The airport of Addis Ababa is a strange place. First of all, it is located so close to the city itself that it seems absurd after getting used to one-hour rides to and from Entebbe in Uganda. I hear someone we know in Addis lives three minutes from the airport.

The new terminal is a large glass and metal tube dominated by an army of overenthusiastic cleaners in bright purple outfits. After our flight back to Entebbe had been delayed by five hours, I tried to relax on a free row of seats, but it turned out to be next to impossible due to the perpetual sweeping and vacuuming and chatting among the cleaning personnel. Seriously, they seemed reluctant to stop at all despite the fact that the place was almost empty and everything clean and shining already. At some stage there were seven of them working feverishly within a few metres of me, mops flying and engines whining. And it went on and on, endlessly.

There seems to be a belief among African professional cleaners that it is possible to stock up the results of your cleaning, as food in a cellar or money in a bank; that by working hard enough, one can remove future dirt and thus make future work easier; that the more you scrub, the cleaner it gets, even if it's perfectly clean already; that you can somehow push down dirt levels to such an extent that they sink below zero, into the negative zone. Then the surface can freely accumulate dirt for some time, and the levels only rise back to zero. It will still be completely clean, as if just scrubbed.

09:03