Addis Ababa Ethiopia

We rolled into Addis Ababa in the early afternoon and found a hotel right in the center of the University area. I liked being around the student areas because there was usually good food and drink as well as good people to talk to. I like hanging around educated people with open minds that like to open up their hearts and passions when they talk. I don't always have to agree with what comes out of their hearts but I like the passion regardless of the source.

The city was a typical big city with lots of traffic and people on the streets. I didn't see all the starving poverty here like out in the countryside. There were still people around here in the city that were hard up but not the famished dying poor souls we saw in the southern area. There was plenty of food available to purchase and there was a shower in our hotel. The management asked us to conserve water and we did. Traveling is always very tiring so we rested up for a few days and just wandered around the area checking out the people and the culture.

I changed some money at a bank one afternoon and then walked back to my hotel. On the walk back I had a bit of a problem. I had cash in my pocket and I was being careful and alert of my surroundings. I noticed a man stop on the side walk ahead of me and another man quickly walking up behind me. Now I walk really fast and most people need to almost run to keep up with me so it is unusual that somebody would be catching up to me and that is what caught my attention first. Then the whole picture came into focus. This was a classic pick pocket setup. I pretended I did not know what was happening and kept on walking. The man in front of me was walking slowly and looking behind him often to see where I was. If I walked to the left of the sidewalk he moved left and right then he went right. That verified to me that I was walking into a trap. Suddenly as the man behind me was almost caught up to me the man in front stopped walking so that I would bump into him and the man behind me would pick my pocket as he bumped into me or if I turned around then the man int he front would pick me. I chose to grab the man in the front by the neck and lift him off the ground by his neck. He had his hand in my pocket as I did it and he quickly gave up on the picking my pocket scam and focused in on not getting killed by me. But before I could do anything about twenty five or thirty of their accomplices stepped out of the shadows and started toward me. I just looked the man in the eyes and said "pick an easier mark next time" then I sat him back down on his feet and pushed him to the side then I confidently walked through the approaching men. They let me walk away. They just as easily could have beat the crap out of me since there were so many of them and I was alone but they knew that I was not the mark they were looking for and they gave up on me. It usually pays to be aware of your safety on the street and to have confidence in your abilities as you project an image of strength not weakness to those around you.

I had been in Africa for almost two years by now and the Ethiopians were the first people that as a whole displayed any pride in who they were. They historically were never defeated by a foreign power and had been self identified since at least the days of Cleopatra from what I was told and many people went way further back then the days of Cleopatra claiming four of five centuries BC of continuous autonomy for the people of Ethiopia. There was some tribal differences between the northern and southern people. The people in the north felt like the southern area dominated them politically and that is why they wanted their independence now. Myself I don't know all the history. All I could see was a group of people that were proud of their heritage and didn't bow down to any other group. I like that in people.

The Ethiopians defeated a modern well armed Italian army of Mussolini's men with essentially nothing but spears and a few pre-1900 guns and killed all told around 3000 to 4000 troops that they came up against. It has to stand out as one of the greatest military victories in human history to be so out gunned and still win. It makes Custer's Last Stand seem like a fair fight compared to the disparity of these two armies. The Italians had the numbers and the arms and they got their buts kicked big time by a bunch of ill trained warriors with antique weapons. Here is a link to the whole military story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Abyssinian_War

I had wanted to visit an old school friend of mine that was supposed to be going to school in Addis Ababa but he wasn't there any more. We met a bunch of nice people and traveled around the area a bit with some of them. We met a couple of Ethiopian business men that offered to take us East to see pygmy hippos and the Red Sea. We took off and after a grueling drive through beautiful rift valley scenery and mountains we crossed the arid lands into Djibuti. We expected to check into a hotel right in the center of town that these men were fond of. Instead we parked the car near the hotel and as we went to get out and get a room we noticed the horrible smell of death in the air. We looked around to see what was going on and there right near where we parked there were two dead bodies hung by the neck all black and bloated hanging out in the hot sun rotting. Our two friends panicked immediately and ordered us back in the car. It isn't like we didn't want to leave also. I don't think they had ever experienced death like this by their frightened response--or maybe they had and that is why they reacted so strongly. We high tailed it out of there and bolted back to Addis Ababa right away. We never saw our pygmy hippos or the Red Sea. Such is life sometimes. It is better to be safe than to be sorry and hanging dead in some desolate area like this.

A few days later we were sightseeing around Addis Ababa and visiting the palace of Haile Selassi the current (in 1972) Emperor of Ethiopia. We were calmly touring the palace and its grounds with a guided tour when we heard gunfire. I knew right away that it was automatic fire from some type of military action and the sound was moving in our direction. We fled right away. I decided to flee directly into the source of the firing instead of the opposite direction. I could hear tanks now and as we ran in the direction of the sounds we saw the tanks rumbling toward the palace. We ran right past them without attracting the attention of any of the soldiers walking next to the tanks. When those tanks started to fire I wanted to be behind the guns not in front of them. We made it out of the area and went back to our hotel. The next day we found out that the tanks and soldiers attacked the palace and tried to kill Haile Selassi but that he had escaped that day. It wasn't much later when he was finally deposed by a similar military mutiny. I don't remember how many died the day we were there I was just glad it wasn't us. I was getting really tired of all this warring going on everyplace I went.

That evening while we were eating our injera and wat we decided to get out of the big city and go north. We ate the national foods for almost every meal the entire time we were in Ethiopia. Injera is a femented crepe type of pancake made from the grain called teff. It is kind of a spongy bread that is used to soak up the wat which is a general term for the stews or chili sauces that it is eaten with. Most of the wats are firey hot chili sauces with very little else in them. Sometimes they would have five or more different flavors of wats with some called beef or chicken or some other meat and to me they were all indistinguishable from each other. I think they just had a chicken jump over the ones they called chicken wats and so forth. After six months of wandering around Ethiopia eating injera and wat three times a day, everyday, I got pretty tired of it.

We found a ride going north which means that we didn't have to hitch hike to start so we took the offer of a ride to Lake Tana the next morning.