A single story, some hippos and a running race.

Before coming to Ethiopia, we took part in “pre-departure training” with CUSO.  As part of this, we were shown a video of Chimamanda Adichie, the acclaimed Nigerian novelist, talking about the danger of a single story.   The talk was given at a TED conference in July 2009.   She describes the problems that come about if we limit ourselves to a single story or image of a country or people.

A few quotes from her “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” …….“I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho, and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.”

A long pre amble to say that I hope I haven’t left you with a single story of Ethiopia.  When I look through my postings, I see there is a lot about poverty, lack of water, poor health for women….  These things are a big part of Ethiopia, but not the only part.

Here is another story of Ethiopia; posh hotels, tennis, golf, swimming pools..... 

Relaxing in our room

View from our room

This weekend a few of us headed down to Hawassa which is about 5 hours south of Addis by road.  Our very good friends loaned us one of their vehicles and we drove down in convey.  We were going to Hawassa to take part in a running race, but were really there to relax at the Haile resort

The Haile resort is a posh hotel that is partly owned by Olympic champion Halie Gebreselassie.  Haile is considered one of the greatest distance runners in history.  He has won two Olympic gold medals for 10,000m, four world championships, still holds the masters world record for the marathon and the list goes on.

He also has a very nice hotel.  We had a most relaxing weekend.  Drinks by the pool, hippo watching in the lake the hotel overlooks, golf for the kids and yes a running race .

The highlight; a photo op with Haile Gebreselassie.

You can watch Chimamanda Adichie at the TED conference at: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html