Book - Pages 24 & 25

After the drop-in center, we went to Sishu for lunch. It was, by far, our favorite restaurant. Big fat, yummy burgers!

After lunch, we went souvenir shopping. I did NOT like it. First of all, we went to the shops near the post office and Solomon said they hated him there so he couldn’t help us. We were on our own. He told us whatever they asked for, start at a third of that. It was so hard knowing what was what. Some were kind but most were a bit scary. They would pull on us, whisper prices at me, put things in our hands, etc. One man was selling scarves “made in Ethiopia,” but I called him on the “made in China” label. “All made in Ethiopia, but that one” (as he threw it over his shoulder). Needless to say, I didn’t buy nearly the amount of souvenirs I expected to.

Each night we had a quandary as to whether or not we were going to eat dinner at the guesthouse. We never knew exactly what we were doing day by day and we had to let them know by 10:00am. We found most nights, it was more enjoyable to come back to the guesthouse, get cleaned up, and have a bit of down time before dinner. On Wednesday, I’m not sure why we decided we would go out to dinner instead. By early afternoon, I was regretting that decision, but we hadn’t made reservations and no one was going for my “no dinner” idea. Ian loves Chinese food; anywhere, anytime. There was a suggestion on our list of recommended restaurants so we went. Let me just say – I wouldn’t recommend Chinese food in Africa. Our first tip was that we were the only ones there – ever – the whole time we were eating. It smelled bad, the tablecloth was terribly stained, and there were mosquitoes – inside! We opted not to get the malaria medicine because Addis is at such a high elevation that there are very few mosquitoes. Between the stains, the smell, and the mosquitoes, I was done. They assured me the food was good. That was the last night we ate out for dinner.

On Thursday, we went to the Lion Zoo.

This sign says: town people 2 birr – Foreigners 20 birr. Bring camera 20 birr. Then, after Solomon paid, they changed their minds and were going to charge us more. Solomon told them “no way!”

This 7 year old lion was in isolation because it ate a guard last month. Apparently, the guard didn’t latch the gate properly.

Solomon lives near the zoo and comes often. Apparently, he knows how to antagonize the lions.

This lioness left a huge hunk of meat; Solomon looked tastier. She did not like whatever it was he was doing.

To antagonize the baboon, he pretended to kiss a local lady. Even the baboon looked like he wanted to eat him up.

There were holes like this all over the city. We were lucky we didn’t lose Alexa in one.

Solomon was asking if we had any snacks in our bags. He was surprised I didn’t. I tried to explain that in America, we weren’t allowed to feed the animals.

Since I came ill prepared, he broke off a tree branch for the kids to feed the antelope-like thing. Let’s just say this zoo didn’t have many regulations.