Finding Our Way.

One of the challenges about attending language school was its location. If you think of Addis Abeba as the face of a watch, our apartment was located at about four-thirty, in the southeast quadrant of the city, very close to the airport. The FH/E office was only about a ten-minute drive away, a fairly convenient commute unless there was a lot of traffic around St Ourael church. But language school was held at the SIM Press compound, across town at about eight o’clock on the AA dial, and we had to pick up Joy on the way, so learning to navigate the streets of Addis was also on the summer syllabus.

The south half of Addis Abeba. Scale: ???

I say “summer” because we were in the northern hemisphere, but the months of June, July, and August are the “big” rainy season in Ethiopia; it wasn’t cold by any means but it usually rained hard at least once a day and the bad weather exacerbated the challenges of driving. By the end of the season, there were potholes on the road large enough to swallow the Renault sedan, or at least do serious damage to its suspension. And other drivers – especially taxi drivers – would swerve unexpectedly to avoid potholes and other road hazards, which added an element of excitement to the daily drive.

In this era of Google maps, it’s difficult to convey how challenging it was for us to find our way around Addis Abeba twenty years ago, when our only resources were sketchy tourist maps and word of mouth. The vast majority of people walked or used public transportation, which meant there was literally no need for road maps. Drivers relied on landmarks: turn left at Olympia, for example, or go straight at the tukuls; there were no street signs but most of the streets weren't known by name, anyway. The closest main road to our apartment terminated at the airport about a kilometer away and was called Bole (bo-lay) Road after Bole International Airport. Other main roads led out of the city toward Debre Zeit, Jimma, Ambo, and Asmara, or up to Entoto, and were known by their destinations. One of the few streets everyone knew was Churchill Avenue, the main drag that connected the lower portion of town with the train station and post office to the uphill Piazza neighborhood.

Several main roads came together in the center of the city at Meskel Square and at Mexico, a traffic circle named in honor of the historic friendship between Ethiopia and Mexico. (Apparently, Mexico has been dismantled and rebuilt in recent years due to light rail construction). It was rare enough for an intersection to have traffic signals of any kind and rarer still for them to be functional. Here’s a video clip of traffic going through the west end Meskel Square; Bole Road is one of three main roads that meet at the other end of the square so we had to navigate this intersection on a regular basis:

We could avoid Meskel Square, Mexico, and some of the worst traffic by skirting the city center on our way to language school. Here’s how it worked:

1. Turn right onto Bole Road.

2. Turn left onto the Acropolis Road. According to the map, it’s actually called Ethio-China Street, but we never knew it by that name; we called it the Acropolis Road because that's where our favorite Greek restaurant was. Continue on this road until you reach the intersection with Debre Zeit Road.

3. Go straight across Debre Zeit Road. Try not to get crushed; there’s a lot of traffic and no signal.

4. Continue on Slaughterhouse Road until you get to the tukuls. The official name of Slaughterhouse Road is Alexander Pushkin Street. I don’t know what crime the father of Russian literature committed to have the smelliest street in Ethiopia named after him: enormous piles of bones with bits of rotting flesh basking in the sunlight, and the odor to match. Plus vultures. Ugh.

5. Go through the roundabout at the tukuls (still there!) and continue on Old Airport Road aka Seychelles Street, past Le Petit Paris (…we used several restaurants as reference points) and the Ethio Telecom building.

6. Turn left onto Victory Road, aka South Africa Street. A slight detour here onto unpaved neighborhood streets to pick up Joy.

7. Get back onto Victory Road and then turn left to continue on Old Airport Road, known here as Mauritania Street. There's a shorter way to go but it isn't paved, and that could be risky in rainy weather.

8. When you reach Save-More, turn left onto Jimma Road. Go over the bridge at Akaki, then turn right at the intersection where if you were to turn left you would arrive at Alert, the leprosy hospital.

9. Take the next right onto the unpaved, rocky side street that leads to the SIM Press Compound. Honk your horn as you approach the gate, and wait for the guard to admit you.

This commute took about 35-40 minutes on an average morning, though there were several days where traffic jams made us late for language school, and (spoiler alert) at least one day where we didn’t make it to school at all.