I finally made it to East Africa! I stupidly forgot to bring my camera cable though, so I won't be able to upload the pictures until I get back to Abuja. Uganda is not short of mosquitoes, that's for sure... I just squished my fifth one. However, it's not as crazy hot as Abuja, so advantage point there. Left on Friday afternoon for Addis Ababa, had a pretty smooth and easy time going through the Abuja airport, just had to flash my super cute-awesome-asian smile (::gag::) and didn't have to weight my carry-on, didn't have to open my suitcase for customs to check it. :) I did not sleep much the night before, so I spent the majority of the flight to Addis curled up in my own row, snoozing. The flight was around 4.5 hours, so it was a nice long nap. Arrived in Addis around 8pm-- had a bit more trouble getting my entry visa, only because I didn't realize the restrictions on my flight... ended up just fronting the whole clueless Asian bit and was able to finagle a tourist visa. +1 for me! I must have been sleep-retarded on Friday, because I didn't jot down any phone numbers or contact info for people in Addis and the hotel info in Kampala (which wouldn't have really mattered anyway, since my phone doesn't work), so I started getting a bit nervous once I exited customs in the Addis airport... totally forgot where I was supposed to meet Chandra, and ended up putting on a one-woman catwalk show down this super long ramp that everyone waiting to get into the airport was standing... of course, I got the obligatory "CHINACHINACHINA"heckling from Addis locals... nothing new now. Ended up at the end of the entrance ramp, and then made my way over to the bottom of the exit ramp, having gone in a complete circle. O_o
I finally met up with Chandra after worrying her to death, and in the process, also rudely ignored her taxi driver, who apparently was trying to flag me down--I've gotten into the habit of ignoring people who yell at me for taxis, but I guess he was instructed to look for a small, Asian child, haha. We finally hit the road around 9pm, and headed over towards Habesha 2000, a local Ethiopian restaurant that also had live dancing and music. Wasn't until halfway to the restaurant that I realized I was feeling the effects of altitude sickness, headache and all; guess living in Porter Ranch doesn't really cut it as high altitude, heh. It was pretty crowded for dinner at 930, but it was a lively group and very into the musical performances; traditional Ethiopian dancing and singing is so crazy, the dancers have so much body control in their dance movements... it's like necks are detached from the rest of their bodies, I don't even know how to describe it.
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| Traditional Ethiopian Musical Instruments... I want that harp-thingy... |
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| Stick Dance! |
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| Crazy booty shaking! Too bad I suck at taking pictures. :T |
Food was delicious, ordered a big plate of everything-here-and-there, injera to sop up all the juices, YUM. I also saw the "portable hand-washing station" for the first time, as demonstrated below by Chandra:
After dinner, we headed back to Chandra's apartment, only to find out that there was no running water the entire day. Africa is certainly wearing down my personal hygiene habits, that's for sure. I used my baby wipes to "wash" the smelly places, haha, and crawled into bed. It was so nice to sleep on a spring mattress! Oh the things you take for granted... Woke up super early to the lovely sound of morning Islamic prayer, and decided with Chandra and her husband to sneak me into the Addis Hilton so that we could all shower. I didn't bring shower shoes, so I had to brave walking around the locker room without flipflops... but hey! What's a little athlete's foot compared to the other probable parasite beasties that I'm exposing myself to here? Had a lovely shower and then ate an amazing breakfast at the Hilton pastry shop-- Ethiopian coffee, chocolate cake! danish, ham and cheese croissant (ok, I shared, sheesh....) Full and satisfied, dropped Chandra and her husband off at their Baha'i class and off to the airport for my 1.5 hour flight to Entebbe, Uganda.
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