Sunday Shopping

After church we went to lunch at this lovely Italian restaurant. I had chicken and vegetable stir fry, Jill had ricotta and spinach stuffed chicken with rice and vegetables. It was so yummy! Then Danny, our driver took us around the city. We saw lots of buildings, drove through some “residential” areas, saw lots of little market type stores, experienced traffic (which is much worse in Chicago, New York, Beijing, Kiev, Tirana, even 28th street at rush hour). Not a lot of honking… but people are not afraid to walk right in front of you. A lot of men sitting on rocks chatting. People walking arm in arm down the street, men with men, woman with women. It is so good to see people affectionate in friendships. (I might try to bring this trend with me back to the states). We passed lots of Embassy’s (mostly African countries), a slaughter house (not a lot of health codes), the Headquarters of the African Union, A mosque… really cool to see the pulse of the city. I hear tomorrow it will be different as today is Sunday and “slower”


We asked Danny to take us shopping, He took us to a little walking, market area near the post office, called, the post office market. There were lots of tiny, tiny shops (room 1 maybe 2) full of scarves, jewelry, paintings, wood carvings, dresses, t-shirts… you name it. The shop owners sit outside on a rock and say “please come in” “What are you looking for?” There is not as much pressure as in some other places I have been in like China and Ukraine, but they like to bargain. We picked up a few small things, for cheap.

We started being followed by a beautiful girl with a scarf on her head so I assume she was Muslim. She wanted 1 birr. I did not want to give her money, but she just keep following and she would laugh and had a beautiful smile, beautiful! She liked
to laugh. She shopped with us a while and I asked for her picture and then gave her a granola bar. She promptly took off with her treasure. I though we had become buddies, but I realized she was just using me. We had a similar experience with some boys. There were about 5 of them and they were very charming. They talked to us in great English, asked our names, and shook our hands. Then they begged us, begged us, for our shoes. Especially Jill, who had black shoes with white stripes. They said the shoes would be perfect for soccer. So we are back at the guest house, with our treasures, sitting on a balcony with big potted plants watching the children play (and pee on trees), animals roam, woman do housework… it is a Somolian neighborhood so there are a lot of Muslim woman covered head to toe in beautiful scarves. It is a very peaceful Sunday with the exception of a mooing cow. We are going to eat an Ethiopian meal tonight at the guest house and get a good night’s sleep for work tomorrow!