Flooding kills over 60 in eastern Ethiopia

Contrary to what was a common misconception when I was first coming to Ethiopia, we do actually get a fair bit of rain. And in the last week or so, we've been getting more than is usual for this time of year. Today, for example, we even got hail. It was bucketing down, and I was in our gym, which has a very large tin roof. My ears were still ringing for several minutes after it dissipated somewhat. Still, my problems are small potatoes compared to what has been going on elsewhere.

The Wabe Shebelle river, the largest in Ethiopia, burst it's banks on Saturday, killing at least 60, probably more. This region is several hundred kilometres southeast of Addis. If it's anything like much of southern Ethiopia, it was probably in flood-plain areas, which are usually flooded during the rainy season anyway. It just caught people by surprise this time.

In other news, Brad Pitt has paid us a second visit (the first being with his ex-wife Jennifer Anniston before their much publicised split) to get a first-hand view of the AIDS situation. Hopefully he can help more than me.

They'll build parking lots over anything these days

While finally returning a massive stone obelisk they stole in the 1930s, Italian scientists have discovered a series of ancient tombs under a carpark. The Italians were originally ordered to return the monument in the 1960s, but have procrastinated until now to actually do so, causing Ethiopians great frustration in the meantime. On the up-side, if they had returned it earlier, they probably wouldn't have had the technology used to detect the tombs. All's well that ends well, so the saying goes.

You learn something new every day

Or so the saying goes. In an effort to prove (or disprove) the homily, I have started a new blog - circadianoesis - where I will endevour to daily record the new thing I learn for posterity. You never know, something interesting might get posted every now and then. Click here to witness my slow descent into madness.

Crazy statistics

1.8 million Ethiopians may die from HIV/AIDs in 2008 if current trends continue, according to a report released by (as far as I can tell) the Ethiopian government. That's a decent-sized city-worth (eg. my home town, Brisbane). How do you even start to fight that, let alone try to treat the even larger number of people who are infected? I have no idea.

Note to self:

Avoid getting food poisoning. I've had it happen at least three (probably four) times since I arrive, and usually it's not my fault (eating out in any country is always kind of risky). This time I made the mistake of having some left-over meatballs for lunch and not nuking them into oblivion in advance. It's hard to keep track of food in a house with four guys sometimes...

Ahah!

Not really Ethiopia-related, but according to Defense Tech, the Pentagon has been working on flying saucers! The one on Flight of the Navigator still looked way cooler though.

Bombs in various places

According to Xinhuanet (a Chinese news site), the Ethiopian Federal Police defused two C4-based bombs in a public bus on Friday. And then another one went off at a chicken store, of all things. At 6AM. Apparently it cracked a wall. Thankfully I don't buy my chicken there (Bole is just too far away), and I definitely don't catch busses (not those type, anyway). If this is true, I guess the Department of Foreign Affairs and Tourism was not completely out of their tree after all. Who knows who the culprits were, however.

In other, less explosive, news, we (that being, the staff at Bingham) just returned from a relaxing weekend at Babugaya, a retreat centre on a scenic crater lake about an hour and a half's drive from Addis. The most exciting event (in a negative way) was narrowly missing an Ethiopian woman who was running in the middle of a particularly dark section of the road.

We also saw the two episodes of the Amazing Race which went through Ethiopia. We had heard about this about three months ago, and were anticipating the racers arguing with customs officials, struggling with local public transport, being accosted by beggars and sleeping on the street with some of the locals outside one of the local monuments, waiting for it to open. Instead, they had to put mud/animal manure onto walls, put a roof on a hut, coral a pair of donkeys, match a cross-shaped necklace and run a 4x400m relay. It seems that reality is not all it's cracked up to be...

The Internet feeds the hungry!

The poor of Ethiopia need Ebay! According to Meles Zenawi, a good Internet connection is the "weapon that they need to fight poverty at the earliest possible time". Brilliant! This ranks up there with the government's current primary and secondary school education method - wide-screen plasma TVs emitting pre-packaged lessons (in English) to every public school in Ethiopia. Their teachers now just turn on the screen at the start of the lesson, and turn it off at the end. Why won't Bingham let me teach that way?