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Published: February 10th 2010
The main thing we wanted to do in Addis was see their famous market. We tried to follow the Lonely Planet map which was helpful in getting us from the Immigration office to the general area of the market, then we were sort of lost. There were some traffic cops so I asked them, “Merkato?” and they pointed to a side street. We walked up and were still kind of lost. A professional looking guy was asked us what we wanted, and I replied,”Uhh…souvenirs.” He took us up to what I would learn to be the antique district and dropped us off at his cousin’s store. The stores were mostly small, narrow, shacks. Looked around at all the cool junk. Most of the shops had more or less the same stuff: the walls would be covered mostly with newer masks and old/worn looking silver crosses, and occasionally these little wooden boxes that opened up and had painted religious iconography on the inside. Piled up along the walls would be assorted figures and statues. There was a crown or two and each store would have a glass case with silver rings, war medals, even an old note with Haille Selassie on it. Each store owner would ask us to come in and look and I was like, “Yeah, sure. Why not. Porque no?” I like looking at the old stuff. The guy who brought us there left and his cousin told us to come look at his store. His store was in a three story building and the inventory was pretty impressive. They had new stuff and old stuff. Several rooms worth of goods. There was tons of silver, painted goat skins, and scrolls. I saw a couple old looking books, perhaps bibles that I was really curious about, but decided not to ask. We said thank you and left. There was a café on third floor and I stopped in for a water. We overlooked the tin shacks, drank, and remarked that it was 10:30.
After leaving the café and getting down to the ground level I convinced my companion to duck into some of the covered stall, arcade areas. A guy approached us and asked if we wanted to see the spice market, sure. He took us to this open square field where merchants lined the perimeter and were selling their spices, incense, and vegetables. Each woman would be sitting down and have several small bags of different spices, not sure what they were, yellow, orange, black, red, salts, thyme, rosemary, assorted pods. It was pretty cool. He then said this wasn’t the real market, would we like to see the real one? Nah, maybe this was enough. Ok, would you like to see my store? Sure, that sounds like a fair trade. He brought us to a clothing store and after some negotiating my traveling partner bought two scarves.
We left him and wandered into a newish covered building that was filled with stall after stall of mostly the same souvenirs. Everybody was saying please look, so I obliged them. Never hurts to look. Most stalls had masks or figurines and some silver, occasionally the stalls would have t shirts or baskets. Someone else found us and was like, “I’ll show you the spic market, the recycled market, etc.” He didn’t actually say etc. The guy sort of reminded me of my grandfather Meyer. His English was good, so we said ok. He then took us all over the Merkato. “This is the new market” he informed us, “I’ll take you to the old market.”
Our entrance into the old market was via one of the narrow side streets branching off a main thoroughfare. This particular stretch’s specialty seemed to be incense as the vendors who lined both sides of the crooked street were selling all kinds of different incense in quantities ranging from almost nothing, to several butt loads. Our guide would pick up things, let us smell them, tell us what they were. I remember he picked up what looked like a quartz crystal to me and asked if we knew what it was. I replied it was a crystal used for Wiccan ceremonies, “aftershave” he replied as he gestured rubbing the crystal on his face. Never in a million years would I have guessed aftershave. Seriously. It’s a crystal!?
Our exact path is pretty much completely unknown to me. I know the general area we started and the side streets we wandered through eventually looped back to a main road, but it was pretty much a maze. The roads and pathways through the merkato ranged from wide, freshly paved, driveable streets, to large cobblestones, to flat dirt paths, to small jagged cobblestones, to loose-rock. Their width, smells, and the characters inhabiting them were equally as varied. We must’ve gone to the old spice market as there were tons of spices and other food products. Some of the people selling were just setup along the street, others had established stalls, and others had stalls inside covered areas. The amount of spice was amazing. Nearly everyone had bags full of every assorted spice possible. Huge bags too, not zip-loc bags or even garbage can sized bags, but bags large enough to hide a full sized man in. The people that had stalls had pre-measured packages of spices lining the walls of their shops. One covered section was dedicated to banana root, which looks and smells like cheese. It’s transported in banana leaf and this whole covered area had full and empty banana leaf wrappers everywhere. One of the ladies was saying something loudly and said “ferenji” a couple times so I responded “abesha” a couple times and everyone started laughing. I’m a hit in Ethiopia. I am also big in Japan.
We wandered through many sections of the old market. In the basket section, girls were actually weaving and making baskets. The process looked pretty labor-intensive. Reeds were sticking out of the unwoven section she was working on and then she would tightly wind one reed over the protruding ones. Our guide told us that these baskets were Ethiopian refrigerators and that they will keep Injera from spoiling for a week. The goat skin basket lunch carriers keep their lunch cool. He took us to the leather works department where people were using all kinds of leather from cows to hippo. These harnesses are for horses, these are for camels. One guy was making a leather whip. He would braid the whip and then use a hammer and anvil to tighten the weave. The whole time our guide would ask, “Do you know what this? Do you know what this is for?” “I have no idea what that is. That is a horse tail fly swatter.”
My favorite section was the recycling section. It was straight out of some post apocalyptic war movie. The scene was actually very reminiscent of a town in Fallout 3, the video game. What they do here is take metal from old doors or used cables and recycle it into something more useful. The entrance to this portion of the market was narrow, and all of its passages were tight, a minimum of two people could pass through shoulder to shoulder in most spots. Corrugated metal jutted out into the sky blocking any view of the merkato or surrounding city. The cobblestones here were small, and jagged making walking a bit difficult, frequently streams of dirty water trickled over the cobblestones making passage even more cumbersome. Metal wire and thin metal poles littered the ground. Some guys would be in their shop welding with the sparks flying out onto the passageway. Other guys would be hammering straight bits of metal into L-shaped pieces for use as door hinges. There were no women in this section and my companion was very happy to leave it behind her, but it was seriously my favorite part of the market.
We wandered some more. Our guide took us to the antiques part of the market and I realized that is where we had started our exploration. Tired of walking, we decided we had had enough and as there were clothing stores nearby I started a search for a “rapper hat” for Joseph. He had texted me the day before saying he wanted a rapper hat, either a black or red one. I had to text back and ask if he meant a ball cap or a doo-rag. Ball cap. I got him a black White Sox hat that had the S emblem in small diamond shapes all over the hat, I figured it was blingy enough. While negotiating the price some guy passed by and he was yelling fairly loudly at me as he passed by. I sort of waved to him, then felt something solidly hit my left rear side, one of his pack mules that I guess he was trying to warn me about. They still employ animal power in Addis a lot. I found it funny. Got the hat for 50 birr, it was fitted. Joseph said he would pay for it but he also said his monthly wage was 200 birr so I just gave it to him. He was pretty happy, and his aunt likes the hat as well. We paid our guide 50 birr for his troubles. He of course wanted more, but he was probably happy. His English was good, he described the things we saw and their uses, and there is no way we would’ve found all the stuff we did. Two dollars apiece was no big deal.
We left the market and found our way pretty easily, especially considering we were totally lost trying to find the actual merkato. We stopped at a café just outside the merkato for a drink; it was 2:30 and it seemed like a second ago that we said it was 10:30. The merkato was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.
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mom
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no chicken buses
O.K. SO that merkado sounded a lot cooler than the one in Guatemala, but I'm sooo glad I wasn't there !! Can't wait to see all the pictures of it.