Tourist day

This morning I was woken up by the front desk calling to see why I wasn't down at the shuttle to the airport... geez, I just got here! At least that meant I didn't oversleep and miss meeting the gals for breakfast and our quick tour of the hotel grounds - tennis courts, huge swimming pool, mini golf, basketball court - all kinds of stuff!   We had a bunch of housekeeping to do after that - we all needed to exchange some money, Debbie & Joan both had to change rooms, and I had to find evidence that I really did book my first night's stay on points....   Anyhow, after a late start we finally met up with our driver, Sami, and got off to see some of Addis!

First impressions - bustling, noisy, chaotic city of ~ 5 million where vehicles have no traffic lights or signs (or laws?) to obey and everyone does what ever they want. Thank goodness Sami is a great driver! California smog checks are obviously not happening here - the exhaust fumes are pretty hard on the nose and lungs.

He took us past the palace, Piazza, the University and the roundabout Siddist Kilo (Yekatit 12 Monument) up a sharply winding road onto the Entoto Mountain. We passed a lot of women going down, carrying huge bundles of eucalyptus wood branches on their backs. Apparently they cut the wood and carry it into town to home or the market to sell and it gets used for cooking fires. There is eucalyptus everywhere, so not sure why they have to go all the way up and carry it all the way back down - there might be plantations where it is 'farmed', perhaps. I found this link reading someone else's blog - check it out for more info on the Women Wood Fuel Carriers: http://go.worldbank.org/S9UF4PDRN0

Sami let us out to take some photos from a high vantage point and we all got in a bit of a situation that started when I took a photo of one woman's donkeys. She asked for money for taking the photo - I had just got some changed to Birr and had no idea what the small bills were worth. I gave her something and she wasn't happy - apparently 1 photo = 10 Birr. In any case, I guess I did get her included in an earlier shot so not that big of a deal. Poor Joan got surrounded by other women, though - but we all made it out OK and the women got a few extra Birr this morning.

We went up higher and ended up at our goal of the Entoto Maryam Church. 50 Birr each for entrance, not including the museum, and we didn't get to go inside because there was a service going on. Our self-appointed guide did take us around back to see the very modest palace of the Emporer Melenik & his wife Taitu. It was a collection of mud and stick buildings with high and intricate ceilings, hand hewn wooden floors, and thatched roofs. I think one was a living room, one was a dining room and storage area for meat and other foods, and one was maybe a living quarters. The floors, ceilings and inner walls were supposedly original from the 1880;s. We also saw one of the 'ladies' or nuns in the monastery area behind the church along with all the spices and foods set out to dry in the sun, an old guard and his 3 sheep, a small barley field, and beside the current working church, the small, round church that is supposed to be the first built in Addis.  Tombs for Haile Selassie, Melenik and Taitu (all now moved to another location) and for some aristocratic families are also there.  Reading the guidebook, looks like we missed out on seeing a 13th century rockhewn church that was only another 2 km away.

After coming down the mountain, we drove through the Mercato - the biggest shopping area in Addis. I had been picturing a pedestrian area with open sided stalls, but not so. While there are a ton of pedestrians, they are all competing with the cars, trucks and 'blue donkeys' (taxi minibuses) that clog the roads of the Mercato area. It's HUGE and has sections for everything under the sun - produce, textiles, jewelry, shoes, clothes, spices, building & construction supplies, and what our driver called the most dangerous area with all the, um, reclaimed car parts! It wasn't really somewhere we could get out and roam around, so we just took in the sights from the car.  From the Mercato, he drove us by the huge and very new-looking American Embassy, and later the Canadian Embassy with a Canadian flag painted on the gate.  Then he pointed out the almost complete, shiny new and very tall headquarters of the African Union. It's quite a modern and impressive campus - and it's a gift from the Chinese government. On the way back to the hotel, we also saw the UN offices, the Sheraton which was all decorated for Christmas, and a lovely park that was all gated and looked like it might have been closed to the public.

Pretty good first day! Tomorrow we probably have some of the morning off, but after that it's time to start prepping for the upcoming week of training.