Ex-Co-Coord Meeting...in Addis

T and Stina came to visit for 2 days last week! Happiness abounded.
Highlights:
One of us (I won’t say who lest she be embarrassed) got a little silly on tej (honey wine) Monday night and sang along to “Wake Me Up Before You Go” rather spiritedly in the taxi on the way home. Our taxi driver took this as a sign that she loved the song and turned the volume up to an absurd level. The juxtaposition of Addis after dark and that song at that volume was amazing.
We went to Entoto on Tuesday. To get to Entoto, you drive up a STEEP mountainside, full of hairpin turns and flanked alternately by a eucalyptus forest and sheer cliffs. Sometimes you have to swerve around donkeys or goats. We were in a malfunctioning minibus, which made the trip all the more amusing and memorable. Every hundred feet or so, this minibus would stall, roll backwards a few feet, stop, and then slowly start to creep forward again. T spent the whole time trying to distract me from visions of our impending fall off the side of the mountain. At one point the minibus pulled over, all the passengers unloaded, and the driver LIFTED THE FRONT SEAT UP to fiddle with the engine. Some boys ran down the hill singing Shakira’s World Cup song while we waited. The kids who had gathered by the road to stare at the minibus thought it was hilarious when I sang along. Eventually we made it to the top safely and saw the sights, yadayada, but the ride was really the best part.