The next morning, the five of us drive back to Kampala to visit Dave’s work, join Joy and the kids at their local pool, and let the kids romp one more time in their yard. I go to the nearby American embassy to refill more pages in my passport. Kyle drives to the airport to retrieve Reed’s blanket, which has now enjoyed a side trip to Rwanda. We sit on our friends’ wraparound porch and graze on avocados sprinkled with pepper and lemon juice. The kids beg for a sleepover with their new friends; Joy happily agrees and shoos the two of us out for a date.
Tonight, Kyle and I dine on pizza and wine on red-checkered tablecloths under mango trees. I do mental math and realize we’ll be in Italy in less than two months, probably eating this same type of food under a different type of tree. We whisper to each other the languages spoken around us: French. Mandarin. Some sort of Indian language, maybe Tamil. Swahili. The restaurant’s patrons are an assembly of united nations. Uganda has gathered quite the global crowd.
“I think I really love it here,” Kyle says.
I nod. “Wait—the restaurant? Or Uganda?”
“Both. But I mean Uganda.”
The next morning, the kids are thrilled to have had a sleepover with friends, a first on our travels. Joy returns us to the airport, and we hug farewell with our arms dusty red and our eyes wet, promising to stay in touch. We were barely in Uganda. I hardly opened my laptop. The pack on my back seems lighter as I walk down the airplane aisle; my shoulders feel stronger. The plane hasn’t departed, and I already want to return here, continue my conversations with all the folks we met, meet even more people who call Uganda home. We touched the red dirt, but we didn’t scratch the surface.
11
ETHIOPIA
Geographically, Ethiopia isn’t far from Uganda, but the differences are palpable before we even leave the airport. It’s much colder here; despite our proximity to the equator, we’re far removed from the tropics because of the high elevation. Guidebooks say it’s hotter in the southern part of the country, in the Great Rift Valley, but we’ll be north for the duration of our short visit, from here in Addis Ababa and onward into the Highlands. We dig to the bottom of our packs for layers. Seven hundred miles northeast doesn’t seem too far on the map, but just a few hours ago we were sweating in Kampala.
We check in to our hotel room and pray the heat works, take quick showers to warm up. They gave us a different room from the one we booked, but we are desperate for sleep, so Tate joins Kyle and me on the one king-size bed and the boys share the twin, feet to feet. In eight hours, just after sunrise, we’ll meet our new driver and host, who’ll take us into the Highlands, to an obscure village even he has never visited. Kyle pulls shut the blackout shades, turns off the light, and I burrow into the blankets. Sleep comes in two minutes, dreamless.
My alarm sings far too soon, and I drag my body into clothes, then wake the kids. Finn’s mouth is hanging open and Reed is drooling, deep in slumber. The room is still freezing. We trawl our wasted bodies down to a hotel lobby breakfast of cold pastries, sugared cereal, and instant coffee, which seems a travesty here, origin of Yirgacheffe, one of the world’s favorite coffee beans.
It’s seven o’clock: time to meet our host for Ethiopia.
Atkeltsion is waiting out front with a local driver and his companion. “Salam, and welcome to Ethiopia,” he says. “Ready to head out?” The driver grabs our bags and tosses them in the van.
Our host is in his late twenties and speaks English with a flawless American accent. We climb in a van that is the same size as Dave and Joy’s, but with more rows of benches and considerably older; it reminds me of our van in Sri Lanka. Atkelt—as our host asks us to call him—has rented this entire van for the weekend; it normally functions as a taxi. The three narrow rows of passenger seats provide scarcely enough room for us to put our legs down. The three kids climb into the back row, and Kyle, who’s over six foot two, claims the extra inches of legroom in the front. I’m left in the middle row with our pile of packs.
The van heads north out of Addis with windows open, and I breathe in the dryness of desert air. It is nosebleed dry here, and I’m already parched. The kids ask for water, and I realize we haven’t yet bought any. Wind slaps dust from the road into our eyes, and I slide the van windows closed. We immediately start to sweat.
“Atkelt, can we stop and buy water sometime soon?” I ask.
“Oh sure, sure,” he says. “Our first town is soon.”
I hear a small voice behind me. “Mom?” Reed squeaks. “I’m gonna barf.”
I turn around and his limp body sways; his white face drips with sweat. I scramble for a plastic bag, and I pass it back with seconds to spare. Reed vomits what little breakfast he has eaten. The driver tells Atkelt he knows of a place right up the hill, and in a minute pulls over to a natural spring on the side of the road. A pipe juts out of a rock at the base, a provisional public faucet dribbling spring water. Kyle jumps out and holds his hands under the pipe, then splashes cold water over Reed’s head and shirt. They climb back in the van. Five minutes later, Finn pukes.
My mothering brain has been devoted these five months to basic tasks: feeding our children, advancing their education, timing the drying of their clothes before packing for the next destination. Even the hunting and gathering of food seems to consume hours of my day. Check in advance the altitude of our next destination? Determine the upcoming climate’s effect on our need for plentiful water? Calculate our ability to procure water from the road? Consider whether these roads will prove so dusty that it makes schooling impossible? I don’t have remaining brain cells for advanced preparation.
These are rookie traveler mistakes. Addis Ababa, our starting point, was already above seventy-five hundred feet in elevation. We’re three hours into an eight-hour trek heading into mountains at a ten-thousand-foot-elevation, we’re in a van with bad shocks and no air conditioning with the outdoors too dusty to open windows, the van is uproariously loud, and we have no drinking water. These narrow roads are sinuous, coiling into the sides of hills. We’ve been in the country twelve hours, most of which were spent sleeping, and we’ve had no time to get our act together.
We finally arrive in a small town, and Atkelt hops out at a convenience store to buy a case of bottled water. I clean up Finn’s face, and we declare a sick day, ban the kids from their lessons on the iPad while we’re driving. Tate huddles in the corner, avoiding her brothers’ touch. I think of her regurgitative retching fiasco on the Beijing metro, now over five months ago. Four hours down in a suffocating van on serpentine roads, four to go.
We pull back onto the road. “Since we’re sitting here, now is a good time for me to tell you a little bit about Ethiopia!” Atkelt shouts. The van rattles upward, and the sound of its loose parts jiggling, wind smacking the windows, and potholed terrain is earsplitting.