A (work) trip to Addis Ababa

Well friends, I’ve made it to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!

After a series of long flights and a long layover in Dubai (not great when you go only for 12 hours and it’s night time), I made it! This is, thus far, my first trip to the African continent and, as many of you know, will not be my last.

The first week was mostly a slew of meetings, but even so, I have really been enjoying myself. So what are my first thoughts, you may ask?

It’s an insanely busy city. During the day, there are people EVERY WHERE. And I really mean every where. They’re sitting on the sidewalk getting their shoes shined, walking in the middle of the street (I will never complain about pedestrians in the US ever again), driving cars several inches away from other cars (but mostly appear to be excellent drivers), walking goats down the street to be sold, shopping in “commercial centers” (commercial center = shopping mall), or training for football matches in what was once known as “Revolutionary Square.” I mean really, you name an activity, I could find at least 10 people in Addis doing it. But then, after 10PM, the streets are empty. It’s really a drastic shift and made me feel odd about being out so late. I suppose it’s lucky that with work and jetlag the way it has been, I haven’t been out much at night. Don’t you worry friends, there’s still several days left!

Now onto other important things–the food.

Spoiler alert: I’ll only talk about food for the remainder of this entire post.

Food

Local cuisine is eaten with your hands (but only your right hand, because your left… well… is spoken for) and you use local flat-spongey-sourdough bread, injera, as a kind of shovel. At least I do. As it turns out, it’s easier said than done.

My Ethiopian colleagues look quite composed while eating, meanwhile I’m on the otherside of the table half-covered in doro wat (stew made with lentils and sometimes meat) trying not to drop all of my food back onto my plate. But believe me, it’s not for lack of trying! Our Country Director, tried to share the artform which I will explain to you now:

Basically you rip off a small piece of injera (think 3×3 inches), loosely pinch it between your thumb and forefinger, pick up some food, place it back down on the plate, and fold it–creating a small little food envelope of joy. After you created this little bite of doro wat-heaven, you can gracefully place it in your mouth. OR SO THEY TELL YOU.

The “Lily-way” of eating mostly goes like this: rip off some injera (and don’t forget to rip with ONE HAND PEOPLE) in a small rectangle, use it to push your desired bite into a convenient corner of your plate (if you’re lucky, it’s a bowl), use ALL fingers to get it to look like it’s under the injera (faking the food envelope, if you will), subtly bend your head slightly down and sideways, move like hell to get the bite into your mouth before gravity robs you of your delicious bite of doro wat.

It’s a little less elegant, but it works! Eating with injera is an artform, people. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

So anyways, here is a video of what the food looks like when served traditionally.

And here’s a picture of us ordering quite a bit of food… This plate is about the size of a child-sized hulahoop and all the food sits on a bed of injera (remember the spongey-bread I talked about?). Everyone digs in, shoveling food into your own mouth as gracefully as possible. Don’t ask me to explain what everything is… Mostly I describe it as mush with different contents and spices–mush with meat with lentils, mush with green beans (which are SO GOOD), mushy collard greens (ALSO SO GOOD), … Yeah, just mushy goodness seasoned to perfection.

Ethiopian cuisine served at Yod abyssinia

This particular plate was brought to you by Yod Abyssinia, a cultural restaurant known for it’s delicious food and dancing! More on that later…

Aside from local food, Addis has millions of other restaurants, but really from what I can tell, it mostly has Italian food. Which, ya know, makes sense. Castelli’s, which some have referred to as “an institution,” is one of those Italian restaurants. Given it’s reputation, having dinner there was a must. Long story short: it was awful. I’ll never go back, unless I’m craving a rude Italian man yelling at me, bugs in my food, and overly priced wine. Chances are, that will never happen.

Otherwise, we’ve been having a good time trying different restaurants and drinking way too much coffee. Oh my gosh, the coffee. Let me tell you. It’s next level. But I’ll save that for later… Coffee deserves an entire separate post. Meanwhile, I’ll tease you with this beautiful picture of a macchiato from the Bunni (pronounced “boo-nee”) Cafe. It was delish.

Oh my dearest Macchiato. You know how to make my heart (and stomach) smile. My colleagues all probably love you too, given that I’m that much more enjoyable after your company.

I’m off to have dinner (shocking) at an Italian restaurant (also shocking). It’s a pretty good idea to gorge myself on Italian food before going to Rome for the weekend… right?

I’ll leave you with two very different views from (1) my hotel room and (2) Gina’s hotel room. Enjoy!

The view from my room.

The view from Gina’s room.

See you stateside in December!