The Unknown Cost

Arriving in Addis Ababa, I walked down the steps onto the airport runway. I wasn’t immediately met by the smells of wood fires, as I am in Uganda, but there was a hint of the exotic in the air, and I was ready to explore a new country. As I made my way out of the run-down airport, the shine of a novel city wore off quickly and wariness of the unknown filled my mind. A man approached me, saying “do you need to change money? The best rates are in the airport.” I know that this has been true in other places I have travelled, so I nodded and followed him. But instead of leading me to a forex bureau, he led me to a dusty booth of curtains and folding chairs in the side of the airport lobby. He asked how much I wanted and told me the rate was 31 birr to the dollar. I had a hundred dollars to exchange, and he opened up a drawer and pulled out 31 grimy 100 birr bills. There was no sign of any form of record keeping of this transaction, and it set off alarm bells in my head. I pulled out my cell phone and looked up the current birr to dollar exchange rate, which was listed as about 29:1, so I decided to proceed. The man simply smiled and shook his head when I asked about a receipt. 

In contrast, when I had changed money in Cape Town, I had had to transfer the bills through a little metal sliding drawer underneath a glass window to a teller, provide my passport to be copied, and fill out a form with my personal information including local address. Although I felt unsettled after this highly informal money exchange, having the feeling I had either gotten swindled somehow or been part of something illegal, I got on with searching for the hotel shuttle. It was nowhere to be seen, and I was accosted by at least 10 taxi drivers in the meantime, who just rudely tried to hustle me to their cars, which seemed to me even less polite than the Ugandan method of cheerfully calling out “madam, you come and we go!” I had had to lug all my bags down to the shuttle parking area, and when I tried to lug them back up towards the airport (where I could access wifi to see if the hotel had tried to contact me) there were armed guards who refused to let me back up in that direction, forcing me to take a circuitous route for no reason I could determine. There was a man at the top of the ramp who saw my tired expression of confusion and exclaimed in a German accent “they will not let you in this way! This is the most ridiculous place in the world! Once you step out, you cannot step back in, there is no explanation for it.” 

I wandered the sidewalks, clutching my heavy suitcase, until finally, I located a driver and a bellboy standing by a shuttle with my hotel’s name on it and holding a sign. “Ah, you are here,” said the bellboy with relief as they got in the car and prepared to depart. “Don’t you think we should wait?” I asked, gesturing to the sign. They looked confused. “The name on the sign is not my name.” They looked at the sign again, and I was slightly amused that they were about to accept that my name was Li-Cheng Hu [or something equivalently obviously Chinese).  It turned out that they had not even known I was coming, so fortunately I was able to hop on to the shuttle with Li-Cheng Hu and we headed to my hotel.

Upon arrival, the bellboy, Lemesgen, took my bags and brought me to my room. I debated internally what to do, since I had only 100 birr bills, which seemed too large for a tip, however a tip also seemed polite to give, especially since Lemesgen said he had waited two hours for me at the airport the night before (for my original arrival time which I had missed, even though I had contacted the hotel 6 hours prior to that to let them know my arrival time had changed). When I set my bags down in the room and reached for my pocket, however, Lemesgen said “How long do you stay in Addis? Do you need a SIM card?” It was like he had read my mind, and I enthusiastically said “yes! I do need that!” “Wait 10 minutes here,” he replied mysteriously. “I’ll be back.”

True to his word, Lemesgen knocked a short time later and handed me a SIM card, with no sort of packaging attached. “Great,” I said, “how much do I owe you for it?” He looked at me rather impishly and said, “how much do you want to pay for it?” “No,” I said, irritated. “I don’t know what anything costs here. How could I know how much it is worth?” “It is worth whatever you think it is worth.” He looked at me expectantly. 

While he was gone, I had removed a few of the birr bills from the stack and hidden them by the door, so that I wouldn’t have to pull out a wad of cash to pay him. However, I regretted answering truthfully when he quizzed me on the ride about the purpose of my visit to Addis, because he had been addressing me as “doctor” ever since. It is highly ironic being a young female physician that the people who care most about identifying you as a doctor tend to be the people who you wish you could keep that fact hidden from. I threw two 100 birr bills at him, which I figured should be sufficient, but he looked at them in disgust and did not move. “This is very little money,” he said. “This is not enough.” I narrowed my eyes. “Well, you’re the one who was supposed to tell me how much you want for it, and you didn’t say.” “Ah, doctor, but this is very little money, very little,” Lemesgen reproached me. “Less than ten dollars.” In my mind I shouted “A SIM card is worth less than ten dollars even in the USA!” But I was tired, and I just wanted him to get out of my face. I threw another 100 birr bill at him, he continued to give me a disappointed look, but I told him that I was tired and going to take a nap, and he reluctantly departed, while I remained angry and feeling like I had been the victim of highway robbery. I was told the next day that SIM cards are worth 30 birr.

I had accomplished what needed to be done that morning, getting a good rate on currency exchange, and paying less than ten dollars for a local SIM to be delivered to my door, but it struck me how the feeling of completing these transactions in Addis was different than completing similar tasks in Cape Town, where prices are known and posted. Paying a set price for an item has a completely different feel to it compared to paying a lower price that you've had to haggle and argue for. It takes so much more out of you. I’ve lost what willingness I ever had to pay a different price because of who I am, I realized, and I’m out of patience with people who try to take advantage of me. This was not a good frame of mind to be in as I started out on day one of my stay in Ethiopia.

Drama in Jo-burg

I arrived at O.R. Tambo Airport in Jo-burg with many hours to spare until my flight to Addis would depart. I was feeling so confident in my travel skills at that point, I made several serious errors. I did not assess the layout of the airport, which like most international terminals, was made up of a maze of check in desks for each airline which would open and close over the course of the day depending on flight departures. You cannot check in too early for your flight, you must wait until it is within a few hours of departure. Also, because it was so long until my flight departed, it was not assigned to any particular check in desk numbers, so I did not notice that Ethiopian Airlines was actually in a different terminal than the one to which I had arrived. After taking a quick stroll through the immediate area, it seemed that there were no seats available unless one sat down in a restaurant, so I decided to choose one to spend my layover time in. I sat down and ordered what turned out to be about a quarter of a whole chicken, and picked away at it while I read Anna Kendrick’s entertaining memoir “Scrappy Little Nobody.” Hours passed. 

While I was giggling about Anna Kendrick’s exploits as a feisty child star, I completely forgot that I was not on the other side of security in this airport. I had this idea that I could just wander out of the restaurant near to the time of boarding and head to my gate. But as I did wander out and looked at the board tracking flight departures, I realized my error and started to run. It was about 30 minutes prior to departure and I wasn’t sure when the cutoff for baggage drop off would be. An airport porter saw me in distress and jogged up alongside. I told him which flight I was on and he grabbed my suitcase and began running with me. “I will get you on,” he said. “If I can! But you must be ready. Something for the people at the counter.” He glanced at me meaningfully as we ran. “Something for me and for them.” I started to pick some Rand out of my pocket. “Dollars!” He barked. “Dollars!” 

As we pulled up to the Ethiopian check in counters, it was apparent that they had closed check in and the staff were gone. I would have to go to the office and rebook my flights. The porter still wanted his dollars. I did not feel that was really fair, given that all he had sacrificed was less than 5 minutes running with me. If I gave him my US dollars, I’d have nothing left in my pocket, and it is foolish to travel without some kind of cash on hand, I thought, and I told him so. I gave him some Rand and he complained loudly and walked off in a huff. It was quite a shock to be so rudely awakened from my relaxed reverie of the day into a high adrenaline state, but fortunately there was another flight to Addis later that night, and it only cost me a small fee and my pride to make the change.

Since I ended up spending a very extended time in O.R. Tambo airport, I explored all the nooks and crannies of the place. I went up to an abandoned hallway, lured by a sign reading “Plane Viewing Area.” This led to a space where one could watch the planes taking off and landing, and also a small museum devoted to the life of O.R. Tambo, a key historical figure in South Africa who worked to bring an end to apartheid. The floor was transparent, with a colorful model map of the city of Johannesburg laid out below our feet. There was a funny statue of two antiquated looking Germans wearing pith helmets that seemed now quite out of place surrounded by the story of Tambo’s life. 

As I wandered back down (ready to check in for my subsequent flight at the first possible moment), I investigated a sign labeled “Muslim Bathrooms.” Following the sign, I came into a restroom that looked the same as others I had visited in the airport, which had stall doors that reached almost floor to ceiling, but there was one completely sealed closed door with the Muslim Bathroom label on it. After stealing a few surreptitious glances in all directions, I opened up the door to find a squatting toilet in the floor, with a little spraying attachment on a hose on the wall for bidet style cleansing. I tried to console myself that my time spent learning about the history of O.R. Tambo and cultural education regarding the mysterious Muslim bathroom might make sacrificing a good night’s sleep even the slightest bit worthwhile, as I boarded my red eye to Addis Ababa.

Cape Town: Extreme Income Inequality

As I spent the following days visiting the beautiful sights of Cape Town, I was amazed at how segregated the city was. In many parts of town, there were no more black people than I would see walking through the streets of Rhode Island. Yet driving from the shiny, modern city back to the conference center, we passed acres of shanty town. I was reminded of the spectrum of poverty that one sees traveling to the world’s lowest income countries. In Cape Town the poor were wearing shoes. The shanty houses had innumerable small satellite dishes dotting the roofs. Instead of beggars on the street corners, there were people selling small items like stickers to cars at each intersection. 

I hiked to the top of Table Mountain with a friend, a challenging trail that required nearly vertical ascent at times. The summit provided stunning views of the city and beyond, and even has a coffee shop with a buffet and wifi lounge. On the way down, we took the gondola, which slowly spun around and around for a spectacular ride, although it made me dizzy. I visited the waterfront, where a troupe of dancers in animal skins with painted faces entertained children and world class seafood restaurants lined the quays. I even took an Uber that cost me the equivalent of almost $100 USD, just so I could climb to the peak of the cliffs overlooking the Cape of Good Hope, and see the Indian and Pacific oceans crashing together. Overall, I was left with the sense that I could have stayed in Cape Town for weeks longer and still had much more to see and do. But only 3 days after arriving, I was boarding a plane for “Jo-burg” (I never heard a South African call it Johannesburg), heading for a very different place, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Racism From The First Hour: Cape Town

I’m not a fan of large hotels. They’re sterile and completely lack any welcoming aura. When traveling to a medical conference, it is customary to book the conference hotel, because it’s far more convenient to wake up and be right where you need to be for the event, as well as being able to easily pop back to your room in between lectures or meetings. I much prefer small B&Bs, lodging houses or vacation rentals by owner when I travel. And so instead of booking the $100/night conference hotel in Cape Town’s Century City, I had booked a small nearby lodging house for $30/night which would be approximately a 20 minute walk to the conference center. As usual, this worked out quite well for me, since the owner of the place picked me up at the airport for a small additional fee and essentially gave me a tour of town as we drove back towards the lodging house. This tour was complemented by his take on Cape Town politics. 

The proprietor is not the first Afrikaaner I met who was unendingly pleasant to me as a white person, but who harbored some disturbing views of nonwhite people.  As we drove through Cape Town, he pointed out the shanty towns we passed, each one compact and lined from top to bottom in colored corrugated steel, and exclaimed “they’re stealing electricity! They’re stealing water! And we the taxpayers have to pay more and more to subsidize them.” He railed against the corruption in the government, which to be fair, appears to be rampant. He told me “Apartheid government ended in 1994… it’s all been downhill since then.” On one hand I could see the logic of being angry as a wave of penniless illegal immigrants arrived at a high cost to current residents. On the other hand, I could also see that Cape Town would look like the promised land to people fleeing violence, failed states, and crushing poverty. I don’t think anyone should have to live without water because they can’t afford to pay for it. And it seemed the local government had made some significant efforts to build row houses in place of the shanty towns, only the shanty towns were expanding too quickly for them to keep up. Regardless, I only had a few minutes to ponder the political and racial challenges  of this situation, because my host had moved on to criticism of Chinese immigrants. “They’re modern day slave drivers, these Chinese!” He told me about how “China Towns” had been popping up all over the Cape Town area, which made me picture quaint little side streets filled with little dim sum restaurants. It turns out that China Towns are a chain of stores that sell a variety of super cheap products. My host was angry because he felt that the China Towns were undercutting local businesses by selling cheaper but low quality goods, and hiring only illegal immigrants who they could work long hours 7 days a week. South Africa apparently has strict labor laws for its citizens that do not allow a weekly work schedule with no days off. Now I was pondering the paradoxical fact that my host, who had just finished ranting about the crimes of illegal immigrants, was now ranting about the crimes that were being committed against illegal immigrants and how unfair it all was.

We arrived at the small lodging house, and I was quite charmed. Inside its gates, there were cages of twittering birds lining a garden path, flanked with a variety of tropical looking shrubs and succulents. A traditional “braai,” which is a small outdoor barbecue area, was next to my room. Although the next dawn would find me cursing those little twittering birds, I felt peaceful and relaxed, and headed off towards a dinner with friends at a well known place called The Africa Café.

At the Africa Café, I was served a literal feast, with each dish representing a different African nation’s cooking. As we ate, we were serenaded by a group of dancers and drummers. Was it touristy? Yes. Did I love it anyway? Yes yes yes.

Journey to Cape Town

When I started off on my biggest adventure this year, I was feeling pretty good about my preparedness for the trip. I had completed all my charts. I had packed everything and forgotten nothing, as near as I could tell. I remembered to take out the compost before I left, return the library books, download every electronic book and podcast I could possibly imagine myself reading for two weeks and fill my entire waitlist of requests for e-books. I even remembered really obscure items on my to do list, like emailing the folks at home a list of the foods that needed to get eaten or they would spoil, and I had traded in a bunch of old $20 bills for recent year bills at the bank, since they can fetch a higher exchange rate. I had also done something incredibly dumb, which was that the night prior to my departure, I worked all night, then obviously slept very little the next day as I spent hours arranging my suitcase contents and hugging my children repeatedly, then went to work again at 4pm with a plan to drive straight from work to the airport at 2am for my 6am flight. I had brought a large nitro cold brew coffee and I was drinking it constantly, but I was exhausted. Fortunately there were no other cars on the road, and I made it to the airport and onto my flight without any issues. Don’t ever want to make that mistake again.

I sailed through with my TSA PreCheck, flew from Boston to Washington DC, and then boarded the longest leg of my journey, a flight to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. I was pleased to find out that I had gotten my request of a window seat, until my seat neighbor appeared. He was a very portly Ethiopian man, and he settled in next to me with a thud, immediately encroaching on my space since he had no room for his arms except over the armrests on either side. He appeared very jovial and wanted to chat. I decided to deploy my ‘sleep outfit’. When I travel, I typically wear a set of “athleisure” clothes that could double as pajamas. I also wear this great old find from Betabrand (an experimental clothing retailer, if you don’t know them), which is a travel sweater. It’s drapey and cozy and has a hood with a built in sleep mask that you can fasten behind your head with an elastic. It probably looks absolutely ridiculous, but I love it. I popped on my Ethiopian airlines socks, the sleep mask hood, and my travel pillow, and…. Someone in a nearby seat started coughing. It was no normal cough. This was a paroxysmal, can’t stop, wheezing death cough (official medical terminology being used here). The cough kept going on, and on, and as a person who had just spent 16 hours of the past day or so taking care of sick people, I was on edge at the thought that my services might be needed, since this person didn’t really sound OK to get on a 10 hour flight, and then also cross with myself for being irritable about a person who was clearly quite ill through no fault of their own. This lasted an interminably long time. I really think they might have made the passenger disembark the plane, because I never heard the cough again for the rest of the flight. I fell asleep to my guilty thoughts that I was glad the coughing person was gone, but I was really in no mood to be summoned to an in flight medical situation. 

I slept for about 4 hours, which I thought was decent considering there was a large man with his elbow and his knee in my seat. When I woke up, I felt clever since I had brought an empty water flask and had the flight attendant fill it up with cold water. I started watching Guardians of the Galaxy, since I like watching movies I’d likely never watch otherwise on planes, and again feeling pretty slick. Have I done enough foreshadowing to suggest that I’m going to end up screwing something up later on? I think I have. But the remainder of my flight to Cape Town was safe and uneventful, and I arrived over one day after I had departed Boston, very sore all over but excited as we landed and the crowd of people in the plane all started applauding and ululating with glee. I think being part of a cheering and ululating crowd is an experience everyone in the world should have at some point in their lives.

I found the proprietor of the small lodging house I was staying at waiting for me at the airport arrivals area, a very friendly and helpful gentleman who seemed excited to introduce me to his beloved home city.