Being thousands of kilometres away from home and in a foreign country can be both exhilarating and nerve-racking. We fully went through this continuum of feelings within a few hours of arrival at Bole International airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In early November 2018, we were in a group of 15 climate change mitigation and adaptation enthusiasts from Kenya and Rwanda, and were set to join five others from Ethiopia for a week of presentations, peer reviews and field trips to some of Ethiopia’s climate change mitigation projects. This assembly was the final leg of a six-month project-oriented programme and we were looking forward to the reflections regarding the individual projects we had carried out in our respective organisations.
From Nairobi, our flight landed in Addis Ababa a few minutes past 9 p.m., while our colleagues from Kigali arrived about 10 minutes later. By the time everyone disembarked, went through immigration, engaged in nostalgic chitchat, congregated for a roll call and ready to leave, it was past 11 p.m. We filed into the hired tour bus and the animated din soon went down as we settled in for the journey to Kuriftu Resort and Spa in Bishoftu City, about 50 kilometres from Bole International, an hour’s bus ride.
From the airport, we took Addis Ababa’s Ring Road heading south, and after a few kilometres exited to Highway A1 for the major part of the journey. Upon reaching Bishoftu City just past midnight, we exited the highway, turning left after Chelekleka Lake area. At a crossroads about 300 metres from the highway, our driver suddenly pulled over and alighted the bus.
On a moonless, dark night, only the sporadic beams of oncoming traffic and the erratic barks of faraway street dogs tersely accentuated the gloom at this patch of the road. We patiently waited for a few minutes assuming that our driver had gone to answer the call of nature. However, our sense of dread was quickly roused when we realised that he was attempting to stop motorists. Not unexpectedly, none stopped, owing probably to the unclear intentions of someone flagging down motorists at this late hour.
After some discussions in the bus, a few of us decided to venture out to try figure out what the driver was up to. When we tried communicating with him, a new problem emerged: our driver could not speak English. We recalled that we had bid goodbye to our guide at the airport and since we were to join our Ethiopian colleagues the following morning, we had no one in our group who could speak Amharic. After a few laboured attempts at communication due to the language barrier, we figured out the original problem: we were lost. Apparently, after reaching Bishoftu, either our driver did not to know the exact directions to our final destination or he lost his bearing, and thus his attempts to flag down motorists ostensibly to ask for directions.
A few days prior to this back home in Nairobi, I was excited as I prepared for the trip to Addis Ababa. It would be my first time in Ethiopia and furthermore was looking forward to reconnecting with project colleagues. As part of the preparations, my flight reservations were safely tacked away in my Gmail, and thus automatically showed in my Google Trips app. I then searched for our hotel, located it on Google Maps, and added it to my Saved Places. I then went to the app options and without even thinking about it, tapped to download the map for the area as I usually do to safeguard against spotty connections on my travel routes.
Back to our nadir point in Bishoftu, I whipped out my phone and with no roaming mobile phone coverage, launched Maps. With the offline map, we quickly located where we were and the distance to the hotel, which turned out to be six kilometres. Pointing to the phone’s screen, we gestured to the driver that we knew our destination and we would direct him there. We therefore restarted our journey, giving him gestured navigation instructions. The most notable section was a very sharp left turn (screenshot at the top of the article) that was easy to miss under the circumstances but Google Assistant’s voice instructions expertly prepared us for it.
At the final declaration of “You have arrived”, the relief in everyone’s face was palpable. The hotel staff received us warmly, but at fifty minutes past midnight, the restaurants were long closed. Thankfully, they had arranged to serve us some quick bites. The sting of the cold cinnamon juice and the tingle of fermented teff buns felt nothing compared to the elation of safely arriving at our destination. We were also resolutely looking forward to enjoying our seminar and sampling the hospitality and cultural splendour of the Ethiopian people.