From School to Home

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Kovas writing……I wanted to share our daily ritual that we repreat over and over and over again - walking home from school. When school ends at 3:20pm, we go to after-school clubs till 4:30. These clubs include basketball club, soccer club, Lukas’ chess club, table tennis club, volleyball club, and a puzzle/games club ect. At 4:30 my brothers, Vasara, and I walk to Bole Bras, a “line taxi” station. Line taxis are minibuses that serve as Addis Ababa’s transportation system. They are quite cheap - the shortest ride costs the equivalent of 6.5 cents.

Inside the minibus
We listen intently trying to figure out which of the forty plus taxis are going to Haya Hulet, our destination. Once we have found one of the taxi is going to Haya Hulet, the 5 of us cram into a 3 seat space and wait for the twelve-seater taxi to fill up with at least fifteen people. The conductor inside is usually a young boy or young man - we feel lucky if the conductor speaks English. Along the way home people yell out waraj which means stop. When there is an empty seat in the taxi, the conductor sticks his head and shoulders out the window and yells the destination. It is amazing to me how subtly people signal for the taxi to stop. In the US, people hail a taxi by shouting “Taxi” or whistling. Here Ethiopians nod their head up or lift their eyebrows while making eye contact. Further the conductor has specific signals to communicate with the driver. For example, if someone signals that they want a ride, the conductor hits the outside of the van twice which signals the driver to stop to pick up the passenger. Hitting the van once signals the driver to start driving again.

From the drop off point to home
Because we need to purchase food every day, upon leaving the taxi at our Haya Hulet stop, we buy 15 small loaves of fresh bread. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we do the fourteen minute walk to our house. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we have soccer ( or “football” as it is called here) practice, so we walk five minutes to the soccer field. While walking uphill to our house it is surprising how much attention we attract since we walk there every day. We walk past the soccer field on our left and the electrical stores and bakeries on our right. Further up we walk past the little butcheries that have cow sized pieces of meat hanging on a wall. Interestingly the butcheries have crosses on the painted on the outside of the store to indicate whether it is a Christian butchery or Muslim butchery.

As we walk on we cross a big street which has no street light or stop sign. We then walk on an unpaved road which very little cars go on because of the rocks which make the trip very bumpy for cars. There are many shops which have things like batteries, thread, little plastic soccer balls, biscuits, etc. Actually it is quite convenient if you need to buy something for home. When we reach the street that leads into our compound, we look both ways three times because the street is on a hill, so some drivers go on neutral to save gas, and we can’t hear their engine. As we walk into our compound, we are greeted warmly by the nice compound security guards and get an acknowledgement nod from the two dogs that lay by the entrance of the gate. At our house, it’s strange that we don’t carry our house keys because we always have a guard at the house. We ring the bell at the right of our gate, and finally we arrive home!

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