Flight Insights: Addis Ababa Airport

To get from Cuiabá,Brazil to Chiang Mai, Thailand, I took six flights. Counting flying time and layovers, it was 42 hours. Horrible. In the future, I will buy round-trip tickets to-from Dulles International Airport in Washington DC. That was my first flight insight, and a very important one. Although the date of this footprint is September 12, I am actually writing it on September 19, STILL feeling the hard effects of that journey.

What was really interesting was flying Ethiopian Airways, and experiencing a five-hour layover in Addis Ababa. Ethiopian Airways provided the most direct flights to Bangkok, so that’s why I chose it. However, I was highly apprehensive, as my illogical mind made up a story of a primitive plane that couldn’t get off the ground, that would be dirty and unsafe. Read “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman to learn the origin of such wrong thinking. The two Airbus A320 flights, from São Paulo to Addis and Addis to Bangkok, featured new and shining planes, courteous and prompt service, and the old-fashioned addition of the most beautifully radiant flight attendants imaginable. Or maybe most Ethiopians are beautiful; so it seems. At any rate, ET, Ethiopian Airways is succeeding in being the leading airline in Africa, according to someone I overheard in the airport.

In Addis Ababa, the airport was full of the kind of travelers I never encounter: Indian contractors going to Africa, and vice-versa; pan-African travelers—from the Congo, South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco—everywhere! And the foreign dress, hair styles, body language, spoken languages! I found it all so interesting and attractive. For the first time, I was seriously drawn to Africa. My head has always been full of my own made-up stories about the horrors of Africa, despite the body of fine literature and facts to the contrary pouring out of the continent. As I was pondering that, I met a Belgian violinist on his way back to Kenya and his Nairobi Symphony job. He told me, “Go there! They really need violin teachers!”

When I sat at a table for six in an airport restaurant, I shared my space with a 34-year-old man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When my order of an Ethiopian vegetarian dish of chick peas in a red sauce and three injeras arrived, I convinced Joseph to share it with me, which he did with enthusiasm. Then we talked about his marriage until the bill was paid. In leaving, he called our meeting “an act of God.”

On the plane, I sat next to a shrouded muslim-dressed Somalian woman, traveling with her NINE children to go live in New Zealand. We only had a few words of Arabic between us, but we communicated and helped each other throughout the flight to Bangkok. When we parted, we hugged and kissed like dear friends, which in a way, we were. I seemed to be in a different consciousness as my mind took everything in. Well, being relaxed and secure in my retirement helps, as does my never-ending curiosity about others, but still, this was important cultural learning.

And now begins another adventure in a totally different culture, where I shall try to keep identifying my inaccurately invented stories, and replace them with as much truth as possible. Which will be very interesting and great fun.Read more