In transit (Ethiopia: Day Ten)

On the plane now to London. We stopped at Alexandria, Egypt for about 45 minutes. The flight from Addis to Alexandria was around 4-5 hours. We're in the air again, and I don't know how much time has passed, but Ini and I just finished watching "The Land of Women" (no personal monitors; we had no choice); so it's gotta be close to three hours. Probably another hour and a half and we'll touch down.

We were able to do some shopping yesterday afternoon. Will took us to a shop that focused on souvenirs and "authentic" art work. Wood carvings, silver and onyx jewelry, cultural clothing, the works. It was pretty fun. I'm such a dolt when it comes to buying stuff to bring back and give to people as gifts, so I just bought a number of random items and will just have them pick out what they want. Heh...I'm a hack.

Before the shopping, we went to the village where Will grew up. We met his mother, and he showed us his house and gave us a description of his lifestyle before he moved into Dave Hunt's house. Apparently, the kitchen area and toilet was used by neighbors as a communal area. Not much machinery, and everything was damp from the rain. There was a little less than comfortable smell in the air like a leaking septic tank or an unkept public restroom.

The main reason why we were in the area was to get our last shot of a little boy being passed by a "Westerner" who didn't care about anyone but himself and the Bible in his hand. It's a pretty harsh shot, but we're not going for "friendly" in this video. We're going for realism and the hard truth of the spiritual condition of Africa.

After the village and the shopping, we went to Kaldi's for coffee. Kaldi's is the rip off of Starbucks, but this only occurred because Ethiopian government doesn't allow much corporate chains into their country. I haven't seen a McDonald's, Burger King, Apple, and the like in almost two weeks. It's really nice to be segregated from major commercial chains for a while.

We spent a good time at Kaldi's just talking with Bob and Will. It was our last full day with them, and we just wanted to spend time with them before we had to go. We went back to the hotel around 8:30 or 9 PM, bid our last goodbyes to Bob, exchanged business cards and wrote down e-mail addresses, and went back to our rooms to pack. Packing didn't take too much time, we all packed pretty light. It was a trick to find a way to put all our valuables (mainly all our cameras) into one bag because we were counting on them to only let us take one carry-on luggage.

Will picked us up at 5 AM to take us to the airport for our 7:10 AM flight. Once there, we hugged Will goodbye and prepared for the process from the check-in booth to the seat at our departure gate. It didn't take long, only about 30 minutes. The longest and probably most unnerving part was when the guy at Customs wasn't satisfied with my passport photograph. The long hair down to my shoulders and Costco's poor printing job (they stretched my face a little wide) made them question me. I offered them my CA driver's license and further proof. I showed them another picture of me. They asked for my residence card for the U.S. I explained to them that I didn't have one; that I was born in the U.S. and am a native born U.S. citizen. There was lots of frowns from the officer, and there were a lot of shrugs from me. There wasn't much else I could do to reinforce my claims. It wasn't until Carol came up to the officer and vouched for me and said she was my boss. I guess that was a little more convincing because they let me through. Phew! Although, I was a little disappointed that I wasn't taken to some holding room and questioned or something. That would have been an experience.

And so here we are. I can't wait to get to London. Carol said we'll go out to Indian food after we get settled in our hotel rooms. I keep hearing that the Indian food in London is most excellent, so I gotta try it. I don't know what we'll do tomorrow, but there's time to think about that. Right now, I'm just waiting to set foot on UK soil.