The Money Tree by Chris Guillebeau

Author:Chris Guillebeau [Guillebeau, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

24.

When he woke up the next morning, Jake felt confused and refreshed at the same time. The confusion came when he looked outside his window and saw a flock of chickens fluttering about in the front yard. It took him a minute to remember he was more than nine thousand miles from home.

The sense of feeling refreshed came from sleeping in his first real bed in days. Who would have thought he’d have to come all the way to Ethiopia to get a good night’s sleep?

Maybe I should look into mattress reselling. All I’d need is a place to store one of them each night.

Entering the dining room, he found a simple breakfast spread laid out with bread, jam, coffee, and fruit. A note from Clarence said that he’d be back at seven thirty to pick him up.

Jake looked at his watch: 7:06. Enough time to grab a shower—not in the gym for once!—and a quick breakfast. They’d be traveling out of the city today, and he was eager to get to know the area more.

As he was finishing up his bread and fruit, he heard a car come to a stop outside. Clarence was in the passenger seat next to a different driver, not the one they’d had from the airport.

“Jake, this is my friend Yonas,” said Clarence when Jake hopped in the back.

“Mr. Jake, it is my deepest honor to meet you,” said Yonas.

“Nice to meet you, too, Yonas. Just ‘Jake’ is fine.”

“Okay, Mr. Jake. Are you ready to go to the village?”

They set off through the city, where for the first twenty minutes they saw more of the mobile market scene they’d encountered the previous day. Jake was hoping to buy a Warriors shirt for Zach, preferably one with the wrong championship date on it. He was pretty sure he didn’t have room for any giant stuffed animals in his carry-on bag.

They didn’t stop for either of those items, but when Clarence saw a man lugging a mesh net over his shoulder, he motioned to Yonas to pull over. Yonas waved to the man and they haggled for a few minutes, arguing good-naturedly about a price. When the negotiations had concluded, Clarence reached over from the passenger seat to give the man a few bills in local currency. The man handed over . . . a soccer ball.

“Are we going to play soccer?” Jake asked from the back. Both Clarence and Yonas thought this was funny. Clarence said something about how you never knew when you might need a soccer ball in this part of the world.

Before long, they’d left the main part of the city and the scenery changed. There were still plenty of people milling about at intersections, but everyone seemed much less in a hurry. Yonas pointed out various points of local pride, ranging from mills to markets to a new cell phone tower that everyone was talking about.

Jake thought the last attraction was a little odd—who points out a cell phone tower on a tour of their city?—but when he thought about it more, it made sense.

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