It's been 16 days since I landed at Addis Ababa's Bole International Airport, and the first fourteen of those were spent in quarantine at my residence. I tried to keep myself occupied - for one thing, you would be amazed at the amount of dust that accumulates indoors (inside a sealed house!) over the course of the six months that we were spinning our wheels in Arlington while on Authorized Departure. It was a lot of work dusting, sweeping, vacuuming and mopping the floors of one kitchen; an entranceway; a living/dining room; four bathrooms; and six bedrooms (only three of which are actually used for sleeping). Our house is very reminiscent of places where we lived in Taiwan - namely, it's a narrow three-story structure with tile flooring that doesn't take much to get dirty again. I also went through all the kitchen cabinets and shelves, throwing out any food items that were past their use-by dates; some had expired back in 2017 and 2018! My wife wasn't too pleased to hear I had done so, as she apparently believes expiration dates are merely guidelines, but my stomach isn't made of cast iron, so like a going out of business sale, everything that was out of date had to go!
Still, despite all the work involved, the boredom was constant. It didn't help that I didn't have working WiFi indoors for the first few days I was back, meaning I had to rely only on my government-issued 3G phone to communicate with the outside world. This also meant I couldn't access Netflix, so my evening entertainment options were limited to my daughter's Studio Ghibli スタジオジブリ DVD collection. Over the past two weeks I've watched (in the original Japanese, with English subtitles) Princess Mononoke もののけ姫; Spirited Away 千と千尋の神隠し; My Neighbor Totoro となりのトトロ; Ponyo 崖の上のポニョ; Howl's Moving Castle ハウルの動く城; Grave of the Fireflies 火垂るの墓; Castle in the Sky 天空の城ラピュタ; and, most recently, Kiki's Delivery Service 魔女の宅急便. If there's one thing I've learned during quarantine, it's that Hayao Miyazaki 宮崎駿, Isao Takahata 高畑勲 and Toshio Suzuki 鈴木敏夫 are (or, sadly in the case of Takahata, who died two years ago, were) freakin' geniuses! I'm looking forward to finishing the rest of the collection over the next few weeks.
Thanks to my supervisor (who provided a box of food for me), and the local versions of Door Dash, Grubhub et al (plus the food in the kitchen and freezer that are still within a safe timeframe to consume), I didn't come close to starving, though it does seem I lost around four kilograms while staying indoors. We'll see what happens to my waistline now that I can go outside to consume.
Tomorrow I return to the office for the first time in 206 days. This upcoming week is going to be a busy one - in addition to catching up on work (especially emails), I'll need to make sure my car is still operating after sitting in an Embassy parking lot for more than six months; pick up all my personal mail that has accumulated during the time I was away; exchange all my old Ethiopian birr banknotes for the new ones the government of Ethiopia introduced in mid-September; and arrange for Shu-E and Amber to rejoin me here following the end of the my daughter's school's first semester in late December (she's currently doing online learning from Taiwan).
Ah, yes, the family. We've been separated for 25 days now. They had their own quarantine to go through in Taichung 台中, but now they're out and living what approximates something close to a normal life thanks to the Taiwanese government's successful attempts at controlling the spread of COVID-19. We talk everyday on the Line social messaging app, but I miss them terribly.
Speaking of the coronavirus, how are things in Ethiopia you or may not be wondering? The last time I checked (which was just now), the country has recorded 90,490 cases (out of an estimated population of 109 million), 1371 deaths and 43,638 recoveries. The good news is that Ethiopia has a young population (people aged 0-24 make up 63% of the population); the government acted quickly in response, declaring a state of emergency in April that lasted until September; and nearly 80% of the populace lives in rural areas. On the other hand, because testing has been scaled back due to limited resources, the actual extent of the virus is unknown; and when I went outside this weekend to do some shopping, it appeared that fewer than half the people on the streets were wearing masks, and many of those were only covering their mouths and not their noses as well. For the remainder of my tour here, it's going to masks, hand washing and social distancing all the way!
Don't expect too many blog posts in the coming weeks and months, as thanks to COVID-19 and my unwanted bachelor life, I probably won't be going out too often except to shop and work. As for the title of this post? Well, for fourteen days I wasn't working up a sweat in Addis Ababa's subtropical highland climate, nor was I interacting with other human beings, so I didn't see the point in applying deodorant. Sometime a man's got to smell like a man!
More views from the balcony. The nighttime shot was taken using a tripod. Yes, there really aren't that many lights on at night:
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