Addis or the problem of time flying by…

As I said, time I flying by faster then I can realise. When I will be back from Banjul, I will have two weeks left of work and two weeks of travelling before heading back to France. I think those six months have been the fastest of my life…or something equivalent. The more you meet people, the more you feel home, the more work you have, the more week end you have travelling, the more you are lost in time. And Addis has been great for all this to me.

Going out of Addis
I went out many week ends. It is very easy to just hop in a bus and go somewhere, to rent a car and drive away. I have been to:
- Langano lake (one of the only lake in Ethiopia where ou can swim without being scared of strange worms infiltrating in your nice clean body –I mean you are not scared if you are not scare of hippos either)
- Awassa (down south, a city near by a lake where you can just …humm… chill, watch birds, walk around, visit the famous fish market and so on)
- Harar (a city to the est, with Arabic influences, that looks very different from the rest of Ethiopian cities. Small streets, houses painted in white or blue, hyenas to feed in the evening, best chat in Ethiopia, great sun and beautiful landscapes)
- Nazret and Soderi (Where there is some hot springs where you can take the hottest shower in the world, where women push you under the water for you to taste the good good natural power)
- Wenchi crater lake (where we went my car with the record of doing 30km in three hours on a pista, but 3hours that are worst as the lake is absolutely beautiful, the people are great and the quiet area is amazing)
- Debre Zeyit (one of my hot spots as it is one hour from addis and that you can go for a day. I have a friend there who has a beautiful house on the edge of one of the seven crater lakes you can find there)
I am sure I am forgetting some… but it is already good!

As opposed to staying in Addis
There also there is so many things to do. NGO market, drinking lots of juices and macchiato, showing places around to the new comers, hanging around in my hamoc, eating beaucoup de amazing breakfast, going out in cool bars or clubs, meeting friends, going to the markets or just walking around and do some shopping… et hop 1,2,3 week ends have passed. Oups!

And in Addis there is the work also. It has became more and more interesting and exciting as I got to get the trust of my colleagues who involved me in any projects I could participate in. They really made my stay fruitfull and I think my fear of the beginning have fastly faid away because I saw that I could be useful and that they even needed me! There are stuff that would need to be continued and I kind of wished they could hire me…hihi, yes because my parents are nice but the UN should be nicer and pay the people working hard for them, because it is not as if they could not afford it!
The work with the African Union (my newsletter and retreat, remember?) have been a bit forgotten because the processes within the AU just take ages and that they suggest budgets that we could never approve, so everything has to be diplomatically discussed and negotiated and this just takes months!
But there were other stuff as the Regional Coordination mechanisms meetings (UN as One initiative), the organisation of this meeting in =Banjul, translations, writing concept notes, and so on and so on…No time to be bored. So it has been very hectic at work lately and I didn’t take so much time to hang around.. (just to upload my pictures, that you are welcome to go and see as they are very beautiful of course ;)

The Gambia experience!

Let’s start by now because it is the coolest. I am writing from the airport of Lagos, in Nigeria. Why the hell am I there ??? Hummm…ok. There is this very big regional ministerial meeting happening in Banjul, the Gambia next week . The meeting is about gender in Africa an dit is a review process of the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Plateform of Action, which some kind of another framework for countries worldwide to commit for gender equality and women empowerment. Of course UNIFEM is participating. Moreover, UNIFEM and OHCHR are working in partnership to organise a special event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the CEDAW, the convention for the elimination of discrimination against women. I have been working with the programme officer to organise this. So of course she was the one supposed to go- she is the staff ! They were supposed to go ( my boss and her). Turns out that the have been pushing HQ to add my on the list. But HQ ended up saying there were too many persons from UNIFEM going, and for some reason, i am the one who has been chosen to g o… I still can’t really believe it but apparently it is happening as I am apparently on the other side of the continent already. I think this is the coolest thing that could happen and i am really gratefull to my boss to actually have supported my against people who considered an intern not able to travel like this –which makes sense somehow, even if i don’t personally approve, for reason you ll figure out yourselves-. They mainly need me for leg work, not so exiting but who cares ? Yes i will do some copies, organise the venues, and coordinate the event while my boss will concentrate on the substantive matters. The other thing they needed from me is my amazing translating skills, which have proven being very very very useful and soooo cool within the UN. The other reason is that the director of the Gender unit of the Economic Commission for Africa –with who we work a lot- have officially invited me for being her larbin (translating skills are limited to official vocabulary…you will excuse me of course).
Anyways, the result is that I am off to the Gambia, for ten days, to sweet warm west Africa, on the coast, in a nice hotel, sucking the UN money for comfort and good food. I am a bit agasint it of course (“my values bullshit”), but as everyone, it is hard to spit on those kind of opportunities just because I am going in a four star hotel and finally get some payements for my work… shit, how do we do to stay totally humble when people offer you that much? Have to thing about it from the swimming pool of my hotel…

Me or the abandonnement of my blog

Yes i haven’t been feeding this blog for months. What are my excuses. Humm i guess enjoying so much being here that i forget to take time to tell about it. I have been very busy at work and agitated outside of work as i have been meeting more and more people, found more and more cool activities, went out of town almost every week end. Those are my excuses… cool ?
I don’t know where to start if i have to sum up…should i actually ?
SO many things have been going on, it is hard but good !