The Transition Artist

Well, my last full day in Addis has come to an end and the feelings are bittersweet. I wished off a big group of country directors and coworkers this evening, and genuinely was sad to see them go. I’ve officially been invited to visit Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Congo with the promise of a place to stay and plenty to see and keep me occupied, so I guess there’s some sort of hope that I’ll see some of my favorites again soon. But I did make sure to warn the sweet country directors offering to host me in their home countries to be careful inviting me, because I’ll actually show up.. As evident by the trip I’m currently on..

This past week has been full of learning and new experiences, and I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful experience, but tomorrow I take off for Kenya. Before the day closed I did make sure to get a fun little final experience in the city, though. The entire trip I’ve been talking about wanting to buy some Ethiopian coffee to bring home. I was sure that, if anything, that was the one souvenir I couldn’t miss out on. So, this afternoon I announced that I was going to go on a mission to find at least one bag of coffee to take home with me. I had decided I would just walk around the corner to Kaldi’s coffee (semi lame because it’s the Ethiopian equivalent of Starbucks, and who wants to bring home chain coffee?), but it was my closest option.

Mathison, the videographer and next youngest member on our trip (I’m the youngest) who is just about to graduate from Rice, offered to join me. Talking to him is really pretty interesting because we quite literally traded places when we left for college. He moved from Nashville to Houston to go to Rice just two years before I moved from Houston to Nashville to go to Belmont, so we know a lot of the same places, but both experienced our home cities in different ways. We chatted as we wandered down the street from the hotel in search of my coffee. Until this point I had literally not set foot on more than 20 yards of the streets of Addis. I’m all about walking around and exploring a city to get to know it, so I had been a little sad to have only seen Addis through the window of whatever vehicle was taking us to or from one place or another, but given the size of our conference group it made sense that I wouldn’t have been able to. Needless to say, I was pretty excited about our little excursion.

We walked a few blocks down the road, and then turned at a big intersection where I remembered the Kaldi’s coffee was located. But of course my sense of distance was a little off because 1. I’m a little directionally challenged at times and 2. I had only ever seen the streets through the window of a van.. We walked for about 10 minutes before the sky started to conveniently get progressively darker. It wasn’t long till I felt the first few raindrops. I wasn’t too bothered, but as it started to rain harder I interrupted Mathison to ask what he thought we should do. Basically we had two options: get wet and not care (seeing as we didn’t bring any umbrellas), or duck into the coffee shop about ten yards from us, checking to see if they might sell coffee beans, and waiting out the storm. Although neither of us seemed to mind walking in the rain, the sign above the coffee shop said “best macchiatos in town” so we settled on that option and walked in just as a torrential downpour began.

The coffee shop ended up not selling beans, but we sat down for coffee and ordered macchiatos. Turns out the sign didn’t lie. The little coffees we were served were easily the best tasting macchiatos we’ve had here, and certainly the best I’ve ever had in general. It was strong, sweet, and had a perfect milk to espresso ratio. Rainstorms here are notoriously short, being that it’s somewhat of a mountain town (and almost monsoon season), so after we had chatted for a while and finished up our coffees the rain had subsided. We paid and left, still on a mission to find me some Ethiopian coffee.

We finally made it to Kaldi’s and they did, in fact, sell coffee, but it was pre-ground and stamped with the Kaldi’s logo. Looking at it, I felt like I was just looking at a generic bag of coffee that I could buy in the states, so I was a little disappointed. Mathison, who’s been here before, explained that a lot of times the coffee they sell and make here is actually the cheap stuff, and that most of the good coffee gets exported. With that in mind, the whole excursion started to seem a little silly, so I basically just gave up. We walked around a little more just to look around, but Mathison was leaving with the group heading to the airport at 7, so we took just long enough to peek around before heading back.

As the week comes to a close, I’m wholly content. I write primarily about the fun and excursions, but in between all of that has been a lot of work, a lot of discussion and project planning, and a little sleep. The week has left me feeling exhausted, but I’m looking forward to getting to sleep tonight and getting some much needed (and deserved, I think) rest before heading to Kenya for the next leg of my adventure tomorrow. After today, I’m not sure how frequent (if at all) my posts will be, but I hope to share what I can. I will say, though, that the point of this trip is not to be half here and half stuck in the states. I’ve been posting something either on this blog or on social media pretty consistently at the end of each day this week, but today I started to feel restless. It is my intention to now disconnect from everything a little bit, so that I can be wholly involved, present, and participatory in the work I’ll be doing in Kenya.

I’m sure by now some of you have heard about what’s going on there with al-shabab, but I’m trusting God to take care of me, and can promise that I won’t put myself in any unnecessary danger. All I want right now is prayers, support, and positivity. I can only hope for the best, but I’ll update as necessary!