Happy New Year!
Addis Ababa street concert
Happy new year! It’s 2002 in Ethiopia, which is on a different calendar. It’s a wonderful gift to be able to go back in time and be younger than you were when you entered the country! Tonight Addis Ababa is celebrating New Year’s Eve. We filmed a New Year’s Eve concert, which was packed out. They had chairs going out the door and spilling out on the sidewalk–probably more than 1500 people in the building and an unknown number more outside. Our band performed their set along with some local musicians, and during one extended Ethiopian jam, the building erupted in a wave of stomping, jumping, hand-waving joy. It was quite a sight to behold. I wasn’t able to get any decent still photos of tonight’s concert, but I do have one of yesterday’s impromptu street concert in one of the poorer neighborhoods where we went to visit some of the children. It was so much fun to watch the children running from all directions to take in this concert.–Carolyn McCulley