You Know You're Back in Ethiopia When...

Right, there’s no toilet paper in the airport…or the western shopping mall…or the government offices. In fact, you start gauging the status of a place based whether or not it has tp or not.

That warm, uncertain scent of spice and sweat and rain permeates your nose and envelopes you from your first step into the airport.

“Ferenge! Ferenge! Rings in your ears as you walk down the street. Lately the new favorite is “China! China!” Last I checked I don’t look Asian, but then again I can’t find a mirror around here so who knows what I look like these days.

Saying 'thank you' is as simple as seven syllables: ameuseugenallo. It rolls off your tongue like tej (the local honey wine – mm mm good!)

Street vendors and hawkers are convinced that you really do want to buy their cheep chewing gum, damp tissues, and stale biscuits but you’re just playing hard to get.

There was one man who followed me from shop to shop one evening for over half an hour trying sell me an umbrella. His price? Three times the ordinary amount. I don’t think so! Not all ferenge are ignorant.

The car frequently becomes a boat in the flooded streets beneath undying torrents of rain.

Thirteen of every fourteen days it rains heavily and some of those days like God forgot to send Noah a flood back in the day.

The toothless butcher you sat next to at the World Cup final waves and shouts every
morning, “Spain! Spain!” It pays to support the opposing team in a Dutch club - it makes you memorable if nothing else.


Coffee is thick like molasses, rich like syrup, bitter like only good coffee can be.
Yes, I’m back in Ethiopia.

You live on bananas when your stomach needs a break from raw meat and fire sauce.

That guard you walk by every day as you pass the Zambian embassy on your way to work
pleads with you on a regular basis to marry him. He still doesn’t know your name and you’ve convinced him that you don’t know what a phone is, never mind how to work one, so his phone number is useless because you don’t know how to call him.

Internet – like an endangered species it’s a rare sighting and often a sickly one.

You can’t really speak English anymore. Your grammar is confused and word choice bizarre. Not only do you mix your few Amharic phrases but also all of high school’s Spanish lectures and French tutorials.

Running is sport for more than just you. It looks like the Pied Piper of Hamlin – streams of street children, dogs, and goats trail shouting, barking, and murmuring behind your stumbling steps. It’s 6am and the fruit vendors get a kick out of your wheezing while the taxi drivers chuckle at your pace. My first morning I chased into the hills of Alem Bank (Amharic for World Bank) thinking I could do what every Ethiopian runner does. Out of breathe in fifteen minutes. My first morning running in the city I heard a pair of shoes clapping on the red and yellow tiles of the Addis Ababa sidewalk. Soon alean Ethiopian in worn trainers paced beside me. We ran together in unspoken harmony – clap clap clap – up the steep side walk, over uncovered drainage holes, and under the pinking sky. Disappointingly short-winded, I waved goodbye near the creast of the longest hill. If only I could have mastered that hill.