Adventures in Addis Land

This past weekend, a couple of friends and I ventured to Ethiopia for a break from Eldoret. On Thursday, we flew into the Nairobi airport, and stayed at a Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi. Since our flight landed at about 8PM, we didn’t arrive at the Guest house until about 9PM, to which they scoffed at the request for any food options in the area, because CLEARLY it was past 9PM, and thus no one is hungry. Luckily one of my friends found an Indian restaurant that would deliver, so we nibbled on some paneer before bed. The guest house boasted a library, tennis courts, basketball courts, a lovely garden in the epicenter of the rooms, equipped with a tire swing and all! These Mennonites sure seem to know how to have a good time…whether that be a hungry good time in the wee hours of the night, I’m not sure. (Perhaps we looked to be heathenous gremlins, that shouldn’t be fed after a certain hour, as to not ravenously multiply…not sure what extremes the imagination of a Kenyan Mennonite can explore).  Our room, a room for three people, was actually 3 rooms, each with a set of beds in it. We clearly got the family suite, with a double bed, and two rooms with bunk beds, and a crib. Amy chose the crib, and I went back to my roots and chose a bunk bed!

(pic of Amy chillin in her crib)

The morning flight on Friday to Addis Ababa was uneventful. When we landed, the airport was adorned with rusted broken down fighter planes, including a few situated just off the landing strip. I am not sure if they serve a purpose, or if they had just been abandoned after ill-functioning. I hurriedly thumped off the plane, trying to carry our luggage down the external flight of stairs, nailing the bottom of my suitcase on each step, too enamored with excitement to worry about the contents of my luggage…and with a quick pace, headed toward the main airport terminal, with Amharic lettering in green and red colors spelling out “Addis Ababa International Airport.” After a quick venture through the visa line (a visa for Ethiopia is only 20USD!!!) and a fast exchange of money, we headed to the arrivals area and found our driver waiting patiently for us. We drove through Addis Ababa on the main road called Bole Road, which is just situated outside of the airport and takes you into town. The Bole district or area is very modern…and CLEAN! Shops lined the road, including cafés and clothing stores. The roads in the Bole district were damn near perfect, with smooth asphalt that actually was wide enough for proper alignment of 3 cars wide on each side, very reminiscent of a US highway…oh, the things we marvel when living in Kenya and you become accustomed to pot holes the size of your car and weaving in and out of livestock, people, bicycles, motorbikes, and other cars…this Bole road seemed like something found in Europe or the US. The giant heaps of trash and plastic bags along side of the road that dress the Kenyan roadside was also missing from the Addis roadside. Granted, there were pockets of poverty and shanty houses with tin roofing, and the occasional cluster of trash along the roadside in Addis, it had a completely different look and feel than Kenya. I think the biggest distinction between Nairobi and Addis was the lack of red dirt that practically cakes every object in Kenya with the clay-like material. The smell of the city was also quite different. There seemed to be a lingering of burned incense (mostly Eucalyptus leaves, which as an aggressive species, has made its way into the city center, lining each street with various clusters of eucalyptus trees) and berbere spices that season various wats.

After a smooth ride of about 15 minutes, we arrived at our hotel, the Addis Regency hotel, where we were greeted by the proprietor, Mack, and his staff, and a lovely cup of joe to tide us over as we checked in!

(first cup of Ethiopian joe)

After exchanging a few laughs with the hotel’s receptionists, we headed up to our room, which was on the 3^rd floor and overlooked a school yard.

(a view from our hotel's balcony)

We quickly set our bags down and decided to see what was in store for the day…first order of business…FOOD! We walked to a local restaurant, which is apparently one of the oldest food establishments in Addis, called the Addis Ababa Restaurant. The décor was very run down, with wood that soaked with the smells of years of odorous wats and injera. Each table was low to the ground, with small stools to sit on, and cowhides on the walls. We arrived after the normal lunch crowd, and all that was left of what seemed like a busy lunch hour were wadded up napkins and splashes of colorful wats on the tables. We chose our seat wisely, as it seemed to be the only table without a smear of wat on it. When the woman arrived to serve us, she spoke little to no English, so we just smiled, asked for some water, and ordered whatever she wanted to give us…which was delicious and perfect! The flavors were much more intense than Ethiopian restaurants I had been to in the States. Each smack of the wat soaked injera on my tongue was absolutely enjoyable. We definitely ate past our hearts’ and stomach’s desires…and our entire meal only cost the equivalent of 5USD!!!!

After our late lunch, we decided to walk to the National Museum of Ethiopia to see Lucy and the history of homo sapiens. The museum, although dimly lit with a musty carpet odor, was pretty awesome. There were hundreds of excavated bones and teeth that are dated from thousands of years ago. I immediately thought of my dad, an anatomy prof, and my roommate Rachel, a dental student, when I saw the bones and teeth neatly laid into brittle outlines of human-like structures. The museum also had some older African art and some relics from the Emperor Menelik and Empress Taitu era of Ethiopian politics. 

After the National museum, we went to the Sheraton hotel, in all of it’s extravagance. We literally felt like we had stepped into Europe and certainly were way underdressed for even walking through the front doors. We took a seat in the upstairs lounge with had a piano and some large cushioned chairs overlooking the water fountain’s display of spouting water in various forms into the air with colorful lights in the backdrop. We then sipped on a martini the Grassland Vesper, which was mostly gin, and had a hint of herbed honey…quite tasty, and listened to some interesting pianist’s classical mix of mid 90s pop and somber ballads. After a few hours and a couple of Grassland Vespers, we headed to the downstairs bar area, which featured a live band called the Zemen band, which had 4 front ladies, a lead singer, bass player, a couple of guitarists, a keyboardist, and a rapping drummer. They played a mix of popular music, with choreographed dances, Italian pop songs, and popular Amharic music. The band was very lively and did a great job at engaging with the crowd…I got a few high fives from the lead singer as I danced in my chair.  

Saturday morning, we enjoyed our seemingly free brunch at the Addis Regency and hopped in our driver, Fikru’s car and headed to the largest market in Africa, the Merkato. The merkato was quite a disappointment, as it was mostly commercial goods that were being sold, and were not cultural or even a vast array of spices arranged along the streets, something you would more think of in an outdoor market in Africa. Although it was a bit of a disappointment for our desires to soak up some culture, it was quite interesting to see how people navigated through the Merkato and how commercial items were sold at a bartering price, no matter the product.

After our drive through the Merkato, we headed to the Sabahar scarf factory, where the owner keeps the silk worms with her at all times. When we showed up to the factory, the worms were gone and the saleswoman kept saying “no worms today” to which I answered in a Seinfeld voice “NO WORMS FOR YOU!,” eliciting a confused laughter (hey, it was laughter, nonetheless). The products in the storefront were absolutely gorgeous and you could tell how much time was spent on each design in the fabric. After a couple of purchases, we decided to look for more scarves, white scarves with variable prints, which is popular in this part of Addis Ababa, so we headed to Shiro Meda, a smaller market situated at the bottom of the Entoto trail. As soon as we stepped out of the car, older beggers approached us, with their hands held out and simply saying the words “money, money” and looking longingly into each of our faces. It is heartbreaking to see such poverty, yet also to understand the economic drive of some individuals in this area to make their children quit school to beg on the streets, because of the potential to make more money. Poverty and begging…social conflict I will never fully grasp. 

After the Shiro Meda, we drove to a restaurant called Abyssinia, where we had a great array of Ethiopian traditional dishes (kind of sick that I just spoke of poverty and then my memories of Abyssinia restaurant are of leaving the place too full…ugh internal disappointment). After lunch, we headed to a café to look at some art, where we met an artist who told us of an Art Gallery that displays art from up and coming Ethiopian artists at Millenium Hall in the Bole District.  We immediately hopped in the car and headed to Millenium Hall where we soaked in some beautiful works by young artists and even got to meet some of them. (Amy bought a painting that will be delivered to the US!)

PICTURE

At night, we headed to the Taitu Hotel, which apparently Queen Taitu wanted a place in town that she could retreat to, so she built the hotel. The architecture of the hotel is lined with old wooden beams and every floorboard creaked under your weight, but was certainly a beautiful landmark that housed what seemed decades of memories for the owners. The hotel had a jazz club that features live jazz bands, so we decided to head into the club and get a few drinks and some pizza and watch some music, only the band was a bit late, so we were only able to capture a few songs before the others in the group wanted something a bit more lively, for our dancing purposes.

(Meta Beer by candlelight, serenaded by some jazz)

(the jazz band)

So, we headed to the Sheraton to go into a club that was suggested to us, only to be turned away due to our underwhelming appearances in travel clothes, with laymen’s shoes…aka sneakers. The bouncer scoffed at us as we tried to enter, ready to take over the dance floor…but immediately looked at Amy’s converse sneakers with multicolored laces, laughed and turned us away. Feeling a bit defeated, with our tails between our legs and Amy and I walking with a quicker stride due the embarrassment of SNEAKERS that adorned our feet, we headed back to our hotel for a couple of hours worth of Rummy cards and some drinks

(YOUR KIND DON’T BELONG HERE!)

On Sunday morning, we woke up and decided to hike up Entoto hills area, which has a wonderful view that overlooks all of Addis. The entire trail up the side of the hill was completely laden with the Eucalyptus trees, which smelled fantastic. 

(mid way up Entoto Hill with a view of a Eucalyptus tree highlighted from the sunlight)

(View of Addis at the midpoint up Entoto Hill)

St. Mary’s Orthodox Church, which had a museum full of Queen Taitu and King Menelik’s church garb, second church which was in the traditional orthodox structure of a church in an octagon.

(a window in the Menelik and Taitu palace next to the St. Mary's Church)

(octagon church)

I walked from the first church to the second church with our driver, named Fikru, who was an older gentleman with such enthusiasm about Addis and the culture. It was nice to talk with him and make him laugh through some of his skepticism of our uncultured questions. He and I had some even comfortable silences toward the end of the walk, mostly in reverence for a series of dead cows that lined our walkway. We were puzzled about cause of the lifeless carcasses…nonetheless the silence seemed comfortable.

(view after the lifeless cows)

After hiking Entoto, we had coffee at Tomoca, which was one of the oldest coffee shops in Addis, which was quite reminiscent of Italian style coffee shops with standing room only, and giant copper (at one point in time was polished) espresso machines. We took a quick swig or two of our macchiatos and wanted to walk to the Ethnologic museum which is located inside of the Addis Ababa University…however, we were stopped in our tracks by heckling from older women, thrusting their hungry babies into our faces as we hurriedly tried to escape the tourist entrapment of guilt. We hopped in one of the blue and white taxis that was probably manufactured circa 1946, as the engine chugged its way up the hill toward the university, at about 4kph. We made it, eventually. The ethnological museum was very interesting, describing bits and pieces of the tribes that are from Ethiopia, including descriptions of rituals and food habits. At the end of our meandering tour, we ran into my old boss from last year, Martin Were. It was quite a lovely surprise and we were all baffled that we would run into him in a different country and at such an odd hour in a museum. It was fun to run into him, that is for sure!

(a pic of a golden man at the entrance of the museum)

After our excursion at the museum, we walked back to the hotel and decided to grab a late lunch there (about 3PM at this time), where we were laughing and enjoying our array of food including grilled cheese sandwich, Cajun fries, and crispy spring rolls (all had a bit of an off taste, but we didn’t care, we were so hungry). I was talking with the receptionist as we sat there, with our food display, and suggested that she come out with us that night, to which she quickly answered “Yes, I must ask my mother for permission first.”  That night, after a quick nap and reboot from the awesome shower head and warm water, we chose to go to 2000 Habesha for dinner, which is kind of like an Ethiopian version of Beef and Boards, with live dancing for entertainment, and mostly fat over indulgent Europeans that are free to stare at black the entertainers. The Europeans all ordered the buffet, which had more Euro-American like options of bread and rice, but we chose to sit opposite of them and chose to order traditional Ethiopian food. The amount of food we ordered was laughable, as the servers had to pull up multiple side tables to withstand our extra orders of Tibs (grilled meats). The food was not as flavorful as our previous meals, which was depressing. The ambiance, including the gluttonous white people, just did not feel welcoming or what we intended for a good evening. The dancing was interesting, but I felt it was a bit strange, as the ‘traditional’ dancing was not entertained with ‘traditional’ clothing and I felt like we were all white people watching the black people dance as we take our fill of the watered down food.

(our food at 2000 Habesha)

So, we sent an SMS to our new friend, the receptionist and asked her “where to.” She picked us up in one of the rickety blue and white taxi cabs and we headed to club H20. She was extremely excited for the opportunity to go out with us and that we all, even with minimal English exchanges, had a connection of dancing and having fun. She even paid for the taxi on the way there, which blew our minds, because we assumed that we would be hosting her the entire night and it was comforting to know that this was not an expectation from her (we still bought all of her St. George beers, out of her impressing attitude toward the night). When we got to the club, it was barren, and was dimly lit, with blue lights. However, the décor was very European and was very clean! We had a few drinks and talked over the loud 90s-2000s R&B (perfect song mix for Amy and myself) and shared a few laughs with her. Once the dance floor opened, we ran down the stairs to the dance floor and cut some rugs, impressing the more Amharic style dancing of the men and women around us. Everyone was having a great time…it was a perfect last night in Addis!

(me and my new friend at club H20)

On Sunday, for our final hours, we were in search of purchasing coffee beans for friends and family, so we toured through various coffee shops in search of the best whole beans one could buy. We bought most of our bags of coffee from a company that was family owned called “Aster Bunna, Morning Pleasure” that roasted the beans on site. After almost depleting the company’s pre-packaged supply of whole roasted beans, we chilled in the Bole district, sipping on fresh fruit juices, and then took off for the airport.

(guava, avocado and papaya fruit juice)

Overall, the people of Addis were fantastic and so welcoming and the food was more tasteful than you could imagine from the stuff they call Ethiopian in the states. The feel to the city is unlike any other city I have ever visited…a peaceful conglomeration of cultures. My kind of city!

(A St. Patrick's Day Beer for the Only Irishwoman in Addis Airport!)