home

After 24 hours of travel I am home (the ride home was not too good -- from a naked 93 year old woman on the flight, cancelled flights in the US from Washington to Boston, and lost luggage). But now I get a shower with water that is not either boiling or freezing! It is nice to be home with my family.

The food

To purchase meat you go to the butchers. Yes that is just beef hanging in an open shop that they cut off what you want, weigh it and you are on your way.


Before eating washing is very important. At the larger traditional restaurants they come to the table with soap and water to let you wash.


Coffee is the number on export in Ethiopia (accounts for 85% of thier export). here a woman is roasting coffee beans, they are then ground with a mortar and pestal to make coffee for a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceromony.

Traditional Ethiopian food -- it is a community dish and served with injera (a bread that comes like a pancake). Injera is used as your utensils -- you use it to get your food and to eat it (no other cutlery is needed).

This is a stove someone would use in their home to cook with.

The Monuments

This is a staircase -- 13 stairs to symbolize the years Italy ruled Ethiopia. On the top is a Lion the symbol of Addis Ababa and Ethiopia


At the hotel swimming pool they had these huge platform diving boards. Anyone want to try?



The first cannon in Ethiopia


The famous obelisk. The band on the bottom depict scenes of suffering when Italy came into Ethiopia. At the fall of the Italians rule, they stole this statue and took it to Italy. They retuned several decades later (at a very high cost)

Trip to Sodere

To get out of the big city I took a day trip to Sodere. It was a 3 hour bus ride both ways, so I was able to see alot of the country side. Sodere, itself is only ok. It is a hotel and "resort" that is built around natural hot springs. They have a communal shower like place that is packed and a swimming pool (equally mobbed). I did not see any non-Ethiopian of any kind in the water so I chose not to get in (I decided getting ill from contaminated water has not a priority). The cool thing about the resort was the hundreds of monkeys running around and we walked about a bit and saw an interesting river crossing. Above are some pictures.

Trip to the churches at Entoto

Shigute and I decided it was a good day to go see Entoto. This is the mountain just north of the city (maybe 20 minutes). Shigute’s car cannot make it so we hired a taxi (cost $350 birr = $33). We saw the first palace of Ethiopia (the capital was Entoto until it was moved to Addis Ababa), and three churches. One was the oldest church in the country and where they hide all of the Christian artifacts when they feared they would be stolen or burned. It is 2 rooms carved into stones. The newer church that is at this site has beautiful murals inside. We had a personal guided tour (since we were the only ones there). You take your shoes off when you go in and the guide shows you all the murals and describes them. It was amazing (it was $30 birr to get in but another $20 for pictures – a bit strange how that works huh). I drank 2 cups of coffee before our trip to Entoto which was a mistake. The only restroom was a hole in the ground with other peoples’ waste everywhere, no toilet paper and no water to wash. On the return we stopped at a craft store that benefits the women firewood carriers. It was a small store but they allowed me to watch them weave and grind coffee. We saw tons of donkeys on the road. Our car made it but barely. The driver had to change tires when we were at the church and we had to stop to let it cool down because the low gear and use of breaks going down the mountain made it smoke.

After Entoto it was lunch and shopping then a museum on the AAU campus. This museum was great, it told about different parts of Ethiopia, different parts of their daily life and it had an art gallery. It was wonderful. We ended the day at the Lion Zoo. I had wanted to see what it was since we passed it every day going to campus. They have perhaps 10 cement cages with iron bars on them, each cage containing 0-2 lions. It was actually very depressing to see the lions living on cement – with the random pieces of bone and raw meat in the cage.

The people

The people here are wonderful. They seem very relaxed, not as stressed out as in the US. There is not so much of a hurry to get places and accomplish things. Above are a few pictures I have.

Internet problems

Well apparently the bandwidth in Addis Ababa makes it very difficult for me to connect to my blog an dmake posts. It has been 6 days since I was able to connect to the blog. I try a few times a day (when I happen to be in my room) and typically I cannot connect. So Iwill add a few things now while I can.