We sucked in our breaths, dragged our suitcases over to a non-crowded corner and began gutting. It’s amazing what suddenly becomes disposable when you have to pay $90 for every extra kilogram. After about forty-five minutes of wistful tossing, we finally whittled our luggage down to an acceptable weight. Definitely one of the worst experiences I’ve had with check-in before.
The flight was 29 hours long (including the layovers and such). On Emirates, it wasn’t bad at all. They had personal TV screens with on demand movies. Gourmet meals every few hours. I managed to get about 7 hours of sleep and watch about 5 movies. Another highlight was that, flying out from out layover in Dubai, I got to see the tallest building in the world from the window of the aircraft. It’s pretty dang tall.
So we’ve finally made it here to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, David’s homeland. We arrived rather weary and jet-lagged at 12:00 in the afternoon. One of David’s childhood friends, Biruk, met us at the airport. It was so wonderful to have a friend who speaks the language fluently. He haggled with cab drivers for us and helped us get to our guesthouse without any hitches. David and Biruk spent the afternoon catching up over the six years that David has been away while I fought off the urgent urge to take a nap. Over the past year I’ve learned well that the best cure to jet lag is to just make your body submit to the local schedule, ie, wait until nighttime to sleep.
First impressions of Addis Ababa. This city actually reminds me a good deal of La Paz, Bolivia. Something about the atmosphere of the streets: the dust and exhaust, the way tiny wooden shops proudly display cultural handicrafts, the broken sidewalks, the old, beaten cabs. While we’re in the thick of the capital city, it’s sometimes hard to believe that this isn’t some sort of outlying suburbs. It’s not thick or terribly crowded like Seoul. The buildings are all almost uniformally one storey tall, occasionally two or three. There seems to be a very deep cultural heritage here, different than the sort of Korea or Cambodia or Bolivia. I think much of this is due to the fact that Ethiopia has never been enslaved or overrun by a culture different than theirs. I’m told they’re one of the only nations in Africa that has never been officially colonized.
The guesthouse we stayed at in Addis!
First time in Africa!
I got a very good taste of that heritage when Biruk and another Ethiopian friend named Addis took us to a cultural restaurant for dinner. I’ve had Ethiopian food before with the Strausses in Charlotte, but this food was on another level of goodness! injerabowat is their traditional food. It’s a dish that consists of a very flat, spongy pancake-like bread (injera) and a bunch of different sauces with meat, vegetables and butter all brewed into tons of spices (bowat) on top of it. You use your hands to tear off pieces of the bread and dip it into the meat. Overall it’s quiet a filling and satisfying meal.
The restaurant we went to had performers playing traditional music and dancers performing traditional dances. Biruk and Addis thought it would be a clever idea to have David and I get up and dance on the stage in front of the entire packed restaurant. They wrote a clever note to the band members, who then coaxed us up on stage and got us to dance. It was challenging, and I’m sure I made a fool of myself, but at least I had the guts to go through with it!
Our first full day in Addis was spent catching up with people David knew as a kid and going to sights that were familiar to him. We went to the very dusty Merkato, where everyone yelled “Ferengie!” (foreigner!) whenever we passed by.
We also went to the compound where David and his family lived when he was growing up. It was like an oasis apart from the city, with lush gardens and yards, clean, well-fed dogs with glossy fur, swingsets and stucco houses. It looked like a nice place to grow up. David says he doesn’t recognize a lot of it. Things change when you’ve been away for almost ten years!
When we were done visiting the press, we went to see Chaltu, David’s “second mother.” Chaltu helped the Strausses out with the household chores and such. She was a very sweet woman, and I could tell she loved David very much from the way she wouldn’t let go of him when she first saw him. She doesn’t speak too much English, and David doesn’t speak much Amheric, so communication was a bit limited. We sat around looking at old photos and eating while she held David’s hand and said his name over and over again (they pronounce it Dawit). I was still full from a huge lunch of injera, but she was quite insistent that I eat a lot. I had to keep eating, lest she think I didn’t like her food. By the time we left my stomach was bulging!
Unfortunately, later that night, the Enjera came back to haunt me. =( Which was no fun at all. The next day I felt weak and terribly dehydrated. So I hung around the guesthouse for the morning while David tramped around Addis and took pictures the whole morning. By lunchtime I was feeling better. Enough to be willing to go with David to tour some more of his childhood stomping grounds. These included ETC, the church and school were David’s father helped found (he taught classes there as well) and Bingham Academy, the school David attended when he was a child. Both of these places were a lot like the press compound in that they were lush and green and very well kempt. Very unlike the rest of Addis.
While I really enjoyed visiting these childhood places of David’s in Addis, I confided to him that I though it would be really hard for me to live in the city for a long amount of time. It’s just too barren, too full of dust and diesel fumes, too littered with trash. I know this sounds selfish of me. I’ve been married into a family that lived there for nearly twenty whole years. I greatly admire the dedication and commitment that shows to their calling there. God would definitely have to give me a special grace to stay long term in such a place. David and I had such different childhoods!
No comments:
Post a Comment