Arriving in Addis

When we arrived at 2 am at Addis Ababas International Airport we realized there had been a miscommunication. Louise's colleague and friend Jordan Chamberlin -- who lives in Addis and was going to host us -- thought our arrival was still 24 hours away. Hence no Jordan to pick us up. We couldn't call and wake him up at that godawful hour. And we couldn't taxi it to his house as we didn't have the address. So we waited at the airport until the birds started chirping outside and we could make that call without scaring the daylights out of Jordan. While we waited and sipped tea at the airport bar we heard two guys speak ... Swedish. They turned out to be Christian missionaries who had previously worked in eastern Ethiopia, spreading the word of The Man Upstairs, and were now back in Ethiopia to attend a wedding. They were soon joined by three Swedish women, there for the same purpose. Sebastian, Andreas, Anna-Karin, another Anna-Karin (I think) and Linda all turned out to be very nice, hanging out with Louise and me as they were waiting for their driver. I am, to be honest, a little skeptical about missionary work. Can't help but think thoughts such as: 1) Is this what Ethiopians today really need, Westerners preaching their preferred version of religion? 2) If you're a Swede, believe in the Lord and have the urge to convert others, why fly off to a far-away land? Why not stay in Sweden, where most people are agnostics or atheists, and take a whack at it there?

Any case, the little skeptic inside me stayed silent as I realized how genuinely nice they all were. Truly good-natured young folks -- and only partly evidenced by the fact that they didn't get paid for their missionary work, but took jobs in Sweden and saved and saved until they could afford to go for a year or so. I ended up being impressed with them, and would love to cross paths with them again.