Addis Ababa: Bum Rushed by Donkeys

I can just see it now, my obituary in the Brown Alumni Magazine.  "Zara Ahmed, aged 25, was crushed to death by a stampede of donkeys on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 12th.  Why she didn't have the sense to get out of the way is unknown.  In light of this tragedy, Brown is incorporating a session on 'Donkey Dodging' into the freshman orientation curriculum."

Okay, so I'm being melodramatic.  But when you're walking down the street of a major city you don't expect to suddenly face a pack of donkeys running down a hill right towards you.  And we did get out of the way--the donkeys just happened to also turn in that same direction.  

So how did I end up in this situation, you ask? Well, I agreed to go on vacation....

This whole adventure started when my friend Camila (an American living in Kigali) asked me if I wanted to join her on a trip to Ethiopia.  Having not taken a day (or even hour) off of work in more than four months, I said yes.  So one Thursday afternoon we set off on an ambitious five city, ten day tour of Ethiopia.

Our extensive pre-trip planning told us that this wasn't a popular time of year to travel to Ethiopia and that there was really no need for hotel/hostel reservations.  Nevertheless, we tried our damnedest to arrange all our accommodation in advance, but couldn't seem to get through to a place in Addis Ababa (our first stop) that would take reservations.  We decided that we would ask to crash at a the house of a friend of mine from grad school, if nothing else worked out.

This was not a great plan, as it turned out.  Arriving in Addis at 8:30pm Thursday night (and after having the immigration guy tell me he only wants to marry an Indian woman), and still without a hotel reservation, we found that our Rwandan phones, which we had counted on working in Ethiopia (the same network is used in both countries), didn't work, so we couldn't call my friend and beg for a bed for the night.  Without any other options, we took a taxi to the main backpacker area of of town in search of an available room.

Addis, in comparison to Kigali, is a large, sprawling, dirty, polluted, but still charming city of about 4.5 million people, the equivalent to half the total population of Rwanda.  What struck me most during the 20 minute drive was how many people were out walking around at 9pm.  In Kigali, once the sun sets at 6:30pm, the city becomes a ghost town--"nightlife" is an oxymoron in Rwanda.  In Addis, the streets were filled with people young and old, coming and going, and shops were still doing a bustling trade.  The young couples were holding hands, families outwardly affectionate to each other, which was quite in contrast to the more reserved nature of Rwandans.  And there were neon lights and traffic jams- two other things you don't find in Kigali.  Although just a two hour flight away, it felt like we had come to another continent, if not a different world.

We were shaken out of our reverie when we arrived at our intended destination, a backpackers' establishment recommended in the Lonely Planet.  Before we could even open the cab door (or the cab driver could open it for us, since the rickety thing couldn't open from the inside), the guard told us they were full for the night, but recommended we try a place across the street, also a LP recommendation.  It too was full, but the manager recommended a place around the corner.  The cab driver, who had come with me into the second place to inquire, got on his cell phone and (claimed to) call the third hotel, which he said was also full.  (They speak Amharic in Ethiopia so there was no way of verifying his claims.)  However, predictably, he said he knew of another hotel that was sure to have a room available--it was owned by a friend.  At his mercy, we agreed to check out that hotel, which it turned out was another 15 minute drive away.

The shag on the dashboard of our cab, which went all the way across. 

After a few wrong turns, we finally found the hotel down a long dark alley.  Unfortunately, when the driver and I went inside, we found that the manager was in the middle of negotiating the letting of the room to an Asian businessman.  The driver, now feeling guilty and embarrassed, started talking to the driver of the businessman's taxi.  That guy, who actually spoke a little English, asked us if we would be willing to pay $30 for a room for the night.  (All these other places were in the $10-$20 range for a double.)  It was by then 10pm and we would have paid 10 times that for a room, so we of course said yes.  Our cabbie then followed the other a short distance, turning off the main road, past a large, proper hotel, to another guesthouse.  Blessedly, the fifth place turned out to be the charm, and after five minutes of panicked pounding on the gate, we discovered that they had a room was available for $30.  It was basic but clean, and they promised us the shower had hot water.  (I am a baby and hate cold showers.)  Exhausted, all we wanted was a hot shower, a cold drink of water and a good night's sleep.  Unfortunately, the shower turned out to be frigid, I couldn't get my water-sterilizing pen to fit inside my Nalgene without some contortions, and mosquitoes buzzed all night, keeping us awake.

This was not the optimal start to our trip, but we hoped, as Jim Lovell/Tom Hanks put it, that we'd "had our glitch for this mission."

The next morning we woke up happy to not be on the street, but in desperate need of a hot shower.   Because it seemed that the odds of our shower getting fixed were extremely low and we still had another night in Addis, and it was Camila's birthday, we decided to splurge and move to the hotel we had passed on the corner, which looked like it actually had hot water.  And so at 8am we paid our bill and  hauled our stuff down the street to the Axum Hotel, which was probably the best decision we made during the entire trip.  Not only did the room (which was smaller but mosquito-free) have hot water (although we did require assistance from the bellhop to figure out how to get it to work), but the reception staff was able to solve all of our other problems, namely not having a phone that worked.  And by "solve" I mean the receptionist let us rent her SIM card for $7 a day, which was extremely helpful since only Ethiopians can purchase/legally rent a SIM card.  Meanwhile, Abel, another concierge, kindly drew us a map of how to get into town and where to find the Ethiopian Airlines office so we could buy tickets for our travel within the country.  He and the bellhop even put us on the correct minibus (i.e. a packed 14 seater van with a young guy hanging out the side shouting the next destination), after we ate breakfast at a small place around the corner.

During ride to the center of town, we got a better look at Addis.  Even more bustling in the daytime, the city is a densely-packed, colorful mix of the modern and traditional, rural and urban.  Most women, Christian and Muslim alike, keep their heads covered, but wear their white head-scarves over western dress.  Mercedes sedans crowd the road alongside goats, sheep, and yes, donkeys.

Thirty minutes and $0.14 later, the bus "conductor" told us to get out, as we had arrived at Meskal Square, massive intersection in the heart of Addis.  He pointed to the right and gestured that we should walk in that direction--apparently the hotel bellhop had explained our incompetence to him.  And so we started walking, over the broken sidewalks (all sidewalks in Addis are broken) into a more commercial part of town.  And that's when we got bum-rushed by the donkeys- in the middle of a main road, in the middle of the day, with cars whizzing by.  There were about 10 of them, trotting down the hill.  Unfortunately, lost in our wanderings we didn't see them until the last minute, but we did make an effort to get out of the way.  But it seems that donkeys interpret "I'm getting out of your way" to mean "Please, come run directly in this direction."  And so we went to Plan B: stand perfectly still and hope that, even as stupid as they are, the donkeys will try not to knock you over.  Luckily, our donkeys were smart enough not to knock us over, so we continued on our way, now very much awake.

We spent the next two hours at the Ethiopian Airlines office in the swanky Sheraton Hotel, trying to work out our itinerary for the rest of our trip.  It turns out that if you fly EA into the country, all your domestic tickets are 1/3 the regular price, meaning that each of our 20 minute flights came to about $30--including a snack! What value! (US carriers, take note.)

Another problem solved, we continued walking up the hill into town.  Addis located is at over 7,000 feet elevation, so climbing a hill (or even walking on a flat street) can really wind you.  Our next destination was one of the four (according to the Lonely Planet) tourist attractions in Addis: Holy Trinity Cathedral.  In another display of Ethiopian hospitality, a nice young man noticed our confused wanderings and kindly guided us to the church (which you really do need a local to show you to).  The grounds around the cathedral were silent and still, with hundreds of people standing outside in reverent prayer.  Most of the people were women but all were clad in white, with their heads covered.  We felt quite out of place in our street clothes, following our guide through the throng. However, instead of hostile looks, we received only smiles and a warm welcome from the groundskeepers, who invited us to walk around and apologized for the fact that a religious ceremony was going on and we would not be able to go inside the church.  

Holy Trinity Cathedral, the second most important place of worship in Ethiopia.

And so we thanked our guide and walked around, admiring Ethiopia's second most important place of worship and trying not to disturb those in prayer.  After a little while we decided to carry on and head towards King George IV Street and the national museum.  Another 30 minutes of walking uphill in the heat and we were ready for lunch.  This turned out to be good timing, since everything in Addis (and indeed, all of Ethiopia) closes from noon until 2pm.  One giant pizza, $3, and half an hour of eavesdropping on a group of young Euro tourists later, we walked across to the street to the museum. The main draw of the museum is Lucy, the 3.2 million year old fossil of a bipedal hominid; until late last year she was our oldest known ancestor. Admission to the museum is only 5Birr ($0.37) but for that price you can see the throne of Haile Selassie, some artworks by famous Ethiopian artists, and a display of ancient fossils discovered in Ethiopia, as well as Lucy.  Strangely enough, the crown jewel of the museum, Lucy, is kept in the basement, in the very last, cramped, room.  Nevertheless there were two striking things about the display.  First, Lucy is tiny, just over 3 1/2 feet tall.  Second, the area in which Lucy was found is a huge, desolate, barren, scorching desert.  How the paleontologists managed to find Lucy in this vast and harsh environment is beyond my comprehension.  Even a non-scientist like me can appreciate the enormity of their achievement.

After the museum we caught a minibus back to the hotel, where we congratulated ourselves on successfully navigating our way home by taking a nap.  Then it was on to dinner at a cafe across the street. One of the most unexpected things about Ethiopia is, for a country most associated with the word "famine," how cheap food is. Really, you have a try very hard to spend $5 on a meal, and even that seems silly since even the cheapest meal is delicious.

The next day, Saturday, we decided to try our hand at visiting another church, St. George Cathedral in the heart of the city but just our luck, it was another holiday and we could not go inside.   Another plan foiled, we decided to do something I had never done before: drink coffee.  Yes, believe it or not, I survived four years of Brown, three years of grad school, and two years of being a manager at a fair-trade coffee shop without drinking coffee.  But since I'd eaten caterpillars in Cambodia, uncooked sheep liver in South Africa, and bushmeat in Cameroon, I figured that should try coffee in Ethiopia.  Unfortunately, something possessed me to order an espresso.  Only a significant amount of sugar could make it palatable, but I did get it down and vowed to try coffee again, without sugar, before we left the country.

The view of Piazza (the main square) from St. George Cathedral.  That's St. George on horseback.

After our coffee stop we carried on through town, stopping to buy some handicrafts along the way.  Then it was time for a lunch of injera (which is like a spongy roti/bread), and tamarind-y beef--delicious.  We also had some avocado/mango/papaya shakes, which seem to be ubiquitous in Ethiopia.  From there we went back to Meskal Square, having walked the length of the city (or the city as it appears in the Lonely Planet's map), and caught a bus back to our hotel.  Our flight to our next destination wasn't until 8pm, so we killed some time in bookstores, cafes, and internet cafes until heading to the airport at 6pm.  Ours was the only flight of the evening, the small domestic terminal was empty and we passed the time watching children play and enjoying our Kindles (which I now believe to be the savior of every traveler).

As we sat there, gearing up for our next set of misadventures in Bahir Dar, all I could think about was how thankful I was to be indoors...and away from all those donkeys....