After a busy week that decidedly flew by in spite of our trouble with various stomach ailments, we had a wonderful start to the weekend. On Friday evening, we went out to a cool local spot on Bole Road called Ice Blue, where Shuwen and Marc enjoyed shiro and lamb tibs with injera, while Yohannes (a colleague of Marc's at ENTRO, who is one of the main data people there and has aspirations to do a PhD in water resources in the future) enjoyed spaghetti carbonara. Afterwards, we spent time at the bar, drinking local St. George's beer and even trying a couple shots of tequila, though Shuwen did not partake in the last bit since she was already generating quite a bit of heat trying to process that one beer. We made it home rather tired.

Today was another day, and a wonderful one at that. We started off going up to Mt. Entoto by minibus, and poked around the Entoto Maryam church, a historic Ethiopian orthodox church that was quite colorful and interesting to look around. We opted not to go into the museum on
account of the faranji price we would have had to pay (besides 20 Birr to see one room of artifacts seemed a bit extreme to us, whereas Ethiopians could have access for a mere 3 Birr). After departing from the church, we walked a bit further down the road to where Marc had
found the entrance to the Entoto Hills Park, and turned into it. A little ways down the road and past the first groves of eucalyptus trees, we came upon a clearing where a club running team was doing drills and laps as part of their training. In the foreground, donkeys were also running along with loads of eucalyptus leaves and chopped wood, which they would carry all the way down to Addis some 800 meters below on the plateau. Two of the runners wasted no time in approaching us and asking how they might obtain an opportunity to compete in the US. We replied that we really had no idea but gave them Marc's hotmail address since they were extremely persistent about wanting contact information.

We then continued along the road through the park, taking in breathtaking views (from either side of the ridge) of the plateau below, being generally amused by the hundreds of donkeys running by, and seeing the hard work of the women who did most of the collecting of wood (and even some carrying). It was generally peaceful and the harassment of foreigners was very much reduced up there at the top of the mountain. We tried to greet people as we went by, and sometimes received shy greetings back. At one point, Marc waved to two men sitting down in a field below, and one of them stood up to wave back, and remained standing for some time, offering us a great amount of respect.

Nearly all of the trees on Mt. Entoto are eucalyptus, and their effect on the landscape is striking. They literally suck all of the water out of the ground, and their extensive root systems are partly what make them such an easy method of reforesting large swathes of land. The downside of this is that nothing else grows around them, save for a bit of moss in some locations, and occasional tufts of grass. We saw very few of the cedar trees that thrived on Mt. Yerer further from Addis,
and only a few other types of plants. These trees make it easy to cut through the woods, as there is no dense underbrush to contend with. And they clearly offer the women who live up there some livelihood, since they are able to sell the wood and branches in the city. There also appears to be some forestry management regime up there (a good thing), because the women were only collecting dead branches and cutting the leaves in controlled manner.

On our way back down the mountain, we passed the two courteous men again just as a group of baboons was crossing the road in front of us. There were 5 or 6 of them, and we were pretty close, but unable to get a picture before they scurried away. In the clearing below, our friends
pointed to a few more baboons off in the distance. It was an unexpected surprise for us to see those animals, since the human traffic had been so thick earlier in the day, and we believed it highly unlikely we would see anything that could be called wild. But that part of the walk had been much quieter, away from the primary wood-carrying thoroughfare.

We made it back down to Addis by the road that our minibus had taken up, and saw the poor donkeys struggling with their footing on the asphalt road. Their hooves are not well adapted to that surface, and the road was steep, so they would slip and slide at times, struggling to stay upright under the weight of the loads on their backs. And in spite of the opportunities for great views of the city, and stunning pictures of scenery, we became steadily more annoyed as we descended because people began to ask us more and more for money or gifts. One woman apparently became irate that we were not doling out the money, though we more or less ignored her. We also came across and watched for some time a weaver working with cotton, stretching it out in the first step of making the traditional cloth.

Finally at the bottom of the mountain and back in Addis, we ate a cheap lunch of misto -- a mixture of beef and potatoes with a tasty broth, got back in the bus to take us the rest of the way to our neighborhood, and then spent the rest of the afternoon resting while eating ice cream or drinking coffee, or looking around the Institute of Ethiopian Studies Museum at the University of Addis Ababa. Though we were initially a bit disappointed in the museum, that disappointment faded away completely as we entered the main collections, where cultural aspects of different Ethiopian tribes were explained and accompanied by smart displays of artifacts and traditional stories. We were then truly impressed by the art galleries at the very top of the museum, with the extensive collection of religious icons (mainly metal crosses, and painted fresco-like diptychs and triptychs -- two and three paneled displays of religious scenes) and traditional musical instruments (an elaborate series of lutes, fiddles, flutes, horns, noisemakers and drums).