2 Weeks in Africa: Getting to Gojo and Back

(Warning: This post could be entitled: "The one with a billion--literally--photos taken through the window of a moving van."  However, there is one of those "I will never forget the experience in all my life" moments/stories near the end, so stick with me on this one.  And I apologize in advance for the poor quality of some of the photos...again...taken through the window of a moving van.)

Compassion had sent me the schedule for my visit with Fanose weeks earlier. 

7am: Host will pick me up at agreed upon location.

10am: Arrive at project site, meet Fanose, see site.

11am: Go to Fanose's house, meet family.

12pm: Lunch back at site, play with Fanose.

2pm: Head back to Addis.

5pm: Host delivers me to my friend's at agreed upon location.

This Google Maps photo tells you that it takes 2 hours to get from Addis to Gojo, and they scheduled 3 hours.  Knowing that nothing ever goes according to schedule, the extra hour made sense to me.

We didn't end up leaving Addis until about 8am.  

All along the way, I got to see more of the city, and kids on their way to school.

I loved seeing the morning sun hit that mountain in the distance.

My host, Miaritz, and the driver sat in the front, and I sat in the first row of the van.  I put my headphones in and just enjoyed the drive.  You'll notice that in nearly every single photo I took, there was always a person.  Always.  People all along the way.

Big open field...and a person.

At one point, I noticed an airplane on the side of the road.

It was converted into a party hall, and we saw a wedding party going on at it on the way back home.  If that's not the most random thing I saw on the whole trip, I don't know what was!

It seemed like every five minutes the countryside looked different.  Sometimes green, sometimes brown, always beautiful.

Miaritz turned back to me and told me that the road would be very bumpy.  My mind flashed back to India, where, at one point the road was so awful we had to get out of the jeep and walk.  I told him I'd be fine.  We turned off the paved road and for the next two hours: bumpity bump bump bump.

I never imagined Ethiopia to be so green and beautiful.  My goodness.

There were plenty of farmers moving their herds along.

And there were farmers working in the potato fields.

Many, if not most, of the houses we passed had fences and yards.  The houses either had tin roofs or thatched roofs.

The women wore colorful clothing.  Many of the men wore sport coats.  The children, when they'd see me smile and wave, would wave back, running after the van yelling, "Firenji!"  (Foreigner!)

We entered into the Chilimo Forest.  Up until this point, I had not been too uncomfortable on the road.  The bumpiness hadn't bothered me yet, and although we'd been going uphill most of the way, it wasn't enough to make me nervous.  But in the forest, we were going steeply uphill, round curves, and all with no shoulder...just cliff drop offs below.

The driver, all along the road, would look for the smoothest part of the road and drive that direction.  On the flat part of the road, it was no big deal.  But on the mountain cliff, I preferred that he'd stay away from the cliff that would plunge us to our death where live baboons would feast on our corpses. (These are the kinds of thoughts that begin to enter my mind when I'm up high in a moving vehicle.)  Seeing how one big rock in the road could bump our van into the air and throw us off balance and off the side of the mountain, I wanted to be hugging the mountain with our van, not finding the smoothest part of the road.

Then I looked out and saw too long white tails.  The tails were attached to monkeys!  The driver slowed down and right as we passed them and I clicked the photo...the one climbed onto the other and began to do his monkey business.  By the time my camera was ready for the next photo, they'd finished and run off.  So this was the only monkey photo I got.  Monkeys will be monkeys, I suppose.

The mountain leveled out in the forest, and we saw some cattle.

And their cowgirl watching after them.

Then, oh my.  We saw two baboons!!!  I tried to zoom in to take a photo, but this was all I got.  But I promise, I saw two baboons and they were not doing monkey business.  They were mean looking and I'm glad we never got too close to them before they ran into the bushes.

And just like that, the jungle was over and we were back in the farmland on flat (yet still very bumpy) roads.

 Now, the whole time on that road, I kept telling myself, "You can trust your driver.  Compassion wouldn't hire an unsafe, unfamiliar with these roads driver.  You're not going to end up as baboon supper.  You can trust him."

And then all of sudden our van was off the road at full tilt and my legs and arms were braced all over the place to keep me from falling off the seat.  We'd gone off the road!  I've been asked many times since then, "HOW?" but I honestly can't tell you.  Maybe we slid in some mud?  Maybe he hit a rock that threw us?  I don't know.  I just know I was sideways.

Miaritz said, "Maybe we should help you out before the van tips over."

Yeah, maybe.

Miaritz and the driver and the intern with us tried to push the van out of the ditch, but it only made it worse so that the back end was way down in the ditch and the front end was barely touching the ground of the road.  Oh my.

They stopped a trucker who came by and asked for help, but he replied, "You need more than the two of us to get you out of that ditch, sorry."  And they drove off.

On such an abandoned road just past a jungle on an Ethiopian countryside, I figured...I'm not going to meet my Compassion kid.  We'll be stuck out here until dark and then the baboons will come find us and eat us for supper.  Someone please tell my family I love them.

Then, a bus jam packed full of people (where were they coming from and where were they going?!) came by and our three guys stood across the middle of the road to get them to stop.  12 men got out of the bus to help push our van back onto the road.  (Two other men checked the tires of the bus.  Several women went into the bushes, apparently not afraid of baboons, to take care of business.  The rest of the bus surrounded me and asked what I, a firenji, was doing way out there.  I'm so glad I wasn't on a bus like that on that jungle mountain road.

After they got us back on the road, we headed on our merry way.  The driver thankfully stuck to the middle of the road after that, avoiding the ditches.  We got to the Compassion site and I got to visit with Fanose (which I'll write about tomorrow).  On the way home, however, I no longer had the same trust for my driver that I'd had earlier.  I could no longer promise myself I wouldn't be eaten by baboons because he wasn't going to drive us off the side of the mountain.

Already nervous about the ride home, my overactive imagination kicked in when the lightening and the thunder and the torrential downpour began.  Those roads had been bad enough dry...what was going to happen now that they'd all be mud?

Then the hail began.  Remember those green countrysides I showed earlier?  See all the white in this photo?  That'd be the hail.

Miaritz said, "This is what we call snow."  I said, "Miaritz, snow is soft and beautiful and magical.  This is hail.  It hurts."  He replied, "It's the only white stuff falling from the sky that we know."  So sad.  And at that moment, so scary.  I was sure I was going to die on that mountain.  Sure of it.  We could barely see out the windows after about 10 minutes.  It was as if a storm likened to one of the plagues of Egypt had descended upon us.  There was nothing for me to hold onto in the van, and so we just slowly bumped along, hoping no baboons would jump out in the mud in front of us.

Miaritz turned to me again and said, "This is an adventure, even for us.  For you, it is a BIG adventure!  You are a brave sponsor!"  I must have given him a look that showed I thought we were going to die.  "Do you think we will die on this mountain?  If we do, it'll be fast, and then we'll be with God!"

Not exactly what I wanted to hear at that moment.

I prayed and prayed for us to get out of the jungle and off the mountain alive, and since I'm blogging about it, you must know that God answered my prayers.

I made it back to Addis alive and happy.  No baboon ate me.  No goat poo'd on me.  I'd been happily called firenji about a thousand times, seen even more smiles than that, shared the afternoon and a meal with the sweetest little Ethiopian girl named Fanose, and experienced the coffee ceremony twice.  I've said since then that it's a day I will never forget--because of Fanose, of course, but also because of the adventure getting to her and back.

It was the kind of day that makes me love life overseas.  I love my firenji life.