Where It All Began

Addis street scene
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By Dan

Having spent a lot of time listening to Bob Marley and his pals over the years, it felt like living one of his songs as we left Babylon and landed in the promised land of Ethiopia. Oh, what a change! Our overnight train from Luxor to Cairo didn’t allow for a lot of sleep, and our flight from Cairo to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia left the next night at 10 pm, landing at 2:45 am Addis time (with one hour further of time change, we are now 11 hours ahead of California time). So, we were a little loopy from travel fatigue. The Addis airport was pretty quiet in the wee hours of the morning, but we immediately felt an absolutely wonderful vibe about the people and the place, and Christina and I, who have been huge fans of Africa for a very long time, exchanged knowing grins and mouthed to each other something along the lines of “We’re home again.” Egypt may be on the African continent, but it just isn’t real Africa.

shoe seller
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Making it feel all the more special was the recognition that we are, truly, in the cradle of mankind. The Leakeys, Cal’s Tim White, and every other paleontologist or anthropologist worth his or her salt has spent a lot of time passing through Addis, because of all of the great fossil discoveries found around here. Read your evolution books: it all started in East Africa, and probably Ethiopia in particular. More on that in a subsequent entry.

Addis was a real mystery to us – we just didn’t know what to expect. Initial impressions from the blurry eyed, 20 minute drive in the middle of the night to our hotel were that it was clean, spread out, not too crowded, and surprisingly developed. We also got our first flavor of the whole Ethiopian running thing, as we saw a guy out on a training run at about 3:45 am. Let’s just say I didn’t suggest that I join him. Addis sits at about 8300 feet above sea level, too, so running (or even walking up stairs) is not something one does lightly! A few days later, driving to the airport at 6 am (yeah, we’ve got to work on taking flights at more civilized hours), we must have seen two dozen runners in 15 minutes. It’s huge here! For the record, we probably hadn’t seen more than a dozen runners in the entire 3 months we’ve been on the road, and most of those looked like tourists, so to find so many here was very interesting.

future beauties
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Ethiopia is also living up to another stereotype: wow, are the females in this country gorgeous! From little girls who look like they’re going to candidates for “America’s Next Supermodel” in a few years; to young women who exude this amazing confidence along with their spectacular looks; to older women who have this spectacular dignity along with the good bones – it’s a real feast for the eyes. We had told the kids that Ethiopian women are the most beautiful in the world and our prediction turned out to be accurate. Of course, just to clarify, none of them could hold a candle to Christina. . . .

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Addis is the fourth largest city in Africa by population (don’t ask me what’s bigger, other than Cairo), and really spread out. It’s situated on a bunch of rolling hills, with higher, tree-covered hills in the farther distance. The good vibe we felt in the airport continued, as we started to look around. We’re definitely in a developing country, as was evident from the places where paved roads suddenly turned to dirt for extended distances, the ramshackle shops lining the streets, the hawkers who descend upon cars at every stoplight, and the taxis that all threaten to expire as they labor their way up the hills in town. But, we loved the friendly attitude displayed by almost everyone we talked to, the tremendous pride that people have in their country, and the relaxed feel to things. After the edginess of Egypt, it was nice to be here.

I think we knew that this was going to happen somewhere along the road, and in some ways I’m surprised that we dodged it as long as we did, but we’ve been hit with a bout of homesickness (probably symptomatic of the more challenging issue of culture shock) in our younger travelers. I thought it was going to hit in Egypt, which felt like a step from T-Ball to the Big Leagues in terms of intensity of the travel experience. Apparently, the kids were able to look past the roughness, the poverty, the grime, etc., in Egypt, because they understood that Egypt was all about the pyramids and the antiquities. (Of course, Christina and I thought that Egypt was also all about the people and their lives, but that’s the difference between the middle-aged and the pre-pubescent view . . . .) The whole reason for being in Ethiopia hasn’t yet become quite clear to the kids, and so they’re struggling with why we’ve chosen to come to a place where we get accosted by beggars at every stop light, see people with physical handicaps hobbling along on almost every block, and have to put up with mysterious foods that are pretty gross tasting. It’s all about perspective, eh? Like any good Americans raised on consumerism, we engaged in a little retail therapy for the kids by taking them to the nicest Italian restaurant in town, where the photos of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Jimmy Carter’s visits line the walls. The food was great, the tales of Christina’s and my prior bouts of culture shock may have resonated, and the kids’ outlooks seem to have improved significantly, I’m glad to report.

I’m also glad to report that Ethiopia is completely living up to the high expectations of the older members of our traveling contingent, and we are fully confident that our enthusiasm, coupled with getting out of Addis and into the cool historical stuff to the north, will go along way towards curing the homesickness/culture shock. The arrival of Nana in 3-1/2 weeks, the safari in East Africa, and catching up with Papa and Jojo soon thereafter should complete the cure.