ARRIVAL

1 Jan. 2020

I’ve never been to Africa before, and I’d be dishonest if I told you that I didn’t experience pre-arrival nerves, the kind that precede the just-arrived rush. Stepping off the 13-hour plane from Chicago, shuffling through the haphazard lines to obtain a visa and an Ethiopian sim card, I walked out of the airport into bright Addis Ababa sunshine and a scuffle between two taxi drivers, who were yelling at each other as a soldier in blue camo jogged over to break them up. At that moment, I was intercepted by Abe, the manager of my guesthouse, who held a piece of computer paper with MATTHEW CRANE printed on it. This made me feel strangely special: My first designated airport pick-up ever. I suppose I was easy to spot, as there were no other white people in sight.

We hopped in Abe’s car and drove into a chaotic scene that was immediately foreign, but familiar to me from trips past: As in much of the world, traffic in Addis is an organic entity, devoid of hard stops and starts and crystallized concepts of right-of-way. Vehicles roll within inches of each other as pedestrians weave and hurry acoss the road; honks, waving hands and assertiveness dictate who moves when. Beggars and vendors made a beeline for our vehicle when they spotted me in the passenger seat.

Like many African cities, Addis is relatively young, dating back just to the end of the 19th century. Much of the existing infrastructure, however, is only a decade or two old; as we drove through the dusty streets, Abe told me that much of the city is unrecognizable to him from before then. This seemed to be borne out by the ubiquitous construction around us; everywhere I looked, particularly as we arrived in the northeastern suburb of Yeka, I saw partially constructed highrise shells, missing their facades and looking like giant cinderblocks.

I’ve grown to like Yeka over the few days I’ve been here. The neighborhood feels friendly, home to one of Addis’s largest markets (although to me, the most interesting sight in the immediate area is an apartment building that proclaims itself the FRENCH KISS BLDG in large metal letters fastened to the roof). The guesthouse encloses a small driveway-garden, and opens onto a dirt path that leads past a neighborhood of corrugated tin sheds, punctuated by a pool hall and a semi-abandoned-looking highrise hotel.

While the architecture is undistinguished, the pretty green hills surrounding Addis are visible from the nearest intersection. At 7,700 feet, Addis Ababa is the fourth-highest national capital in the world, behind only the three South American Andean capitals. And while its mountain setting is attractive, the altitude added another layer to my faint first-day malaise, on top of the 11-hour jetlag and microbially unfamiliar food.

I walked east from Yeka that day, farther into the suburbs. My predominant impression of Addis then was of people lined up for public transportation. So much public transportation. Blue snub-nosed minibuses criss-cross the city, the conductors leaning out of the side door, yelling their destination rapid-fire as up to 20 Ethiopians pile in. Large full-size city buses roar by, similarly crammed. The queues for the buses line the streets, sometimes more than a block long, the people waiting patiently. And what a variety of people: Muslim women in full niqab, women in colorful headscarves with babies tied to their backs, men in sunglasses and business suits, Africans in jeans and sandals and sweatshirts, white-robed men with beards and turbans.

Also squeezed onto the sidewalks were women in bright clothing selling produce laid out on blankets. The most common items were ginger roots and small spherical limes, but I also saw papayas nearly the size of my head, and most surprisingly of all, avocados. I stopped to inspect a pile of them and signalled that I’d like to buy one, but the woman misinterpreted my sign language and handed me one kilogram instead. The kilo cost 20 birr, or about 60 cents. It turns out that Ethiopia has been growing avocados for 40 years, and there’s an initiative to turn them into a major export alongside coffee.

My goal that first day was to see Rise of Skywalker, since I hadn’t caught it before I left the States. It just so happened that one of the few foreign-language movie theaters in Addis lay along my eastward trajectory. Thus it was that I arrived at the Century Mall, a five-story stack of mostly empty stores and arcades that caters to upper-class residents and expats. I bought a 7 pm ticket, a few hours away still, and sat in a cafe in the lobby reading my book. My eyes blurred, and once I realized that I had been squinting at the same sentence for 30 seconds, I abandoned my ambition and walked out into dusk, moving quickly with my hands in my pockets. The route back was lined with vendors, beggars, and engine repairmen sitting in little corrugated tin lean-tos. It was a strange contrast from the artificial colors and cheerful plastic fixtures of the mall, but travel and five years in San Francisco have taught me that there’s nothing particularly profound or notable about that.