Murder at Murchison?
In the morning, we manage to somehow get a taxi to the Red Chilli Hideaway hostel, where our tour to Murchison National Park will depart. We wait for ages for them to get us into the van, and when we do, T and I sit in the back row with a guy named Ben. Ben is English/South African, having grown up in SA but moved to England when he was a teenager. He works for the UN as an economic consultant and T and I like him immediately. Unfortunately, the same is not true of Vladimir (whose actual name is not Vladimir, but go with me here) who sits in the row in front of us. Vladimir is a Ukrainian with American citizenship (I feel it is important to qualify that he is not American by birth), who knows Everything. He joins in the conversation with T and Ben about economics about an hour outside of Kampala and for the rest of the ride he never. shuts. up. I give up on the conversation when he informs us that 95% of Americans have health insurance, at which point I told him that I must know the entire 5% who don’t. I am more grateful for my iPod than I have ever been.
We stop for lunch and meet the other members of the tour: Sammy, a Ugandan working in Sudan, her friend Marlene, a Dutch girl working for the same organization, and a couple of German women. I try to eat my lunch while averting my eyes from Vladimir, who is shoveling food into his mouth with a relish I have never seen of Jews eating pork. I can’t look at it or I will retch.
I spend the rest of the ride with my iPod on, trying to tune out Vladimir’s constant assertions about The Way Life Is and T and Ben’s economic durka. It works well, and we drive through colorful villages and children stand on the side of the road waving to us for most of the ride. I am listening to “Under African Skies” when the iPod dies, suddenly, just outside the entrance to the park. Fortunately, we are all distracted by the monkeys running around outside the van, and I wonder, were I to throw Vladimir out the window, would they eat him on the spot? I amuse myself with my twisted, bitter thoughts until we get to the camp.
The camp is a bunch of tents built around a large wooden hut, overlooking a stunning green valley and the Nile. We dump our bags in the tents and head down to the river, where we have been strictly forbidden to bother the hippos, or we will face a certain death by hippo. So we walk down, swatting at mosquitoes, and look for wildlife that won’t kill us. We don’t see much wildlife of any sort, except for hippos across the river, which are much too far away to chew our faces off. Or are they? I don’t test the theory.
In the morning, after a boozy dinner the night before, we get up to go on our safari. We take a boat across the river and immediately see all kinds of baboons running amok. We climb into the van and head into the wild (or a dirt path through some deep grasses). We see elephants and lions from a distance, and I am equally fascinated by them and annoyed that we can’t get closer (because we are on a low-budget safari, we don’t have a 4×4). We see water buffalo and giraffes and Uganda kobs and they are all beautiful. As usual, I am too short to be able to see out the top of the van, which lifts off, becoming a kind of sun shelter, so I spend most of the time looking out the window. I am in love with the sunbaked nature of things, which makes everything brighter. It reminds me of Australia.
After lunch, we go back down to the river for a boat tour of Murchison Falls. It’s starting to rain, but the boat is covered, so it’s okay. We cruise slowly up the river, past a bunch of fat, fighting hippos and I realize why my friend Cara is terrified and repulsed by them. They could and would chew my face off, if I let them. The falls are really beautiful, and everyone stops to take some photos. I mostly sit and watch out the side of the boat, still exhausted for no good reason. The rain kicks up and starts pouring into the boat and finally stops just in time for us to get out and go to dinner.
Dinner is wildly entertaining, because everyone is drinking too much, except for Sammy, who is on a special diet. Still, she wins for best story of the night, which goes like this: Sammy teaches English in Sudan. Her class is entirely Muslim boys, no girls. One day, she was teaching the alphabet and she got to the letter Z. Z is for zip, she told her class. She pointed to one of the boys. Show me your zip! He just stared at her. Show me your zip! she says again. The boy starts to cry and runs out of the room. Later, Sammy finds out that zip is the local word for penis. Oops.
In the morning, we wake up and have breakfast and drive over to the top of the falls with some local Peace Corps volunteers. The sun is sweltering and we hike to the top and look down. It is a long, long drop down to the bottom and the rocks are slippery. I wonder if anyone on these tours has ever plunged to their death, but decide not to ask the guide. After walking around the top of the falls, we get back in the car and start the long drive back to Kampala. My iPod is dead, so I try to sleep. Unfortunately, because the two Peace Corps girls are getting a free ride, everything is much more crowded, so instead I stare out the window like a zombie, as the world flies by.
The trip is good enough that on the way back, I am no longer contemplating the various ways to kill Vladimir, and I am even willing to spend another night in his company. But fortunately, I don’t have to. And this pleases me.
The happiest people on earth
I spent most of the flight to Kampala in tears. I tried to hide it by staring out the window, but it didn’t help. I looked down at Sudan, with its endless red sand and the footpaths slicing across the horizon. I tried to watch movies. I watched Juno and laughed a little, but when it ended I wanted to cry again.
Eventually, the red earth turned to a stunning green. Instead of flying over the desert, we appeared to be flying over the world’s brightest forest of broccoli florets. And then we were there. We got off the plane and it was immediately hotter and more humid than Addis. We stood on the tarmac and T reminded me that Kampala airport is the same place where the Israeli hostages were taken. I looked around and said, “Yes! And look how GREEN it is!”
We went inside to go through immigration, and T suddenly noticed that he didn’t have enough money for our visas. Online, it had said the visas were $10 apiece less than he had. But we had no money, so we waited in line anyway.
I realized pretty early on that Ugandans are even nicer than Ethiopians. By that, I mean they are much friendlier. Ethiopians are very quietly friendly, raising their eyebrows as a greeting. Ugandans are all smiles and teeth. Thank God, because otherwise we might have been in trouble. Our immigration agent was completely unfazed by our situation, and smiled at T and told him to go through customs to the ATM and get some more money and bring it back. Hang on, WHAT? I’ve seen a lot of immigration agents, but none of them ever told me (or T) to go on through the airport to get some more money.
And so I waited. And waited. And waited. And T didn’t come back. Eventually, the immigration man turned to me and told me I should go through and find him. EH?! I didn’t stop to question whether he had lost his mind, but I did ask if he wanted my passport in exchange. No, he said, waving me through.
Thus, I liked Uganda immediately.
What I did not like about Uganda was our guidebook, the Bradt guide to Uganda. Suckity suck suck, man. It was wrong about everything. It told us about hotels that did not exist, or were in the wrong places, or were likely never even built. Virtually everything it said was wrong. Nonetheless, we managed to find a lovely Chinese hotel (I’m starting to wonder if the Chinese see Africa as one giant colony), with a Chinese restaurant and very firm beds.
Kampala is a very modern, clean, pretty city. It has all kinds of international restaurants and bars, and it seemed worlds away from Addis. We spent a day or two walking around, eating Indian food, and sleeping. There was a lot of sleeping.
The best explanation I have is that leaving Ethiopia sucked every last ounce of energy from our bodies, and we had to recover. For a number of days. While watching cable. And getting full body (and I mean full body) massages by large Ugandan ladies at the nearby club. And marveling at the cheerfulness of all the Ugandans, who didn’t seem to mind that we looked like we had been hit by trucks and were wan and kind of grumpy. They smiled anyway.
Ethiopia
I’m not sure if I’m the kind of person who believes in fate or destiny.
If I was, I would tell you that I was destined to go to Ethiopia. That Ethiopia would change everything. That Ethiopia was part of my soul. And for something like that to happen, it must have been predestined.
When I was nine, I had a little fundraising group to help the famine victims in Ethiopia. When T was about the same age, his aunt went to Ethiopia, all by herself. She came back with a painting of three drummers, which T asked for when she died. It is the only piece of art he has and he paid a lot of money to get it beautifully framed. All this was before we decided to go. And you could argue that these were factors in our decision to go, but they really weren’t. We went because I sponsored a little boy at AHOPE and it seemed like a wonderful place to volunteer.
Which, of course, it was.
On the flight to Addis, I cried when I looked out the window. I was moved, for a reason I could not explain, and even though I had never been to Africa and was terrified out of my mind, I knew everything would be okay.
Which, of course, it was.
Here’s the deal: everyone deserves a family. The kids at AHOPE definitely do, and they shouldn’t be punished for having a completely treatable disease they inherited. And despite being alone in the world and having nothing and being “sick”, they showed me how to live. AHOPE is their home and their family. They play and work and fight and laugh as hard as any other children I have ever seen. But unlike the other kids I’ve seen, these kids only want to be loved. They don’t bitch about Nintendo games or Barbie dolls. They play on a broken basketball net or with rocks and marbles, and they never complain. They share each other’s clothes without arguing. They never say life isn’t fair, even though it’s true and is within their rights. Instead, they hug each other and me, and they laugh and they cry and they go on.
There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think of those kids. Sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I cry. Because even though they don’t complain about how the world isn’t fair, I know it’s not, and it makes me furious and sad. I want all of these kids to know what it is to have a family. I want them to be loved and adored and treasured they way they should be. And right now, they are loved, don’t get me wrong. Living at AHOPE is the next best thing to having a family, but I can’t help wanting more for them than that.
Everything is different now. Things that used to seem really important to me are trivial. The stock market is in the tank? At least I have a husband and a family who loves me. I’m having a hard time finding freelance work? At least I can pay for food and rent. I fell down the front steps of my house? I live in a country where I have access to and the means to pay for some of the best medical care in the world.
I think Gelila was right when she said God sent us to AHOPE. I think going to Ethiopia was something I was meant to do. And I’m still not sure I believe in destiny or fate, but I know that AHOPE is where I belonged and I have never felt as loved, or loved as much as I did there.
Ciao, AHOPE
On the evening of our last day in town, we go to our goodbye party. We had been given a choice of having it at the little or big compound, and we chose the big one. I’m standing in the yard talking to an adoptive mother when the kids come and drag me inside. I’m okay, I think. I’m not going to lose it.
Or not. I sit there surrounded by the boys, watching them play with my tape recorder, and I’m pretty sure I can hold it together. Then the kids start saying goodbye. Surprise says that he just wants us to know that they love us and will miss us, and I’m off. Some people have a pretty cry. I do not. I have the world’s ugliest cry. I cry all the time–at Oprah, or commercials, or when I’m talking about something particularly sentimental–but this is particularly bad. Snot flying everywhere, big ugly red face, covered in tears.
I always knew it was going to be hard to leave. I had no idea it would be this hard. I love these children in a way I can’t explain. I didn’t know them two months ago, but now that I do, I can’t imagine my life without them. They are the smartest, funniest, sweetest kids I know and I love them all. I don’t know how I am going to get on the plane.
I eventually regain control, and we have a nice time listening to the adults say goodbye (Gelila tells us that God brought us to AHOPE, and I’m not sure I disagree), and then we eat candy. Sometime along the way, it starts to rain, and we use that as an excuse to stay longer, because we can’t bring ourselves to leave. The power goes out, and rain is pouring down.
When it’s finally time to go, I say goodbye to each one and tell them I love them. By the time I get to the end, I am so happy that there is no light, because my face is swollen from tears. I kiss the big boys and tell them goodbye, and a couple of them are crying too. We stagger home, exhausted and sad, and sit for a while in the silent, dark house.
We go to little AHOPE the next morning and a bunch of the older kids are there, ready to go to the doctor’s. I keep it together a little better this time, and just end up kissing them all over and over and saying goodbye. This time, the nannies start to cry, and one of them grabs me and holds me tightly, whispering to me in Amharic. I don’t know what she’s saying, but I know what she means.
It’s almost a relief when the taxi comes to get us. We sit silently in the cab, and then again in the airport. I take out the tape recorder and listen to the kids’ messages in the departure lounge. “Goodbye, Allie and Tim. We love you” over and over again. I love them too–so, so much.
The last days
On our penultimate day in Addis, I insist to T that I am going to paint the base coat for the older kids’ compound. Waah, waaah, he doesn’t want to do it because it will take too long and there is no way we will finish it in time and he doesn’t want to leave it half finished for M when she comes back from London. Like the good wife I am, I ignore him and go to paint it myself.
When I get there, I am greeted by about six of the kids who are home from school. They climb all over me to get to the brushes and the paint, and at first, I tell them no. The last time I let them paint, it was pandemonium, so this time they have to help me clean the walls and sweep the floors and all the other crap jobs. It takes about 20 minutes before I realize that this plan will not work. Soon, I have about 15 painters, and 5 other kids doing the crap. I make them put on trash bags over their clothes so we don’t get in trouble with the nannies, and they’re off. Dangling off ladders, stepping on each other, breaking furniture…but getting most of the paint on the walls and not on the floor.
By the time T gets there, the room is nearly done and it looks fantastic. It’s a sunny shade of yellow that covers the previously dirty walls, and it looks like a whole new place. The kids love it too, and as we move the furniture back into place and check out our hard work, we are very self-impressed. And we are not impressed with lazy T, who didn’t think we could get it done. It’s a nice feeling, sharing this pride with the kids who are so happy about the chance to make their home better. I really wish we could paint the mural and the individual bedrooms, but we’re leaving soon.
That night is Kate’s last night in town, so we plan to go to the Castelli Restaurant, a fancy place in town where ANGELINA AND BRAD ONCE ATE. (I’m pretty sure that’s actually written on a plaque there somewhere.) We go with Elias, Kate’s friend from work, and we actually make it to the restaurant, but it’s closed. The rest of the night is a comedy of errors as we try to find Serenade, the other fancy ferenge restaurant. Elias’ brother shows up to drive us, and we spend about half an hour in the street while poor Elias and his brother try to figure out where it is. Then Elias’ brother ditches his girlfriend somewhere so he can drive us to the restaurant, and we all squish in. None of us has any idea where it is, and the Lonely Planet is no help when none of the streets is marked. At one point, we are bumping along a dirt road in the dark, and Elias’ brother snorts, “China.” We all laugh; it’s funny to blame China for the paving of the roads! As we say in my family, someone must be blamed.
We never make it to Serenade and end up at a bar where we have dinner. We get a taxi home and say goodbye to Kate and Elias, and stagger home, exhausted. After all, ONE OF US painted all day.
Betam konjo
After the funeral, we’re walking over to see the big kids. I have my Indian scarf over my head, and as I am walking down the hill to AHOPE, a little boy walks up to me and says “KONJO!” FINALLY! I AM BEAUTIFUL! I smile at him and say thank you, and then poke T in the ribs, saying, “Did you hear that? I am konjoooooooooooo!”
The next day, T and I are sitting in a restaurant in an attempt to get out of the pouring rain outside. We’re using the free (and fast) wireless, and I check my email. I get the following email from Leather Cap:
Hi there,
Allie how are you doing and your husband (the lucky one) coz you are beautiful.
How is M and your other friend would you pls pass my greeting.
Hope I will see you all befor they leave Ethiopia.
All the best.
DID YOU READ THAT? I AM BEAUTIFUL! I pass the message along to T, who rolls his eyes and grunts something about people who wear leather caps having no idea about what’s attractive. Then, the waitress comes over with my Coca, and when I smile at her, she too tells me I am konjo.
I am on fire, baby! I am irresistable to men, women and children alike! I am adored by millions!
And then, we go to see the big kids. We tramp through the rain and mud, and when we get to the gate, one of the kids opens the door and points at us. Koshasha! Dirty! No, kid. BEE-YOO-TI-FUL. Get me?
Then I am sitting with the girls on the stairs as they braid my hair. “Ooooooh,” they say. “You have MANY grey hairs!” My heart stops beating. How many do I have? They start to count. “One…two….three!” I contemplate breaking their legs for giving me a near heart attack, but decide against it because I am so relieved that many = 3.
Then, I am invited into the girls’ room. Finally, I am allowed into the inner sanctum! I sit in a wooden chair for hours as they pull and tug and twist my hair. Boys reach in through the window, yanking my hair out to braid it. The girls do innumerable braids, but virtually every time when I hopefully ask, “konjo?”, they wrinkle their little noses and take it all out to do again.
Ah, well. 24 hours of being beautiful isn’t bad, right?
Goodbye, Sweet Girl
In the morning, just after Genet tells us the story about her rabies treatment, the phone rings. We’re actually in good spirits, knowing that we can take M to the Swedish clinic to get the damned shot. I answer it, and it’s Gelila from the office. I say hi and ask how she is. She’s fine, she says, but she has some bad news. There’s a catch in my throat as I wait for it. Sweet Girl died last night, she says. Shit. I listen to her explain how she died in the night and there’s a funeral in the afternoon and would we go? I tell her yes and hang up the phone.
And then my knees give out.
I don’t remember how long I cry. I’m sobbing–big, heaving, snot-filled sobs that suck all the air out of me and I just can’t stop. M is in the other room, and I can hear her crying from across the house. Genet is wailing in the kitchen, and T is breathing deeply beside me. I don’t know when I have last cried like this. I am devastated and horrified and so, so angry. What kind of a world is this where an 8-year-old girl can die like this? What kind of a world is this where an 8-year-old girl can die?
And oh God, it’s Sweet Girl. My little friend who would sneak up behind me and hold my hand, who would pose for sassy pictures, who would whisper that she loved me, who had the most beautiful crooked little smile I have ever seen. I can’t breathe and I don’t want to. I have lost control of myself completely and I cry until I am so drained that I can do nothing but sit and stare at the wall.
Eventually, we go to little AHOPE to prepare for the funeral. The atmosphere is dulled, with the nannies walking around with tear-stained faces, and the office staff stonefaced. Mama Genet just cries. I hug Tigist and tell her I am so sorry. She was a beautiful girl. Tigist is sorry too.
The funeral is unlike Baby S’s. Sweet Girl had no family left. She was living with her mother until she died, and then her neighbors cared for her until they brought her to AHOPE. The neighbors come to the funeral, but there is none of the keening that went on before. Unlike the other funeral, the staff is crying openly. Everyone loved Sweet Girl, and she will be missed.
Afterwards, we go back to AHOPE for a coffee ceremony. We sit quietly as the neighbors talk to each other and the kids try to peek in the room. Gelila tells me that they know something’s up and that one of them said Sweet Girl was stabbed with scissors. I look around, wondering what happens to the memory of a girl like this. Her family is dead. The staff and the neighbors will remember her, but will she eventually be forgotten completely?
I hope not. I try to believe that a girl who brought so much light into the world will be remembered.
Goodbye, Tsion. I love you.
Bite the badonk
On Friday, as I am lying in my house of pain, M and T leave to go to work. They leave the house chatting to each other and I hear them say goodbye to the guard. Five minutes later, I hear them come back. Then I hear them saying something about a dog to Mifta, and they come in the house. M goes straight to the bathroom, calling behind her, “I need you to look at my butt.” I wonder if I’m delirious, but then they explain that on the way to work, on the same path where T pushed M in front of a “raging bull” the day before, a dog ran out into the road and bit her in the bum.
T makes the offer to check her out, but suggests I might be a better choice. I dutifully go to the bathroom and look at the wound. Sure enough, the dog broke the skin. I make one crack about this being the logical punishment for her always sticking her ass out, and then I put on some clothes to go to the clinic with her. T goes to the office to tell them what happened.
We’re in the clinic waiting room when T calls. He went to the dog’s house with Tigist, the nurse. He didn’t understand the whole conversation, but he heard a whole lot of the word “ferenge”. As far as he can tell, Tigist told the woman that her dog bit Tigist’s white girl, and the woman has to take care of it. The doctor checks M out and asks some questions. Was it a street dog or someone’s pet? A pet. Was it older than 10? Who knows? Has it had its rabies shot? The owner says yes. M will probably be fine, if the dog is a pet and has had a rabies shot. Buuuuuuut, if it’s an old dog, the rabies shot might not work and M could die of rabies. Thank you, and goodbye!
So then we go to the woman’s house. It’s a nice house, behind a gate like our own, and the woman has two dogs. We slink past them into her house, where she waits for us with her baby. She is so sorry about this, the dog escaped from the yard, yadda yadda. She then pulls out a certificate for the younger dog (the one that bit M is 11 years old, of course) that says it was vaccinated for rabies the week before. She can’t find the one for the biter, but she swears that it was also vaccinated, because she has children and she doesn’t want her dogs to bite her children or their friends! (Only ferenge!)
We go home so M can call her parents. It’s something like 4am in New Hampshire and they are a little confused by the call. M explains that she needs to get the rabies shot, but we don’t know where to get it in Addis. The rabies treatment is one shot in the wound, and then five shots over a number of days and weeks. She says she and T will go out and find the shot, and then she’ll be fine.
Ha. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. She and T leave at about noon and are gone forever. I watch Oprah and all kinds of other shows and the news and I read my book and take a nap and they still aren’t home. They roll in at about 7pm. They have been all over the city looking for the shot, and they can’t find it anywhere. They went to a hospital that had the treatment, but they didn’t recommend it for foreigners, who don’t generally like 17 shots to the abdomen. They went to a rabies clinic, where they saw all kinds of pretty pictures of different varieties of dogs, but got no shot. They went to the UN, who said they couldn’t give it to her. They went to the FRIGGING AMERICAN EMBASSY, who told her that they only carry the shot for their employees (but they asked if she was carrying any guns before they let her in, which is a reasonable question given that I’m sure lots of scary terrorists admit to carrying firearms before attacking an embassy). GOD BLESS AMERICA! The only place in Addis to get the shot is the mythical Swedish clinic, which everyone recommended but no one could place on a map.
By the time they get back, they are understandably exhausted and M is a mess. Her parents want her to come home and her doctor in New Hampshire (who never suggested she get a rabies shot in advance) says she should come home for good to get the treatment. Even I am gripped with terror at the thought of her having to leave three months early. The whole situation is awful, and she is completely wrecked.
The next morning at breakfast, Genet tells us about how she was bitten by a dog and she “cry cry cry” during the treatment. I bet, dude. 17 shots?! Then M’s parents call. They managed to locate the Swedish doctor in the middle of the night, and he has the shot. Thank you, Sweden! First Swedish fish, then Ikea, now the rabies shot! That’s the good news. M calls the doctor and he doesn’t have the first shot to go in the wound. That’s the bad news. M’s parents call her health insurance company and they say they will fly M to Israel or London for treatment. M chooses London. She will leave that night.
We go to the clinic and get her the shot. It is a lovely little clinic in a leafy compound, but we’re all too sad to appreciate the fact that we finally found it. We go to see the kids and tell them what happened. They look at us in horror at the story, and suddenly we realize why all the kids are afraid of dogs (if I was facing 17 shots to the abdomen or certain death if one bit me, I’d be scared as hell too).
We are all sad. M is leaving us. We go back to the house so she can get her stuff, and then we take a interminable ride to the airport. It’s really hard to say goodbye to her when we know we are going to miss her so much. She is the mini-me I never knew, and T’s second wife. She is the best friend we have made in a while, and we love her like a sister. Addis is not the same without her.
So let this be a lesson to you: no matter how good it makes you look in pictures, don’t make it a habit to walk around with your badonkadonk out, or a dog will surely chomp it.
Pus is not your friend
The morning we leave Lalibela, I wake up with a disturbingly sore throat. It’s worse than the other days, when I have just popped a couple Advil and gone on my way. This morning, it feels like I’ve been drinking razor blades. We get in the bus to go to the airport, and drive past St George’s church where there is a long line of Ethiopians wearing white, snaking around the hill.
When we get to the airport, Leather Cap stops to talk to me. How long are we in Ethiopia, he wants to know. I tell him we’ve been living there, but that T and I are about to leave. He is taking the tour to Aksum, so he’s not going back to Addis. He wants my phone number anyway, so I give him M’s mobile number. Then I run over to T to tell him how much Ethiopian men lurrrrrrrve me.
On the flight, things go rapidly downhill and I start to feel really nasty. I get really cold and start to shake and end up spending most of the flight with my head in T’s lap because I am too weak to sit up (not really, but this is what husbands are for). By the time we get to Addis, I need him to help me walk off the plane so I don’t keel over and die. At the airport, we had planned on going to the Emirates office to change our flight to Uganda, but they are closed. Why are they closed on a weekday in the middle of the day? It is obviously to spite me and make me feel even closer to death.
We make it back to the guest house, despite me almost having a fist fight with the taxi driver who tried to scam us (fortunately, I was too weak to show him the full extent of my wrath), and I take a nap. M and T go to see the kids and they come back with the news that the kids have measles, that most of them seem better, but that Sweet Girl has now been infected and is really sick.
T takes me to the clinic around the corner so I can see a doctor. We both go into the doctor’s office, and he opens my mouth to look at my throat. “Ooooooh,” he says. “Come look at this.” T walks over, and looks down my throat as I am sitting there like a baby bird waiting for a worm. “Look at all that pus. We don’t like pus!” he says to T. Really? Because I am pretty sure pus is my favorite thing ever. Now let me close my frigging mouth!
T can’t see anything, but agrees with the doctor because he sees me gagging and choking away. The doctor says I have a throat infection. Did I finish the course of antibiotics the first doctor gave me when I had food poisoning and my throat was red? Of course not! That would have been sensible, and would have spared me this glorious trip to see you now, doctor!
He gives me a prescription for antibiotics and T goes to fill it for me, and then he and M take off to see the other kids while I take a long, beautiful nap. Just me and my pus.
Loving Lalibela
The night before we left Gondar, we checked with the guys at the hostel about when we needed to leave to get to the airport on time. An hour before the flight, they said. Sure, we asked? Yes, they said, authoritatively. But in the morning, when we are all half-dressed and bathed, we suddenly hear banging on our doors. TIME TO GO! the guys yell. GO NOW, OR YOU WILL BE LATE! It turns out that the guys at the hotel are big liars, and we are all muttering about this when we get in the taxi and they pat the back of the car as we drive away.
Despite being hustled into the car earlier than we expected and listening to the hostel guys yell as us like cattle, we find that our flight to Lalibela is ON TIME. And we are allowed on! So on we get, with the Chinese tour group who are now smiling at us like old friends. The flight to Lalibela is surprisingly smooth, and I spend most of the time looking out the window at the flat, cracked, ochre-colored earth below.
As riveting as I find the world from the plane, I find it even more spectacular when we get in the van to the hotel. The area around Lalibela is like another planet. The red earth spreads far into the distance, where the horizon is lined by jagged mountains. We climb higher and higher into the desert; all four of us staring out the window at the bleak landscape outside. It is harsh and barren and completely stunning. I have never seen anyplace like it.
The hotel is even better than the one in Gondar. It is new and clean and the rooms are big enough to leave on the floor and still walk around. We have hot showers ALL THE TIME, and the beds are clean and big enough for two whole people. M and Kate even get a room with twin beds. There is a little store and a small restaurant, and a view over the valley below. The only downside is that it is at the exact opposite end of town from the churches.
We decide to walk up toward the churches, so we start up the hill, which seems neverending. As usual, as we walk through, we are accosted by a big group of boys. They are young and endearing, and one tells M he is collecting foreign money as a competition for school. He has the biggest collection! M dutifully gives him all her foreign change and he runs away, only to come back a few minutes later with a necklace for her. His name means Happiness, the same as her favorite kid at AHOPE, and she is smitten. (Later on, we discover that the kids all ask for money this way, and that they then try to sell it to trade it to foreigners for birr, but at least M got a necklace out of the deal.)
Of course, the churches are closed by the time we get there, so we end up looking for a place to eat. We wander through town and stop to have coffee at a restaurant perched on the edge of a big cliff, overlooking the churches and the valley. I am crabby from low blood sugar, and the other three laugh at me as I hate everything and drink my coffee. They are evil and must be destroyed.
On the way down, we’re surrounded by a bunch of kids. There is one little girl who attaches herself to Kate, and walks through town with her, clutching her hand. Her name is the same as our Princess at AHOPE, and she is about four years old. We turn the corner on our way back to the hotel, and Kate gives her a whistle when she says goodbye. The little girl runs off down the road, and we can hear the whistle squeaking even after we can’t see her anymore.
We get back to the hotel and decide to have dinner at the hotel across the street. Kate and M and T have some beer (I can’t, because I am a big allergic loser) and eventually, Kate gets very tipsy. The tipsiness coincides with the arrival of the Chinese tour group, complete with Ethiopian tour guide. Kate, M and I have been commenting on the tour guide’s cuteness for days, and think him cute even with his leather newsboy cap. T disagrees and mocks us all. The more beer Kate has, the more she loves the tour guide, but she is convinced that he has a crush on me, which makes me think she has had way too much to drink. When I go to the bathroom, I run into him outside, and he introduces himself and asks about my husband. Suddenly, I think Kate might be right and I am oddly pleased by the thought that young Ethiopian men clad in leather hats find me attractive. T is less pleased, as it means he will be hearing about how hot I am for months to come (which is an appropriate punishment for making me listen to years of how gay men find him attractive).
We manage to stagger out of the restaurant and into bed and the next morning, the girls and T are not feeling pretty. We all drink coffee and eat pastries and wander around looking for an artist’s shop. We find it in a tukul which we would never have looked at twice, were it not for Lonely Planet. The artist has sold his works to many famous people, including Princess Anne, with whom he has a photo. We each buy a painting, despite the fact that T is loudly complaining about buying more stuff that he will have to carry (I artfully tune him out).
And then we head back up the hill to buy our tickets and find a tour guide. We pass the same man who told us the churches were closed the day before, and are alarmed when it looks like he’s taking off his pants for T. Unfortunately, he is not trying to exchange guiding services for sexual favors; he is merely showing T his £20 note from the Bank of Scotland, which is in his jeans which are under his guide uniform. How disappointing.
It starts to rain as we begin our tour of the churches, but even the rain can’t diminish them. The churches are carved out of the earth, which means they lie below ground, surrounded by rock and stone and dirt. There are 13 churches, mostly built during the 12th and 13th centuries, by lots of people over a long time (check out that historical accuracy). They’re fascinating in a way that European cathedrals aren’t. Instead of being enormous and ornate and gloriously beautiful, they’re simple and mostly plain, but the work that has gone into them has to be equal to the work on the European churches. They are carved out of the ground, for God’s sake! (No pun intended there.)
We walked through some, and T got to go into a special man church (Ethiopia seems to have a lot of churches banning girls), but he took pictures so we could see what it looks like. In one, we ask the priest if we can take his picture, and he nods, putting on a pair of sunglasses as he swings his incense from side to side. We all try not to giggle as he does this. At St George’s Church, they are preparing for St George’s Day the following day, and the whole area is full of somber chanting and singing, which makes the whole experience that much more ethereal.
Our tour guide asks if his family can join us for the latter part of the tour, and we say yes. Soon, we are joined by a family with two little boys, who are completely hilarious. They are mostly disinterested in the tour, and as time goes on, increasingly interested in performing for us. After we walk through the tunnel called hell (where I take a tourist shot of Kate, M and T pretending to be in Hades), we arrive at the last church and the boys are about to explode with energy. I take a picture of them, which ends up being appropriately blurry because they can’t sit still.
At the end of the tour, our guide sends us up a back way through town, and we walk down quiet paths and tukuls overlooking the valley. When we get close to our restaurant, a gang of kids comes up to us and wants to speak to us. Of course, I end up taking their picture, and they ask for my email address, which is the MO of most of the kids in town. Wherever we go in Lalibela, we are accosted by children asking for our email addresses so that we can send them books for school.
We have dinner at a restaurant that has a sign saying “recommended by ferenge” outside. We walk inside the restaurant, which looks like someone’s living room. The locals clear out so we can have a table, and they bring us some pizza for dinner. I’m not sure whether it’s comforting or disturbing to be served pizza in a restaurant in northern Ethiopia, but we eat it anyway, listening to the rain fall on the roof and ruing the fact that we have to leave.
