Travels in Ethiopia - Part One

Travels in Ethiopia is an ongoing series written by Katie Douglas - look for a continuation of this story in the next issue of Zethiopia.

Zethiopia - January 2007 - Issue 47

The rain is streaming down in sheets reminding me of Africa. A big heavy rain that makes you feels cozy as you sit inside in a sweatshirt with a cup of tea. It’s the perfect time to write. African rain almost always takes you by surprise. The big dark clouds roll in and the slate of a sunny day is wiped clean within a matter of minutes before the sky opens up and buckets of big fat raindrops come pouring down. Sometimes it is only for a few minutes and sometimes it lasts all day. Either way, it is a welcome relief from the sun that somehow feels closer to the earth in that part of the world. The sky is so big in Africa that as you stand and look up it feels like freedom. The rain always makes me think of Africa. It’s much more of a sensory experience there. The smell of fresh earth awakened from a new rain, the feeling of sharp water pelting your skin as you’re caught in a downpour on your walk home, looking out onto a sea of big brightly colored golf umbrellas, and my favorite part, the sound of rain tap dancing on the tin roofs. I have been rained on in Kenya, drenched in Cameroon, and spellbound by the rain beading off my porch roof in Ethiopia and as I sit in my fifth grade classroom in Washington, DC and watch the rain cloud our windows I think of Africa.

It was raining the day I arrived in Ethiopia. After too many hours of flying and wandering foreign airport corridors I had arrived into the maze of Bole International Airport. It was almost midnight when I passed through the last checkpoint into the waiting crowds scanning for a card with my name on it. It only took me a moment to notice the tall, thin, smiling Ethiopian man and short, blond, Australian waiting to meet me. Sisay worked at the children’s library I was here to volunteer with and Seth was a fellow volunteer and housemate. I was too tired for more than brief introductions and as we wound our way through the streets of the city on our way home I gazed out the window at the shadow of my new life for the next six months.

Ethiopia was my third trip to Africa. The trip was inspired by a newspaper article tucked inside one of my grandmother’s letters. The article told the story of an Ethiopian man named Yohannes Gebregiorgis who, after working as a children’s librarian in San Francisco for thirty years, had returned to his home country to create Ethiopia’s first free public children’s library. As soon as I read the article I knew I wanted to be a part of his project. I am always inspired by people who drop everything to follow their dreams and this was my chance to be a part of that. I had no idea what I was stepping into when I stepped off that plane and would soon find Ethiopia to be a fascinating place full of contradictions that would stick with me forever. There are so many things I would like to tell you about Ethiopia and my time there but it’s the small moments in life that always make the biggest impression on me so that’s what I plan on sharing with you here. The little moments that made me smile or cry and inevitably changed my life forever.