An Excursion.

We culture-shocked our way through that first week in Ethiopia, spending our days at the office and our evenings hanging out at the SIM Guest House. Without a valid driver’s license or access to a vehicle, we were extremely limited in our ability to get around town on our own. We were far too timid to venture far on foot or – heaven forbid – to wrestle with the intricacies of the public transit system. So we were excited when our co-workers, P. and E., proposed an excursion for us and our new friend Joy, on our first Saturday in Addis.

(We were quick to notice that all of the seasoned “expats” we met referred to the city as “Addis”; only newbies like ourselves ever used the full name).

The plan was to visit Mount Entoto, which rises almost 1,000 meters above the city. Back in 1881, Entoto had become the military base for Menelik II, the ruler of the Showa province who was at that time still fighting for political power among a number of regional kings. In 1889, Menelik became the Emperor of Ethiopia, the King of Kings; he is credited with the creation of the modern political state of Ethiopia. Along with a fortress, Menelik and his wife Taitu established two Ethiopian Orthodox churches on the mountain, one of which, Entoto Maryam, was our destination.

It’s a short but steep drive, straight uphill, from the center of town to Entoto – past Addis Abeba University and the American Embassy. At Shiro Meda, an outdoor marketplace where one could purchase locally made cloth, delicate hand-woven cotton shawls gleamed white in the sunlight.

As we left the city behind we drove through forests of eucalyptus trees that had been planted by Menelik and his successors in these hills and all over the countryside. Eucalyptus is known locally as “bahir zaf,” the foreign tree, and it is valued in large part because of how quickly it reaches a mature size; when it is cut to the ground (or coppiced), several new stems grow from the original stump. We passed dozens, or maybe hundreds, of women who were shuffling down the hill, bent double under weighty bundles of eucalyptus that they were planning to sell as firewood to support their families. J and I will never forget the sight of these women, our first experience of desperate poverty. Although it was illegal to cut the wood without a permit, these women had limited choices, and the penalty for getting caught was worth the risk.

I shouldn’t be so surprised to find that one can now read reviews of Entoto Maryam on Google and TripAdvisor, and watch video tours on YouTube. A Google image search returns hundreds of results; you will have to look there and forgive our oversight in not having taken any of our own pictures of the church on that day. It’s a distinctive building, an octagonal plan that was (and still is) brightly painted in the national colors of Ethiopia. I don’t recall going into the church itself, and even if we had we wouldn’t have been allowed to take pictures inside. We did visit the adjacent museum to view artifacts from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, including ornate imperial robes, and shields made of hides and trimmed with the manes of (now endangered) black lions.

Along with the churches, Entoto is known for its amazing panoramic views of Addis Abeba. And we did take pictures of that, shown here from east (upper photo) to west (lower photo):

We drove along the ridgeline for a few minutes, then parked the Land Cruiser on the side of the road and tramped through the underbrush to find a beautiful view of the countryside to the north.

Probably the first photo of us in Ethiopia.

On the way back into town we stopped at Blue Tops Café, the only place in the country where one could get soft serve ice cream.

J and Joy at Blue Tops.

Two years later, Blue Tops would be the site of a terrorist grenade attack that injured nine people, mostly foreigners. But on that first Saturday, we were just starting to discover the complexity of the country in which we found ourselves.