May 7, 2024 Tuesday

Getting up

Generally, not feeling well while on a trip isn’t something we plan for. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling well when I woke up. With intestinal difficulties the day before and a few episodes during the night, I didn’t sleep well. I’d eaten late and too much both the night before, and that did not sit well with my stomach. I’d taken antiacids and slept on two pillows, which helped the sleep and the stomach but didn’t get rid of the discomfort.

All I wanted to do was stay in bed. Luckily, the day was not too strenuous, and I did okay. I dragged myself out of bed and dressed because I wanted to go to the fabric place. I thought maybe I’d feel better if I just got going, and I was right. By the end of the day, I felt much better.

Breakfast and off

At breakfast, Becky shared her omelet with me again. That’s the best food in the restaurant.

We met the van at 9:30 and were taken through the streets of Addis to the fabric compound. Once again, I was fascinated by how the city alternated between modern high rises and sheet metal shacks, from clean to littered. Half-finished buildings were everywhere.

Tuesday was the first official working day since we’d arrived, and the traffic, both on foot and vehicular, was horrendous.

Sabahar Fabric Workshop

The Sabahar Fabric Workshop was like the pottery place; it was a cooperative formed to help women who needed jobs. It is connected to a medical facility that helped women who developed fistulas during birth from being too young and not fully formed to be pregnant and delivering babies. Look it up. It is a horrible condition. A woman doctor from Australia came to Ethiopia to fix the issue and train others to do the same. Melaku said she’d go out to villages and collect these women, bring them to Addis, and do the surgery that repaired their physical problems.

Unfortunately, many of the women could not return home because they’d already been stigmatized as unclean both in their villages and in their minds. That meant they needed jobs if they wanted to stay in Addis. Hence, the Sabahar Fabric Workshop.

Our guide at the workshop was a woman who had managed the place for many years. She told us they spun, dyed, and wove all the fabrics they sold. She also showed us silk worms and how they used the silkworm cocoons to make thread. The featured photo at the beginning of the blog is from the Sabahar web page: https://sabahar.com/pages/ethiopia-shop

Purchases

But, of course, they had a gift shop.

I bought a scarf that was a mottled black and white with a red band across both ends. Becky said it looked like me. I’m never sure how to take a comment like that. I don’t think it is either a compliment or a criticism, but one wonders. I had told her I’d buy her a scarf for her birthday. She ended up getting some cloth napkins. I liked that idea. They cost about as much as my scarf. Luckily, they took credit cards. They packed our purchases in a nice cloth bag. Becky asked if she could keep it. Of course.

Lunch

Then we went to lunch—again, with the van and the traffic. The restaurant, Union Restaurant, was very nice, but wow, we had to travel through several unpaved, potholed-pocked back alleys with rebar in piles alongside the road. As I said earlier, this place abounded in contradictions.

We had a table for 12 out on the patio. The staff had put the table under an awning. I was glad it wasn’t in the sun. Melaku warned the people with their backs to the view that they were sitting right in front of a step-down. In the picture, you can see the gray carpet on the steps.

Melaku had taken our orders earlier and sent them to the restaurant before we got there. He said otherwise, it would take forever to get lunch. I can believe that. The hotel certainly takes forever. I’d gotten grilled chicken breast, veggies, and French fries. The fries were perfect. I ate all my veggies, but the chicken was tough. John got lasagna and ate about half of it. I didn’t order a starter or dessert. I was trying to give my stomach a break.

According to those who ate the cake, it was the best dessert we’d had the whole time we’d been here. That’s okay. I could live without it. Melaku told us that where we stayed, the Jupiter Hotel had the best bakery in Addis. I found that hard to believe. I hadn’t had any baked goods that I’d finished since we’d been there. The bakery items tasted like they came from the day before or earlier.

The view from the restaurant balcony was stunning.

National Museum

The next stop was the National Museum. It was near Addis Ababa’s graduate school campus, where Melaku went to school. One of its claims to fame is that it houses the Lucy fossil, the name given to the fossil of Australopithecus afarensis, an extinct species of early human origin.

The exhibit was in the basement. Again, I was amazed at the lack of maintenance around the campus. The grass needed to be mowed, and the shrubs needed trimming. John said he was astounded that one of the most significant archaeological discoveries was in a basement.

I thought the placement accommodated how the staff tried to arrange the exhibits. Having the best one downstairs meant people would start their tour at the beginning in the basement, then work their way upstairs. Melaku was very knowledgeable about paleoarchaeology. He said he doesn’t believe in evolution but loves science. I wasn’t sure what to make of that statement.

Then Melaku led us through the rest of the museum. I can’t say there was much else that I found interesting. Seriously, I don’t remember much else. I will admit to museum fatigue.

Back to the hotel

By this time, it was mid-afternoon, and we had taken the van back to the hotel. This is a photo of our driver, Esayas.

My favorite story of riding in the van happened that afternoon. When we got to a roundabout, our driver wanted to turn onto the street the farthest around, so he cut against traffic to get to the direction he wanted to go. It was so quick I barely had time to recognize what he was doing. At breakfast the next day, one of the men on the tour said that the van driver cut off a military vehicle with that maneuver. Whoops. But he got us where he wanted to go without anyone dying. The traffic there amazed me. There didn’t seem to be any traffic signals; people stepped out, and cars drove into the traffic, expecting others to make their way around them. What’s impressive is that it seemed to work.

Lesson in Amharic

On the way to the hotel in the van, Melaku offered to arrange transportation for anyone who wanted to go to Kabana Leathers, a place that made leather goods. The booklet said that a female designer owned it. The shop’s mission is to offer employment opportunities to other women.

When he offered this opportunity, Melaku pronounced the word “leather” as “lea-zer,” some of us were having difficulty understanding the English word he meant. In our discussion, we discovered that the language spoken in Ethiopia, Amharic, doesn’t have the “th” sound, so it is difficult for him to say “leather.” His English was so good that this was one of the few times we had to stop him and get him to repeat what he was trying to convey.

Haircuts for the boys

After Melaku got the people who wanted to go to the leather store situated, he took us to a barber to get the boys a haircut. It was down the street and across at an intersection, so we walked there.

On the way to the barber shop, I heard Becky telling Melaku how she taught the Chinese children to make the “th” sound because Mandarin doesn’t have that sound either. She said she’d have them stick out the tip of their tongue between their teeth, and then she put a small piece of food on their tongue. She’d get them to spit the food out using their breath to make the sound. She said he could use the barley snack we’d had the first day we did our walkabout. I said it would be messy. She said you do it outside. I said you could feed the birds at the same time.

We had to go up three flights of stairs to the barbershop. Whew. There were seats available, so we didn’t have to wait long. The shop was tiny by our standards, yet they squeezed in four barber chairs and a waiting bench along the wall. In the left-hand back corner was the cash register. Sam got the left chair and Micah the middle chair. A woman did Sam’s hair, and a man did Micah’s.

We discussed how the boys wanted their hair cut using Melaku as an interpreter. Thank goodness Melaku took us.

Sam’s hair had no shape, so his hairdresser created one. Both haircutters cleaned up the boys’ neckline with clippers. I swear, every time I thought they were done, they’d get out the clippers again. Micah kept the poof on top of his head, but the guy shortened it and shaped it. After the haircut, they shampooed their hair.

After the shampoo, they put some gel in and sprayed it with olive oil. It was quite a production and took far longer than I’d expected. I must say that Melaku earned our gratitude with that expedition. The trip to the barber shop was definitely outside his purview as a tour leader.

Back to the hotel

We walked back to the hotel, where we found Melaku’s wife waiting for him at the little seating area outside the hotel with her sister. She works in the city, and they were going to drive home together. He told us she’s a “physio,” which is a physical therapist. She was a lovely woman. It was clear that he loved and respected her.

We had dinner on our own that night, and John and I were happy to dine out of Becky’s snack stash. Dinner consisted of peanut butter on Ritz crackers and trail mix, the perfect amount of food. I played a game of Uno with the boys. Becky joined us in the middle of the game by dealing herself seven cards off the top of the draw pile, which I declared was highly unorthodox. Sam played a card at the end, but it wasn’t clear if he’d played one or two, so I called the game a draw and said good night to everyone. I was tired and wanted to go to bed. I went back downstairs to our room. We were in bed by eight and lights out at nine. I slept well that night, thank goodness, and felt much better the next day.

The next day was a travel day. We drove to Lalibela (pronounced just like it reads, emphasizing the “bell” part). The O.A.T. booklet warns travelers that Lalibela is at 8,500 feet, and one should pay attention when walking and hiking. Addis Ababa is at 7,726 feet, so we did go up in elevation. My little party of five was very fortunate not to be impacted by the altitude without taking drugs, and for that, I am grateful. I hear altitude sickness is awful.