J-We’re in Addis Ababa again for a few days before we go to
our site (Fiche, if you want to Google it), and we’ve been given a little
walking around cash so that we can go out for dinner while we’re here. Along with 6 other volunteers, we decided to
go out for some Mexican at a nearby-ish restaurant. Our first happy encounter came in the form of
a shuttle bus from our hotel that happened across us as we were attempting to
figure out how to commandeer a line taxi.
They gave us a ride to the restaurant free of charge (though I’m still
concerned that they might try to invoice the organization for it, despite the
fact that we didn’t tell them who we were affiliated with). Then, when dropping us off at “La Familia,”
they told us to call the hotel whenever we wanted to be picked up. Cool beans, right?
Then we had some delicious Mexican food that included such
beautiful items as: salsa, sour cream, fresh tortillas, and beef that we’re
100% sure was not goat. The real treat
were the desserts. Donovan and I got the
Kahlua mousse and “quadriple” chocolate cake, which was a good chocolate cake
with chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and chocolate
sprinkles on top, which some of you back home might recognize as a facsimile of
“Hauge special.” The prices were good by
Western standards, which means pricey by the standards of a PCT budget. It was still absolutely worth it!
The hiccup came when we tried to call the shuttle to come
back, and were told that the service was not available. I don’t have all the details on that because
I was not the one handling the call, but the long and short of it is that they
were not going to come get us. It was
dark outside, and though we were within a technical walking distance of the
hotel, it would have probably take us about half an hour walking on the
unfamiliar, dark streets of Addis to get back.
There were also a couple of rather shady looking individuals outside the
restaurant eyeing our party with a little too much interest for our liking
(also, they both had canes, and one was wearing a bandana over his face). This meant walking was a no-go. We started discussing our other options and
had pretty much decided to pony up and call on one of Peace Corps pre-vetted
cabs, when our second little moment of awesome happened.
A woman who I would guess was in her early 50s came up to us
and (in flawless English) asked where we needed to get to. We told her that all of us were staying at
the Ghion Hotel, and she asked if we wanted her to arrange a shuttle
there. We said that would be lovely,
assuming that she probably had a preferred cab, maybe a nephew or a friend, who
she could call to give us a ride. She
counted that there were 8 of us and commented that we’d need to take two trips,
seeing as her car could only hold four passengers at a time. Yes, her car, as in her little white VW that
she had parked out front. It turned out
that she was the owner of the restaurant.
She led the two of us and the other couple in our group out to the car,
and I noticed the man with the mask and the cane start to head towards us. I can’t say for sure if he was planning on
rolling us because he veered off in a different direction the moment he saw us
getting in to the lady’s car. Still, I’m
really happy that we erred on the side of caution and got into the car with a
stranger (no sarcasm, seriously).
We ended up getting a lot of interesting information from
her on the five or so minute drive back to our hotel. It turns out that she is a half Ethiopian,
half Armenian resident of Addis who spent 12 years working at restaurants in
California. She was very open and
friendly and told us about how she moved back to Addis and started her
restaurant back when there were no other Mexican places in the city (there are
a couple now, but I’m guessing you can already tell which one has my loyalty
for the next two years). She didn’t
start it as a Mexican restaurant, but she’d spent years slowly adding more and
more tex-mex items to the menu, starting with guacamole because Ethiopia grows
crazy good avocados. The menu is now
full of some of the best tex-mex I’ve ever had outside of the states, and
apparently the place is popular with both locals and foreigners alike, though
business always goes down a little during the rainy season because a lot of
people are out of town. Like I said, it
was an informative ride.
She dropped the four of us off at the gate of the hotel and
then turned around to get the other half of our group who was still waiting at
the restaurant. Needless to say, we all
went into the lobby of the hotel and started praising the heck out of the place
to our fellow PCTs because both the food and the owner are amazing. It just goes to show you that there are
awesome people in all corners of the globe, and sometimes a little trust is a
good thing to have.
Of course, there’s also a decent sprinkling of jerks out
there, as evidenced by the fact that while we were having this little faith-in-humanity-restored
moment of ours, a fellow PCT got mobbed by a bunch of kids and had his phone
stolen. He’s fine, and the phone was
broken, uncharged, and only cost $20.00, but still. I guess it takes all kinds, and I’m just
happy I keep running into the good kind.
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