It Takes Time

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(Ruta writing…) Without modern conveniences, like a personal car, and because of the way of living in Addis, just living takes a lot more effort. For example,
Buying Food
Anything we purchase, we need to carry ourselves. While it sounds quaint to go to the market every day for fresh bread, it means that there are very little reserves in the kitchen. The market stalls are tiny tin roof shacks. We usually walk about 15-20 min to the larger market - there is one stall for bananas and oranges, another for potatoes and onions, one stall for sugar, another stall for rolls. We then go to a “supermarket” (similar to a corner grocery store) for jelly and single serving milk packets. We then find a person selling eggs or find them at a stall. You don’t want to buy too much, because you have to carry it home.

Washing Laundry
It’s simple, there’s a tub, water, and soap. We quickly hired a person to do our laundry - with 7 persons’ clothes, sheets, towels, and the extra dirt from the muddy unpaved streets and bugs all around, it is a major job. The clotheslines criss-cross our courtyard, so anyone coming to our front door ducks under our undies, boxers, and socks hanging on the clothesline - good thing we don’t have too many visitors.

Buying anything
Because Addis Ababa is a big city, there are nice stores that have price tags and fixed prices. The majority of purchases are made in small stores and market stalls. We negotiate for everything. Automatically they seem to double the price for foreigners, but not all the time or it gets confusing quickly. We have definitely gotten snookered some of the time - paying about 2 times more for a map of Ethiopia. We thought we got a good deal because we bargained down to 50% of the original price - Ha. Ha. Live and learn!

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