Apparently
I have bad luck when it comes to traveling outside of Uganda. Once again my flight “no longer
existed” when I was scheduled to leave for Ethiopia. Fortunately I have learned my lesson after Rwanda and Paris,
and I actually checked my flight status this time around. When I checked my flight status, I
realized that once again my flight had left a day early. The status did not say, “changed,”
“departed,” “delayed” or “cancelled,” but instead just said, “FLOWN.” Good to know. I do not understand how this happened, again, since Lisa
booked her flight two weeks prior and it was still a real flight. As a result, Lisa and I were put on a
flight that left at 3:30am – 2 hours later than our original flight was
planned. 3:30am is really not the
most convenient time in the world since neither of us lives close to the
airport and we didn’t feel like booking a hotel room for the night. So, we spent a lot of time at the airport.
Lisa
and I got to the airport around 9:45pm, which meant we had to wait in a
separate section of the airport because they do not let you check in until two
hours before. There is a
“restaurant,” but I use that term loosely. They really just sell sodas, alcohol and a few “food”
items. Again, I use the term
“food” loosely. After traveling
all day to get to Entebbe on various taxis, coasters and private hires, we were
both pretty dirty and disgusting.
All I wanted to do was shower.
There was a man there who was definitely enjoying the scotch – he was
pounding them since 10:00pm up until we left to check-in. We kept counting down the minutes until
we could check in for our flight even though there isn’t anything necessarily
“better” on the other side of security/customs. Duty Free, however, was calling our name because I wanted
some candy and I needed to buy face wash.
At 1:00am, they finally let us go
to the other side.
I
have a Priority Pass, which lets me get into airport lounges throughout the
world. Shockingly enough, the
Karibuni Lounge in Entebbe Airport accepts this pass. Actually, more shocking…Entebbe Airport has a lounge.
Lisa and I were beyond excited to go into the lounge, and we were the
only ones in there. There were
nice couches, a clean bathroom, a
shower, massage chair and real food.
We felt like homeless people in the lounge since we were so dirty and
disgusting. We also were unclear
whether or not the food and drinks were free, so we kind of just stood around
awkwardly until the waitress told us it was free and we could sit down. We really did not belong in this
lounge. Nevertheless, we were
hoping our flight would be delayed because the lounge was so nice.
At
2:45, Lisa and I decided to leave the lounge because that was the boarding time
of our flight. The lady at the
front desk said, “Your flight isn’t boarding, yet. You may wait until it’s called.” Lisa and I thought, “Sweet!” and headed back to the seating
area. I ate a little more, and
Lisa took a massage from the chair.
Twenty minutes later, we heard our flight being called for boarding on
the loudspeaker. So, we gathered
our things, and left to head to our gate.
As soon as we got out of the lounge, the loudspeaker said, “Final
boarding for flight 822 to Ethiopia, gate is closing.” Lisa and I looked at each other like,
“what the heck?” and ran for the gate.
(Thankfully Entebbe Airport is super tiny and we only had to run like
ten feet). We got to the gate and
security said, “We were about to call your names.” So, I guess they were
actually boarding when we wanted to leave the lounge. We went downstairs and got onto the shuttle where everyone
was waiting for us. One man
actually said, “We have been waiting on you two.” Whoops! We apologized and explained that we had
been told the flight wasn’t boarding.
He responded, “Typical.”
We
boarded the airplane, and the man who had been pounding the scotch was standing
behind Lisa and me, waiting to get to his seat. We were on a tiny
prop plane that did not have a typical first class. It was just a curtain that divided economy, but the seats
were the exact same. The guy
loudly starts asking, “Where is first class? Is this first class? What is the
difference? Is this first class? What is the difference? The curtain? Is this first class?!?” Lisa and I were trying not to laugh,
but he reeked of booze and he was clearly inebriated. We both kind of figured he had a first class ticket, and was
pissed that there wasn’t really a difference. Lisa turned to him and said, “It’s probably the
service. First class will get
better food.” He completely
ignored her, and kept shouting about first class.
Turns
out, this guy was not even in first
class, he just wanted to shout. He
ended up sitting across from Lisa, but his complaining was not over. They didn’t have the AC on, so it was
extremely hot on the plane. The
guy started shouting, “Oxygen! Oxygen! We need oxygen! Hello? Oxygen! We need oxygen. Where is the oxygen?”
Everyone turned to look at him because he was shouting. He kept yelling, “Oxygen! This is an international flight, we
need oxygen!” He started playing
with the AC knobs and then fanned himself with his jacket and said,
“Hello! Can’t you see people are
wearing jackets here?” (I’m not
sure why he didn’t just take off his jacket). By this point, everyone in the plane was giggling, and the
flight attendants were paying no attention to him. The guy next to him turned and said, “So you’ve been
drinking, huh? Ya…okay.” He turned to the flight attendant and
asked, “There are seats in the back, right? Okay, I’m moving.”
He got up and moved to the back (don’t blame him).
The
flight attendants started going up and down the aisles to count people, and the
drunkard started yelling, “Stop counting! Why are you counting? We need oxygen!” Again, the flight attendants paid no
attention to him. The flight
attendants then started to pass out the extension seat belts, and the drunkard
thought everyone needed one because that was your actual seat belt. He kept yelling, “You didn’t give me
one. Ah, she is not answering
me. She is being rude!” He eventually figured out that he did
not need the extender, and tried putting on his own seatbelt. This was no easy task for a drunk man –
the flight attendant had to do it for him. Finally,
the captain put on the air and the drunkard yells to the flight attendant,
“Thank you! Ah you are beautiful.
That is why I am going to marry you.” The flight attendants began showing us their safety
procedure, but we couldn’t really hear anything. After it was done, the drunk yelled to the flight attendant,
“I couldn’t understand. The first
class curtain was in the way.”
Lisa and I were dying from laughter.
The
captain turned off the AC again, and he continued on with his rant. He also yelled whenever the flight
attendants came on the loudspeaker because he couldn’t understand them. He kept yelling, “SPEAK ENGLISH!”
whenever they spoke in Amharic.
Thankfully, by the time we took off, the drunk passed out. He was, however, great entertainment
before take-off. And don’t you
worry; I finally decided to film him after ten minutes of his yelling. Video will be at the end of this post.
We
landed in Ethiopia at 5:30 am, and decided to just hang out and drink coffee
until our other friends landed a 6:45 from Zanzibar. It was freezing in
Ethiopia, which we had not expected at all. We were trying to warm ourselves with our coffee, but it
didn’t help. At around 7:00, we
realized our friends’ flight wasn’t even up on the screen. We were a little confused, so we
started to look for the driver from the hotel since they were going to pick us
up. No luck. We finally asked about our friends’
flight, and we were told it arrived in the Domestic Terminal (weird!). So we walked over there and we were
stopped by security before entering the airport. They asked, “Where are you going?”
Lisa
replied, “We are meeting our friends at arrivals.”
“You
can’t go in. Wait here.”
“Ok,
well can you tell us if their flight has landed?”
“Yes,
I will check for you. No go over
there.”
“Ok. Do you want to know what flight they
are on?”
“Sure.”
“Flight
from Tanzania.”
“Ok,
now go over there.”
I
am not sure if the guy was screwing with us or what, but he definitely didn’t
check the status of the flight. We
waited in the parking lot for another 40 minutes, but we still did not see our
friends. Of course our phones do
not work in Ethiopia, so there wasn’t much we could do, but get in a cab. Since Peace Corps has made us all
pretty passive, and have the attitude, “Oh it will work out” – neither Lisa nor
I had thought to print out the address or phone number of our hotel. No worries though, after the cab
drivers talked amongst themselves, they figured out where we were staying.
We
ended up meeting everyone else at the hotel, so it was fine. Only downside was Lisa and I missed the
free airport pick up. Oh
well. We decided to go get lunch
because were all starving. Someone appointed me to go ask the
staff for a recommendation of where to eat and directions. Clearly my friends don’t know me too
well, I cannot be trusted with such a task. I sort of listened to the name of the restaurant and the
directions, but not really. So,
when we set out walking, we did not find what we were looking for. Whoops! However, we are all so passive that none of us really cared,
and decided to just try any restaurant.
We walked into the first one we saw that looked somewhat
legitimate.
Rachel
asked the waiter, “Do you have food?”
(A question we are all accustomed to asking since restaurants in Uganda
regularly don’t have food.)
The
waiter replied, “Yes. We have raw
meat or tibbs.”
“Um,
come again?”
“Raw
meat or tibbs.”
“Ok. Do you have anything that’s
vegetarian?”
“What?”
“Vegetarian. No meat.”
“Yes!”
“Oh,
what do you have?”
“We
have tomatoes.”
“Just
tomatoes?”
“Yes,
we give you a plate of tomatoes.”
“No
thank you.”
Needless
to say, we left that restaurant and headed to another one. The next restaurant actually had menus
and our waitress spoke better English.
We all ordered our food – Rachel, Abby (Maggie’s sister) and I decided
to all order gored gored, a local meat dish that is like steak in sauce. I have had it before, and it’s really
good. Abby, however, ordered it
without sauce because it was spicy.
Rachel and I got ours first and started inhaling the meat and injera
(traditional bread served with Ethiopian food). After we were about halfway through, Rachel said, “I think
this is raw meat!”
I
said, “No way! It’s cooked a little it’s just rare.”
“No,
I think it’s raw. It’s really
common here. According to Lonely
Planet it’s safe, and they recommend to try it.”
“Gross!
I am not eating raw meat. And this
looks cooked.”
Soon
after, the waitress brought Abby her meat sans sauce, and sure enough, it was a
bowl of raw meat. It looked like
they had just slaughtered the cow and put the meat in a bowl. Abby had a look of disgust on her face
and looked at everyone saying, “NO! Oh my god, no! That’s not happening, that’s
just not happening. Oh my
god. No! Seriously, that’s not happening. I can’t eat that.”
She looked around the table for affirmation. Her eyes were wide and then kept saying, “I’m
not eating that. It’s just not
happening. That makes me want to
vomit. Oh my god! No!”
We
all could not stop laughing because she kept saying, “No!” – like we were actually
going to force her to eat it. We
called over the waitress and Abby asked, “Can I have this cooked?”
“Oh,
you want it cut?”
“No,
I want it cooooooked.”
“Smaller
pieces?”
“No!”
Abby looked at us like how can I say this in a different way? She finally said, “I want it hot. Cooked!”
“Oh
you want more?”
Rachel
finally said, “NO! FIRE!”
The
waitress finally understood and took it back to be cooked. Meanwhile, Rachel and I both looked at
our plate of food and realized that ours was in fact raw. (It was hard to tell with the
sauce). At that point though, we
both figured since we had already eaten half of the meat, we might as well
finish it. If we were going to get
sick, then we were going to get sick.
Abby got her meat cooked, but she couldn’t eat most of it because her
platter of raw meat traumatized her.
I can proudly say, though, that Rachel and I did not get sick. Whether or not we have tapeworms is up
in the air though. Afterwards, we
got really good coffee that was super strong. Rachel said, “Well, Aubrey, it’s a good thing we are in
separate rooms. I have a feeling
this coffee will just make us spit fire from our ass.”
Ethiopia
was overall a ton of fun (even the raw meat fiasco!). Everything was so cheap, and we pretty much spent the whole
time eating. For my five days
there, I spent $200, and that was including the hotel/apartment we had and my
shopping. It was awesome. We went to the National Museum and saw
Lucy. (Oldest complete human
skeleton remains ever found, and she was named after the Beatles song, “Lucy in
the Sky with Diamonds.”) We found
out later that it was actually a replica, and the real one is at the
Smithsonian. Lame! We also went to the markets to shop (so
many great scarves!) and walked around the city. Ethiopia was taken over by the Italians for a bit, so there
was really good Italian food. We
had a lot of pizza and desserts.
On
our second night we splurged and went to Castinelli, an Italian restaurant that
Lonely Planet raved about for their homemade pasta. They also said that the Jolie-Pitts ate there, so that
pretty much sold us. The food was
amazing, especially the gelato, and it wasn’t really that “expensive.” We, however, looked a little ratty for
the restaurant – I’m pretty sure the host assessed us before letting us
in. Rachel said to me, “Aubrey,
put down your hair. You look like
you’re in high school and just came back from track practice!” While we may have been a little out of
place, we made up for it by ordering a lot of food and leaving a very generous
tip.
As
you can tell, the trip was mostly food based. Can you blame us?
Apparently, we also looked picture worthy. While Abby and I were walking around the Ethnological
museum, a European guy blatantly took a picture of us with his iPhone. Creepy. Later that day, when we were at a restaurant, an older
American woman took a picture of us all eating lunch. She either took a lot of photos or was videotaping us
because she was aiming her camera at us for about 5 minutes. We should have started charging people
for photographs.
Overall,
we had a lot of fun in Ethiopia and did not want to leave. The place we stayed was great. They had a coffee ceremony on Sunday,
so they crushed the coffee berries, roasted them and made real coffee. It was delicious! I had four cups, so I was a little
wired the rest of the day.
We
only have two more weeks until our Close of Service (COS) conference. I cannot believe it! We will be getting our leave dates, and
I am pretty excited. I started
cleaning out my house and giving things away to my neighbors – they are
pumped. Today, I gave Stephen’s
kids the Legos and Hot Wheels that I kept at my house for kids to play with. I’m sure it will all be lost or broken
within the next week, but I was tired of keeping it at my house. Kids came over at all hours to play
with it. As a thank you, Stephen’s
wife gave me a whole plate of homemade peanut butter. Not to take home or anything, just to eat it right there and
then. It was good, but so sticky
and I felt like a dog eating peanut butter. I ate only about an eighth of the platter of PB. Sometimes, living here just makes me
laugh.
I
am sure when the time comes, I will be sad to leave and it will be bittersweet
saying goodbye. As for now, I’m so
excited to finish up and get back to the good ol’ USA. Showers and toilets galore!
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| Our flight has what? FLOWN. |
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| Lounge. Like the jungle theme? |
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| My bedroom - got my own room, sweet! |
