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Phone Numbers & Codes All Ethiopian numbers have 10 digits. The international country code for Ethiopia is %251 and you need to drop the first zero from the number when calling from abroad. Other important telephone numbers are listed in the Need to Know chapter, p14.
Time Ethiopia is three hours ahead of GMT/UTC. » Time is expressed so sanely in Ethiopia that it blows most travellers’ minds! At sunrise it’s 12 o’clock (6am our time) and after one hour of sunshine it’s one o’clock. After two hours of sunshine? Yes, two o’clock. The sun sets at 12 o’clock (6pm our time) and after one hour of darkness it’s…one o’clock! Instead of using ‘am’ or ‘pm’, Ethiopians use ‘in the morning’, ‘in the evening’ and ‘at night’ to indicate the period of day. » The system is used widely, though the 24-hour clock is used occasionally in business. Be careful to ask if a time quoted is according to the Ethiopian or ‘European’ clock (Be habesha/faranji akotater no? – Is that Ethiopian/foreigner’s time?). For the purposes of this book, all times quoted are by the European clock.
OH, TO BE YOUNG AGAIN In addition to the Ethiopian clock system, another Ethiopian time-keeping idiosyncrasy that confounds many a traveller is the calendar. It’s based on the old Coptic calendar, which has its roots in ancient Egypt. Although it has 12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month of five or six days, like the ancient Coptic calendar, it follows the Julian system of adding a leap day every four years without exception (which is the sixth day of the short 13th month). If you’re travelling during a leap year and want to attend a specific festival check you’ve got the dates right – we have heard plenty of stories of people missing Christmas celebrations by a day and that includes people on an organised tour! What makes the Ethiopian calendar even more unique is that it wasn’t tweaked by numerous popes to align with their versions of Christianity, like the Gregorian calendar (introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582) that Westerners have grown up on. What does this all mean? It means the Ethiopian calendar is 7½ years ‘behind’ the Gregorian calendar, and you’re seven years younger!
influences, respectively. In most midrange and all topend hotels as well as budget hotels catering to foreign tourists, Western style ‘sitdown’ toilets are the norm. Elsewhere it’s squat toilets only. Public toilets are found in almost all hotels and restaurants, but may not form your fondest memories of Ethiopia. In small towns and rural areas, the most common arrangement is a smelly old shack, with two planks, a hole in the ground and all the flies you can fit in between. You may suddenly find that you can survive the next 1000km after all. Toilet paper is very rare in any toilet outside a more expensive hotel; you’re best advised to carry your own.
Tourist Information Local Tourist Offices
Toilets Both sit-down and squat toilets are found in Ethiopia, reflecting European and Arab
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In 2005 the Ethiopian government unceremoniously sacked the heads of the Ethiopian Tourism Commis-
ETHIOPIA DIRECTORY A–Z T I M E
as reliable. Whether you’re using your home phone on a roaming plan or a locally bought phone and SIM card, expect hours, or sometimes days, to go by when, despite having a reception, it’s impossible to actually make a call or send a text message. Internet-enabled smart phones are also unreliable.
sion (ETC) and created the new Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Thankfully, this ministry kept open the ETC’s ever-helpful Tourist Information Centre in Addis Ababa’s Meskal Sq. Other especially useful offices can be found in Aksum, Mekele, Konso, Lalibela, Gambela and Wukro. While in Addis Ababa, the most accurate information on travel outside the capital region is available through tour operators (see p295), though naturally they will expect to sell you something. Outside Addis Ababa, local guide associations and the traveller grapevine are your best sources for up-to-date information. Managers of hotels popular with budget travellers can be fairly clued up as well.
Tourist Offices Abroad No national tourist office exists abroad. The Ethiopian embassies and consulates try to fill the gap, but they generally just hand out the usual tourist brochures.
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