A Night on the Street in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - part 2

"three boys"
ethiopia journal – feb 19 part 2

We met at 11:00 and started walking. It didn’t take us long to start really talking about what we were going to do. Andrew (my fellow UCF adventurer) said something that I had thought a lot about. He said he was glad we were doing this but he realized that we would never really be able to identify with the street kids because we had showers, shelters and soft beds to go back to. I agreed! No amount of effort was going to allow us to fully identify with them, because it was only going to be one night, but for one night we would try.

I put on my jeans, a long sleeve shirt and a light pull over jacket. I left all my money and anything valuable at the SIM headquarters and we met Ephraim around 11:15. He said that he knew where some kids would be, so we followed him. Immediately we seemed to attract a lot of attention – one man who passed us began to turn around and follow us. Soon after he quit following us another man started following. I don’t think they were dangerous – just curious or maybe hoping to get some help from the two white guys. In hindsight, I should have worn a hooded sweatshirt (for a few reasons) that would have hidden our identity more. We walked a mile or two through the streets of Addis and suddenly three kids came running up to Ephraim.

(Ephraim –pictured in the first journal - seems to be a very trustworthy and responsible – almost too trustworthy! But he has been consistent throughout and seems to have a real heart for kids on the street. He demonstrates kind compassion and many of them know him by name. They yell to him as he walks by.)


The three boys were full of energy – at least they seemed to be. I asked their names, but all of them seemed to be too difficult to pronounce. I asked (through Ephraim) their ages and they told me 12, 8 and 9. It didn’t seem like they had a regular place to sleep, so we kept walking trying to find a place to sleep.

Just thinking of actually sleeping out on the streets almost made me vomit. Many times as we were walking on the sidewalk, I would be overwhelmed by the smell of stale urine, or the wreak of crap, or a funky combination of the two combined with a wet trash smell. I just hoped we could find a place that didn’t wreak. As we would walk I would step over puddle after puddle of urine - most of them very close to people who were sleeping on the sidewalks. We passed 100’s of people scattered along street after street. Each of them were usually covered up completely by a blanket. Some of them had some padding, but most were just lumps on the sidewalk. Several of the businesses we passed actually had night guards sitting or laying in front of them to keep everyone else away each night. It was awkward passing them in that you would think they would make you feel more secure, but in reality most of them are probably street people themselves and this is their job at night. Some of the nicer businesses actually had a small rectangular tin structure that one guard would sleep in while the other guard kept watch.

As we were trying to find a place to go to sleep, another man started following us, and then another. It wasn’t frightening at the time, just a little creepy. At some point you kind of realize that Andrew and I are some of the biggest, strongest guys around. We obviously didn’t have any weapons, but we did have some size on just about everyone around. (which is comforting because you don’t want to get into a foot race with an Ethiopian). We tried to lose these guys, but couldn’t. Finally Ephraim led us to a group of 5 or 6 street people who were huddled in a corner. It wasn’t what I had envisioned when I had the idea, but I was simply following Ephraim at this point. We asked if we could sit down and in Amharic they said that we could.