THE ART OF WALKING HOME FROM WORK

The end of the road....

Drying....

Cleaning.....!!!

This is just a fraction of the mud that was actually attached to our shoes....

Outside my compound

So, Bernadette was meeting me after work to come visit my place and spend the night there. We met at the main road at the embassy, and started walking towards the junction where the minibuses stop. It had been raining heavily earlier that day, and the roads were already muddy. All of a sudden it started raining again, this time really heavily. We had to stop and just stand at the entrance of one of the shops along the roadside so that we wouldn’t get completely soaked. You can’t believe how it rained. In a few minutes there was a river running along the road. After a while, the rain stopped, and we could move on. When we came to the junction, we realized that we were not going to be able to get to the minibus taxis without having to step in the mud. The company who is building the roads all of a sudden just decided to cut the road off just like that, and now there was this big steep edge that we had to get passed to get down to the road from where the minibuses go. We started moving through the mud, I wearing my high healed shoes that were just completely inappropriate for that kind of weather. Well, I didn’t expect it to be like this - after all, the sun was shining when I went to work that morning. Anyway, after a little while, my shoes were completely covered in this thick, sticky, greasy mud, and I felt that if I didn’t have anybody help me down this edge, I was going to fall and just be completely covered in mud. Wearing my white cardigan and my new purse I wasn’t really ready for that, so Bernadette, who magically managed to get down without too much problems, came to help me. And all of a sudden there was this Ethiopian guy next to me, very eager to help. He grabbed my arm with his muddy hands, so my intention to keep my white cardigan free from mud till I got home just completely failed. Around us there was several groups of people observing my frantic effort to get myself out of this troubled situation. Yes, I guess it must have been an amusing sight, and I can really see that it would look funny and would make you laugh, but I wasn’t really in the laughing mood that day. I was about to resign and just sit down and cry hysterically, I was so mad, but somehow I managed to get down from that awful place, and we could get into the dirty minibus and get ourselves home. Outside my compound there were rivers of water running, it had obviously been raining there as well (rainy showers tend to be quite local in Addis). Well, finally at home we had to start the business of cleaning our shoes. You wont believe how thick the layer of mud was!!!! And so greasy……We spent quite a while digging our way back to our shoes, and then we wrapped them in newspapers and left them to dry. Having calmed myself down, and eaten my dinner, I was able to at least smile at the whole thing. I know one thing, though. I'm definitely going to bring my rubber boots back from Norway. And I used to complain about Bergen.....