Addis Ababa - the departure
Finding Addis again after 3 years of absence is like seeing an old friend again...the feeling of change is always present just as three years earlier but in reality everything has remained unchanged, the usual piles of rubble, the usual construction sites, the usual beggars, the usual feeling of unease. Then you look around carefully and you realize that maybe there are fewer beggars, more multi-story buildings, more construction sites, more rubble and certainly more cars. The purpose of our stay in Addis is purely bureaucratic-administrative-representational: permits to wander in the desolate valleys of the South, ministerial letters of introduction, dinners at embassies and Cultural Centers, and so on. Nothing prevents us in the few hours we have available from taking a tour of the city and its attractions.
And so off we go to see again the copy of Lucy at the Archaeological Museum and the (beautiful) Ethnographic Museum, the self-celebratory Cathedral of Haile Selassie and the monument to Menelik, the very long, very busy and entirely uphill Churchill Road, the increasingly decadent Square, exquisitely Italic in style, the excellent pastry shops where (in violation of the most elementary preventive rules) you can stuff yourself with cream pastries, the unpaved little streets cluttered with garbage on the edges of the center climbing up the hills that surround the capital, the arguments with all the taxi drivers who don't have the faintest idea of the places where you ask to be taken (try asking to be taken to Queen Elisabeth Road and you'll see...), the luxurious Hilton and Sheraton, the enormous and very hot Meskel Square decorated with maxi-screens broadcasting advertising 24/24 h, and so
on. In short, nothing has changed in 3 years but everything seems to have, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Addis is not a memorable city, it isn't beautiful, it doesn't have much to see, but it is extremely alive day and night. You leave with the desire to return and to stay and live there, who knows why? Anyway it's time to pack our bags, the valleys and the peoples of the South are waiting for us and returning to Addis after almost a month of discomfort always has a very positive effect.
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