The Showa Gate

Typical colorful Harari house

Considered to be the fourth holiest city in Islam, Harar's walled old city contains perhaps the world's greatest concentration of mosques, devout women in headscarves, and while I was there, a joyful population preparing to celebrate Eid Al-Adha. Outside its graceful white walls and atmospheric alleyways, the hectic, densely-inhabited modern city feels like a giant open-air market.

Upon retrieving my backpack off the bus' roof, I gaped at the seething crowd until my kind seatmate grabbed my arm. As we walked through the station, the baggage handler yelled in Amharic until she pushed a tip into his waiting hand.

She pulled me into her friend Efraim's mototaxi. Tewodros Hotel was only a short walk away, but I had heavy bags and hundreds of eyes on me; in the brief period since touching down in Ethiopia, I'd already sensed the infamous "ferengi-hysteria" building.

The eager young receptionist at Tewodros spoke only halting English. Immediately after showing me my room, he gently recommended the resident guide's services. Disoriented, I told him I wasn't sure yet; uncomprehendingly, he asked me several more times.

The Harar Gate, the Haile Selassie-era addition to the five traditional gates into the old city, was close to the hotel. Within minutes of entering the wall, Efraim drove up on the wide main road with a big smile.

"Remember! I am here if you need anything! Do you still have my number? Write it down again!"

I wish I'd had the nerve to call and taken the opportunity to hang out with locals. But it's difficult enough for a woman to trust strange men without being the one initiating a meeting—what impression does that give?—and there was no guarantee he'd invite the girl from the bus.

We made small talk as a couple kids sidled up to the mototaxi. They acted like they knew Efraim, but soon it was apparent it was just my first case of "ferenjo, ferenjo, let me be your guide..."

The young boy who was pretending to guide me through the old city
Unable to shake them, I allowed the small boys—who claimed to be 16—to show me their city. Ambling vaguely along the cobbled dusty alleys, the kids served as nothing more than company; yet I depended on them to get me out. While my guidebook claimed it was impossible to really get lost as long as one followed the wall, I couldn't see the wall.

Traditional Harar décor

The boys led me to a traditional Harari home, now a guesthouse requiring a few birr to visit. A woman showed me around while a young man—perhaps her son—impassively watched TV in the main room, its high walls covered in the famous Harari pottery and baskets.

While I hadn't expressed interest in shopping, the boys took me to a small store with beautiful baskets on display. As I examined the work, the lead boy noted, "white people sure love baskets!" I'd been previously informed that Africans consider all non-blacks to be white, but was still startled. Me? White?

Street tailors

We strolled past the street tailors of Mekena Girgir into the odoriferous meat market, surrounded by optimistic birds of prey. A man struggling with a camel's bloody head insisted I take his photo for one birr. I didn't even want the picture but as the crowd grew around me, I didn't know what else to do but agree.

"Jamaican" family at the market

A merchant woman in a makeshift tent called out, "American? American!" Cackling, she called herself a Jamaican, revealing her mass of dreadlocks as proof. A refugee from Shashemene lost in Harar? I refused the plain injera she offered to share but took a few photos of her adorable child, after which she screamed out for money but didn't chase me down.

A car pulled up and the men inside asked where I was from. "New York," I said. Mysteriously, they then screamed "GROUND ZERO!" with huge grins, pumping their fists joyfully.

We left the market and exited through Showa Gate, surrounded by another market. The boys had repeatedly asked me to see the hyena man with them, but still exhausted from the journey, I repeatedly deflected. One tried to convince me the hyena man was his father, and their persistence won me over in the end. They ran off before we reached the hotel, begging me to say nothing to the live-in guide at Tewodros.

The hotel guide Guma approached immediately and informed me that it was illegal to see the hyenas with my unofficial child guides; whether or not that was true, I decided it was easier to go with him instead of some random kids. Almost an hour early, he knocked on my door and awoke me from a long-delayed deep slumber. We rescheduled for the following day.

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