A new mascot?

We moved our office in Gambella today! The government needed our old office, so we scrambled to find a church that had some extra office space and were successful. The only problem with it is that there is definitely a snake living in the ceiling. You hear something move around up there every now and then and it definitely doesn’t have feet. So, that should keep things interesting for us.

I was in the local market trying to have a skirt made for Amanda. My co-worker was translating for me to the man who will make it. While this was going on, a woman he had previously made a dress for came up to him with the dress on and told him that she didn’t like how it looked in the area of her stomach. He proceeded to tell her that it was because she was fat and had nothing to do with the dress. You can imagine how well that went over… 

There is usually a moment in all of my foreign travels where I think to myself… no wonder so many people dislike Americans. For the most part my time in Ethiopia has excluded these instances though. In fact, I have no idea what nationality they are, but some other white guys staying at the same hotel in Gambella are now making Americans look like respectful angels. These guys are not young college kids, but rather mid 40’s to mid 50’s guys. Yesterday they stayed up til 2am drinking and yelling. Of course there was no power at that time, so none of the other guests could drown out their ruckus with a fan, tv, etc. This morning they were already at the bar drinking before 9am! Then tonight, I had the joy of watching them make utter fools out of themselves as they berated the servers to get their double whisky’s faster, yelling at other guests, and then not having enough cash to pay the bill in the end. This was all fun until it started to rain and they decided to come inside and continue their yelling. Guys can relate to the feeling when you walk into a public restroom and nobody is there. You choose a urinal in the long line of urinals and then someone else comes in and decides that instead maintaining a comfortable distance, they will take this opportunity to display their lack of common sense and end up at the urinal right next to you. That is when you start looking around and asking yourself… really? Well, inside the restaurant tonight there was me and only one other guy. At least 20 seats were open and the first drunk guy to come in decides to saddle up right next to me as I am eating my dinner. Already off to a bad start he leans in to talk with the smell of whisky permeating from him before he even opens his mouth. Of course he doesn’t speak English either. When he started talking, I started grabbing my plate and preparing to move. To whatever he said in drunken jibberish, I said “no”, as I was standing up. He took great offense to this and and stumbled into the next chair over. Goodness people… I hope to learn more about these people soon, because Gambellans will not put up with this for long.