Without really meaning to, I’ve managed to miss the Fourth of July in the US for the last few years. As I write this, the calendar has just flipped to the 4th and I’m currently sat in the Nairobi airport, waiting for a flight to Addis Ababa. I left Minnesota on the 2nd, so it’s been a long travel day, with another 5 hours to go.
As with our other visits to East Africa, this trip is aligned with Kat’s work. She’s had a workshop in Addis, and was then faced with a weeklong gap before needing to be in Nairobi. During that gap, I’m joining her so we can explore Ethiopia a bit.
This trip has been a little chaotic from the start. I originally booked my flights via Dubai, thinking it’d be a safe bet and a cheap ticket. That turned out to be a bad call, and a couple weeks ago all my flights got canceled. Our plans in Ethiopia have also been disrupted – we had originally planned to go to the Tigray region (with a guide) but increasing regional tensions spooked us. The politics are complicated – an Ethiopian separatist group, regional meddling from Eritrea, Egypt, and Sudan, as well as power struggles between Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fueling fear of renewed fighting. Once Kat got to her workshop, the local Ethiopian folks convinced her that the journey wasn’t worth the risk.
We’re still in the midst of figuring out exactly what we’ll be doing for the next few days. Stay tuned! First I need to stay awake for another few hours. Whew.
Hope you can snooze a bit on the last leg of a very long journey. We’re eager to follow this adventure… once you get some good sleep at the hotel in Addis.
Thanks for checking in—wishing you a good deep long catch-up sleep at the hotel in Addis.
Not sure why the site told me to post again—user error.