Alright, time for the real work: more shopping.

We headed to the Entoto project compound after our morning meeting. The team worked on sorting clothes, cleaning up, landscaping, etc. I went shopping. We wanted to do some landscaping, flower planting, painting, shelf and closet construction, etc. These things are very hard to do without supplies, so Esias, Tamara, Anna, and myself all went out to get them. There’s one catch: there’s no Home Depot in Addis Ababa. So where do you shop for supplies? Well, Lowe’s of course!

Just kidding. There’s no Lowe’s either. No, you go to Mercado, purportedly the largest open-air market in Africa. If you’ve ever been to a market in a third world country, you can picture it. Shopping at Mercado isn’t like going to the store. You go from shop to shop hoping that someone has what you need. Our trip to Mercado and a couple of shops outside of Mercado took basically the first half of the day.

After lunch we went back to the compound to drop Tamara and Anna off. Their part (paint selection) was done. Esias, Jovani, and I then went out to a wood shop to get the wood we had purchased cut. What an experience. We drove down this stone paved street into a small neighborhood and then down a hill. We unstrapped the 4′x8′ wood sheets from the top of the van and down the rest of the hill, over a ditch, and into the shop. I marked the boards, and the workers cut them for us. We also needed some 3 cm x 3 cm boards, so they cut down some branches for us. Yes, the wood didn’t come pre cut. They had branches that had been quartered length-wise that they then cut to the size we needed.

We then went to the paint factory to pick up the rest of the paint that we needed. After that we stopped at a couple of shops to buy large bags so that we could transport gravel, which we purchased at another shop. It had taken nearly the entire work day to buy paint, paint supplies, wood, shovels, screws, and gravel.

Sunday began with church at Beza. It was a great experience. At NCC we hear a lot about Beza, and I’ve had the opportunity to hear Pastor Zeb (Beza’s head pastor) speak before. So it was great to be able to actually experience a Beza worship service.

Pastor Sale spoke on “Go.” It was a great message about how we need to just go, to go do what God is telling us to do or to take a step forward in faith, trusting God to meet us on the way.

After service we went to lunch. On the way there a guy came up to the van and wanted me to buy a pair of sunglasses. This type of street vending is very common in Addis Ababa. Usually people aren’t selling something I want, but I knew I’d appreciate having sungalsses while in Addis. The guy asked 75 birr. (A bit more than $7, the exchange rate is around 11 to 1). We haggled over the price and settled on 40 or 50 birr, at which point I realized that I only had 29 birr on me. I figured I was out of luck, but he was happy to sell them to me for 29. I think this made me the first person to haggle for something on the trip. (Well, not including John who had already been here for over two weeks.)

At lunch Rachel and I sat with Melissa and Anna, the Beza staffer who coordinated and led our trip. Afterwards half of the team went to the pool and the other half went to the Ethnological Museum. I headed to the museum which was located in the former palace of former king Haile Selassie. It was a good opportunity to learn a bit more about the history and culture of Ethiopia.

After that we went to the Shiro Meda market, which we we had driven through the day before. It’s an interesting place. Tamara, one of the Entoto Project staffers, was with us and helped us bargain for better prices, but the best find of the day was the Ethiopian coffee pots. I don’t think we even had to haggle over the price. They offered them to us for 10 birr (less than a dollar). Coffee is a staple of Ethiopia, and even those who are very poor have a coffee pot and small stove to prepare coffee, so a pot makes for an authentic souvenir.

The group split up a bit going through the market, leaving me on my own, which is pretty much how I like it in situations like that. I walked down a few shops and saw a belt that I was interested in. Once again, the guy started the price at 75 birr. I said 25. I don’t remember what his “final” price was, but I walked away from it. He called me back and agreed to give me the belt for 40, but when I gave him a 50, he gave me back five ones. I had walked away again by the time I realized it, so I went back to the shop to get five more. He was reluctant, but after some arguing I got my five birr. As I walked away, one of the guys standing around said “Good” to me. I was pretty pround of myself. My second day in Ethiopia on my first trip out of the U.S., and I was already haggling like a pro!

After shopping was dinner at Yod Abyssinia. Yod serves traditional Ethiopian food and has live music and dancing in the traditional Ethiopian style to entertain you while you eat. There’s a good story here, but it’s better accompanied by video, so I’ll leave that for another time…

I know what you’re thinking. This doesn’t sound like much of a mission trip, but let me assure you, the real work began on Monday morning, although for me that meant more shopping. (More on that in my next post.)