc. And the ones that were able to survive this holiday will not be happy for too long as Meskel (the finding of the true cross of Jesus) is dated for the 27th.

Miscellaneous

Birthday
My birthday was amazing here thanks to all the nice e-mail and ecards I received from all around the world. You guys are amazing. But also have to thank the great colleagues who really surprised me with actually having a present for me. You guys are great, thanks:
Adam, Adrian, Asnaketch, Azeb M, Azeb W, Bart, Emmanuel, Hiwot, Janvier, Kwabia, Leonce, Ralf, Roza, Reto, Susana, Tsedale, Yetonayet and especially Wengel who arranged the whole thing.
Actually my colleagues at ESPD (Economic and Social Policy Division) have been amazing since the first day and really made me feel at home very fast. I salute you my friends.

Drivers license
After driving around Addis without a valid drivers license for a while (had to bring Femi up and down to the Dutch embassy and a trip to Awash) I finally got my Ethiopian drivers license this Friday. Quite a hassle, but with the help from the transport-office here at UNECA I managed (well they managed I just had to pay and show my face at the right desk).

Visitors
After the great experience of “youth hostel Jakob, the cheapest in town” in Copenhagen it seems I have arrived at yet another one. Jens has now become an official non-official AIESEC’er after hosting random guests we both never met before, but hey they were in AIESEC and cool so we offer them the guestroom here (well first of all Jens was so amazing to offer a room to me the day he met me, so it’s part of his hospitable personality).
By now we have had Femi (Nigerian from AIESEC International) and Alicia & Brian (American AIESEC-trainees in Egypt) all came over for a visit to this wonderful country.

So if you feel like having a break and come over to Ethiopia feel free to knock on our door. The rainy season is almost over and the weather is really getting better even at the 2600 m altitude here in Addis.

Awash weekend

This update is two weeks late and many of you have already read Thea’s blog (normally a better and faster writer then me and describing the exact same trip), but thought I had to write something personal as well.

As Thea’s Ericsson trip to Dubai was cancelled and Femi had a slightly bad ending of his trip up north we decided it was a good idea to go out of Addis for the weekend and see something of Ethiopia.

[Femi lost his wallet in Gondar including his Dutch residence-permit, so spend 1 1/2 week going to the embassy every day to be able to fly back on the 28th]

Anyway, the road to Awash was of much better quality then we expected, although we did have to avoid hitting any people or animals that were crossing the road without having any clue what a car driving 100 km/h can do to you when it hits.

But the park was worth the ride and made you feel like a real safari (although there seem to be better parks, but to far for a weekend). I think we noticed around 15-20 different species including baboons, crocodiles, warthogs, turtles and different gazelle look-alikes.



But the most amazing was probably the picnic at the edge of the gorge and the swim in the hot springs. The last was around 37 Celsius and in the middle of an oasis making you feel you were swimming in a small paradise.



We spend the night in a hotel in the village of Awash, which claims to have hosted Charles de Gaulle and Emperor Haile Sellassie. This could easily be true, but then nothing has changed since. Nevertheless great beds and we needed those, because we were exhausted.

The next day we went back to Addis and tried to visit some sites where apparently there were hippos and another natural spring. The hippos didn’t come out in the day (which can not be said for the amount of tour guides harassing us) and the spring was turned into a commercial recreation centre.

But the monkeys, real cute ones not the big fat baboons, and the ice-cream made it into a successful day. With another amazing experience richer we arrived back in Addis Ababa where Femi had to hurry to catch his flight. But not without one last meal of Injerra (Ethiopian national dish).