Day 2

Monday. First day of work. Meeting at my hotel at 8.-8.30 (early). The car came finally at 9. after I almost fell asleep again. My boss was there, made me a warm welcome and we went to the office. Then started a “usual” kind of first day. Saying hello to everyone, introducing yourself, not getting the name of anyone. Reading all the presentations, strategies and projects documents and making a list of all the new strange names I need to know but I don’t (yet). I went to have lunch with Fidawok and Gadjo dilo in the UN ECA cafeteria, in the huge compound of the ECA (Economic Comission for Africa that has its headquarters here). The UN has an immense conference centre there. Built ten years ago it looks much older but the fancy decoration makes it impressive.
Tomorrow, I will directly dive in the active work. My boss is going for a week in Rwanda for a conference. But they organized from Tuesday to Thursday a workshop with the ECA, gathering several stakeholders involved in the GE/WE issues (it is on my list= Gender Equality and Women empowerment) on: “Assessing and strategizing on gender mainstreaming”. So. I will have to assist to the whole workshop and write a note on what has been said. Soit. C’est cool. It will be a bit scary first. There will be one representatives for each of the regional economic communities (REC, on my list), one representative of the African Union and one for the UNECA. And, it will be in the big UN conference hall (Robin, tu vois de quoi je parle je suis sûre).
Hoo what I forgot to say about my hotel and that I remember now (I am sitting in my room writing, while plenty of baby making noise on my front door). Actually, this is the place for the white couples coming to Ethiopia to adopt. Apparently, they have to stay in Ethiopia for three or four weeks before they can go home with their babies. So here they are, talking of the long process of getting a baby during breakfast, exchanging tips in the corridor on how you can adapt your baby’s food and so on. Nice and a bit disturbing at the same time. Apparently (my boss says) the adoption in Ethiopia is very often badly done. Westerners come and give money to NGOs while local families consider that sending one baby to get a good education might be a good long-term investment. She says that “if you went to be rich by launching a new NGO, get into adoption”. Glauque. Enfin dans un sens, c’est aussi un peu maison du bonheur ici!
Now I will go out under the rain to find an apartment. Wahou. After, I’ll go dip my bandage in a good Ethiopian soup with my new funny friend (un petit rastafarai-haile-salaissie-fan qui me fait penser à Ahmed).
Btw, the weather is okay, beautiful yesterday but today rainy and a bit colder. A big storm came with big Tropic Thunders (Jaaaack) and impressive lightenings.

Ps: merci les parents, bien sûr que c’était malin de prendre mon ordinateur. Les cyber cafés sont lents et pleins, et ma chambre au calme est plus sympa pour prendre le temps de faire un blog et trier des photos. Je l’avoue vous aviez raison.

Les photos viendront un peu plus tard, je n’ai encore la wïïfïïii et je ne serais pas au bureau cette semaine.

Bisous à tous