THIS IS AFRICA

One of the things that over the course of my stay has truly bothered me is; the perception of Africa in Europe and North America. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not specifically any of our fault it’s just that that’s the way were taught because that is HOW THE MEDIA portrays Africa to us. A similar example to this would be the perception of beauty- which has been completely destroyed by the media. The perfect women is tall and skinny with rather large boobs and the perfect man is tall and muscular preferably with a 6 pack! But how much of our population actually looks like that? A very small percentage. 

When we hear the word Africa, I would not be surprised if the typical “World Vision” commercials play in our heads. When I think back to the day’s before I got to experience Africa for itself, that’s exactly what I think. Some of us might picture Africa as the starving children with the popped out malnutritioned bellies, people living in damaged mud huts with no electricity and very limited supply of water and elephants walking around. Other individuals might picture Africa as a place where millions of child soldiers walk around with AK-47’s shooting everyone they see. And yes, for some parts of Africa this might be true, but let me set this straight. 

Africa is a rather LARGE continent, just like Europe and just like North America. You can’t just judge a book or in this case a continent by its cover, or how the media likes to portray Africa in our countries. Most African countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa among others are extremely developed. They have electricity, flowing water, tall buildings, roads, schools, internet, especially television, shops, food from different cultures, shopping malls etc! The list goes on. I’ve personally been invited by a woman into her mud-house and you would be surprised how spacey it is and how modern. She had electricity, beds and even a television. Fancy, Fancy eh? 

Since I personally got to experience Addis I would like to talk about that. First of all, a funny fact. I live in a very Asian populated city – but I’ve never tried Korean food. Here in Addis there are 3 amazing Korean restaurants and in my first 2 weeks here I went for Korean food 3 times! Just to let you know about the diversity of cultures you see in Addis.

Addis Ababa is a city, with 5 million inhabitants. Ethiopia has a total of 80 million counted, but 90 million believed inhabitants. Addis had taxis, busses and is even working on a Skytrain similar to cities such as New York and Vancouver. 

You can buy anything here from Nutella, Snickers, Tide Laundry Detergent, Nailpolish, Handmade paper, Leather ANYTHING. People might think, I’m going to Africa I must bring packaged food. WRONG. You can buy anything here, the only thing I couldn’t find was Advil haha, but I did find Aspirin!

The best part of Addis is the fresh fruit that comes from the South, which is absolutely fine to eat. Every night I eat salad made with fresh vegetables and in the morning I eat Mango’s and Bananas! For dessert we sometimes have doughnuts covered with chocolate and when we go out I even eat Ice crème, because it’s perfectly safe to eat here. 

It just makes me mad to think that these people don’t have anything, or are underprivileged when they’re perfectly happy and certainly on the fast track to become very VERY developed. I don’t think we have the right to look down on these people at any point, instead we can learn from them. Of course there are some things that can be worked on, but if you look at the development of these African countries in just the last 5 years you would be absolutely mind blown.  

I want to make sure that Africa, and especially Ethiopia is no longer portrayed as this crippled, dangerous country, because it’s not. It’s developing fast, and one day it will catch up to us. We might be ignorant now but one day we will see. 

As you can see I’ve fallen in love with Africa. By making my voice heard I hope you understand a little more about this resource rich, rapidly growing continent and that you too can one day fall in love with Africa.

T.I.A (This is Africa) everyone.

Céline 

Entrepreneur 3: Salem's Design

Salem’s Design is amazing, and if you would see it for yourself it would blow you away. Each and everything Salem sells it 100% handmade, mostly by lovely Ethiopian women. For example, the other day I decided to go into the basket weaving section of the store and just sit and watch the women weave. WOW how much skills does one need to create a basket. Its pretty complicated and well it takes a lot of work! The women were so lovely and very happy to see me. They would talk Amheric (language of Addis Ababa) to me, and I would reply in English. None of us had any clue of what were saying but somehow we had a great flowing conversation going for us! Everyday I try to visit the women and say hi to them, because they are just so lovely. I put in the order for my basket as well, so they’re going to make a reallllyyyyy nice and colourful one! I’m very excited. 

                                                    One of the Weavers making a Basket!

The main project I’ve been working on for Salem’s Design was to re-design the business plan. I do the writing and Taylor and Marissa (our friend from the USA) are working on the numbers and all the other parts. I completely re-designed the business plan to make it presentable to investors – since Salem’s design is growing fast!

                                                                Showing off her work!

Another super cool project I’ve been working on, and well just actually started today is the Leather Jewelry line! I, with the help of two of Salem’s workers came up with a beautiful leather bracelet that has a silver flower on it. I absolutely love it. (I will post a picture as soon as I get a good one). Tomorrow, Sentago (one of the workers) and I will head to Merkkato – which is the biggest and busiest market in town. I’ve been there once before, and almost got rammed by a bunch of cars, so for Forengies (Foreigners) like me, they suggest to bring nothing but money and to take off any jewellery. So tomorrow we will go and look for some more Leather, so that I can create more Bracelets!

                                                             Materials and Products

Were also working on a Brochure for Salem’s Design. She is so successful that she’s been invited to go to Germany and present her work there at the end of August! We have been taking lots of pictures of her hand made Scarves, Jewellery and Baskets and made it into a beautiful brochure with much help from one of our Ethiopian Friends, Ermias. 

I will probably post more about Salem’s Design soon, because there is always lots going on here!

Il keep you posted, and promise to update my blog more!

Cherioo from Ethopia!

Entrepreneur 2: Printing Factory

Alright, here I would like to talk about another one of my favourite Entrepreneurs and well she’s not just an Entrepreneur for me anymore, she has also become one of my favourite people and closest friends. The other day we had the privilege to visit her factory, and she has an amazing set up. She still uses very old German machines for her printing business – which is one of the oldest and most respected in Addis Ababa. She’s an extremely hard working and determined woman with such an incredible drive. Her factory is absolutely beautiful ( I will attach some pictures here) and she does very important printing works for Embassies, Musicians and even books for Churches etc. I’ve never seen a printing business before, but this one was definitely very cool to see because of all the old machinery and the detailed hand work behind it. She seems to be doing very well, but now wants to do something new with it. We say go Selamwit, were proud of you!

Salemwit in ACTION

                              The Factory

Bushes Book Seller

This guy I walked by the other day and would just briefly like to talk about. He is a bookseller, on the street but his shack is sooo old that its completely overgrown with plants, yet he is still there proudly selling his books! Good for him!

Entrepreneur 1: Handmade Paper

One of the Entrepreneurs I’d briefly like to touch on is Tesfaye. I’ve heard about him from Jeff before I left for Ethiopia and was able to immediately spot him on the first day of the Conference at the Ghion Hotel! His business is really cool, in the sense that his whole business is made from recycled materials. His business is to make paper from already recycled paper, or from banana fibres. I had the opportunity to visit his factory – which was amazing because he was able to show us the recycled materials and the banana fibres, the equipment he uses and well that most of his stuff is almost 100% handmade. I even made a paper myself! Tesfaye has become really famous in Ethiopia, supplying much of the nation with his handy crafted paper and products. Some of the products can even be found at Salem’s Design (another Entrepreneur that I’m working with – she sells amazing hand made Jewellery). I myself plan on purchasing a handmade album for all my Ethiopia Pictures, as well as a hand made paper bag with some coffee in it!

After Hours

Besides all the business impressions, there are of course also other impressions of Ethiopia. One of them especially touched my heart and I’d quickly like to talk about it.

During my time when I was staying at a missionary guest house, there was a government place that issued passports. Every day on my way to the Ghion Hotel – where we hosted the business workshop I would walk by this very large line up of women and always wondered what they were doing there.

Turns out that every day thousands of women line up there, because they want to leave Ethiopia for a chance of having a better life. 2000 Women actually do get deported from Ethiopia and deported to Arabic countries, where well one can only imagine what happens to them. The sadest part about this whole thing is, no one can do anything about it because they’re going out of their own will.

The next impression I’d like to touch on is the hospital right across from where we were staying at first. The hospital is called “The Black Lion Hospital” and apparently once you go in, you never come out. Now if this is true or not, I don’t know of course but multiple people would say that its not really that great of a place to go to – and to be able to sleep at night even I will refrain from going for now.

one of the last communist sculptures left.

At last, another thing that really touched my heart is the poverty that you see around (and I will talk more about that later). Lots of people here are living in mud houses, there are always very many beggars on the street, especially as a white person I’m basically a walking dollar sign. Sometimes I really feel bad, but other times it can get to one if 30 people come up to you in one day asking for the same thing. Money truly does make the world go round, which in my opinion is incredibly sad – but I guess reality.

One part of town. More developed

Of course there are other crazy things, such as random slaughtering of sheep on the street with piles of bones, organs and meat, things such as cut off roads, unfinished bridges, random tour de France like race through the city of Addis, donkey’s walking in the middle of the roads, even the odd naked person walking around the streets!

But take the positive from the negative, I’m learning ALOT here and these three weeks I’ve been here I’ve become incredibly comfortable with the friendliness of most people, the culture and even the food. I know that this experience will guide me throughout the rest of my life, and for that I’m forever thankful.

The TEAM!

Time to take care of Business

Alrighy, so since I haven’t blogged in a while I have a couple things to blog about. This first post will be about the Workshop that ARC hosted in cooperation with Chinook (BC First Nations). The preparation before the workshop was a lot of work, since photocopying is not just walking into staples and giving an order. At the first place where we printed the cover pages, I had to manually feed each and every paper! It was brutal. The whole photocopying 110 booklet with around 60 pages each took us 2.5 days! Talk about Ethiopia, power coming and going – printer running out of ink etc.

Then the workshop was finally here and I have to say it was great in the sense that we met a lot of Entrepreneurs (some of whom I will talk in later posts) and others who just benefited from the expertise of our fellow Canadian and American speakers. The whole workshop was 4 days and we were pretty busy throughout it. At night, we would all go out for dinner usually. Sometimes we went for Chinese Food, sometimes for Korean and sometimes of course Ethiopian. The one thing about Ethiopian food, is that I really don’t like Injera – the bread they use to eat all their other stuff, since Ethiopians eat with their hands!

So the first week quickly passed. If I had to come up with one take away for the week it would be all the connections I’ve made throughout the workshop and that I now – 2 weeks later still keep in touch with and other aspects of business that I didnt know about before. It was also cool to be able to use my Marketing skills, such as the 4 P’s and things that I learned throughout my time at Sauder and apply them to real business situations! Who knew I would be using all those things I learned in class!

After the workshop, our friends from the Chinook team travelled to the North, which finally gave Grace (Minjin), Taylor and I some time to reflect.

Hi Everyone!

So sorry that I havent been able to blog. Internet here is terrible, and were so busy getting ready for the conference.

SO if you need to reach me, feel free to call me at 0913518686. I get free incoming calls!

The last couple of days we basically have been running around Addis Ababa trying to photocopy the booklets for the conference. Believe it or not, photocopying takes about 8 hours just for lets say 30 pages. We had some huge troubles the first day, but now 2500 pages later, were almost done. Today were mainly getting ready for the conference and maybe going back to the Merkkattoo Market! I thought markets were crowded in China, but WOW they are much more crowded in Addis.

My experience here has been amazing so far. The first 2 days I was thinking to myself, WHAT AM I DOING HERE? And really wanted to go home, but then I met some wonderful people that helped me transition into the everyday life of Ethiopia. Of course there is alot of poverty here, and I still have to get used to the fact that as a FORENGI I am an easy target for beggars, but all in all if you walk like you know where youre going or are with a local I have been fine and feel very safe.

Anyways, I will keep you posted and write more about my adventures.

xoxo
C

Since I'm madly in love with my new blog and want to keep you guys absolutely on the loop with everything I will link here a few videos that show what I'm about to do in Ethiopia:

This is what I will MAINLY be doing (70% of the time)
http://vimeo.com/34035384

This Video is with our partner Charity - we will be visiting these Orphans fairly soon after our arrival in Addis.

http://www.hope-international.com/projects-and-programs/watch-latest-hope-videos/children-of-hope.html

More about what Hope does In Ethiopia:

http://www.hope-international.com/projects-and-programs/watch-latest-hope-videos/a-thirst-for-africa.html

Check out Hope's Website: http://www.hope-international.com/index.php! They are amazing! :)

Welcome to my official Blog which will guide me through the Journey of Ethiopia with the ARC Initiative Team 2012! Grace, Taylor and I are all very excited to be departing on Monday and cannot wait to see what's in store for us! Please see our profiles where you can read more about the three of us and the rest of our fellow traveler's as well as Jeff who will be traveling with us and stay for the period of the workshop (il explain this later in detail)

Right now, were still preparing for everything, and meeting one last time at UBC to discuss final details, GET OUR SHIRTS (YAAY!!) and well start getting ready for our 10am flight from Vancouver!

Our flight looks something like this: Depart Vancouver --> Toronto --> Frankfurt --> Sudan ---> Addis Ababa! Long Journey ahead of us!

I will try to have my VBlogs uploaded here as well (Video Blogs!) and remember to keep checking back from more news about my trip!

Talk soon,

C