The Lion in the Gardens of the Guenet Hotel
On the last day of our 1962 Peace Corps training in Ethiopia, we had a farewell dinner at the Guenet Hotel in the Populari section of the capital Addis Ababa.
The Guenet Hotel, even in 1962, was one of the older hotels in Addis Ababa. It wasn’t in the center of town, but south of Smuts Street and down the hill from Mexico Square, several miles from where we were housed in the dormitories of Haile Selassie I University.
While out of the way, this small, two story rambling hotel, nevertheless, had a two-lane, American-style bowling alley, tennis courts, and most surprising of all, an African lion in its lush, tropical gardens.