late...

The concept of "late" is different in every culture. I wonder what it is in Ethiopia, since I am arriving a whole day late (25 hours, to be exact). I feel bad for Tanya who is probably giving up her vacation to wait for me.

Keeping a positive frame of mind, the good thing about courtesy hotels is that the food is markedly better than that served on the plane. I decided that since I had all night, I might as well make good use of the buffet. Whooo! There was some great dishes there. A stroke of luck in my favour too: a French vineyard was having a taste-test that evening in the hotel. Had a wonderful feast. Of course, I took full advantage of breakfast too. Maybe I need to learn a lesson about gluttony. Hmmmm...

Arriving in Addis Abbaba at 1:30 in the morning (24 hours later than I was supposed to), I had to stand in line to purchase a visa, but when I finally came out, there was a taxi-driver holding a sign with my name on it. I thanked him for waiting and he assured me that it was no problem at all compared to when he had waited all night (1:30am-6:30am) the previous night, not knowing if I would come out of the airport or not! Poor guy. He was a tiny, cheerful, chap who outweighed my left foot by at least 2 ounces and he wore a ski jacket to protect him from the frigid +15 temperatures. I was just happy that he spoke a smattering of English which was far better than the zero capacity that I had for Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. He led me to his 1965 Peugeot 204 that looked like it might not be able to support the weight of both me and my luggage and after a quick push-start, we were on our way. As soon as we left the airport, he coasted to a petrol station and swore loudly when the attendant said that the pumps were out of order. This made me slightly concerned that I might be pushing the car to the guesthouse, but I needn’t have worried, as the antique ran just fine on fumes, taking us over some seriously difficult terrain.

When we got to the guest-house, the guard let us in to the yard, but told me that he had not been given a key to the building itself, or to my room. Hmmm…. By this time it was 4:30am. I used the taxi-man’s cell-phone to call the guesthouse phone. After about 10 rings, a light came on upstairs and a tired voice said that he would come down and let me in. Dale, it turns out, is also a guest there, but was gracious enough to show me where I could sleep! (Turns out that the guesthouse manager was away and things were not running as smoothly as they should). I didn’t care. I was finally here. Felt great to get some sleep for a few hours.

Today's quote: One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on [gluttony], so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe.
C.S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters