Chat, China and more at the Merkato market

We woke up the next day by Jordan knocking on our door and asking if we were okay. Why did he ask? Because it was 2:30 in the afternoon. We had slept more than 12 hours. Something I hadn't done since I was about 16. We cleared the fog in our brains with some excellent bunna (yes, that's Amharic for coffee) prepared by Weynshet. Then we loaded into the Landcruiser and headed to the Merkato market. Some say this is Africa's biggest open market. Don't know if that's true, but no doubt it's huge. Street after street with vendors selling all kinds of clothes, food, jewelry and various staples. We bought some beautiful hand-made shirts, scarves and a table cloth, after bargaining and drinking tea with the shop owner.
Our guidebook (Lonely Planet) said that at Merkato you can find everything from camels to AK 47's. We didn't see any hump-backed animals or assault rifles, but then we also visited only parts of this sprawling market. One thing struck us as interesting: seemingly most of the of the small, cheap plastic and/or electronic goods we saw at the market, including the flashlight we bought, were made in China. America and Europe, of course, have been flooded with cheap Chinese products for years, but it did surprise me to see the extent of it here. I had heard that the new ring road around Addis was built by the Chinese. For good and bad, China is making big inroads in Ethiopia, and probably throughout Africa, in many different ways.
Merkato was lively and colorful. Vendors shouting prices, children selling napkins and gum, people carrying a mountain of empty water jugs on their backs, taxis fighting for space with pedestrians. We saw no other forenjis (Amharic for foreigners, that is whites) here, and we got plenty of stares and hellos. But as was the case throughout our vacation, the glares and greetings were almost all the time of friendly nature. Almost. There was one guy at the Merkato, a bearded man probably around 50, who looked damnright irritated when he saw us. Even more so when he spotted our camera. We checked him out because of the green leaves that filled up his white sack. Someone told us it was chat. We had heard about chat. It's a mild stimulant, a natural drug, that is illegal in most of the world but popular in some parts of eastern Africa. In Ethiopia it used to be illegal but is now legal. Chew it for some time (hours, they say) and apparently you get a nice buzz, get all friendly, talkative, eager to wax philosophically. (Well, that's the positive spin on it; some say it mostly produces a headache.) Some Christians we talked to said chat is mostly a Muslim tradition. In neighboring Somalia, we've heard, it's become a huge social problem, where many if not most of the men spend their days dazily chewing chat. (For the record: One night in Addis we visited some friends who had a nice little garden where they grew thyme, sage and other spices -- as well as chat. The host broke off a few leaves for us. Chat, it turns out, has a slightly bitter taste. Not unpleasant. We didn't try nearly enough, though, to get even a little bit of the intoxicating effect.)
The guidebook had warned us about the Merkato. It said that while Addis Ababa and Ethiopia in general are very safe places with little crime, the Merkato can be an unpleasant exception. Here, the book said, if you're a forenji the risk of being robbed is real. So we had some apprehensions. As I can be a little absent minded, I had managed to tuck a 10-birr bill only halfway down my rear jeans pocket. One half of the bill stuck up, flapping in the wind like a little flag. I was unaware of this until someone tapped on my shoulder. A young guy with a friendly smile let me know that I might want to tuck my money in. Yes, we felt very safe throughout our vacation in Ethiopia. As it turned out, even at the Merkato, the one place we had been warned about, the locals turned out to be -- with one chat-chewing exception -- very friendly.