A 23 year old Toyota Corolla

Last month we rented a car.  After 6 months without a vehicle, we finally broke down (we are not the salt of the earth people we were hoping to be).  It is now much easier to get the kids back and forth to various activities and social events and of course easier for us to get to work and be back home in good time. 

 

Our landlord found us a vehicle and we are now the lucky renters of a 1990 red Toyota Corolla.  A very popular car.  According to Wikipedia over 39 million Corollas have been sold as of 2012.

There are many elderly cars roaming the streets of Addis, mostly because the import taxes on new cars are huge. 

Here is some information from the Ethiopian Customs and Duty Tariff site.  A motor car is liable to five different taxes.   An example:  A vehicle with a cylinder capacity greater than 3000 cc is subject to the following taxes:

Duty Rate: 35%
Excise Tax: 100%
VAT: 15%
Sur Tax: 10%
Withholding tax: 3%


This gives a grand total of 163% tax to the assigned value of a car. As well, one is unable to import “old” cars into Ethiopia.  As a result, old cars currently residing in Ethiopia, retain their value quite well.

Mike is the driver of the red Corolla and has an Ethiopian drivers license, valid from 2005-2007 (Ethiopian Calendar).  He is doing an excellent job negotiating the tricky and unpredictable Addis traffic.  The kids and I are the passengers and are doing an excellent job of trying not to be backseat drivers.

The Yellow Jerry Can

A common site around here is a yellow jerry can.  In many countries in Africa women and children use this 20 litre jerry can to collect, transport and store their water.   

The jerry cans initially held cooking oil or (more alarmingly) diesel fuel.  They are cleaned and then used to transport water.

Apparently this is a big improvement from the old clay water vessels as jerry cans are lighter, more durable and easy to carry on the head.  The phrase “easy to carry on the head” may be a matter of opinion as I would be hard pressed to lift a full jerry can let alone get it up to my head.

According to the WHO, living within 1 km of a safe water source and having access to 20 litres of water per day (per person) is deemed sufficient for adequate drinking and personal hygiene.  As Canadians, we would have a tough go of it on 20 litres of water per day.

                                                               Here is a little number quiz:

-Number of kilometers walked by the average African women in search of water per day:  6

-Number of kilos of a 20L jerry can weighs when filled with water: 20

-Number of people living more than 1 km from a safe water source:  1.1 billion

-WHO estimate of annual deaths from water-borne diseases due to unsafe water: 3.3 million

-Number of litres of water used per day by the average Rwandan: 5

 -Number of litres of water used per day to irrigate the world’s golf courses: 9.5 billion!

 -Hours spent in one day by women and children on collecting water for domestic use: 200 million

 -Environment Canada stats of how many litres of water individuals use in an average day:

                                                                     Americans: 575

     Canadians: 335         

     Europeans: 200

     Asia: 95

     Sub-Saharan Africans: 10-20

I think I will start taking shorter showers.

YELLEM!

Yellem is an Amharic word.  It’s a handy little word to know.  The rough translation is “none”,  “there is no…” ,“we don’t have any..”

There is a lot of yellem in Addis.  Here are a few examples:

1.  There is a cute little pizza stall/restaurant close to our house called Yoni’s.  Yoni’s has two things on the menu; pizzas and sodas.  Yesterday Yoni’s pizza house had “yellem” pizza .

2. One fine day at work, I needed something copied.  Surprisingly it is a bit of a production to do this; one has to obtain permission by getting various forms stamped with an official blue stamp.  After completing the numerous procedures in a not too timely fashion, I arrived at the photocopy station with my blue stamped papers.  I was then told there was “yellem” power, so “yellem” photocopying.

3.  The last time we were at the Mekele airport there was “yellem” to everything on the menu.

4. Luckily, in our neighbourhood we don’t often have “yellem” power or water (only occasionally).    However, when this happens we seem to have “yellem” working flashlights and “yellem” matches in the house.

5.  There is generally a lot of “yellem” in our little grocery store.

At any rate, the list goes on.  Initially, all this yellem caused some slight angst, but we have become used to it.  We now hardly bat an eyelash when we can’t order anything from a menu.

Our friend Brian says we need to get signs printed for various establishments that say: “YES, WE HAVE YELLEM”.  I think that would be a good idea.

Yellem photos for this post :).