Thur 13 Feb 2014 (6 Yekatit 2006) Addis

Thur 13 Feb 2014 (6 Yekatit 2006) Addis


See below for the importance of 6 Yekatit 2006.


This is the last day of our trip.  Mike wants to eat a lot of fruit and drink some more avocado juice.  Carol thinks that she may have figured out how to break the mystery of the Merkato and get to the interesting stuff without the help of a guide. She wants to purchase some more souvenirs and some toothbrushes: not the Western kind, silly.  “Mefakia” is the Amharic word for the natural wooden Ethiopian toothbrush, which is made from fibrous twigs, roots and stems of plants. Every day (especially in the morning) street vendors sell these "chewing sticks".


We are up early.  By 7:10 AM we are walking on our way to the Merkato, past the turnoff for the synagogue and the Anwar Mosque. There are plenty of people, vehicles, donkey carts. Lots of fruit and vegetables. But wonder of wonders: it seems that we are arriving TOO EARLY for retail purchasing. Before 8:00 AM, it seems, the market caters to large and small wholesale vendors. Small flatbed trucks are being loaded with unripe bananas (not the usual yellow-brown fruit) and other items. The bulk potato sellers are breaking down hefty loads and sending off bushel sacks at breakneck speed. No one wants to sell Mike anything less than a kilo or two of mangoes.


After our experiences of the past week, we are a bit wary of crowds and people who pass by too closely. But we take time to exchange a few words with the guys selling fresh hot sambusas (savory lentil-stuffed triangle pastries), and we snap some photos.  One guy quotes 2 sambusas for 3 birr.  Mike hands over the 3 birr and grabs the 2 sambusas.  The price has changed.  It is 4 birr for 1 sambusa.  Mike attempts to grab back the money.  The vendor doesn't want to let go of the money.  Finally, the tussle ends.  We have two sambusas.  He has 3 birr.  The sambusas are pretty tasty.


In all the market tumult, stray fruits and vegetables fall to the ground. They don't stay there long. At a small traffic circle down the street, what appears to be a scavengers' market is spread out on the pavement. A woman might be selling a few tomatoes or a couple of potatoes. Presumably, when the items are gone so is the vendor, hopefully with a few extra birr.


We follow the road we have used before to reach the Merkato. This time, we head to the side of an Islamic center and follow a narrow alley. We end up in a poor residential area. Laundry hangs over the street. Picturesque, but we two ferengi are voyeurs here. We pass a very local eatery and a few vendors of note, but by now it is time to head back to Piassa. The Merkato is bigger than both of us.


As we walk to the main cross street we pass a beautiful church within a courtyard. The sanctuary is all locked up, but as at other Orthodox sites, plenty of worshippers throng all around the outside of the building.  Men, women and schoolchildren are raptly involved in individual prayer. Clearly, this is a part of their morning on the way to work or school.


On the next street and around the corner are vendors at booths, selling all sorts of religious art and wares.  Carol finds some picture prayer cards and snaps up 10 or so for souvenirs.


Around the block is the entrance to a school - complete with colorful hand drawn murals.  One shows the 4 iconic sights of Ethiopia: Fasiliades' Castle in Gondor; the Blue Nile Falls; St. George Church in Lalibela; and the Aksum Stelae.  We have seen all 4. Yeah for us! There is also a charming depiction of the benefits of education.


On the way back to Piassa, we pass a vendor of toothbrushes (those small sticks of wood you chew on).  We give him 20 birr and take a stack of not quite 20 of them.  They are 1 birr each (we believe), but they cost more in quantity.  Or for us. Go figure.


Soon we are back in the fruit and vegetable market.  Mike sees a mango vendor.  1 kg costs 15 birr (80 cents).  So we now have 6 medium-size mangos for breakfast.  We walk a bit and come to a small bench in front of a not-yet open business.  It's breakfast time for us. 


You eat a mango as follows:  Cut open the top, peel back the skin, eat the flesh down to the seed, throw the remainder away.  Mike eats 4 and Carol eats 2.  Toward the end of this messy process, the bemused owner of the store comes out with a pitcher of warm soapy water, and a paper towel or two.  We graciously thank him.


Back to the hotel for the final pack and check out.  We will store our bags in a back room and pick them up later.  Mike is persuaded to abandon his Rockport shoes, which are well along toward falling apart.  This puts him in the fancy shoes which he brought as spares, but which are rather tight and uncomfortable.


We are now in possession of around 1900 birr.  We will need 200-250 for a taxi to the airport, and some money for lunch.  The rest we will try to change back to US dollars (in retrospect, it's sort of a shame that we didn't use birr for our donation to the Chabad rabbi).


We spot a very pretty mancala board at the gift shop at our hotel, with the cups decorated with hand-painted Gondor angel faces.  There goes 180 birr.  Lunch is our now familiar vegan buffet at the hotel, for 150 birr.  Internet is cheap, water is cheap, a few juices at a neighborhood fruit store are cheap.  Mike figures that we need to trade in just under 1000 birr for $50 USD.


So it is back to the bank where we have done business twice before.  This time we are selling birr and buying dollars.  The bureaucratic requirements are astonishing.  Mike needs a passport (check), a hotel room (check, even though we have already checked out), proof of an airline ticket (check?), and proof that he exchanged dollars for birr at this exact bank (a receipt will do).  Mike didn't have such a receipt (actually it may have been stuffed into the bottom of the backpack in the back room), so he said: The transaction was on 18 Jan  - find it in your records. 


And so Mike waited while they found it in their records.  For the next 20-30 minutes, Mike held this pleasant conversation with an older man (who may have been the bank manager).  At one point, the gent noticed the pens in Mike's shirt pocket. Just like all of the 8 year olds all over the country, he asked for a pen.


While we were waiting, Mike noticed that the bank clock on the counter said "13 02 14" and, underneath, "06 06 06."


Look at the Ethiopian date: today is 06/06/06! Make your plans now to visit Ethiopia in coming years, where it will be possible to experience 07/07/07, 08/08/08 ...


Anyway, Mike asked the manager for clean bills in each denomination.  Two sets came to 330 birr or so.


We visited the internet café.  We visited the Ethiopian Airlines office to assure ourselves that the plane tonight was in fact going to take off. 


We sat around and chewed the fat with all sorts of foreigners in the hotel.  One was a professional paraglider/ instructor who had come to Ethiopia to fly/glide.  He explained why the flight from Dulles to Addis was non-stop, but the flight from Addis to Dulles stopped in Rome.  At sea level (Dulles) the 777 can carry x amount of fuel and a full load of passengers and luggage.  At 8000 feet above sea level (Addis) the same 777 can carry a substantially reduced weight.  Less air pressure equals less lift.  So the plane carries the same number of passengers and the same amount of baggage, but less fuel - enough to make it to Rome, Italy.  There it refuels, with enough fuel now to make it to Dulles.  Easy peasy.


We've seen all that we can see, drunk enough juice and eaten enough fruit for today, and bought enough goodies for gifts and for ourselves. We are just wasting time anyway, so Mike suggests that we catch a minibus to Bole Road, and walk to the airport.  Why not?  It is around 4:15 PM.


So we walk out to Churchill Road, find a minibus going to the end of Bole Road.  The regular fare is 5 birr each, with 5 more for the bags, which are stuffed into another seat.  We are no hurry.  We are not at the head of the line.  Our driver tells us that he would like to live in the US one day.


Finally we are off, around 4:45 PM.  Our driver has decided to leave with a light load. The transit gods don't smile on him this afternoon. He doesn't pick up many passengers. Traffic is very slow, and it is maybe an hour to the end of Bole Road (7 km).  We hop off, walk the last km into the airport, and we are at our destination.  It cost only 80 cents to reach the airport.  So we will be bringing home 205 birr.


It is just after 6 PM. Our plane is not leaving for another 4 hours (10:20 PM).


We have abundant time to go through all the formalities of checking. Carol and Mike finish the last of our edibles (peanuts, the parched grains, some stray sweets). In the list of items not allowed in carry-on bags,  Carol spots 'berbere' (!), the classic Ethiopian spice mix.


Once inside, we grab the most comfortable lounge chairs in the airport.  This bed-like seating looks exactly like the lounges in the Tehran airport. Turns out that we were wise to arrive early: the best seats are quickly occupied.


After a welcome nap we walk around. The duty-free shop isn't tempting and there's almost no place to buy food or drink.


We spot a fellow dressed in Orthodox Jewish garb. No, not another Chabad rabbi, but a passenger waiting for the flight to Tel Aviv. The Chabad presence in Addis is news to him. He shows us an interesting downloadable booklet called the Jewish Passport thejewishpassport.org.  Who knew?


We won't be home for 24 - 26 hours, once the plane pushes off.