Sunday 23 January 2011

Practicalities of visiting Ethiopia

Although our preliminary visit to Ethiopia means that we will only be there for 11 days, we are keen to hire a car for this visit, simply so that we can visit all of the places that we need to in preparation for our year-long trip in october. I want to visit the Wollega university, and in particular, the health school that appears to be there. Mind you, so far, I have had not managed to get a response to my emails, with the last one being returned due a full inbox. So although I am not convinced that I will be able to meet up with many members of staff from the university, I would like to at least see for myself what opportunities the campus holds for a UK academic like myself. Wollega university is about 150 miles from Gimbie and according to the internet, they have a campus at Gimbie. I think this reflects the nursing school that is based at the hospital, although this is far from clear from the website.

So as with any travel arrangements, we look on the internet to book a car from Addis Ababa airport and are astonished to find that there are very few companies that hire cars in Ethiopia. Indeed, it seems that just 2 companies offer cars from Addis and neither of these are easily accessible via the internet. this doesn't bode well as one of the plans for our October trip is to potentially lease a car for the year. It seems that this will not be as easy as we had anticipated. The reality of getting by in Ethiopia is beginning to set in.


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