Addis Ababa Neighborhood Shopping Experience in Ethiopia
Discover a neighborhood en route to Mount Entoto, the highest peak overlooking the capital city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
We drove up Entoto Mountain North of Addis Ababa in hopes of finding a great view of the city. There is a good lookout point at the top, but unfortunately, it was too overcast to get good photos or footage. The drive itself, past Addis Ababa University and through Shiro Meda, a colorful local market area, was a fun look into real Ethiopian neighborhood culture.
Shiro Meda is an area where locals shop for colorful and reasonably prices textile products, like local dresses and clothing. It's on the outskirts of the city on on the way up Entoto Road past Kuskam, so you’d pass right through it and you’ll notice it, as there is stall after stall of clothing, fruits and vegetables and people everywhere. We stopped to look around and film some of the color.
Further up Entoto, we passed thick woods of Eucalyptus trees and rolling mountains, as well as lots of women and children with donkeys carried dry dung and firewood, used for heat and cooking.
It’s illegal for people to cut down trees in this area for wood, so people search for branches and whatever is lying around on the floor of the forest. It’s very much still a subsistence lifestyle for many people in Ethiopia, who depend on agriculture to survive.
Since it was too cloudy to get a good photo of the view from Entoto, I instead leave you with this photo from my hotel, the Sheraton in Addis, truly a five star place, located right near the U.N. Addis is a hub for African conferences, the headquarters for the U.N. for Africa and the Africa Union.
