June 12, 2010

9:30PM

We were given a membership to the Dallas Zoo this year and although it made Josie VERY happy to get to go see the animals and ride the carousel whenever she wanted, deep down it made me very nervous. If you’ve ever been to the zoo with me, you probably know that I get quite jumpy and right on the verge of a panic attack while I’m there. I really do. There is something so scary about lots of wild, very wild, animals being caged up and being gawked at day after day after day. And, as we all know, sometimes those wild, very wild animals get OUT. (I’m not sure when this fear started, because I’m sure I loved the zoo as a kid!)

When Ethan and Amber took me on safari in Massai Mara six years ago, my fears of zoos only deepened. Actually SEEING with my own eyes these wild, very wild animals in the wild, only solidified my theories about caging them in cute little zoos. In the wild, they really weren’t scary at all. They were the way they were made to be.

I’m not talking about animal cruelty necessarily or anything really like that. Mainly I’m just saying I’m scared almost speechless sometimes at the zoo.

Having children has made me brave. I now have a membership to a zoo. The fear is still there, but I love going now…even if sometimes I am scared.

All that to say, today we visited the Ambasa Zoo of Addis Ababa. That’s Lion Zoo for those of you unfamiliar with Amheric. Lion. Zoo.

I knew I was in for something intense. And I was right.

First we walked, along with Tommy and Mary, the German couple on our team from DTS, down the big hill to a stoplight/mini bus/taxi area.

Side Note:

Mini buses are cheap – 1 birr usually for a ride from stop to stop – in and about the city, this is how the majority of Ethiopians get around. They are small min-vans and there is a driver and a call boy – the driver sits in the, you guessed it, driver’s seat and the call boy stands on the sidewalk or ditch yelling out the mini-bus’ stops. There will be mini bus after mini bus stacked along the side of the road, and call boy after call boy yelling all their stops as you walk by. Its loud and almost harmonic. Once the mini bus is full – and by full I mean EVERY seat and most other areas as well, the call boy will hop in and hang half out the window and off you go…at some point during the ride he will start asking for money, and birrs will be handed in from all over the bus. It’s a little chaotic and smelly, but overall, it very much feels like we are embracing Addis Ababa life when we’ve ridden in them.

Contract taxis are more like US taxi’s – you get their attention, they pull over to designated spots and you get in. You haggle prices, though, so you may go from taxi to taxi trying to get one of the drivers to take the price you’re offering. They are small for door white and blue colored cars. These are “nice”, because it is a one stop shop. You pay, you are the only rider and the driver takes you all the way to wherever you want to go.

So, since the mini-buses were packed, we decided to try and find a contract taxi willing to take the five of us (plus Lucy who I was wearing) all the way to the Lion Zoo, which is about a 15 minute car ride. Jeremiah was the man in charge of this trip, asking around for directions before we left, making sure he knew what mini-bus stops we would need to take to get there, etc. He is already speaking quite a few Amheric words and phrases so he bargained with a contract taxi at the bottom of the hill and got him down from 50 birr to 30. Not bad. We all piled into the tiny four door car and off we went.

Our driver used quite a few side streets which had me mentally and emotionally and finally spiritually dealing with major worse case scenarios of kidnapping and worse things of that nature…just kidding…sort of. Reason number 106 why never to watch 20/20 or Dateline again. It’s the same reason I stopped watching CSI in college. Sigh.

So we made it to the Lion Zoo. Paid our fee (and our camera fee) and waved goodbye to our sketchy-short-cut-knowing contract taxi driver. We were some of the main attractions there, though…foreigners. Lots of eyes and waves our direction from the minute we walked through the gate. We had a group of 12 year old girls follow us around for over half an hour just staring at Josie. At one point they were brave enough to come and touch her face and kiss her cheeks. She sat, wide eyed and we waited for her to push them away. She did not. She didn’t smile, but she did let them invade her space without a fight.

The black-manned lions the zoo boasts of are caged in by bars and then chicken wire (?) on 3 sides and a cement wall with a gate at the back of their cage. The zoo is set up in a circle, with cage after cage to look in as you walk around the circular sidewalk. All the cages have some kind of raw meat/bone dealio for a special lion treat. You can literally get RIGHT next to the lion with only a row of bars and a wire fence between you.

So I may be a bit skittish at zoos, but that’s just FREAKY, there is no way around it!

What’s even more frightening is that people get sticks and taunt the animals so they will growl and hiss and open their mouths at you. When this one guy saw we were foreigners trying to tak pictures of a certain lion, he physically TOUCHED the lion. The wild, African lion. He touched it with his hand. That lion whipped it’s head around so fast, I seriously thought we might be paying for counseling for Josie (and me) from this day forward to work through post traumatic stress disorder. Oh my word, if I would have seen a lion bite off someone’s hand right there, I would have flipped.

I wouldn’t have blamed the lion though…it’s got to be downright annoying to be caged up like that. At least at most zoos, an attempt is made for a somewhat natural habitat.

ANYWAY – the Lion Zoo was in fact, intense.

The rain and hail we got caught in as we were leaving was also intense. So as the rain poured down, we piled under a covering with a bunch of people waiting for it to pass…I guess we waited for about 30 minutes as we ate ice cream cones (stamped with “Ethiopia 2000” on it – oops – didn’t see that until we were DONE. It’s only 2 years old…it’s only 2002 here, but that’s another story…but still, definitely expired.). After the hail stopped, we decided to give it a try and head out to the streets to find another mini bus or taxi to bring us home.

The hail stopped, but the rain did not, and as I was tromping around massive mud puddles with Lucy tightly wrapped in the Moby, and zipped up under my North Face while watching Jeremiah hold Josie in her cute rainjacket under an umbrella, I thought “we are really in Ethiopia”.

We eventually found a row of contract taxi’s and Mary, Josie, Me and Lucy (one and the same these days) stepped under an awning– a very small awning – to escape getting even wetter than we were, of a barber shop while the guys tried to negotiate a good price going from car to car getting more and more soaked. It was obvious we were going to be there awhile, so I peaked my head into the barber shop (the size of a small hallway) and once the barber and others saw I had a baby under my jacket, they invited us inside out of the rain.

Thank you Lucy. (we have found she’s been rather handy to have around this trip – seats in the bulkhead of the plane with ample leg room, checking in our bags with first class, first boarding, lots of smiles here as “Lucy” is quite famous around Ethiopia, and now a dry place to wait.)

It didn’t take much convincing…we were snug inside that little shop watching Korea & Greece in the World Cup in a matter of seconds. And eventually the guys persuaded a driver with a decent price to take us all the way to the gate of the SIM Guesthouse! Yes! And this time we took the main roads, which set my mind at ease.

It’s time for the ENG/USA soccer game, so I better get a seat in the tv room before it’s packed. Kind of wishing we could order a pizza while we watch but will settle for a bag of Kollo (roasted seeds/nuts) instead!