Arrival in Addis

I did the most extraordinary thing today. I arrived in Addis Ababa. I flew here on Ethiopian Airlines from Lusaka, on a serviceable 757 which had originated in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. The flight was about three-quarters full, and already on boarding I had noticed that the passengers were a splendidly globalized mix of dark-skinned Bantu Africans, fair skinned North Africans and Middle Easterners, Europeans on business and pleasure, plenty of Indian families and a handful of Chinese headed east. One Chinese girl was seen off with a bouqet by her boyfriend – I guess she was visiting her beau at his place of business in Zambia (Was he a merchant? A road builder? A restaurateur? It was hard to tell.) I did notice a dearth of Ethiopians and their distinctive copper skin and noble foreheads.

Now, the reason why it was extraordinary that I arrived here was not because it is an extraordinary place (true), or because I have no real reason to be here (likewise), but because I was the only one on that plane to arrive in Addis – the rest were all transiting onwards. Allow me to repeat: of the 200-odd passengers on that 757 to Addis Ababa, I WAS THE ONLY ONE COMING TO ADDIS ABABA.


The plane had landed and then sat for 45 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a pea-soup fog to lift. I then deplaned, paid $20 for a “Visa on Arrival”, wandered through immigration, went to the toilet, then looked about the baggage hall for my number. I found the baggage carousel, but it was rotating emptily. I asked a nearby woman in uniform where the bags for Ethiopian flight 806 from Lusaka were, and she looked down at a clipboard in her hand, looked up and asked “Mr. Maritz?” I asked how she knew. “She said that I was the only passenger on that plane arriving in Addis, and that mine was the only bag, and that it would be there shortly. It came a minute later.


I need to investigate more, but it appears that Ethiopian has cornered a large slice of the Africa-to-the-East traffic, ferrying passengers from the various capitals of Africa to Asia and beyond. The airline is a tremendous source of national pride. There are billboards for it all over the capital, despite the fact that 99% of Ethiopians could never afford a ticket. I even passed a restaurant shaped like a Ethiopian airliner. Seriously.


Theirs is a gritty business, with many of their routes having to call on several cities before they can muster enough passengers (Lilongwe-Luska-Addis, for example). They must need to price quite competitively to be able to take traffic from the major airlines and the various flag carriers (where they exist). It was clearly a working-class, no-nonsense bunch on the plane, not expecting any frills. Indeed, despite the mere $200 premium for business class on the 14 hours of flying between Lusaka and Bangkok (my next destination), the front cabin where I sat was more than half empty. (Sorry Abba)


I'm now in my hotel room in Addis, which smells like socks. I did have my first tasty Ethiopian meal in the restaurant downstairs. So far, the Ethiopian joints in Seattle remain competitive with the genuine article. Both are excellent.