Ghion Hotel Pool

On our first trip to Ethiopia, we stayed at the Ghion Hotel. We stayed in the Riviera Suites, right across from the pool. The day after we got our little girl, we deicided to try out the swimming pool.

We got our suits and towels and walked over. It was a lovely warm day– probably close to 80 degrees– and we thought the water would feel nice. We didn’t discover til we were right up to the little fence around the pool that we needed to get a pass from the front desk of the main hotel.

The main hotel is up a STEEP hill from the pool and the Riviera Suites, and with jetlag and the high altitude (Addis is at 8,000 feet) you get to feeling breathless pretty quickly. But the pass was needed, so up the hill we trekked in our swimsuits and shorts.

Since I’d heard women usually dress very conservatively in Ethiopia, I was a mite uncomfortable walking into the lobby dressed that way. But it felt like way too much work to go all the way back to our room (carrying my 27 lb one year old!) for more clothing before walking up to the hotel.

The desk clerk was on the phone when we got there, but after one look at our attire, he wrote us a pass without even pausing his phone conversation. Back at the pool we showed our slip of paper and this time were let past the fence.

The fence was ringed by men just standing around, watching people swim. It struck me as a bit odd that all those men had nothing better to do. Later I found that adoptive families usually prefer the pool at the Hilton or the Sheraton, just for this reason.

Flanking opposite sides of the pool were open showers labeled Women’s and Men’s. On the women’s side a lady stood under a shower with her suit down to her waist as she nonchalantly shampooed her hair. No wonder there were so many guys standing around! Another lady swam wearing only a white bra and undies– not much different than a bikini, I know, but not something I’d seen in the US.

There were two pools, a shallow one where kids splashed and played, and another one complete with swimming lanes, starting blocks, and three diving boards. My toddler was wide-eyed just at the sight of those pools, and once we got into the shallow one, she lost it. It was the first time we heard her cry since we had gotten her the day before.

I tried to hold her up out of the water– it was hip-high on me– and just gradually ease her an inch at a time into the water but she would have nothing to do with it. She whimpered when her whole body was out of the water, and howled when any part of her entered the water. After 10 minutes or so of trying to soothe her, we gave up and headed back to our room. So much for swimming!

Note: on our second trip to Ethiopia, we were able to see the pool at the Hilton, and thought it looked much nicer. It still probably would have terrified my toddler though. The funny thing is that nowadays, she is a regular fish. She got over her fear of water very quickly after she got home.

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