After suffering from some over scheduling yesterday and the resulting meltdowns and other behavior, we decided to take it really easy today, and overdid it a tad. The only outing we had planned was to go to the airport right after breakfast to get the luggage, which left the ENTIRE rest of the day unplanned. Of course we had a few ideas of things we could do here at the guesthouse, but in reality we were sadly underprepared. The critical error is our reliance on parks and other outdoor spaces that we have such awesome access to at home, so killing an hour or two isn't that hard at home, but there just aren't places like that here. To try to keep ourselves from going insane, we ended up going for 3 walks to various destinations (or with no destination), colored with chalk, played with balloons, played in the hose that was running when we came home from one walk, played soccer, hide and seek, tinker toys, Legos. and Yeb got a good nap this afternoon. Despite all that, we still suffered the effect of some boredom.
The guesthouse is in a nice residential part of Addis, where the streets are cobblestone, the outside of people's gates has some trees or other foliage, and the people we met while walking around seemed more well to do than most of the city. Our 2nd walk of the day was to search for a little store that sold soccer balls. Our big mistake was to take the double umbrella stroller that we brought for the airports coming home, but we thought it would be fun to let the boys ride in it. As we were leaving the guesthouse I realized that I hadn't ever seen any strollers here in Ethiopia, and yep, as if we weren't already very visible, the stroller pretty much made us into a circus act. Both boys were really excited to ride in it, but as soon as we got outside the gate Tam was embarrassed and insisted on walking, and then commenced to make fun of Yeb for being in the stroller. Fortunately, Yeb was still waking up from a nap, and couldn't care less. After we found and bought a soccer ball, Tam decided he wanted to ride, too, until a passerby made a disparaging remark about strollers, and then Tam wanted nothing to do with it again.
After buying a ball we went down a quiet side street to kick it around, but after about 5 minutes the boys seemed ready to go, and as we started heading back to the guesthouse we realized that there was piece of wire wound in one of the stroller wheels. We stopped to try to get it put, and after about a minute a young teenage boy came up and asked if he could help. Pretty soon a whole bunch of his teenage friends were gathered around, with them and Kerry all trying to get the wire out, and a couple of them kicking the ball around with Tam. They were such good kids! They were able to fix it after about 15 minutes with the help of some pliers one of them borrowed from his house, and we were sad to say goodbye. The funny thing was the actual conversation I had with one of them where I had to explain the purpose of the stroller, and where he politely tried to hide that he was perplexed about why anyone would need such a thing.
The day ended with us walking to the little store to buy some snacks for the trip home, where we as ones that the price of snacks and juice was going to be a lot cheaper than mental health treatment if we stayed put all evening. After buying some cookies and mango juice awe sat on the ledge next to the sidewalk and ate them and watched cars go past. The highlight (for me at least) was watching the boys reactions when a man herded a cow down the sidewalk right in front of us. They seriously had no idea what to think, and we had to convince them they weren't in danger. The weather was beautiful, people were out and about, and he sun was starting to set, and it made me really sad that we're leaving tomorrow. On the other hand, living out of a hotel room long term isn't tempting, and we sure miss Kate and are excited to get home to her and family!
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