Rain, Rain Go Away

Well we are officially in rainy season here in Addis! It rains every day for pretty much the entire day. Luckily it doesn’t storm too often but the mud and the cold is beginning to drag on us all. Getting anywhere is made infinitely more difficult as people are crammed on the mini buses or navigating the streets that are swollen with muddied water. All of us now have three times as much laundry to do on a regular basis—poor Fraye!—and it’s a struggle to look somewhat normal and clean. I have had particular issues since the only shoes I brought are canvas slip-ons, Danskos (glorified clogs for all you non medical people), and flip-flops. It looks like I’ll be buying some more shoes while I’m here!

For the first time since I’ve been here, we spent this weekend at home in Addis. Overall, we had a great time, and spent most of our afternoons having movie marathons. You can buy bootlegged movies on the street for 30 birr (about $1.50 US) so we stocked up on some new movies and classic favorites. Unfortunately we don’t have a DVD player so we all have to cuddle up around my laptop, but it works out for the most part. We also went to the Edna mall theater to see Snow White and the Huntsman, which was entertaining! I’ve decided that the movie theater is my new farenji mecca. At 40birr ($2.25 US) per movie and with cheap, delicious popcorn, it’s a nice break from the rain and the bustling city! The movie selection is somewhat limited (current titles include Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer and Ice Age 4) but some good ones come through too.

On Saturday, we decided to head to Mercado, Ethiopia’s largest open-air market. Katie, our fellow Emory MPH student, is leaving today and wanted to see it before she went on to Germany to visit family and then home. We were also hoping to buy a grill for the 4^th of July party we are throwing for our Discovery mentors tomorrow. All of our mentors including the dean of the medical school, Dean Lawley, are visiting us this week so we wanted to treat them to a fun dinner at our place. 

After brunch, we were lucky enough to hop on a mini bus going exactly where we wanted with room for all 6 of us. At least, we thought we were lucky. We started to head towards Piazza but then the bus suddenly made a U-turn and went the opposite direction. We thought that it was a little odd, but figured the mini bus driver was just being crazy and confused as many are. The bus made the loop and finally started heading the right way but then turned suddenly again. All the while, Chris was being hassled by the money collector and his stuff was constantly being touched and moved. All in all it was very weird, but we continued to trust that we were just reading into things. Then the mini bus dropped us off saying we had to take another taxi to Piazza, which never happens. We all were frustrated and confused but delighted when another mini bus pulled up saying they could take us all to Piazza. Mistake. Again the mini bus took off in the wrong direction, we were shoved into the window seats, and Katie felt a hand on her purse. Suddenly, the bus pulled over and we were forced to get out again. This time, angry and tired of being hassled and scammed, we grabbed our money back from the collector guy and stormed off. All the while the people that remained in the bus were laughing at our abrupt reaction. Looking back, we really did ignore the signs of a scam.  We are pretty sure the buses were working in conjunction to rob us but luckily they were unsuccessful and we even walked away with a small profit as we took back 10birr bills to cover our 8birr fare. Unfortunately for us, we were now in the middle of nowhere Addis and absolutely none of us wanted to get back into another mini bus. So we got oriented and started the 1.5hr treck home. Of course it started to rain, so we were thrilled when we got home and were able to promptly curl up to a movie before heading out to the Indian restaurant across the way for dinner.

Getting scammed is definitely a part of daily living here. At first we all joked about the hustlers and hagglers, the gum thieves, and the pickpockets, but after a month of constantly dealing with these stressors we are beginning to wane in patience. When you come to a country to help the people, to improve medical care, it can feel demoralizing to be constantly taken advantage of and to be singled out as a foreigner. Even our sympathy for those less fortunate has diminished as we are continually pushed to our limits of kindness. I think we are all looking forward to our next trip away!