Saturday, October 17, 2009

Out of town again with Tagel

So I was up at 5AM and downstairs to meet Tagel at 6. Addis at that time of day is still pretty dark and somewhat cold. Once the sun comes up, the mercury starts to rise. He showed up about 6:20 and "sent me" back upstairs to get my computer and guitar. Then we went to pick up Falyse (spelling?) and headed south from Addis for about an hour to stop in Debrezeit for breakfast. I had a very nice omelet.

We then drove another 230 kilometres to Awassa, our final destination. We went to the site of a soon-to-be 5-start resort. There are 14 cottages in brick and granite as well as a 24 bedroom chalet overlooking a large lake. I met the owner, who also owns another hotel in Awassa as well as the restaurant where we ended up eating lunch. The resort he is building was a swarm of workers until just before noon when they all washed up and broke for lunch. We stopped at my $27 hotel room which was very nice and in this guy's hotel. The resort he is building has been going on for a few years and it is anticipated that it will open in 3-5 months. Tagel and some colleagues are doing all the network and (I think) satellite TV installations.

More to come ... just when I thought I had Ethiopia figuired out, I discovered another difference from the west. Their clock is 6 hours ahead of Canada. Thus, they work from 2-10PM, sleep roughly from 4AM until noon, and so on. I will look into why this is so sometime on the internet.

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