# The Addis Ababa zoo

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The Addis Ababa zoo," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-addis-ababa-zoo/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*A visit John Kiriakou made to the zoo in Addis Ababa on a free half-day, where he watched keepers force a screaming donkey into the lion enclosure, and noted the two-tier admission price charged to foreigners.*

Kiriakou introduces the story as a way of filling time. He was in Addis Ababa with half a day and nothing to do, so he went to the zoo. [1]

## What he saw

There were, in his account, three or four zoo workers pulling and pushing a screaming donkey into the lions' cage. The animal was "doing everything it can to fight being pushed into the lion's cage." [2] The lions then tore it to pieces. [2]

Kiriakou's own verdict is brief and unhedged: "It was bad." He does not soften it, and when his co-host twice volunteered that he would have wanted to watch, Kiriakou did not join him. [2]

The context in which the story arises is a Danish zoo's public appeal for unwanted pets to feed to its predators, which Kiriakou and Rall had been discussing with a mixture of horror and amusement. Kiriakou offers Addis Ababa as the harder version of the same thing, not a policy announcement but something he stood and watched. [1]

## The admission price

The detail Kiriakou adds without prompting concerns the gate. "They gouge you if you're a Westerner," he says: roughly a nickel to get in as an Ethiopian, and about a dollar if you are not. [2]

## Foreign zoos generally

Asked whether zoos elsewhere are like this, Kiriakou agrees that the ones in Central Asia and comparable places are rough and "not up to the high standards", a judgement his co-host immediately relativised by pointing out that the Central Park Zoo in New York used to be awful too. Kiriakou's reply was a single word of agreement. [3]

The episode is one of a small set of unglamorous travel recollections Kiriakou offers from his overseas career, told without a lesson attached.

## See also

- [The best meal overseas](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-best-meal-overseas)
- [Qat in Yemen](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/qat-in-yemen)
- [The bowl of dates](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-bowl-of-dates)

## Sources

1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-06), at 56:26. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnuGCFlPKaI&t=3386s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-06-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-LnuGCF/
2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-06), at 56:57. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnuGCFlPKaI&t=3417s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-06-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-LnuGCF/
3. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-06), at 57:29. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnuGCFlPKaI&t=3449s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-06-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-LnuGCF/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-addis-ababa-zoo/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt