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.