From Dubai airport (a little too long for a vignette)

The last few days in Addis Ababa were pretty busy, so I wasn't able to write much on the blog. Most of the time I had to stay in and work on my report, but Wednesday night my colleagues took me out to dinner. I chose the restaurant Aladdin, which serves great Middle Eastern food. We'd gone there about a month ago and I had been meaning to return, so was glad to have some great tabbouleh, fattoush salad, kebabs and fish palak again. We ended up hanging out and chatting over dessert too. I ordered lakma, which is basically a sweet fried Turkish donut hole. Stuffed and satisfied, we shuffled back to Chez Glo through the cool evening, passing through the fruit market where I'd bought my coffee jebana, a place usually packed with people, but now, after hours, was peaceful and quiet. We passed by Rainbow Korean restaurant, where we'd eaten at least half a dozen times. We walked down past AGGE guest house and along the road people call Rwanda, because the embassy is at the end of it. And soon we were back to our guest house and knocked on the gate.

The last day at work I said farewell to the people I saw and took some pictures, but was mostly stuck in my office writing a report about what I'd done work-wise over the past month. My colleague checked my Japanese and corrected the errors, and then I printed out a copy and read it over a few times in the car on the way to our meeting where I had to present the work I'd done and answer any questions about it. The meeting was rather long and dull (is there any other kind of meeting?), but when it was done I had some time to go souvenir shopping.

Dereje drove me to Friendship Square, where they have some pretty good shops. He parked the car and met me in the shop, which was good because he was able to negotiate the prices for me and tell me which items were actually dressed up junk. While I was looking over the items, there was a power outage. No one seemed surprised, and even myself, I hardly missed a beat and just kept on shopping. After shopping, Dereje and I took a picture together in the parking lot and then he surprised me by giving me his Ethiopia Millennium wristband. It's similar to those white poverty-awareness bands that were popular about 4 years ago, except that it says "Ethiopia 2000" on it and it's black. Dereje told me to keep it to remember him, and I replied that I'd remember him anyway but thanks for the thoughtful gift and then I put it on my wrist.

After shopping, I went back to Chez Glo, settled my bill and collected my luggage. The staff gathered out in the courtyard and we took pictures together. Ato Malica, the gardener and gatekeeper, was embarrassed because he didn't have on nice clothes, so I passed him my suit jacket and he put that on; it looked pretty good on him too. Even Max got in one of the pictures. Chez Glo really turned out to be a home away from home while in Addis Ababa. For a while the only guests were myself and my two colleagues, so we would just leave our doors open while we were in there, and people would stop by and say hello. It was almost like a bunch of friends living in a big house together. I told the staff that I would be back to Ethiopia later in the year and would surely see them then. Sintayehu, the manager, gave me his e-mail address and I told them I'd send the pictures when I got back to Japan and then bid them farewell and hopped in the car, headed for the airport.

So far the trip back is going as planned. I watched Quantum of Solace, the latest 007 movie, and ate the roasted duck. They even had the red wine that I liked when I flew Emirates last month and I had a couple glasses of that. In another hour I'll be back on an airplane and headed for Japan, where I have another layover in Osaka before flying up to Tokyo. About 13 hours to go!