Peace Corps Ethiopia III

What the Guidebooks Never Tell You About Travels in Ethiopia

(by Alice Gosak-Gary from a trip taken in 2007 and modified by Darrel and Betty Hagberg)

Tip 1: Your county health department has an immunization clinic that is the cheapest place to get your shots. If you are over 65, Medicare will cover the cost of some of them, such as Hepatitis B. If you have secondary insurance, some of the immunizations might also be covered by it. We are talking about $500 worth of shots, including Pneumovax for those over 65.

Tip 2: Take $50 and $100 bills of the 2003 series and later.

Tip 3: Download your boarding pass 24 hours or so before the flight for easier check-in.

Tip 4: Get your entrance visa at the airport for US$50. Phil sent his passport to the Ethiopian Embassy and was charged US$50 for his visa, plus the US$20 courier service fee to get it there and back.

Tip 5: American Express is not accepted in Ethiopia although large hotels and the airlines honor Visa and sometimes Mastercard.

Tip 6: It is impossible not to want to give to the poor in Africa. The meal tickets at Hope Enterprises are a good bet as is patronizing the NGOs that are lifting people into self-sufficiency. Two of these NGOs that I found are ALERT Hospital, a leprosarium on the outskirts of the city, where women spin, weave and embroider goods for sale and Sabaharr ("the silk of Sheba"), which employs hundreds of rural women who raise silk worms, spin silk, weave it and dye it. We were unable to visit the Former Fuel Carriers market near Entoto, where women who had made their living carrying those huge bundles of wood on their backs "retire" to weave cloth shammas to earn their living.

Tip 7: Designate a pair of shoes as your Addis-During-the-Rains shoes in the event that they get destroyed. Although they now have assigned turf, the "listro" or shoeshine boys are still around, but so is the mud.

Tip 8: Having covered shoes, could socks by far away? Wear socks when you remove shoes to go into churches, etc. Bites from fleas that have previously come into contact with rats cause typhus.

Tip 9: The ferinji diet of Ethiopia is long on meat and short on raw vegetables. Since only old men sitting around the Bosque County Courthouse (Texas) and Peace Corps volunteers talk about their bowels unabashedly, let me suggest that Metamucil wafers, available in two flavors in any drugstore, are a good source of needed roughage.

Tip 10: Expect to pay a non-resident fare for in-country flights. My US$250.00 round-trip fare from Addis to Dire Dawa was three times that charged Pat, who is a resident. (Use the Flight Coupons offered by EAL or work with a Tour Agent in Addis.)

Tip 11: Bring a towel with you. The concept of a set of towels has not quite penetrated the small hotel and B&B culture of Ethiopia. In hotels off the beaten track, one guest might be given the bath towel in a set while the other receives the hand towel. As in Europe, washcloths are not common.

Tip 12: You never know where you will be stuck or for how long, so carry some snacks with you. Cheese, chocolate and cookies were some I carried along with small candies such as M&Ms, Skittles, etc. A small bag of M&Ms go a long way with a small group of children, who tend to eat an M&M in four bites. But caution—only distribute candy to children in very small groups.

Tip 13: Traveler Checks are accepted in some areas, but you will be asked to show the paperwork that came with your checks.

Tip 14: Expect to pay about a 3 per cent service charge for using Visa or Mastercard.

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