If loving you is wrong... I don't wanna be a rock!
on Tara's Ethiopian Adventure (Ethiopia), 15/Mar/2010 08:43, 34 days ago
This and may other delightful lyrics entertained us on Friday night as we went to hear a live band play in Addis. They were advertised as playing‘Motown Hits’ but their repertoire in fact ranged from 60’s and 70’s classics to Christina Aguilera, from Ethiopian Folk to Salsa but it was fantastic. They had about six singers between them that took in shifts to perform, and each one had a voice at least as good as the person they were covering! The only trouble was that with the English songs they often got the lyrics a bit wrong... it sounded just as good but didn’t always make sense! My favourite for the night was‘if loving you is wrong... I don’t wanna be a rock’ rather than the slightly better known...’if loving you is wrong ... I don’t wanna be right’. The man singing it sung with so much enthusiasm though I almost doubted myself on the lyrics.This incredible night of entertainment, not dissimilar to a night at Ronnie Scots, was a complete bargain by British terms. It only cost about£1 for entry and drinks ranged in price from £1.50 for a beer to £3 for a cocktail. We also had an amazing curry  (I’ve been craving curry since I got here) at quite a classy restaurant just before we went to the club for about a fiver. All in all I guess I spent about£10 for an incredible night out... curry, taxis, drinks and a live band. It is very easy to quickly start converting things into British pounds and feeling like we were getting an amazing deal... however that extravagant evening out did start to pinch at the wallet when I converted it into a percentage of my allowance here. I’m not sure how much of a bargain I would consider an evening out if it cost me 10% of my monthly income back home!Going to Addis always ends up being expensive though and thankfully the rest of the month I am able to quite comfortably live off of about half my allowance in Ambo so that I can splash out when I come to town. I really don’t know how the Addis volunteers manage though. Almost every time I come to Addis I end up blowing half my allowance in one weekend! Most of it normally goes on groceries that I can only get in the capital. This month I spent 25% of my allowance on a potato masher, a slotted turner, a tin opener, some olives, a tin of tuna fish, a small block of cheese, cocoa powder and a few spices. Clearly I can live without all these things and I feel very fortunate that I can afford these items at all. Although my finances are a far cry from the Expats and rich Ethiopians we saw in the Club on Friday night, just the fact that I can occasionally splash out in this way puts me a in a very privileged position out here. It also makes me realise even more how privileged I was back in England where I wouldn’t think twice about buying olives or cheese and wouldn’t feel the need to save up for a potato masher!