The NGO bazaar is the reason most faranji homes look alike on the inside.

On the last Saturday of every month, a group of NGOs holds a bazaar at the Evangelical International College in the Sar Bet neighborhood.  NGO stands for non-governmental organization, those charitable missions that non-profit citizen groups (not governments) in first-world countries put together to do good works in third-world countries.  Some of those groups organize projects that help Ethiopians to help themselves through the production of arts and crafts.

There is a group of blind women who knit sweaters; teenagers who use banana leaves to decorate greeting cards; a mission in a rural region that keeps bees for honey to sell; and a cooperative that recycles used office paper into papier mache boxes and children’s furniture.  Their products are just a few of things you will find on offer at the NGO bazaar.  And decorating the homes of ICS teachers and NGO employees and volunteers.

This month the bazaar was a week early because next weekend is the long Meskel holiday.  We browsed last month but didn’t bring enough money to get much.  Yesterday we brought sufficient funds, and here are the treasures we came home with.

Now our apartment can look like everyone else’s.