Landfall
11/26/2004 4:38AM MST (2:38PM Addis Ababa)
Landing in a foreign country at night is a surreal thing. All you see on the approach are the lights of homes, streets, etc, outlining the arteries of the city that lay below. There are some differences to be sure, approaching NYC is to approach the core of a galaxy, while approaching Khartoum is the outer spiral wing of that same body of stars. In the darkness you can't see dinginess, or cleanliness, or people or trees or anything. All you see are the scattered lights, and the result makes most cities look more or less the same. It is upon landing that the differences become slightly more visible.
Bole International Airport is not what I have come to associate with Third World airports. The new terminal, where I disembarked, resembles the new terminal in Charles de Gaulle, Paris. A modern jetway juts out of the glass and steel face of the airport and docks with the airplane. Walking down into the terminal, there is a concourse completely covered in marble, which has a soapy pure quality to it. The place is well laid out and the airport staff well dressed and extremely neat. I should have expected as much, since Ethiopians in the US are so much more fastidious than their Sudanese cousins. The only sign of inefficiency came as I waited in like to get my visa on arrival, walking from one window to the next and then back to apply, pay and then collect my passport. A man cut in front of me, with an Irish passport but not an Irish name or accent. At 2am one is inclined to beat him senseless with his own shoe, but lacks the will and energy to do it. Regardless I got my passport stamped with a handsome visa, and entered the baggage claim area.
It is truly a remarkable thing to find yourself somewhere wherein you are the majority. To be able to look around and see a sea of faces that resemble your own. One forgets about it when one is away, living amongst what are essentially foreigners (not in the usual sense). There, every face you see is not a reflection of your own and so you slowly lose touch with the face you see in the mirror. Here, on the other hand, the faces in the crowd are the one in the mirror and vice versa. They start to speak Amharic to you immediately, until your simple smile and shaking of the head let them know that you aren't Ethiopian. Gathering your belongings you walk out into a larger sea of people in the marble, steel and glass main concourse, and see faces that are even more familiar since they are Sudanese faces. They take your hand and greet you warmly. It's the feeling of being home, even when this isn't home; it is the feeling of belonging, where you don't quite belong.