My First Trip to Ethiopia
The flight from Idaho Falls, ID was to depart at 7:00 a.m. After gathering everything together and thinking and re-thinking of anything that I might have overlooked of what I might need to go to Ethiopia for four weeks I was ready to go. Shelley drove me down at 5:00 am. The airport was somewhat busy but things went quickly. I gave Shelley a big hug and off I went. The first stop was in Denver then switched planes to Washington DC Dulles where I had a 5 hour layover. While there I met up with Wes Haws, his wife Alyssa and their 6 month old boy Everett. Soon thereafter we were joined by Paul Morrell’s brother Joe and son in-law Mark. We boarded the plane and were assigned separate seats. I sat next to a nice young man by the name of Zirihuan. He has been working and going to school in Minneapolis and was returning home to Ethiopia for six weeks. I enjoyed conversing with him learning some about Ethiopia. I got his E-mail address and his phone number and he said to call if needed. We were on the plane for about 15 hours with a 45 minute stop in Rome, Italy. We were all anxious to get off when we arrived in Addis Ababa. Ethiopian Airlines wasn't bad, but I doubt it will win any awards soon. After getting off the plane we had to get our visa, it only cost $20 and wasn't much of a hassle. The authorities looked and acted professional. After that we went through customs which was interesting. There were several x-ray machines that our luggage had to go through. Nightmares went through my head of being interrogated by authorities about something they might find suspicious. There was a very large crowd of families waiting to reunite with their loved ones. There was an anxiousness to get through the line, so if anyone paused for just a second to put their bags through the machine others were butting ahead. The authorities seemed not to care about that or even what was even in the bags. It made me think it was all for show. I breathed a sigh of relief as I left the building while being stared at by the masses. I learned that it is a very big deal for people to go to the airport and so for crowd control they require the locals pay $1 to get into the airport, which is half a day's pay for many.
There were a couple of local Morrell Agro employees there to bring us from the airport to the hotel in a van, and what a wild ride that was. They are very aggressive drivers. They honk horns, butting ahead, passing at any time and weaving through pedestrians with little regard for life. We soon got to the Harmony Hotel which was a much nicer hotel than I had expected. There we met up with more Morrell Agro people, Wally Odd, who is the vice president of Morrell Agro; Mark Ure from Camas, UT, a Young single guy and very much a cowboy with the hat and boots; a retired USU animal science teacher named Haven; Lonnie, a dairy farmer from Utah; a young lady named Kate who is here with her grand mother to help with the Village of Hope (an orphanage) and Evan Maxfield the agronomist. We then retreated to our rooms. It had nice marble tile in the bathroom and nice quality wood furniture, very comfortable. It cost about $130/night.
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