Addis Ababa’s allure

18 December 2012

Modern buildings, historic churches and child labor.

As the capital of Ethiopia one would consider Addis Ababa to reveal a lot about the status of the country. Vividly I can recall my first night in Ethiopia as we drove from the airport to our hotel and I anxiously gazed out the window, searching for clues about this new country and culture. Much to my dismay I found broken sidewalks, corrugated tin metal construction, people sleeping in the gutters and trash carpeting the landscape. Typically a capital city has a concentration of wealth, and especially the area around the airport where all tourists and diplomats pass through; Addis immediately proved to be something different. Nothing indicated hope for prosperity only disparity, but I assuaged my fear by telling me that the daytime would shed light on a different story.

I woke up early the next morning to church speakers, diesel engines and mini-bus horns. Outside of my hotel room I saw the most expensive and impressive architecture of the city: the African Union buildings. Maybe, I thought to myself, things are indeed better than they had initially seemed in last night’s darkness.

Admittedly, it took me a few days to have the courage to leave the hotel and venture out into the streets. I walked across a bridge, the water below smelled of human waste and the soap from people washing upstream created a massive collection of bubbles. I turned the corner to walk toward the African Union, the epicenter of modernity, only to be chased off the road by an enormous herd of cattle and struggle to step between the rocks and muddle puddles on the main road. Translated Addis Ababa means “new flower” this is obviously more poetic than literal as the smell and sight of the “flower” quickly overwhelmed me and I returned to the hotel for refuge.

Addis has become more familiar to me over the past 16 months, I can get where I need to go day or night but each visit reminds me of what a bizarre place it is. The expansive city is 203 sq. miles and inhabited by approximately 6 million people; one of the largest cities in the continent of Africa. Only four functioning stop light exist in the city, while other large intersections are directed by a single policeman working daily, or abandoned to the madness of taxi drivers, pedestrians and livestock.  Only 14% of people in Addis Ababa have flushing toilets and the majority of electricity access (only 16% of the country’s population) exists here. Addis has the largest outdoor market in Africa, Mercato, where you can find nearly anything imaginable is available for purchase if you can spend your money before it is stolen. It seems that most areas in Addis are under construction, which seems to progress and expand but never be completed. The construction provides a constant obstacle course for pedestrians that must hop over putrid smelling puddles, pass by unsecure man holes, climb over boulders and avoid bulldozers and workmen.

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The metaphorical flower indeed is something to overwhelm all of your senses, and after many weeks and months in my small town I look forward to a trip to the capital. These visits permit opportunities to eat food from nearly any country in the world, buy groceries and gadgets that can be found nowhere else such as tahini, mouse traps or cooking knives. Such extravagant shopping sprees can make it is easy for me to spend 1,000 birr ($60) in a single day, which would take me 4-6 weeks to spend in my rural town. One of my favorite parts of going to Addis is witnessing middle class citizens, independent and modern women wearing pants and driving cars, well fed children and so many foreigners that I can go about my business unnoticed. My feelings towards Addis Ababa are capricious, as it is only tolerable in moderation and with the relief to know that I don’t live there.