It’s been a busy last weekend in Ethiopia! We started it off on Friday with a trip to Sishu for some delicious American style burgers. Yum! And guess what?! They had bacon this time! What a rare treat…I got a bacon cheeseburger! It was basically fantastic. On Saturday, we got up bright and early to hit up the bazaar at the church by our house. An hour or so later, we were leaving with lots and lots of souvenirs. I’m pretty much loaded with gifts now, and I can’t wait to hand them all out at home. Very exciting. We took all our wonderful purchases home, and began attempting to pack them safely. We have a lot of breakables, and not a lot of wrapping…unless socks and pajama pants count. We soon found out that with a couple pairs of PJ pants and the amazing hands of Amen and Desta, we could safely wrap anything and everything. Seriously, they were incredible! There I was, struggling to wrap a really cool mug into a pair of pants. I wrapped, unwrapped, tried again, and again and again. Desta’s watching me, laughing. After a few minutes he takes it from my hands and second later gives it back to me, wrapped like a beautiful little package! He even used the string on my pajamas to tie it shut! Obviously I left the rest of my wrapping to him, and am now pretty confident that my things will make it back to America in one piece. Thank you, Desta!
That afternoon, we took a trip to Mount Entoto. It’s a big mountain on the other side of Addis, and we had been meaning to get up it before leaving. Amen came along, and we had a really nice guy we had met a couple of days before for our driver. It was a lot of fun, and very beautiful. We got home exhausted, and began preparations for April the Fool…dun dun dunnnnnn
So, evidently they really enjoy April Fool’s Day in Ethiopia. In fact, all of our Ethiopian friends have been talking about “April the Fool” for weeks now. Kendra and I decided awhile back that we had to do something to them. We came up with the perfect trick, and informed the necessary accomplices last night…Desta and Amen. Since most of our peeps are in Awassa for the weekend (mainly Dundee and Amare), Masresha has been “in charge” of taking care of us at the guest house. He’s taking his job very seriously and has been concerned all weekend about getting food to us, drinks, water, anything. We figured that the best prank would be to pretend that we got upset, changed our plane tickets, and left for America a week early. This was simple to pull off, since we are leaving next weekend. We were already mostly packed after buying souvenirs, and everything else got thrown into an extra suitcase. Desta was an important partner in crime, because he’s the guard to our house. We needed him to wake Masresha this morning and tell him that he had seen us get into a taxi with all our luggage. Amen was important because we needed him to translate our plan to Desta…we have awesome convos with Desta all the time, but an important detailed plan such as this requires translation for sure. So anyways, we would have Desta kick off the prank after we had hidden our luggage and ourselves in an extra bedroom. Last night we did a little prep work by acting all bummed out right before bed. Apparently it worked, because Masresha was asking Amen and some of the other guys what happened to us.
This morning went perfectly. We woke up early, left a note explaining our early departure to America, and went outside to get Desta. He was so excited. We hid, and Desta went to wake up Masresha. Even though we could hear them, they were of course speaking only in Amharic. Long Amharic story short, we heard Masresha find our note, make some phone calls to Amare and Dundee in Awassa, and go find Amen for help. When we came out about 20 minutes later, the look on Masresha’s face was completely priceless. Confusion, surprise, relief….it was hilarious. Masresha, Amen, Desta, and a few others that had showed up were cracking up. Our friend Isaac was there, and one of Amen’s cousins. Both were laughing hysterically. Amare had even called his mom when he got the news in Awassa that we were missing, and she came running in saying, “You lost the farenje?! We have to find them!” It was amazing. The best part was how excited Desta and Amen were…they could barely contain themselves. A successful April the Fool day for us.
In other news, rain has come. Hard. It hasn’t rained once since we got here, until this weekend. The past couple of days we had some showers, but this afternoon as we made our way to Bole to use wifi (which isn’t working, hence my blog-writing), it poured. Hellooooooo rain. Wow. We were walking through Mexico when crazy winds started blowing, thinking about how happy we were that we were probably in busy, crazy Mexico for the last time. When the wind picked up, I got about six hundred things in my eyes and was walking pretty blindly. Obviously this means it’s a good time to pick-pocket me...jerk face. So Jerk Face tries to unzip the front of my backpack. Well, all my important stuff is kept in the big pocket of my backpack, which you can only unzip when it’s off my back. Had Jerk Face been successful, he would’ve gotten away with nothing more than an empty gum package, a bottle of hand sanitizer, and a dum-dum. But he’s a jerk face for even trying. Anyways…he was not successful, because Kendra saw and smacked his hand away. There are a million people walking in Mexico, so she knew that giving him a little smack would make him leave. Ha, fool. No dum-dums for you! We made it to our next minibus just in time for the downpour. By the time we arrived at the wifi café ten minutes later, the floods had begun. Water was everywhere, and the streets were essentially small rivers. This was an even bigger problem, considering the fact that the street in front of the wifi café is gone. It was torn up a couple of weeks ago, and what used to be a three-lane road is now a giant ditch of dirt. Given the fact that it was pouring rain, this had turned into mud underneath flowing water that was deeper than my ankles. There is no other way…no detour, no way around the giant torn-up road. You have to cross it to get to the café. So, we did. As sheets of rain came down, we climbed down a small mud cliff into the ditch. As we made our way across, the strong current tried to capture my flip-flop. It came off my foot and began floating down stream. I chased it, half bare-foot, and luckily got it back. We then climbed up the other side, another mud cliff, and made it safely inside. We are soaked. My pants are so wet, and my feet are so muddy. We went on this adventure just to be able to Skype with our favorite people back home. And you know what? The wireless internet is still out. While the adventure was exciting, I sure hope it wasn’t all for nothing!
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