playing tour guide

A friend of ours had planned to visit us, and was supposed to be arriving last Tuesday. Unfortunately because his flight from Luxor to Cairo was delayed, he missed his flight on to Addis. The people in the Ethiopian Airlines office in Cairo didn’t seem terribly interested in helping him, making promises about getting back to him, and never bothering. It was only due to his repeated pestering of them that a staff member finally got him onto a flight on Thursday, and he finally arrived on Friday morning.

He spent time in Tunisia and Egypt, and found himself getting rather jaded with people who only seemed to want to rip him off. He did have one really nice taxi driver in Cairo who genuinely wanted to help him, giving him helpful information and teaching him a few useful Arabic words.

It has been therefore really enjoyable for us to show him around a bit, and for him to see for himself that the people here in Addis are so friendly and aren’t all about ripping him off. Ethiopian people are lovely. He and I went for a walk this afternoon, and while we did have one fellow walk along with us and eventually ask us for money (I really and truly had none on me!) there were kids who came up to us and just said hello (wanting to practise their English) and shook our hands. As Westerners we are novelties to be enjoyed, especially by kids.

We were almost back home when we found ourselves walking alongside a young Ethiopian man. He held up his phone and said something that we didn’t quite understand. It turned out that he wanted to take our photos! Our friend has strawberry blonde hair, so obviously that was something quite unusual to this fellow, and he wanted to record it for posterity. I imagine that our photos are tonight being shown off to his family and friends. A little odd to think of really!

We have booked with our wonderful local travel agent Elias (of Mela Travel and Tours, here in Addis, who we HIGHLY recommend) to go to the Portuguese bridge tomorrow, and Debre Libanos Monastery. It is about a 3 hour drive north of Addis, so we will be heading out into the countryside once again.

If our friend had arrived on the Tuesday as planned, he was going to go to the Simien Mountains for a few days. But disappointingly, all that had to be cancelled when he didn’t get here until Friday. There just wasn’t enough time to fit it all in. So going on our little day trip tomorrow is our chance to get him out of Addis, to see rural life.

We are all really looking forward to it. It was something that I only thought of doing yesterday morning, so its a nice last-minute surprise bit of sightseeing.

This morning was our last morning at church here in Addis. My husband had the chance to tell Catherine Hamlin how much we had enjoyed our tour of the Fistula Hospital. Again I shed a few tears saying goodbye to some people I will likely never see again (this side of heaven), and others who I may not see for quite some time. Goodbyes are always hard.

My younger daughter was tired and emotional this evening. I asked her if she was just tired, and she said no. “What is wrong then?” “I just want to go home! [sob, sob, sob]” Poor thing. I assured her that we will be going home in only two days, and prayed with her. She calmed down, and seemed more content.

Its hard for all of us, but for different reasons.