Today is the start of the holiday - getting ourselves to Addis ready
for the trip to South Omo. On the trip are myself, Ali (also living
in Ferenji Heights), Terri (a VSO at the university at Mekelle), Rob
and Jackie (Rob works at MIT and Jackie at the university), and Lian
and Daniel (VSOs at a town called Dessie quite close to Addis).
Only myself and Ali were coming from Mekelle, the others were already
in Addis. We had booked ourselves on the afternoon flight but went to
the airport in the morning to attempt to get the morning flight.
Sometimes, things being flexible works against you, like when you find
that a flight has just been cancelled or moved from afternoon to
morning. However, given that the system is flexible you might as well
use it to your advantage so we waited at the airport and were able to
take a morning flight instead. It had been well overbooked but I think
the figure of 1/3 of people not showing up for a flight is much higher
here. If you don't show, you don't lose the fare, you can just take
another flight!
I wanted to try travelling light, so for the two weeks I had one
computer bag and one large plastic carrier bag. The computer bag
didn't contain a computer it had things like camera and torch in it.
It was the only bag I had available after short sightedly giving my
back pack to Bella to get her stuff back to England. The plastic
carrier bag was packed into Ali's backpack and I was very proud of the
fact that I had managed to get wet weather gear in as well. Ali
hadn't. Tigray was dry, so what was the point.
As the plane bounced around on its approach to Addis I could see the
rain clouds ahead and with no small sense of smugness told Ali who
immediately thought that I was deceiving her. I thought the water
running across the window would be enough evidence. The plane landed
on a saturated runway, and it was not long before we had cleared
baggage reclaim and were considering how best to get to the hotel. The
hotel we had booked in had an airport service (Central Shoa hotel is
becoming a favourite now!) so, after phoning for the service, we stood
inside Bole airport looking out to the car park trying to see the van
we needed. The rain was very heavy and sporadic, announcing each
wave's approach with a heavy drumming at the back of the airport
before we physically saw the results out of the large and leaking
glass panes at the front of the building. Of course, all this waiting
gave me a great opportunity to rub in the fact that I had wet weather
gear and Ali had not.
The driver got us skillfully to hotel (it had to be skill, nobody
could be that lucky or blessed). After dropping our stuff off we
headed to VSO and Ali bought herself an umbrella. At VSO we met some
of the brand new VSOs. Their intake is only just starting. However,
they should have arrived yesterday and started their training today.
Only half of them were here because of a stuff up at Heathrow. The
plane that they had been scheduled to fly on had a fault (flat tyre
or something) and they were asked to wait outside. They waited for a
total of eight hours only to find that the check in desk had forgotten
them so they had missed the replacement flight or whatever arrangement
had been made. I guess my flight here hadn't been so bad after all,
and of course as existing VSOs we found it all very funny but after
very little sleep (they complained about the church karaoke and dogs!)
the new VSO's sense of humour was stretched. They had tried a sensible
thing at Heathrow - phoning VSO headquarters in London. VSO has
responsibility for us in some ways and they should make it as wasy for
us as possible, right? VSO's reply was, apparently, "you're on your
own". I am wondering if we should push for a change in VSO's logo from
"Sharing skills, changing lives", to "You're on your own". Maybe It's
just me but part of me thinks that VSO should have helped me, but the
"on your own" bit is part of being a VSO as well.
The new volunteers didn't do too bad in the end because at least they had
us to take them out for food in the evening. We didn't even try to
scare them too much but I think the fact that we avoided questions
like "So, are you enjoying it" might have given some hints. At the
restaurant we ordered tegamino (enjera and lentil type sauce) and tibs
(enjera and fried meat). Although a meat eater the tibs proved too hot
for one volunteer because she bit into a green pepper with her first
mouthful. Another volunteer asked whether the lightly coloured bits of
meat were pork. It took a while to work out how to tell her that they
were in fact just lumps of fat.