Merkato Madness. No water, no problem

Today was an interesting day as well. The new twist on things is that we woke up this morning and learned that there was no water at the guest house. Apparently, the surrounding area has been without water for a few days, but we just learned of it today since the guest house has a large water reserve tank that we were using. Ironically, there was a very large rainstorm today that allowed the house cook and maid to collect and then boil for everyone’s use. Alemu said that this has never happened since he has lived here…just our luck I guess. Our hiccup was Mikias deciding to pee all over himself and we had no way of giving him a bath because it was before the rainstorm. We improvised and those of you who will see our video will see firsthand the humor in this situation.

Nonetheless, we had a great day. In the morning, Alemu took us to the Merkato which is the largest open-air market in Africa. It was wild. It was basically like the market we visited yesterday multiplied by 20. Many more people, congestion, and sellers. We were interested in buying some clothing and little gifts, so Alemu took us to several vendors. Luckily he was there because every transaction involved some sort of heated argument about pricing. I think we ended up with some good deals thanks to Alemu’s negotiation skills. We only walked out on one vendor. Walking through the Merkato was quite an experience. Dodging cars, buses, donkeys, and people carrying huge sacks on their heads was stressful. Also, many people would just yell “You!” or “I love you!” at us. Maybe this was the only English they knew or maybe they really did love us. Many people would also try to get in the line of our cameras so they could get in our pictures. At one point, we walked around for 15 minutes with our video camera rolling at eye level just so we could give some sort of perspective.

After our Merkato escapade, we went to a local grocery store to stock up on formula and other items we’ll need to get us through the week and flight home. The rest of the afternoon was spent at the guest house. We were able to spend a lot of time playing with Mikias and settling our room down a bit (it looked like a bomb had gone off in there). As we said, there was a huge rainstorm in the afternoon. This is the beginning of the rainy season in Ethiopia that will last a couple months. Mikias was absolutely transfixed by all the rain falling from the sky.

This evening after dinner we began discussing with Alemu our upcoming Embassy appointment. Our visit to the U.S. Embassy on Thursday provides the entrance visa to get Mikias into the country this weekend. We need to provide documentation and forms for this process. Our discussion this evening left us both a little frustrated. There seems to be a disconnect between the AAI office back home and Alemu. We were under the impression that Alemu was going to help us complete some of these documents, but now we are left calling the Embassy ourselves in the morning to figure out exactly what we need. We’re sure it is just a miscommunication and that we’ll be able to get things straightened out.

We’ve probably got another busy day ahead of us tomorrow. We just hope the water comes back on at sometime to make our lives a little easier.