Durame part 3 - Hotel and Food Service

Part 3 – Hotel Durame and Food Service

Well, let’s just say that the Holt explanations are right. We are in a 3rd world country and being at the Union Hotel in Addis has been like a Marriott. As we went upstairs in Durame, workers were trying to open the doors by sticking a broom through the opening above the door. Fun. We walked into our room which was full of mosquitos. I’m so glad I got a malaria meds. I would have been freaked out with the four or five bites otherwise. After spraying down our room with deet, swatting a few skeeters and rubbing ourselves down with deet, we headed back out the door. We were greeted by the hotel staff who’d decided with the help of the Holt staff that we needed to move from the room with two single beds to another room so the ladies who were friends travelling together could have separate beds. Okay. Then they started to kick another couple out of their room for us. Does that make sense? We asked for that couple to be left and us to be given a new room. Know which one we got? The room that no longer has a key. They have one key per room and no extras (which wasn’t new – the same applied to our hotel in Amsterdam and in Addis where we were required to leave our key at the front desk). We had to leave our room open while not in there. I took a quick visit to the rustic bathroom that had a toilet and sink with no running water. You had to dip into the bucket next to the toilet and pour it in the toilet bowl to get your business to flush. Of course there was no running water in the sink either so I made good use of some wet wipes we brought along. We left our stuff in other rooms and went down to the dining room area to meet up with other parents.

We ordered off the menu which was a sheet of paper with approximately 10 meal choices written on it in English. The paper was passed around and each of us put a hash mark next to the meal we wanted. In typical Ethiopian fashion, it was a long time before everyone got their food. Fortunately the meal options really catered to us Americans. After lunch we headed to the Durame care center for our much anticipated birth parent meeting.

After the birth parent meeting we returned to the hotel emotionally exhausted. It was almost 5 and dinner was scheduled for 7pm. We decided as a group to meet right back down in the lobby/bar area to socialize and talk through what we’d just experienced. For lack of space, the hotel staff let us socialize at the table we’d be eating at. When asked if we could order supper earlier they said no and told us it was scheduled for 7pm. Alrighty then. Finally they decided we could at least send the order sheet (aka menu) around but told us supper still wouldn’t be till 7pm. I saw that there was French fries on the menu so I asked if we could order it as an appetizer. By this time Tesfaw, one of the local Holt staff, was at the table with us. He said that would be fine and so I asked for 3 orders of French fries to be shared down the table. About an hour later, our appetizer showed up. Only it wasn’t French fries, it was French TOAST. Nice. At this point I just laid my head down on the table in surrender. The French toast was served with jam, not syrup and it was actually pretty good (especially compared to the French toast I had the day before that had some extra protein fried in with the batter). At 7pm we still didn’t have our food but 3 orders of French fries finally showed up. Weird. Finally the food began coming out of the kitchen. Someone is always way late on getting their food. Way late. This time it was Shonda and Jamey who got their food just before 830. When their order, the Special (which was like a combination platter), did come out one o f the servings was of raw meat. You should have seen Tesfaw get all freaked out about the raw meat. It’s culturally appropriate to serve but he knew that Shonda and Jamey shouldn’t be eating it. The wait staff offered to scrape it off the plate and cook it. After an almost tug-of-war over the plates, the wait-staff ended up scraping it off the plate but it didn’t matter because they didn’t like the food anyway. Waited forever, dealt with raw food and didn’t eat more than 3 bites. Nice. We went back to our room where we didn’t sleep well and were eager to get up and get out of Durame. Thank you Lord for caring about our children, for putting them in families who can love and care for them.