The Ride Home :(

So here we go out of the hotel parking lot and on to the streets of Addis. I was in the front seat. What I wouldn't have given for that sleeping mask they gave us on the plane. G and B were stuffed in the back seat with 2 large suitcases and three of the carry-ons. All the parking lots have speed bumps in them, so it was bumpy before we even got on the main road. Later we found out we were very close to the airport but it certainly didn't feel that way when we were in the car. It was rush hour. In Ethiopia they have two times. First they are 9 hours ahead of us so when it is 3 pm here it is midnight there. The other time has to do with the working time. At 6 am it is one and so on until 6 pm when it is one again. Working hours and playtime hours. Well I'm not sure about the playtime for most people but the day spa near us was open 24/7. Our guide Able used his cell phone to keep track of one time and his watch to keep track of the other. I'm not sure how to describe the drive. Chicago rush hour times 10 or 20 or 100. Children here make a vroom vroom sound when they pretend to drive a toy car. In Ethiopia, the children there say beep, beep, beep. It is constant. There are stop signs but they don't pay attention to them. No stop light. U- turns everywhere. Cattle, goats, sheep, donkeys and people just walk out in front of you. On a later trip we waited for a bulldozer to move out of the way and drove right through the construction sight. Every so often the car had to slow down because the pavement didn't meet up with the next stretch of pavement and there was a hole the width of the road and about 6 - 8 inches deep. The exhaust fumes were AWFUL. You know who bad a semi here can be when they are climbing a steep hill. Black exhaust. Well all the vehicles there are that way. There are very very few new cars. When they buy a car there the government charges them as much as the car is worth in taxes. $10,000 car = $20,000 purchase price so they can't afford good cars. The exhaust made me sick and Gretchen sleepy. There are 5 million people who live in Addis besides all those who come there to work, shop, for school, for appointments and to beg. Where we would have a two lane road, they would have at least 3 lanes of traffic. I have pictures of how close we were to other cars. I could have reached over and wiped the nose of the guy in the van next to us. I'm not sure what their speed limit was, I think it was just FAST. The streets here are amazing, sad but amazing. Everything seems to be stacked on top of each other. Every building except stores has a fence around it. Most are cement or corrigated sheet metal. People would stand in the street talking as cars sped by inches from them. People had their wares set up on the street, not on the curb, on the street. Malls were not one level but many levels. Stores were often about 12 feet wide with open fronts. One street had plumbing, pipes, toilets, tile, van doors, fresh fruit, DeWalt tools, and Home Depot. We saw a God Father's Pizza. The honking was constant. The driver said if your horn doesn't work, don't drive.