Keep in mind, there are no showrooms full of pre-made furniture. The concept of an Art Van like experience has not yet hit this part of Ethiopia. There is no store brimming with overly helpful salespeople who follow you around pointing out the various features of the new-fangled overstuffed chair, who trip over themselves while scrambling to get the perfect fabric swatch, or convince you that scotch-guarding and a 5 year protection plan is a must have. Instead you wade through the saw dust and around the rip saw (which happens to be running at the moment) to be shown really poor photos taken at a distance of furniture that this particular shop has made at some point in the past.
After experiencing this with Smith a month earlier, I decided to come prepared. I looked up pertinent Amharic words (shelf, drawer, wood, etc), drew up a nice sketch complete with dimensions (in meters nonetheless) of a kum satin (wardrobe) and a dining table with chairs. The only thing I forgot was the earplugs! Zeleke, my co-worker, and I then proceed to hit 6 different woodshops over the course of 2 ½ hours. We eventually settled on a woodworker who seemed to understand my design and was willing to give me a "habesha" price. I paid him half of the total cost upfront, crossed my fingers, warned him that I too was a furniture maker and knew quality from crap and was told to return in 2 weeks time.
I returned 2 weeks later and was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was the work completed on time, but the quality wasn't half bad. Ok…now back to the Art Van analogy. There is no nice little delivery truck just waiting to transport your shrink-wrapped, scotch-guarded purchases through nicely paved streets to one's home sometime between 8a and 2pm. Knowing that transportation was going to be a hassle, I decided to fortify myself with a macchiato and chocolate donut. I find that it is always best to be on a sugar-high when dealing with challenging things LIFE here. So…while sipping my macchiato and problem solving with my friend Eden (a PCV from a nearby town), the manager of the establishment overheard my quandary and offered to help. He sent me over to what I now refer to as the truck yard. For the outlandish price of 150birr, these men were more than willing to load up my paltry amount of furniture and drive it the 2km to my home. Ridiculous!
They were not willing to reduce their price and so I moved on to plan B…which at that point in time was not yet formed. I headed over to the woodshop and found the owner to be so helpful. Within 5 minutes time, he had found 4 men who were willing to walk the furniture to my place for a total of 20birr (a touch over 2 dollars). It took two trips to walk the furniture from one side of town to the other, but it arrived safe and sound, and nicely coated in a layer of Ethiopian dust and grime.
