Adulala Resort and Spa – Weekend break from Addis Ababa

My mother in law is here for a short three week visit, mainly to catch up with her grandson. Her last visit here was in May 2012 when she brought Vihaan over from India. Her previous visit was rather stressful as she was anxious about training the new nanny to take care of Vihaan and making sure that he settled in. The fact that we were also new in town, working full time and didn’t have a car meant that she practically spent  three weeks at home babysitting. Due to all the above, we were determined to make amends this time. Considering the paediatric and geriatric nature of our contingent, any expedition to the Danakil depression is out of question, so I played it safe and booked a weekend at the Haile resort at Awassa. For all my inherent disdain for soft holidays and overpriced star resorts, it is all I seem to do these days. God is cracking up somewhere up there.

Reunion with Dadi

Anyway, the best laid plans and all that..... About a week before Mummy was due to arrive, I started getting multiple notices of a Meningitis outbreak in southern Ethiopia with Awassa being in the affected region. So, I scrapped that plan ( “Indian toddler contracts meningitis on family holiday” -  medical education makes for very colourful parental nightmares  ) and induced Mummy to get along a vial of Meningitis vaccine in a ice box for her grandson. The meningitis vaccine is available in Addis Ababa at the Black Lion hospital (20 Birr) and at the Swedish Clinic ( 2800 Birr ). However, Vihaans paediatrician informed me that the vaccine being administered at Black Lion protected against only Meningococcal Groups A and C. The internationally available polysaccharide conjugate vaccine protects against Groups  A,C,Y and W-135. The latter is the one available at Swedish Clinic, however they have a long waiting list and were out of stock at the time. I have not been able to ascertain the exact  strain of the current outbreak but it seemed prudent to obtain the quadrivalent vaccine from Delhi. Mummy and the vaccine arrived, Vihaan promptly got the required jab and I was still left with a weekend to plan.

I’ve already been to Kuriftu Resort last year for a great day away from Addis, made even sweeter by the fact that they had a 50% discount on room rates at the time. I decided to take a chance on Adulala Resort and Spa because it had decent but limited reviews and cost the same as Kuriftu. For the record, the room rates are 159 USD per night for a double room and 299 USD per night for two interconnecting family rooms, on weekends. The room rates made my brain wobble for a moment but we decided to splurge considering the special occasion. However, I promptly pruned the weekend vacation to a single night stay. The booking office for Adulala Resort and Spa is at the ground floor of Robel Plaza, next to Cupcake factory. I whined about the cost and wheedled and coaxed for discounts and freebies at the booking office to no avail. Ultimately I played the toddler card and got them to agree to an early check in. They were pretty accommodating as we were checking in on a Friday and the room was free the previous night.   

It took us about an hour and a half to reach the resort, point to point, from Bole. We shamelessly reached at 10 a.m. but were immediately checked in. The resort is sprawling with huge cottages sprawling on the hillside by the Babogaya lake. All the cottages are overlooking the lake but are at varying distances from the lake. We stayed in a twin cottage with two interconnecting rooms.

 The rooms are huge and we could have easily managed with an extra bed placed in one double room instead of two rooms. The furnishings were pleasant and comfortable and the bathrooms were clean and luxurious ( bidet, bathtub, hair dryer and black head magnifying mirror et al ). Both rooms had mini refrigerators ( a major plus for us for storing midnight milk ) and the master bedroom had a flat screen tv with Arabsat channels which showed Hindi soaps and movies dubbed in Arabic.

But aside from all that, was the view. Oh, the view. Remember Iron Man and Tony Starks house on the cliff? Well, it felt a little bit like that. A huge peaceful lake surrounded by pristine woodland with hardly any sign of habitation. The rooms have huge glass windows facing the lake which makes you feel like you are outdoors at all times. There is also a large verandah with seating to further absorb the view. And no mosquitoes. Really. At least in March.

The much advertised pool was clean, though a little small. And the water was COLD. Even at midday after a really warm morning. There are nice lounge chairs scattered around the pool and the locker/shower rooms were rather fancy. My experience of the locker room was marred by a huge, completely nude lady who was too preoccupied by her animated phone conversation to wrap a towel around herself. Seriously. Hands waggling and breasts and butt cheeks jiggling in opposite directions in front of the mirror for twice the view. My scarred, modest Indian heart.

The spa and the poolside bar were practically deserted most of the time. The one time we ordered a drink and fries there, it took an hour to arrive. Which brings me to the food. The main restaurant is huge, with high ceilings and wooden furniture. Only two of about fifty tables were occupied at lunch time. We ordered a simple starter and pizza which did not arrive for an hour. We prompted the serving staff twice, at which point they yanked a half raw pizza out of the oven and plonked it in front of us. We left after requesting them to send the pizza to our room. This they did but no one ever came to collect the dishes. There was no housekeeping to speak off either. They had managed to make the beds in our absence but the bathrooms and full waste baskets were untouched. The complimentary breakfast, served on a patio with a view of the lake, was slightly better. There was a reasonable spread of continental and Ethiopian dishes with fresh juice and an omelette station. Good but definitely not the standard you would expect at the prices.

There was a bonfire in the central common area at night with swing seats around it and drinks and food being served there. Very romantic on a chilly night. The cottages at Adulala are scattered on a  hillside, so the lake shore is a steep but pretty 10 minute walk down. Although you can drive down directly to the lakeshore if you want. Boat rides are available for a small price although the boatman was not always around. They also have a lot of other activities like horse riding, tennis and roller skating which we didn’t use much.We actually had a lovely holiday because we went on a Friday and had the place mostly to ourselves and the early check in meant that it felt like a weekend break. It is probably less pleasant on weekends, a large wedding party was checking in on Saturday as we were leaving.  

Basically, Adulala is a lovely property with to die for views and great rooms, being ruined by poor management, non existent maintenance and bad food. Some of the lapses are shocking like the fact that there were no safety railings in the verandah outside the rooms. This meant that I had a nerve racking time, hanging on to Vihaan whenever he wandered out of the room. And the childrens playground is in such a sorry state of disrepair that I actually got a nasty cut on my arm from a rusty wire on the swing.

I would definitely visit again especially if they have a discount during the rains. But next time I would carry my own food and probably go for dinner to the Lakeview resort which is supposed to have great food. The final photo has nothing to do with the review but is definitely the best snap of the weekend.  

      

  

Addis Ababa for dummies – Part 6/ Playschools

When we moved to Addis, Vihaan was 18 months old and the baby of the whole extended family. The decision to start sending him to Playschool was definitely controversial but I definitely didn’t have too much choice.Reading,Riting and Rithmetic

It is probably easier for other expats to make a decision regarding the school to send their children to because they are either diplomats and have oodles of experience in country hopping or working for international aid agencies like the UN or USAID which have dozens of employees in the same position and official guidelines to help you settle down. When we arrived we were the only foreign employees of a small private Ethiopian health care concern and our only contact was our employer. In short, we were completely at sea. My intensive googling and obsessive blog reading threw up a few names and I decided that the best approach would be to visit each of the play schools and see which seemed a good fit with safety, distance and expense being our primary concerns. Since Vihaan was still a teeny-tiny baby boy with a proven track record for self injury, it was paramount that the baby:caregiver ratio be very low and there would be someone keeping a hawks eye on him all the time. And obviously the less time he spends commuting and the more time on the playground, the better. We don’t get an education allowance and would have to pay ourselves, so the expense was a definite consideration.

Vihaan joined his first play school in May 2012 and he changed to a new school in Jan 2013. So I have insider experience of two schools and have personally visited the others. However, all opinions expressed are personal and parents with more experience with other schools may disagree completely. I am just offering a primer to playschools in Addis with basic contact and fee information and you can take it and run from there. There are a number of non-English playschools as well, chiefly French,German and Italian, but I was obviously not interested in those. Note that the fee structure given is accurate at the time of posting but may change frequently. The fees are stated in Dollars but are payable in Birr at the current exchange rate. And of course, feel free to contact me for further information or to rant.

Head to Toe  

I heard about Head to Toe from a few expat discussion sites and it was personally recommended by a parent who was absolutely thrilled with it. Most importantly they take children from 6 months onward. Most playschools in Addis are located on leased residential premises which have been re-modelled to function as a playschool. Head to Toe is also hidden away in a residential neighbourhood and the high gates give no clue to what lies beyond. When I crossed those gates for the first time, I fell in love at first sight.

Open air class!

The huge lawn with the swing, slide, climbing apparatus and numerous bikes, trikes and what-have-you were enough to convince me that I needn’t bother looking any further for Vihaans first school ( Even though the fees were definitely cause for a pause ). In addition to the playground, however, they have well equipped play rooms crammed with enough innovative activities to send any self respecting toddler into a hyperactive frenzy.

The small window before chivalry is needed.

Head to Toe is owned and run by Jane Pyecha and her husband Teddy. Jane is an American with years of experience in early childhood education who set up Head to Toe as her dream school after working at ICS for a time. When you meet Jane and Teddy, you realize they are following their passion and not running a business. The teachers and teaching assistants at Head to Toe are well qualified, but more importantly genuinely love being around children.

Vihaan joined Head to Toe for mornings, three days a week, last May. His nanny went along with him for the first couple of months, after which he started going alone. He took to playschool like a duck to water. He couldn’t tell me exactly what he got up to but his general state of happiness was evidence enough that he adored the school. Some morning he would actually jump out of bed saying “ Skool”. He spent many happy hours messing around with paint, clay, water games, costumes to name a few and invariably returned home exhausted but happy. I will be always grateful to Jane and her staff ( Salem, Hannah and Babush in particular ) for giving Vihaan such an excellent introduction to the education system. The weekly e-mails, term end reports and photos were also much appreciated both by us and his grandparents.

It took him time to get over his "dirty" phobia.

So, WHY IS VIHAAN NO LONGER AT HEAD TO TOE ? There are two reasons for that. The first is that most of the arterial roads in Addis are currently under construction, with four lane highways and flyovers in the mix. In this process, however, the Wolo Sefer road which we took to reach the school has been cut-off from Bole. We were forced to take a circuitous route via the Ring Road which extended our 15 minute commute to 45 minutes. As the deadline for the road opening is May 2013 before the 50^th mega AU meeting, this means six months of being stuck in uncertain traffic, twice a day. The other reason is that I now wanted to shift Vihaan to a five day a week schedule and the hike in fees this meant made me green in the gills. After much soul searching and trans – continental debates, I decided to shift him to a new school. But first, the relevant information on Head to Toe.

Session structure – Two terms a year. Children can attend 2/3/5 days a week.

They take children from 6 months to 5 years. Head to Toe is one of the few places where they take children younger than 2 years. They have a special Infant and nanny program ( 6-24 months) where the nanny is also taught techniques to interact and play with the child.

Duration – Mornings 8.30 am to 12.30 pm. Afternoon sessions available on request.

Vacation School – Summer school is in June-July and Christmas session is for two weeks in Dec-Jan

Fees – 5500 USD / year for five days a week.

Location – Kera ( near the International Clinical Laboratories )

Contact – Jane Pyecha ( 0930012351 )

E-mail headtotoe.addis@gmail.com

Flipper Playschool

In December 2012, when I started looking around for an alternate playschool, I revisited Flipper on the recommendation of a friend of a friend. Flipper is a very popular school with two branches in Beklobet and Casanchis both of which always seem full to overflowing. Flipper was on high on my list the first time around because they take children from 18 months onward and it is much more economical. I visited the Casanchis branch in May 2012. The school is not very impressive and appears a trifle shabby. Though they have all the required trappings, slides, swings and toddler sized toilets, everything looks a little old. The grounds are also small and rocky with no grass or artificial turf to cushion the falls. The classrooms seemed warm with a low toddler: caregiver ratio. I reached there at lunchtime after battling a traffic jam and most of the children seemed in the 3-5 year age group, much older than Vihaan who had just finished 18 months. The office informed me that they could take Vihaan only in the next semester, starting September , so that took the decision out of my hands.

I visited the Beklobet branch in December 2012 because I had heard it was larger and better equipped than the Casanchis branch. The school is located in a residential area behind the Global Hotel. The grounds are much larger than the Casanchis branch with a well equipped play area. I cannot really fault the place in any way except to say that it felt like a school and not a play-school. The classrooms appeared to be traditional with a teacher standing and talking to a bunch of orderly toddlers on the floor. Also, this sounds petty but a lot of the class room conversation seemed to be in Amharic and I was afraid Vihaan would feel left out. At 18 months, he had started to understand Hindi and even speak a few words before we Ieft Delhi. After reaching Addis, his verbal skills had definitely declined and I was afraid that putting Amharic into the mix along with Hindi and English would just confuse him further. I realize that this is purely a first child-neurotic mother syndrome but it is a thought I had at the time. I  put Vihaan on the waiting list for the January session although my heart wasn’t in it.

The details :

Session structure : Three terms per year. Age group 18 months- 5 years.

Contact : Beklobet branch – 0114167895

                 Casanchis branch – 0115548095

Fees : For the Nursery class (2-3 years )

900 USD / year for 5 days a week

 650 USD /year for 3 days a week

Paintbox Playschool

Paintbox is probably the oldest and most reputed of the English language playschools in Addis. It is run by Jane Malone and is located close to The Sanford International School. In fact, most of the students have older siblings studying at Sanford. It was earlier located within the British Embassy premises but has now shifted to the current location. It can be frustrating to get any information on Paintbox unless you know a parent whose child is a student. It has practically no internet presence which is surprising considering its years of existence and sterling reputation. I got the contact info from a parent whose daughter is my patient and currently attends Paintbox.

I visited Paintbox during my first cycle of pre-school visits. It is located in another residence converted to a playschool. The yard area is not much but has a couple of slides and swings. The interior is divided into the usual playrooms, snack area etc. It was nice but not outstanding. I don’t remember exactly how much it costs but the fee structure is very reasonable. I had heard that Paintbox is notoriously hard to get into and has a long waiting list, so I paid the registration fee and registered Vihaan for the Jan 2013 session in May 2012. He had already started going to Head to Toe and I figured I could take a call 6 months down the line if I wanted to shift him to Paintbox. The pros for Paintbox was its reputation and the reasonable fees. The cons for me was that it is located rather far away and the fact that I wasn’t very impressed after seeing it.  

As my knowledge is limited, I am giving only the contact details below:

Contact-

Jane Malone 0911233083

janeaddis2003@yahoo.co.uk   

Jacadi

Jacadi is a new after school activity centre as well as day care which is located on Churchill Road near Lycee Gebre Mariam school. I have heard good things about Jacadi on the expat network but haven’t gone to see it because it is across the town for me and not practical with the current state of road construction. Here is an article giving more details-

http://www.capitalethiopia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=478:jacadis-open-space-provides-education-outside-the-classroom-&catid=44:arts-and-culture&Itemid=50

Contact-

Ruphael (0911214705 )

Fee structure – Approximately 2000 Birr/ 108 USD/per month for daycare for 5 days a week

Brana International Playschool

We had pretty much decided to let Vihaan continue at Head to Toe and to suffer the commute, when I saw an ad for Brana and decided to check it out. Also, this blog post was brewing in my head and I wanted the information to be as complete as possible. Brana is located in a dusty by-lane behind the Gothera condominiums with only its orange gate a clue to its being munchkin central. What can I say, for me it was love at first sight, again.

Note the giraffe-friend.

Brana has a wonderfully equipped, shady playground which Vihaan refused to leave on our first visit. And they have a mini merry-go-around with horches ! And Vihaan has a humoungous horch fetish. We have to go to Africa Park every Sunday just so that he can moon over the horch there for an hour. 

Africa Park Horch

Brana Horch(es)

Plastic horses aside, Brana has bright, well equipped playrooms and a number of innovative activity areas including art, computers and gardening. Great attention has been paid to tiny details when renovating to make the school child safe. I especially appreciate the padded driveway considering my son trips and stumbles every two steps. And they have tiny toddler sized toilets everywhere which Vihaan has not yet graduated to using but I live in hope. While we are on the cuteness meter, their classes are called Teddy bears (2-3 yrs), Brown bears (3-4yrs) and Polar Bears (4-5 yrs). Awwww!

I am done gushing now. Vihaan has joined Brana from the January semester and couldn’t be happier. I was mildly worried about the transition to a new school but it has been completely smooth. I am sure the horches helped. He takes one or more of his stuffed toys to school each day which he used to do at Head to Toe as well initially. This may be a sign of insecurity or maybe, he just wants to share the school experience with his friends. Either way I am thrilled to see how joyful the school experience continues to be for him and for that alone I am glad to have shifted to Addis.

Brana also encourages the inclusion of differently abled children. This is not only on paper as one of the Teddy Bears is a toddler with mild Downs Syndrome. Kudos for that. The school is run by Jeanette Reyes de Throp and Etsegenet Asamere, both of whom are very hands on. Brana has an informative website for further details.

http://www.branaplayschool.com/

Technical details:

Session structure – Three terms a year. Children can attend 2/3/5 days a week.

They take children from 2 to 5 years. Sometimes they take children from 18 months onward.

Duration – Mornings 8.30 am to 12.30 pm. Afternoon session is till 3.30 pm, most of the older children attend full day sessions.

Vacation School – Summer school is in July and Christmas session is for one week in Dec. They also offer a variety of after-school activities for older children including art, gymnastics and martial arts.

Fees – Very variable depending on number of days and number of afternoon sessions. We are paying approximately 4000 USD / year for five mornings a week excluding the holidays.

Location – Gothera ( near NIB Bank )

Contact – Jeanette ( 0930033536, jeannettethrop@gmail.com )

                 Etsegenet ( 0911726276, etsegenetbranaplayschool@gmail.com )

This is my longest and most technical post as yet and represents a lot of research on my part. So, now I can rest for about a month.Hope this is helpful, I know I would have been delighted with this info when I was blindly net surfing in Delhi last year. Cheers.

An Addis Ababa New Year

May the new year bring health, wealth, good cheer and less depressing news feed. And more regular blog posts even if my only audience is the middle of the night net trawler from Ukraine. Hi! Happy New Year and thanks for reading !

I am not alone in starting the year with aspirin and coffee

The featured macchiato

Mixed juice - Guava, Avocado and Mango

I am starting my Addis New Year very appropriately in a coffee shop, fighting and rehydrating an incipient  hangover with macchiato and juice. We had a wonderful end of the year celebration last night at the Indian Embassy which is the mother ship, shielding us from home sickness on the occasions which count. After much debate we decided a toddler free new year celebration would be in the best interest of both parents and aforementioned toddler, considering that his bedtime is at 9.30 pm and that the party would continue till, well, the new year. We executed the toddler bed time routine with military precision, stuff him with food till he is green- trick him into drinking milk twice-hurried bed time book-diaper change-double socks and lights out. Of course the toddler sixth sense alerted him to his impending abandonment and he tossed and turned and fought sleep with his last awake breath until finally succumbing by 10.30 pm, after which we did the change clothes-token make up-wake up nanny and careful right side of the road drive, finally arriving by 11.00 pm. It was all worth it. Drunk dancing under the stars on a perfect chilly night is the best way to bring  in the new year. And we were still back in time for the 2.00 am milk and cuddle.

So why am I rehydrating in a coffee shop instead of having a lazy morning in bed ? Because I work for an Ethiopian company and Ethiopia follows a unique Ge’ez calendar which means it is 2005 now, New Year was in September and Christmas is next week. The Ethiopian Christmas falls on a Monday – two day weekend! We are taking a short weekend break at Wolliso and will be back to start Vihaan off at his new play school after the Christmas break. My new year resolution is to post both a review of the trip and of Play Schools in Addis within this month, we should all keep our ambitions grounded and realistic.   

  

Note:

 I wrote this post on 1^st Jan but did not post because the photos were stuck in my phone because Google including Gmail is suddenly not working on Android devices in Addis and it took me four days to transfer photos by cable. Me and Ethiotelecom are a lethal combo, as of this date the glitch has still not been fixed.

Itchy and Scratchy - in Addis Ababa

It has now been more than six months since we moved to Addis and I am utterly confounded by a peculiar medical issue. I have crops of allergic papules erupting on my extremities every evening. Let me describe the symptoms in detail first and then we can examine the clues and literature to pin point the source. I notice a ferocious itching in my lower legs usually about half an hour after returning home in the evenings and changing into pajamas. Once I start scratching, of course the itching increases and then what started as one localized red spot has soon mushroomed into a whole crop of papules, scratches, erythema and edema and more itching. Of course I know the whole mast cell degranulation-histamine release-vasodilatation cascade but when it itches, you scratch and mast cells be damned.

Tasteful photograph taken with a view to minimize  the gore and skin show  

Thinking logically and being my fathers daughter and having inherited a fervent hatred of all indoor insects, I first blamed the ubiquitous mosquito. The problem is that mosquitoes are few and far between in Addis and of course, when the mosquito is the culprit you can hear it, see it and DESTROY it. I even contemplated a silent, invisible,ninja-Addis mosquito species for a while but as the problem persisted even with multiple mosquito repellents, I need an alternate suspect. As an aside, liquid mosquito repellents are not available in Ethiopia and you are well advised to carry it with you. I ran out and made my sister bring it in from Egypt when she visited.
Next I contemplated if an army of bed bugs was lurking in my mattress which silently emerged under cover of darkness to suck my sweet blood. So, I had the mattresses and sheets baked in the sun and sprayed the beds with whatever pesticide I could lay my hands on, to no avail. The itching and scratching continued unabated.Also, bed bugs are not microscopic so I should have caught sight of them at some point especially when I started switching on the light in the middle of the night and obsessively picking through the bed linen. My husband was not amused. Oh, and what of my husband amidst all the itching and scratching you ask. Well, he is as affected as I am but as he considers all non - Delhi places infested with phantom itch causing vermin, he is content scratching and grumbling and thinking no further about it.
 At the end of my wits, I called my neighbor, an eight year old Addis veteran, to pick her brains. I had an illuminating conversation from which I gleaned the following - the phantom itch affects most Indians who move here, some more than others.There is a cream called Mos-bit on the market which is of questionable use. No one knows exactly the source of the allergy. It can be reduced by rinsing your clothes in dettol, ironing your clothes on the inside before wearing them ( heat sterilization ) and putting naphthalene balls in the cupboards.
I have instituted all the above measures and shall return from Delhi armed with naphthalene balls ready to renew the battle with the phantom menace. Return from Delhi? Well, yes. We are off to Delhi for a two week break which includes a week in the Andamans where the azure water will cure me of all dermatological defects for a while.You can do the slow burn now.     

Please leave a comment!

I am really surprised that my stats show that with over a thousand page views from Lithuania to Zimbabwe, this blog has merited only one comment till date! One! So this is an open invitation to all you voyeuristic nocturnal blog trawlers from around the world - leave a comment. And of course, if you actually want to know anything about any of the topics I write about - Addis,Delhi, Ophthalmology,Diapers- don't hesitate to ask. 

Addis Ababa for dummies – Part 4/ Crime- II ( or how I got mugged and lost my phone )

Read the last line of my entry on prevalent crime on the streets of Addis here. Am I a regular Melisandre gazing into the flames or what? (Full disclosure – the reason I am writing after a month despite several blog-worthy incidents is because I was too busy working my way through five parts of Game of Thrones. I’ve never been into Fantasy fiction but this....I could wax lyrical for a couple of pages on the sheer imaginative genius and body and soul addictive power of the series but I have just one thing to say – Write like the wind - GRRM !)

But I digress. So, its been almost four months since I started wandering the streets of Addis and predictably my level of comfort was increasing and caution was plunging by the day. We have access to a car with a driver which I usually use for running errands but he has a weekly off day on Saturday. On this fateful Saturday, we were caught without any yoghurt on the fridge and no car. Now the seriousness of the situation can be grasped only by a fellow Tam-Bram. A day without curd rice! Gasp! Shudder!

At around six p.m. my mom and I set off by foot to obtain the weekend groceries, leaving Vihaan and Vishal at home. As if that wasn’t ill advised enough, we proceeded to load ourselves  with  more groceries than we could carry. Seven p.m. found us staggering home with a heavy bag in each hand in the gathering darkness. Suddenly, I was accosted by a street urchin peddling the ubiquitous chewing gum and telephone card. I politely brushed past him only to realize that now there were three of them and before I knew it a crowd of ten urchins of various sizes had surrounded me and cut me off from my mother. Some started yanking at my hand and some at my clothes while all of them were yelling at the top of their voices- Indian! Hindu! Telephone card! I was terrified and trying not to show it and trying to politely get out of their clutches all at the same time, I mean I couldn’t hit a child could I? Then as suddenly as they converged,the crowd melted away. I gathered my wits and looked around to see my mother watching the spectacle,stunned and then it struck me. I opened my purse and my beloved iPhone was nowhere to be seen.

 And that is how I got mugged for the first time in my life. Note recipe for disaster – Two inattentive ladies + heavy shopping bags +  darkness = Irresistible target. To our credit, this incident didn’t happen on a dark side lane but on main Bole road, a few yards away from Day to Day and Fantu supermarkets. I didn’t write about the incident immediately because that would have been an angry, bitter entry damning every thieving street urchin to the hottest corner of hell. I fully understand the economic disparity and the lure of easy pickings driving the pick-pocket industry but dammit, I loved my phone! Anyway, after resolving to live with a Nokia 1100 which lasted for about 5 days, I got my Dad to send me a Samsung Galaxy S II because I really can’t afford an iPhone 4 S. ( Bite sized review – Beautiful screen, crappy camera with a long lag time and some of my medical apps don’t function as well on an Android system )

I carry the Samsung only to the hospital and use a cheap phone when I go walking or shopping. But there is no denying the fact that I feel like a walking bulls-eye now and I clutch my bag for dear life and scuttle around on the streets darting suspicious looks at all and sundry.And  I know every street vendor on Bole has a hearty laugh when he views my pitiful-avoid-a-repeat-mugging-maneuvers.      

Ethiopia for dummies – Part 3/ Internet ( And how the Skype ban affects me)

I know I haven’t updated in weeks. This post was written a while back but not completed and with the recent uproar over the ban on Skype and its bretheren in Ethiopia, it seems an appropriate topic to pontificate on.

 When I was web surfing in Delhi for details on internet quality in Ethiopia ( I fully appreciate the irony ) I came across a lot of scary blog entries with facts like Ethiopia has the third worst internet in the world and a number of common social networking sites are banned etc. In fact since this blog is hosted by Blogspot, I actually wrote to their customer support to check whether I would still have access from Addis. They never replied but I have my answer now. I am unsure of the legal issues or the level of government sanctions still prevailing, so I can only write on the current internet situation as perceived by a non-tech savvy foreigner. The first thing to be noted is that there are no private players in the telecom or internet sectors and all services are provided by the government agency, Ethio-telecom or etc.

First – Internet access.

There are two ways to activate personal internet service. The first is by purchasing a plug in modem. EDVO wireless internet was introduced end of 2009 and offers a speed up to 3.1 MBs and you pay per bite. It requires a modem from a computer/phone store or the Ethio-Telecom office and costs around 2000 Birr(112 $ or 6500 Rs). The ‘limited data plan’ EVDO service (400-700Kb/s) provides three options: a 1 GB internet access for Birr 300 monthly payment, a 2 GB internet access for Birr 500 monthly payment, and a 4 GB internet access for Birr 700 monthly payment. In the recent past, Ethio Telecom provided unlimited EVDO that apparently was often used in Internet cafés but this is no longer available.

The EVDO modem

We use the EVDO modem with a 2 GB limit. Practically we need to recharge with 500 Birr at the beginning of the month which suffices for all normal internet surfing. We obviously keep downloads to the minimum but usually set a download on the last day of the month to use up all the credit. Needless to say, any money left at the end of the month does not carry over to the next and a fresh recharge of 300/500/700 Birr is necessary.

The Ethio-Telecom website is advertising that ADSL connections are now available with a 6 GB limit and up to 2 Mbps speeds. The pre-requisite is an available landline. I think they have just started offering this service and I don’t know of anyone availing this service at the moment.   

The second way to access the net is on your smartphone or notepad with a 3G Sim card. Though normal mobile Sim cards are dime a dozen  and regularly thrust in your face by hawkers on the street, 3G Sim cards are difficult to obtain. I first tried one out loaned by a friend, realized it worked well and then bugged my office until they obtained one for me. To the best of my knowledge,3G Sim cards are available only from the Ethio-telecom office at the Piassa. Normal Sim cards cost around 25 Birr (80 Rs/1.5$) while the 3G Sim cards cost around 200 Birr (650 Rs/ 11$)

The internet connectivity is good on most smartphones, I am using an iPhone while my husband has a Samsung Ace. I also have various news and entertainment apps ( Fashion Police, anyone?) to surf the web other than Google, all of which are fast enough to be functional. I think it goes without saying that we don’t have too many patients and I have far too much time on my hands.   

I have a prepaid connection so I have to recharge by buying a 20/50/100 Birr card and entering the relevant code. I don’t think the 3G Sims are used very commonly because it is working out to be really cheap.      

Update – In case you have no interest in things Ethiopia, you may have not heard this piece of stunning news. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18461292. I had downloaded some now unmentionable apps which let me call any phone number in India for a small fee. A payment of 13€ (20$/1000Rs) enabled unlimited calls to any mobile or landline in India. I was able to send a continuous stream of photos and videos of Vihaan to appease the grandparents. I could even send clinical photos to colleagues for a quick consultation. 

Hourly updates on the Vihaan channel

Now that these easy breezy means of communication are a thing of the past, a feeling of glum depression is settling in. Freedom is a right appreciated only when denied. Homesickness may be a palpable reality now that I can no longer call my mother at the drop of a hat to confirm a Sambhar recipe or a senior to ask the best way to sterilize iris hooks. Suddenly the scorching heat of Delhi doesn’t seem so bad and Ethiopia seems much more remote from home than a six hour flight.