Last night we dressed up and attended the annual Marine Corp Ball. The event was a lot of fun with dancing and great food. There were a lot of important Ethiopians at the event, alongside Americans, and also a few representatives from European countries. We enjoyed our evening, but the glamour of the event was quickly overshadowed by the other side of Addis that we were humbled to see today.
This morning Mark and I met up with two other couples and a driver and went to a few unique spots in the city. The first was a shoemaker that creates ballet flats from scrap fabric and uses inner tubes for soles. The company is called Extra Seeds. I picked out a fabric that I liked and had him custom cut a pair for me that will be ready tomorrow. The "factory" is actually a store front in the slums that consists of a single room. In it there are stacks of fabric and two men cutting and making shoes. The room has no ventilation and the fumes of contact cement were overwhelming. The store exists in a line up of storefronts that primarily sell cheap Chinese goods such as clothing, flip flops and plastic bowls. After visiting Extra Seeds we went to a co-op of women potters who have HIV. Their "kiln" was a shack with small fires inside that they set the pottery next to. They pack eucalyptus leaves to the outside of the pottery to give it unique brown patterns. The pottery is beautiful and we are certainly excited to stock our home, once we get one, with salad bowls, chimineas (sp?), pots, and decor from the co-op. We then headed over to a part of town that in Amharic is called "Giraffe" as that is where giraffes once roamed outside the city. It's a large part of town that is, at best, slums. Sewage runs through the streets, children run barefoot, old women hobble on impossibly rocky terrain uphill, homes are made of tarps and scrap metal and nothing goes to waste. There we saw a man who finds rusty and worn metal goods such as hinges and knives and uses a wheel to sharpen them back to life. We also met a man who tans his own leather (a very cheap commodity here) and hand sews soccer balls. They are excellent quality and about $6.50 USD a piece. It takes him one day to make one and his shop employs two others. I bought a traditional shawl made by the women in the slums that is white gauze trimmed in red fabric. Mark and I have been disappointed that much of the Embassy and NGO staff we have met don't spend any time at all in these parts of town. In fact, many we know have never been to these parts of the city ... and they find Addis frustrating for its inconveniences. Visiting these parts of town is both humbling and a noteworthy reminder of the comforts that we still have as wealthy Westerners and should not take for granted. At 12Stone, PK spoke about how people who are comfortable rarely feel compelled to help. We are officially uncomfortable and we're excited to get involved in an overwhelming and huge problem.
We spent the rest of the afternoon playing at the Hilton pool - it has an annual membership fee so many locals use it as a country club of sorts - and played in the pool with two really adorable Sudanese kids. I'm pretty sure I could make a fortune training wealthy Ethiopian children how to swim. They all want to know how to swim (they live in a land-locked country with only a few pools) and have no fear of water. My lifeguard senses were on high alert the entire time as I watched people literally bounce off the bottom of the pool in the deep end to "swim" across. After the pool we went to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant with traditional shoulder dancers from the Tigere region of the country (Youtube search "shoulder dancing"...it's insane). From there we went to a gathering at a new friend's house for an evening around a fire pit. Now it's 12AM and we're headed to bed. Tomorrow we are attending church at 9am and will then participate in a brunch at 11.
If you want to talk, please set up a Google Voice account (it's free) and give yourself a phone number on GVoice with a 202 area code and have it set to forward to your cell phone. Once you have done that, email me your 202 phone number and I can call you for free. It's otherwise about $12/min so basically, I love you all but that isn't happening. We're also on Skype - our username is Markle.Harlan but we don't really sit by the computer so email us if you want to Skype rather than phone and we can coordinate a time.
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