September 12, 1983 Ethiopian Airlines’ non-stop flight from Rome was on approach to the international airport of Addis Ababa Ethiopia. I’m sitting in a window seat looking down on the approaching ground. The countryside is green and lush and the first thing I notice is a thatched hut followed soon by the runway. A thatched hut? We touch down and start taxiing to the passenger gate. The second thing I notice is a dozen military style cargo planes with the Soviet hammer and sickle painted on the tails. This in ’83 remember, the height of the Cold War. I’m a child of MAD Mutually Assured Destruction. Ronald Reagan is President and the Soviets are the world’s worst enemy. A stewardess pleasantly announces our arrive and reminds us that “Photography is prohibited in and around the airport”. I’m not in the United States anymore and about as far from home as I can imagine. How have I gotten to this place and time was a journey and these first few strange moments were not even a small taste of the changes about to descend upon me. The short answer to how I got here was a 36 hour journey from D.C. transiting through J.F.K. International Airport and Rome’s Aeroporto Internazionale di Roma-Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci and now Bole International.
My focus for this journey had been our layover in Rome. While the family had lived in Italy many years ago, we had left seeing the Eternal City for later in our stay and although we lived only 140 miles away we never made it before my father retired from the Navy and we returned to the U.S. Now we are in a taxi headed to a hotel before getting a few hours to squeeze in some highlights of one of the most historic cities in the Western world. I catch a glimpse of the Flavian Amphitheatre. Oh My God, The Colosseum, right there out the car’s window! History attacking my senses, I’m really in Rome, finally. The journey to this moment was one of waiting over nine years. All we had to do is check in to our hotel and start exploring ancient Roman ruins, the Forum, the Palatine Hill and Pantheon. We wouldn’t be able to see everything but just one or two of these would be a dream. A family tired from many hours of jet travel and time zone changes checks into a hotel, drops off our luggage and hails a cab.
“Saint Peter’s Basilica”, my father tells the cabbie. What the fuck?!?!? A 50 something son would have told is father to stop the cab so he could get the hell out and see something of much more interest on his own. The 17 year old version of myself kept his mouth shut and shared the family adventure. There would be time, there were hours left and seeing the Vatican couldn’t be all that bad. Ok, it was cool, the plaza is quite amazing. We might have gone inside, I don’t recall. I do know what we saw next, the damn Spanish Steps. Now I am sure that many people want to see them and many more people do. What ever. Freaking stupid stairs and tourists. I hadn’t even been aware there was some “attraction” called the Spanish Steps. They weren’t old enough to produce any interest in me with everything else there was to see. And with that the site seeing was over as we had to head back to the hotel for a little bit of sleep before continuing our journey to East Africa. My fury of that day is rekindled whenever I see the Spanish Steps in a movie, thankfully they aren’t popular enough to make it into many motion pictures of quality.
Like all airports Bole is busy with people going in every direction, although at the moment, most of us were queuing up for Customs and Immigration. Traveling with the State Department can have certain perks. One of them, at least back in the day, was assistance getting through the bureaucratic processes of a hostile Communist regime. A very nice Ethiopian national had been sent by the U.S. Embassy to whisk us past the red tape. Within minutes we had our luggage and were out of the building and loaded into a large older model SUV for the journey to the Embassy compound where temporary housing awaited us. The long term plan was to move into one of the apartments rented by the U.S. Government but it was being refurbished and wasn’t ready for occupancy. In the meantime we would live in a house on the Embassy grounds. Nothing could have prepared me for the next hour and a half.
Addis is one of Africa’s great cities. It was home to the Organization of African Unity, the predecessor to the current African Union. It was known for having a stable electrical supply (by African standards), paved roads and some with sidewalks. The main roads were paved but our SUV wasn’t making use of them as every street in the city was full of people. We had arrived on the Anniversary of the Communist Revolution and all good citizens were expected to celebrate. Yet again I find myself staring outside a window at what’s going on. People absolutely everywhere. Mixed in with the crowds on the back streets were dogs, cats, chickens and cows. Everything covered in dust. It was total chaos. To an American teenager this was something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The back roads were not paved and were really just made of potholes. The buildings were mud, brick and corrugated sheet metal. Electrical lines crisscrossed the street with no discernible pattern. Culture shock does not begin to encapsulate the sensory overload nor a mind trying to make sense of a million unknowns in my new home. With the flood of so much unfamiliar, at the time I hadn’t made specific note of the large piece of cloth wrapped around the shoulders and upper body of many of the people, the Gabi. I’m not sure I would call it a national dress and 30 years ago it already seemed to be falling out of fashion for younger people. It is worn both my men and women though men not as much, in the city at least. It is a large rectangle of cotton cloth and mostly white. Many had embroidered designs at the ends. If cold weather it might also be wrapped on the head.
Travel and life overseas was a large part of the early years of my life. May parents met in Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) in the mid 60s. My mother was employed by the State Department and my father was in the US Navy. That they started their lives together in another land was a sign of things to come. This reality and shared desire to experience difference firsthand, led to the family spending much of its time in other countries.
My first experience of another way of life came in 1974 when my Dad was stationed in Napes, Italy. We lived in an apartment building owned by the Navy for families stationed in the area. The building was in Pineta Mare, a development with apartment buildings and villas on the coast. There was an incredible beach that sealed my love of the ocean, playing in the waves and building sand castles.I was eight years old and went to the American school for the third grade. It was such a critical time in my development as a person and being outside the US helped me see things from a different perspective.
I was really lucky that my parents weren’t typical. While we took advantage of what the Navy provided, housing, education for the kids, shopping and recreational activities, my parents also dived into what Italy had to offer. My mother would do much of her grocery shopping at local establishments. Sunday’s were frequently spent at a small town nearby getting fruit and baked goods in Mondragoni. I can still vividly recall life in early 70s Italy. Streets were clogged with original model Fiat 500s, impatient city drivers turning two lane roads into three and four all stuck in endless gridlock, a culture where kids in restaurants were treated like royalty and Roman ruins were everywhere. My parents had an attack plan, see things that were far away on vacations and take short day and weekend trips to sites closer to home, Pompeii, Herculenium and the Amalfi coast. One of my first camping memories was a major road trip to Spain.
It was to be an epic journey for the Davey family and the Jones family, friends of my parents. It was my Dad, Mom, Sister and I along with the Jones parents and their two daughters. We packed up our car and the Joneses took their full sized American pickup with a slide in camper. The first stop I recall was Florence. While we did the trip on the cheap, camping everywhere, we didn’t miss a tourist attraction, the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo di Firenze, a museum with the works of Michelangelo including the David and rain. Oh how it rained, a portent of things to come for much of the trip. Our next stop was Pisa and its famous tower. When we arrived at this ancient and famous town the rain joined in on the festivities. Momma Jones was concerned about the rain and fashioned rain gear from freaking black garbage bags. I got to see the sites and climb the tower, dry, looking like trash. At the time my eight year old self was most unamused, now it brings a chuckle and may explain my detest of rain ponchos. Further down the road we travelled, our next stop Monte Carlo and for the record I was too young to gamble at the time, damn it.
Leaving the closet left more room for clothes 