My Last Two Days in Africa

The bus I was on actually went all the way to Addis , with an overnight stop over in Abra Minch. All up it was expected to take between 20 and 30 hours. I was dreading it. My clothes were soaked right through and I was shuddering from the cold. My legs were too long for the cramped little space and my bent knees were aching from pressing up against the seat in front of me.

We stopped along the way on several occasions and each time the driver pestered me to sit next to him, eat with him, drink coffee with him. The only way I could get out of eating injera with him was to promise that I would have dinner with him. He insisted that I share his hotel room that night.

In the evening we pulled into Abra Minch and the driver wouldn’t take no for an answer when I told him that I didn’t want to give him my phone number.

I wondered how I’d get out of a night with him and another long day on that bus.

I grabbed my bag and said that I was going to look for a better hotel and instead got directions t the Ethiopian airlines office.

The office was shut but a man sitting out the front had the airlines number.

I rang it and asked the woman at the end of the line if there was a flight to Addis sometime in the next few days.

“The next flight leaves in one hour. It will cost you 56 US dollars”.

WHAT?!

I practically jumped out of my skin. I waved down a tuk-tuk and raced to the airport.

At the airport I bought my ticket, checked in my bags and made it to Addis early that evening without a single hiccup. Luck had been 100% on my side.

I caught a taxi to the Comfort Pension in Addis, I splurged and paid for a room with a western toilet that even came with a toilet seat! The first toilet with a seat that I had used in weeks and the best thing of all was a shower that ran hot water. There was a TV in the room and I turned it on not expecting to even get a picture. To my utmost surprise one channel worked and I lay in bed watching a movie called Red Eye. It was one of the shittest movies I had ever seen, but to lie in bed, comfortable and alone watching a movie in English made me so happy that I definitely went to sleep smiling that night.

When I woke the next day I still had 36 hours until my flight back to Australia.

I had no plans for Addis except grooming in preparation for reuniting with my girlfriend and I still had to get a souvineer for one of my sisters.

Unfortunately I had pms that day, and the persistent store-keepers may have caught the brunt of it.

At one store I got in a fight with a woman over a pair of socks. I just wanted a plain pair of black socks but she refused to sell them to me because they were ‘men’s’ socks.

“They are just socks!” I insisted. “Plain black socks! It doesn’t matter man or woman!”

“NO! Not for you!” She argued back. She waved a pair of short white socks with pink flowers in my face. “These for you! Not these!”

Despite the fact that she probably really needed the money she blatantly refused to sell me the black socks. She chose no sale over the sale of incorrectly gendered socks.

At the next store I told the woman that I needed a pair of plain black socks for my husband. She tried to sell me men’s underwear for him too, and I bought a pair, just so that I could wear them in silent protest over losing the battle over the first pair of socks I tried to buy.

My final day went smoothly, slowly and was uneventful.

For lunch I ordered a toasted sandwich off a menu at a western café. The menu sold it as avocado, tomato and lettuce but when it arrived it had just cabbage and green beans. I chuckled to myself. It was so African, you can order something and still have no idea what you will actually get. Like the time in Turmy I ordered ‘rice and vegetable’ instead I got cabbage and tomatoes. I asked them where the rice was and they just shrugged, or in Jinka when I ordered ‘pea soup’ and instead got goat a piece of goat in broth.

I was happy when the time came to get in a cab and go. I was ready to go home.

On the way to the airport through I was struck with a pang of guilt. I still had Ethiopian birr, and quite a lot of it left. Until the I hadn’t even given it a thought. All day I had passed hundreds of families asleep in the street or begging for money and I had a pocket full of cash that would be totally worthless once I left. On the way to the airport I had even gazed into the eyes of women selling their time to hungry men and snotty nosed kids searching for scraps to eat. And I sat in my taxi, after leaving my cosy hotel with a wad of notes.

On the edge of the airport I told the taxi to stop. There was a woman slumped on the side of the rode so I gave her a handful of notes.

I still had some left so I tipped the taxi driver and then handed the rest to a cashier at the airport.

I sat and waited for my flight thinking about all the money I had gone through and wasted on that trip. The souvenirs I had bought, the meals I never finished, the extra cash I had paid just for a toilet with a seat. It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair. People around me were hungry and cold and their children were sick and possibly dying and yet I could sit in new clothes, in a clean hotel room with good food in my stomach and pay TV in front of me. I could travel the world and know that really, no matter what circumstance I found myself in, I would have a family back home who would wire me cash and keep me going.

Life is simply not fair.