I talked about great coffee and fantastic food in Addis, but I did not mean to imply that Ethiopia is a first world country.  Ethiopia definitely one of the most backwards places that I've ever been.

Parking meters

Addis Ababa is modern enough to have a few parking meters, but they don't work.  Instead, human parking monitors hang around on every block.  Twice an hour, they put slips of paper under the all of the cars' windshield wipers.  As the cars depart, the parking monitor has to run after them to try to make sure the driver pays. 

But my favorite, functioning bit of dysfunction, is DHL.  The entire country has no street addresses.  Many streets don't even have a name.  How do you send an express package to a city without any street addresses?  Well, if you send a package to Ethiopia, you give DHL a phone number rather than an address.  When the package arrives in Addis, DHL calls up the recipient and asks, "Where the hell are you?"

Back to the topic of the laptop.  When I was in Nairobi, Apple UK told that I'd have to wait 8 weeks, and pay $250 in shipping, for the warranty repair on my laptop.  Needless to say, that wasn't acceptable.  The customer service guy, Mick Hull (I'm giving his full name in case his boss happens to ever read this), gave just about the worst service that I have ever had.  He was inflexible, condescending, and he flatly refused to give me his supervisor's email address when I wanted to complain.  I guess that in the UK, the customer is definitely not always right.  When I left Nairobi, I was still arguing with Mick. 

I carried my dead laptop from Nairobi to Addis Ababa.  Meanwhile, friends at Apple Headquarters managed to work out an acceptable compromise on my behalf.  I can't say anything good about Apple UK, but Apple USA has always been fantastic.  I would pay half the shipping and Apple would rush the fix. 

While it was frustrating being without my laptop, it was very good for me in some ways.  My camera became my constant companion.  In the months without my laptop, I read a lot more books, and took a lot more photos.  . 

But, when I arrived in Addis, I'd been unable to do any writing for 6 weeks.  Getting the laptop fixed was my first priority.  I knew there was an Apple shop in Addis.  All I had to do was find it. 

Google has become the source for all information, about everything, but searches for Apple shops in Addis Ababa turned up nothing, so I had to go in search for a phone book.  For a while, I wasn't sure that phonebooks even existed in Ethiopia

If the shop you're looking for cannot be found on google, you're in a city of several million people, and there are no phonebooks, then how can you possibly find it?  This was not a theoretical question - I was terrified that I would never be able to find the Apple shop.  Finally, I found an old phone book.  The shop was not listed, but I now had hope. 

I was about to storm off to one of the major hotels in search of a new phonebook, when I ran into a French girl, and told her my story.  She had a friend who worked at the UN, who happened to use an iBook.  One phone call later, I had directions to the Apple Shop. 

The owner was an Italian Ethiopian by the name of Gabriele.  He was very willing to help me out, but things, moved forward at an African speed (as they do in Africa).  It took more than a week before the laptop was finally sent off to Europe.

The first problem with the shipping was a catch-22 with insurance.  No one would insure shipping a laptop; and no one would ship a laptop without insurance.  I do not know how that was eventually solved.  Then there were problems because I had no documentation showing that I brought the laptop into the country, but of course, the little mud hut immigration office in the Omo Valley where I entered the country had no such documents. 

I expect things to move slowly in Africa, but not in the UK.  I thought that Mick had agreed to make a rapid repair on my laptop, but perhaps not.  It took 3 horribly long weeks for Apple UK to replace my motherboard.  That was three more weeks of being trapped in Addis, unable to do any writing. 

And then the final insult; after my laptop had been fixed, in an act of obvious passive aggression, Mick Hull (again his full name in case his boss is reading) held on to my laptop for another week.  While I was stuck in Addis Ababa unable to work, the laptop just sat on his desk.  I was furious.

Five weeks after my laptop had been shipped off to the UK, it arrived back in Addis.  But then, I got trapped in a nightmare of African bureaucracy.  It makes me cringe to even think about it.  Four days of bureaucracy really isn't so bad by African standards, but after months of dealing with Mick, it was more than I could handle.  The problems just got surreal. 

A new law was passed, during the week that my laptop sat on Mick's desk.  This new law stated tax documents (in Gabriele's name) now had to be in the business's name.  Customs refused to process any paperwork until the tax forms were corrected.  It looked as if my laptop might sit in an airport warehouse for the next month, while the Apple store re-registered with the tax office.  Fortunately, after two days of begging, one of the guys from the Apple shop convinced customs to make an exception and release this one package. 

The next day, there was a new problem.  Customs demanded the cost of the repair so that they could tax it.  They would not accept that it cost nothing.  Rather than trying to argue with them, or get an actual invoice, I quickly forged one.  This time I went with Amanuel to the airport to push things along and ensure that I got my laptop.  What should have taken 20 minutes, took 4 hours, but eventually all of the paperwork was complete and signed -- exactly 15 minutes too late.  The only step left was to pick up the laptop, but the warehouse was closed.  It was a horrible disappointment.

Amanuel promised to pick up the laptop on his way to work the next day.  When the shop opened, I was there, and then I waited, and waited, and waited.  Three very tense hours later, Amanuel showed up.  He explained what happened.  Customs had somehow given him the wrong package.  On his way to work, he realized the package was much too light, so he opened it and found a bunch of cell phones.  He had to go back and swap boxes. 

And so, several months, and 3 hours late, I finally got my laptop back.  Thank God, it booted up. 

Contact Info

I could find nothing on google about Apple computer shops, or Apple computer repair in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  This page should quickly be indexed by google.  If you found this page looking for the Apple shop in Addis, it's on Bole Road just past the Japanese Embassy.  The rest of the contact info is here:

Gabriele Valeri (owner)
Apple Solutions
Phone:  251.1.622453
Email:  apple@ethionet.et
http://www.appleethiopia.com

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