One week in Addis Ababa

[apologies in advance for the lack of images. After spending half an hour trying to upload just one photo I have decided that my mood just can't handle the stress of that today]

My first stop in Africa was Ethiopia, a country that I have always wanted to visit. I spent almost three weeks there, the first in Addis Ababa and the following two in the deep south of the country, mostly in the South Omo Valley.

When I was planning my trip, I didn’t intentionally book a week in a big African city where I know nobody just for shits and giggles. In fact, my plan for that week had originally been to go to Bali to have a nice and relaxing week between finishing my placement in Indonesia and going camping in an extremely underdeveloped region of Africa, something that was undoubtedly going to be challenging in many respects.

Unfortunately, a series of visa problems necessitated that I go to Addis Ababa early to take advantage of the fact that it’s the home of every single embassy imaginable (including Vatican City, Somaliland, South Sudan etc). Travelling as an Australian is normally very easy: most countries do not require a visa in advance or at all, and Australians are rarely treated with suspicion by immigration officials the way that people from many other countries are (I’ve heard numerous stories from my friends who have tried to travel with passports from developing nations about how they have been given the run around by immigration, especially in New Zealand of all places!). That said, there are some places in the world that aren’t quite as friendly to Australian passport holders, and I have managed to include many of these places in my itinerary!

The story about my week in Addis Ababa begins in June 2013 when I started trying to organise my visas. After some brief research, I realised that I had a big problem. I needed visas in advance for: Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Brazil. There were two problems with this. First, the sheer number of visas that I needed, combined with the fact that some embassies stated a 25-business day (minimum) turnover time for visa applications, meant that I did not have the time to get all of these visas (my travel agent Sian added up the processing times quoted by her visa service and it was something like 120 business days!). Second, visas have a validity period, and for many visas this is 90 days, so if you leave your country more than 90 days before you are due to leave the country for which you need a visa, you must obtain it in some 3^rd party country somewhere along your journey.

So, before leaving Australia I managed to get visas for Vietnam, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Indonesia (after four attempts: my first attempt was rejected because the visa is only valid for 60 days after issue and I’d applied a few days too early, the second attempt was rejected because I had not included the national ID document of the person sponsoring me at the university (as this was some requirement made up by the person looking at my application and in no way a formal requirement) and on the third attempt they issued a visa with my name misspelt, so I spent my final day in Australia travelling twice to the consulate on the other side of Melbourne in order to drop my passport off and then collect it again). I did some research that told me that the visa for Sierra Leone may be purchased online, so I did that when I was in Vietnam and the whole thing took all of about 10 minutes. I also learned that there is a Burmese consulate in Hanoi, so I specifically applied to do my Hoc Mai placement in Hanoi to enable me to get that visa there. Whilst in Hanoi I asked my hotel how to go to the embassy and they told me that they were happy to send off the application on my behalf. It took less than a week and was completely stress free.

In contrast, I had a not-fun time trying to get my West African visas through the French Consulate in Sydney, which is a place that seems to choose its employees based on maximum rudeness. The best information that I could find was that the Burkina Faso visa was valid for whatever period you requested, so I thought that I should try to get this one in advance so that I would have one less to worry about. Alas, this was not to be. The first time I sent them my passport, by courier service, it was sent straight back to me and I was told that visas for West Africa would only be accepted by appointment, and that the next available appointment was 60 days from that date, just a few weeks before I was due to depart. So I made an appointment, and when the date was soon to arrive went back on their website to check all of their requirements and saw a new announcement saying that visas for West Africa now needed to be sent in via courier and in person applications would not be accepted. So, by changing their requirements and giving me the run around they had made it impossible for me to get my visa in advance. Luckily, I discovered that it will actually be possible (touch wood) to get my Burkina Faso visa on the border, but for a grossly inflated price (approx USD 200). I’m posting this blog post on the day that I will be attempting to do this, so if you are reading this promptly you may be doing so whilst I’m actually in the process of crossing this border! So, I was left with just the Benin visa to worry about (I will try to get my Brazilian one in Ghana, as I am there for quite some time and there is a Brazilian consulate in Accra).

The best solution I could come up with for the Benin visa was to fly to Addis Ababa about a week before my tour and apply at the consulate there. Those of you on my facebook would have seen me complaining about the experience that I then had. On my first morning in Addis, I took a taxi to the Beninese embassy. Complication number one was that there are actually two addresses for the embassy, and the first that I chose to try was the ambassadorial residence, rather than the chancery, which is where you need to go to apply for visas. Since these two places were on pretty much opposite sides of the town the taxi journey became quite expensive. The second complication that I encountered was that there were all sorts of visa requirements for the Beninese visa that had not been published anywhere online. One of these was that you needed to provide proof of pre-paid accommodation, so I attached my trip itinerary (I’m doing a G-Adventures tour through Benin) to my application. Unfortunately, the lady at the consulate immediately decided that this was insufficient, and the only solution that I could fathom was that I could book one night in a hotel (using some sort of online booking system) and then produce that receipt and cancel the booking at a later date.

The rest of my Monday was hardly more successful than the morning at the Chancery. After my hassles with the visa I went for a walk looking for a nice place to have lunch. As I was walking down the street a group of drunk men on the sidewalk started shouting extremely sexual things at me, so I sped up and tried to walk with my head held up high, as if I’d not even noticed them. This strategy, combined with the fact that I was wearing sandals, was unfortunate, seeing as there was a bit of rusted metal poking out of the ground just where I was walking. I cut my foot open on this rusted metal, which was miserable as there was blood and dirt everywhere, and the best that I could do to clean my wound (which was quite deep) was to pour hand sanitiser on it before hobbling back to my hotel where I flushed out the wound and put antiseptic cream on it. After that I went to the Sheraton to have some quite time, and then it occurred to me that my tetanus vaccine is almost out of date, and that it would be advisable for me to get a booster. I texted a friend of a friend, Kristina, whose number I’d been given as a contact in Addis Ababa and asked her if she could recommend a doctor. She then came and picked me up in a taxi and together we found a decent doctor (the Swedish Medical Clinic) and fought for me to have an appointment with a nurse so that I could receive the vaccine that afternoon rather than waiting for an appointment with a doctor the following day (which would have cost me $200). Thus, I met Kristina and made my first friend in Addis Ababa.

To cut a long story short, I spent every day that week anxiously contacting the consulate about my visa and being repeatedly told that it would be one more day. On Friday I decided to attend the consulate in person and stay there until my passport was returned to me, complete with visa. When I arrived I was told that the visa application had been approved, however there was a person employed solely to put the stamp in the passport, and he had not shown up to work that day. So, I said that I was happy to sit there and wait until he showed up (it was 2pm at that stage). I sat there for 45 mins and then the guy was at work and putting the stamp in my passport (sit in = success). Unfortunately, the next thing that I was told was that the ambassador had to sign the stamp in my passport. So, again, I said that I would sit there and wait. I sat there for 90 minutes until I was told that the ambassador was actually “attending a lively social function” at the African Union Summit (which was inconveniently being held that week, causing massive road closures and special Summit week inflated prices, not just for contract taxis but also for hotel rates and restaurant food!) and would be in no fit state to sign my passport that day. Seeing as I was leaving Addis Ababa the following day (a Saturday, and the consulate is only open on weekdays during limited business hours), I had no choice but to leave my passport with the consulate for the visa to be signed sometime over the next week and a half.

Surprisingly, the last step of getting this visa was extremely easy and occurred on the day that my tour returned from the south of the country to Addis Ababa. My group had pulled over on the side of the road in the suburbs of Addis for some people to purchase coffee from a reputable coffee shop. I was sitting waiting in the car when I realised that the area looked very familiar, and then I turned around and saw the Beninese Chancery signposted (about 100m away). So, I jumped out of the car, sprinted to the Chancery, grabbed my passport, and then sprinted back to the car, all before people had finished buying their coffee.

The rest of my time in Addis Ababa was spent visiting museums, meeting friends of friends, and hanging out at the Sheraton Hotel (because sometimes you just need a break from Africa, especially when pissed off about the bureaucracy). I met some great people during the week – Kristina, Adrian, Biruk, Winta and Feduku – and experienced many facets of life in Addis Ababa from expat house parties, karaoke, Reggae clubs, Salsa dancing, ultimate Frisbee (on my last night in Ethiopia) and the mandatory trip to Yod Abyssinia cultural restaurant. I had low expectations for the week, but it turned out to, with the exception of the Monday, be quite pleasant. On the Saturday evening I met my tour group and had dinner with a couple of lovely Norwegian girls from the group, and then the following morning I departed  Addis Ababa for my adventures in the south of the country.