A Drive to Town

Opening the front door of my apartment, I step out into the cool, rainy air. I look across the helicopter landing pad in the center of our compound, over the high wall with wire twisted in loops on top, to the green fields filled with crops, donkeys, cattle, and goats, and the green hills that are hidden behind a thick fog. I look to the sky to see if there is any chance of sunshine. All to my left I see clouds and fog. I look to my right and see a patch of blue sky with the sun poking through.

I step into the open, onto the wet grass, rain gently sprinkling my face body. The short walk between my apartment and the missionary’s white 12-passenger van is just enough to get a little chilled. Letting my teammate sit in the front seat, I hop in the back with six kids, ages five to sixteen. The van starts backing out of its parking place and soon we are waving at our guard as he lets us pass through our metal gate doors.

The semi-paved road is bumpy. As I look out my window there is a boy around age 12 wearing ragged clothes and lime green rubber boots with an opened red umbrella and a stick walking nonchalantly behind a flock of goats, every now and then gently motioning the stick to the right of the flock so they knew not to get any closer to the road. As we pass the boy with his goats we see a group of three girls wrapped in their beautiful white fabric covering their hair, shoulders, arms, and torsos. The van rumbles on the now broken, half paved, half gravel road forcing the van to tilt almost uncomfortably to the right. In the middle of the road there is a light brown dog lying on its stomach, scratching behind its right ear. It must not hear the van advancing towards because it continues to lay there. A gentle honk tells the dog we are coming. Casually it stands up and trots off to the side. By now there are many Ethiopian people walking along the road to go to work, or to school, or to the market. The kids see us coming and they excitedly wave their hands at us, flashing their biggest and brightest smiles at us, yelling, “Forenji! Forenji! How are you? Forenji!” in their best English. We smile and wave back as we pass them. Splashing through puddles, driving over rocks, passing a large cement building, we have reached the main road. We see a blue and white taxi van racing in our direction; he flashes his lights to let us know he is coming. After he passes we leave the bumpy half paved, half gravel road and get on the smooth, fully paved main road.

As we gain speed, I look out the window and see a new site. There is a large pile of something covered in white with little blue lines. I immediately realize it is a large pile of guts, covered in white slime with the veins running through it. I quickly look to the right and see the body of a large animal with the head still attached; it is a cow. “Ew! Did you see that?!” exclaimed one of the kids, half giggling. Chuckling to myself at her comment, I see yet another cow that has come to the same fate. There must be a holiday tomorrow, we concluded. As we continue on passing huts, little shops, vegetable stands, elderly women carrying large sacks on their back, other people carrying stacks of the round bread, injera, on their head, we see ahead of us a large dump truck is slowing down traffic. It is a ‘no passing’ zone. Everyone knows those laws only apply when there is a cop visible, so we, along with the other vehicles, scoot right along past the dump truck. We follow the road, now on a gentle grade, with two green hills on either side and a few goats sprinkled among the dewy grass, around a corner, around another corner, and to a bridge with the dirty brown water below, the beautiful green hillside sprinkled with different colored clothes and linens laid out to dry in the sun that is now forcing its way through the clouds.

We pull into the city limits, weaving through the people, the animals, and the other cars, and come to the first roundabout. Traffic is heavy, the most cars I’ve ever seen. Blue and white taxi vans are trying to shove their way in, a little black car is sick of waiting and honks twice, up ahead there is a long red city bus waiting to enter the roundabout. Slowly, we inch our way forward and finally make it to the front of the line. We see a large puddle of water that no one will drive through. We enter the circle, head straight to the puddle, drive through it, and exit the roundabout. Watching out for the random teenage boy that ran in the road not paying attention, we see vegetable stands, clothes shops, people roasting corn, taxi drivers laughing while they wait for their vans to fill, soldiers casually carrying M-16’s joking and laughing with their fellow soldiers.

After ten more minutes of driving along the highway passing cars and pedestrians, we pull up to the large, brown gate of Bingham Academy. As the guard opens the gate door he smiles warmly and excitedly waves to us as we pass him. We go up the hill, pass the guard house, down the hill, and find a parking spot. The van backs into its new spot and turns off. Everyone unbuckles, opens their doors, and files out. We go to our different places for the day until we are reunited once again at the white, 12-passenger van.