Getting to Dembidolo

You haven’t really flown until you’ve taken a domestic flight on an African airline. We leave on Wednesday morning to catch our flight to Gambela, after spending a little over 24 hours in Addis. The electricity is out at “Momma” Hareg’s when we leave her home.

We show our ticket information and ID to get into the airport. I have packed mine away. Iris is, as always, two steps ahead of me and quickly produces my itinerary with her own.

We wait in line to check in. We are told, a half hour later, that everyone flying to Gambela needs to be in a separate line. We switch, and the line stagnates. We are told, after a half hour of standing in the same place, that the system is down. It will be back up in ten minutes.

An hour later, our line begins to move. We make it to the front. The airline worker is a short young man with obtrusive ears named Daniel. By hand, he writes our boarding passes and fills out a paper documenting who has been checked in. I spell my name to him,
“Like your name plus “L-E.”
He smiles.
He weighs our massive bags.
“These bags are overweight,” he says, concerned.
“That’s OK, that’s OK.” Iris says brusquely, waving him along. She already knows she’ll need to go to a separate window to pay a fee for each kilogram of extra weight, and is afraid we’ll miss our flight.
“I’ll pay for all four of the bags,” Iris explains.
Daniel hesitates. “This bag is 22 kilograms overweight, this one is 17 kilograms overweight, this one is 10 kilograms over, and this one is 24 kilograms over.”
“That’s OK, that’s OK.” Iris does not know what he is waiting for. Finally,
“Shall I give you a discount?” Daniel offers.
“Yes.” Says Iris.
And Daniel scrawls “42 kg” on a little piece of paper for Iris to take to the other counter.

I wait a full twenty minutes at Daniel’s counter before Iris brings the receipt and we receive our baggage claim tickets. We hurry up to the gate and breath easy. I learn that the woman at the other counter had initially quoted to Iris an absurd fee for the overweight bags, and it took some time before the woman realized we were traveling on a domestic flight and the fee was just 8 birr per kilo.

Our flight was meant to leave a half hour ago, but because of the system failure, it has been delayed. We settle in to wait. A few minutes later, Daniel comes up to the gate and hands me my itinerary, which I had forgotten at his counter. I smile sheepishly at Iris, who is beginning to realize what an airhead I am. I resolve to guard our baggage claim tickets with my life.

An airline worker informs everyone that the flight will not be leaving for another four hours. They feed us lunch, on the house.

When we finally line up to board the plane, everyone rushes to be among the first to board. The handful of 4 or 5 of us Farangis all end up at the back. The plane is a rickety old thing. We are surprised to find the first two seats empty, and take them. I realize during take-off that we have chosen the loudest seats on the plane. The engine roars.

I am excited to be flying over a breathtaking green landscape. When the plane lands in Gambela, my heart races and I realize that this is completely new territory for me, nothing like I’ve ever done before, coming down among the acacia trees. The “airport” is totally rudimentary. It’s just a landing strip and a tower.

Athough every Ethiopian to whom I mentioned Gambela said it was extremely hot, nothing could have prepared me for the wave of hot, sticky air that hit my face as soon as I stepped out of the plane and into the overcast climate. There was a total disconnect between how the air looked from inside the plane and how it felt.

We saw Stephanie and the sisters waving at us, and Iris nearly leapt for joy.

The bags were unloaded from a plane onto the back of a truck and as a throng of passengers grabbed their bags directly off the vehicle,
I realized the absurdity of the little baggage claim tickets I had held onto so tightly.